Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

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curtis
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Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by curtis »

Just picked this little beauty up, but alas it has no parallel or serial cables.

Does anyone have a source for either the cables or the plugs?

Also, knowing the pinout would be quite helpful if I end up having to create my own cables.

Thanks,

Curtsi
Kyodai
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by Kyodai »

Unfortunately the cables are incredibly rare, from my observations on ebay i think like 90% of all original owners lost the cables.

I do have some port replicators left for the Tidalwave PS-1000. I guess i could sell one... These are not an official product, but pretty professionally made by a German engineer in his spare time. They are not very beautiful as he never designed a plastic housing, but they are very compact (Around the size of a cigarette lighter) and useful since you just plug the port replicator in the back and you have a full serial and parallel port. Unfortunately i don't have any schematics for these.
curtis
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by curtis »

Yes, I would be VERY interested.

What sort of price with shipping to:

Curtis McCain
3502 Van Tassel
Apt. B
Amarillo, TX 79121
USA

Thanks,

Curtis
Kyodai
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by Kyodai »

Hi Curtis,

wow USA is far from here. But oh well I guess i can send it as a letter when i find a box flat enough (Something like up to 1 inch thick is still regarded a letter by German post). I prolly lose money on this, but imma say 40 USD including shipping with tracking and insurance. Well after all i really like it when someone uses these old palmtops - and honestly - "Nuclear war" or "Sim City" is not much fun without a mouse. :)

Oh and my paypal is support@renderarmy.com


Do you have an SRAM card for this? Actually very useful if you wanna store loads of games or appz. I even managed to run Windows 3.0 on a PS-1000 using a 4MB SRAM card.
curtis
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by curtis »

Sounds like a deal to me.

Actually, I've got a couple of cards coming. And I'll be using it primarily as a "disk" for my TI CC-40 which doesn't have a system for saving programs except for a PC Interface which connects through the parallel port of the PC.

The CC-40 is actually bigger than the Tidalwave!

I'll get the money posted.

Thanks again,

Curtis
Kyodai
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by Kyodai »

OK, money already arrived, I'll see that i can package everything tonight, so hopefully I'll be able to bring it to the post office tomorrow.

I'm really curious about the CC-40. I only know it from photos. SInce you can't connect a monitor or TV of it I am curious what kind of prgrams one would write for that kind of device? WIth that tiny LCD display which can only display a few characters i guess gaming is probably not much in the focus?

The PS-1000 includes Microsofts Interlink and InterServer which is kinda neat to connect to other MS-DOS based machines, but you could of course upload any other (DOS based) Terminal emulation onto it.

The included MS-Works 2.0 also includes some very basic modem support, but i guess these days it is rather unlikely you wanna use a modem.
curtis
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by curtis »

Essentially any program that would query for an input then provide some sort of manipulation of the data and provide an output.

Surprisingly enough, there's a very rudimentary word processor called Memo Processor that's not terrible. Problem is you can't save a document without a PCIF (PC Interface).

Constant memory is nice.
Kyodai
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by Kyodai »

Well i used to have an TRS-80 Model 100 and i could never find any "cool" use for it despite being "really" portable back in the days. I guess i was spoiled by my C-64.The TRS-80 Model 100 had a whooping 8 line 40 characters display, but besides the To-Do app and some very basic text (mostly notes for work) i never really did anything with it. I alwas found it rather difficult to manage big texts in that one. So you may guess how i imagine writing texts on a 2 line display. ^_^

The TRS-80 also lacked data storage, but at least you could connect a crude casette player to it for that task. And yeah it was incredible slow, so if you typed very fast you'd easily reach a point where you were like 2 or 3 lines ahead of the TRS-80 and had to wait a moment for it to catch up on the display...

The TRS-80 had BASIC, so i always tried to think of some "killer app" i would program, but it never happened. Oh well i had a little tool i made to organise my VHS collection, but when i accidentially had that backup tape erased to record the latest hits from Radio... Oh well i guess you imagine what happened to the database... What a blessing it was that you couldn't record music on Floppy discs (Well at least from the Radio)....

Anyways, i found a neat little box and some soft padding, so tomorrow the port replicator will go on its long voyage to the US of A. Imma PM you wih the tracking number once i brought it to the post office (Prolly tomorrow around this time).
curtis
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by curtis »

The Model 100 was very popular with newspaper reporters, at least in this part of the world. Very portable, decent screen for basic text editing and with the Term program, it was quite simple to dial up their home office and download the file to their editors.

At least that's the way I sold them when I worked for Radio Shack. That and the built in BASIC was pretty nice for beginning programmers.

However, my preference was the NEC PC-8300 and 8500. With those, and a RAM expansion, you had a full blown CP/M machine with Wordstar and the other "Star" programs. Those were VERY handy.

I do appreciate the quick turn around time on the shipment.

Now that I've found your board, I'll probably hang out here a fair amount of time. I've always had a soft spot in my heart (and head) for DOS handhelds. Once had all 3 Poqet's, a Zeos, the CC-40, most of the Kyocera "slabtops", and other odd and ends type handhelds.

Currently I'm down the the '40, a 200LX and the Tidalwave. Have a double speed, 6MB 200LX on the way. Been kicking around picking up a Olivetti M-10 but those are a bit on the RARE side.

Oh well, time to hang it up for the evening and turn off the brain and turn on the TV.

Again, thanks for your help.

Curtis
Kyodai
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Re: Tidalwave PS-1000 ports

Post by Kyodai »

BTW: The ZEOS was just a "branded" PS-1000, so if you still have it you didn't gain anything by buying the PS-1000. XD

I must admit i never used the terminal capabilities of the model 100 back in the day. Well my Commodore C-64 did not have a modem and i always prefered it as the "Datasette" tape drive was slow but much ore reliable than the "jury rigged" tape recorder i used for the model 100.

The model100 was not "bad", but i guess i never really needed a portable unit and thus the Commodore was obviously handier - loads of cool full color games, big (Errrr like 12 inch?) TV screen, loads of text to be displayed all at once. Hell, later i even had GEOS and a mouse, felt like this was a machine for eternity.

But at least regarding the VHS video collection administration tool both actually lost to a sheet of paper in the long run :) That was kinda... "practical"..

The Poqet was a whole new dimension when it came out - a whooping 640 x 200 CGA pixels on such a tiny screen, i always thought they'd release a "Poqet 2" with 640x480 VGA which never happened (Unfortunately). Well regarding games the PS-1000 is more compatible, at least the speaker is more compatible (Though the volume could be a bit louder). Old versions of "Word perfect" actually were a true treasure on the Poqet or PS-1000, imho being the first really portable solution for writing, formatting and managing large texts.

The HP 100LX (And a year later 200LX) came a bit too late - in 1993 i thought like "Wow a miniature PS-1000 with a crappy keyboard". And in 1994 the 200LX i was like "What, just a software update?". I guess the HP LX series was always kida hate-love for me. I used it a lot since it was so small, but the keyboard was the worst ever on a palmtop imho. i guess the most i ever really typed on it were some server names, problem descriptions and passwords. The screen was such a disappointment when i saw the 200LX, i was hoping so much they'd at least use EGA or (in my dreams) VGA and a switchable backlight. And the weird HP style serial port was soooooo unnecessary, why didn't they just put a damn standard serial port in it which would roughly have the same size?

But admittedly, Quicken was pretty good on the 200LX being THE killer app. I wish all palmtops had quicken.
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