Hi, I acqauired a POQET last year.

I didn't get anything with it other that the slipcover), Assuming yours is the
same, here's what I've figured out about it (I don't have it in front of me, so
this is from memory - may be "slightly off"):

By searching online I was able to find the main user and technical docs.

The "PCMCIA" slots on the side below the keyboard are not compatible with
most "normal" PCMCIA cards - they are for PoQet ramDRIVE cards - these are
battery backed up large RAM cards that look like hard drives - mine had IIRC 1meg
cards pn both slots - rumors have it that some PCMCIA SRAM cards can be made
to work, but these are not common and I've not tried.

Internally is has DOS 3.3 in ROM and 1M of RAM. This shows up as 640k main
memory, and a 384k RAMdisk. This provides working space (in case if you have
no other storage connected), but unlike the drive cards, it will loose all content
when the system is power-off.

The connector on the back has a lot of signals on it, but is not a common
connector (at least I didn't have one). Turns out it is the same spacing as a
PC PCI card. The signals I was most interested in were serial COM1.
Fortunately these were all on one end.

I was able to cut the edge from and old/dead PCI card and make a connector
to fit into the end of the PoQet PC connector and give me a serial port.
(in case you do this - I was worried that the PoQet might rely on the "official"
cable having logic<>RS-232 level converters - but some testing shows that the
signals directly from the connector are RS-232)

Once I had that, I was able to bootstrap my DDLINK (file transfer tool) to
it and then move stuff on/off fairly easily.

Btw, not wanting to go through tons of batteries as I figured things out,
I powered mine with an external supply connected to the battery terminals.
(make sure voltage and polarity are right)

If you want, I can send you a pic of my cable and more details on how I got
it all working.

I don't think I made a specific thread here about it, but if you search "PoQet"
you find my posts relating to it.

Great info. I was actually thinking a 40 pin FFC cable glued to PCB material might work as well. PCI is even better.

The battery backed RAM cards seem almost essential. Maybe I will eventually be inspired enough to recreate my own.

The expansion connector has external power inputs and the manual mentions that these are connected directly to the battery terminals. That may allow use of nimh batteries and with a resistor and diode on an expansion board, you could probably charge and power the Poqet externally.

My wires are broken inside. There appears to be a small nicad battery in the base beside the battery compartment. I likely need to replace this and also need to know what wire colors are soldered to what terminals (there are three over on this left upper edge.) Do you happen to have pictures of yours opened that can show me where the wires are soldered?

I haven't actually taken mine apart, but I might be able to eventually - depends on how hard they've made it.
Don't want to risk breaking it.

I didn't bother to make a full expansion connector - so I went the easy way and powerer it with clips on
the battery terminals - It's not a terribly useful machine, no I/O other than serial (and if you want to make
the cables, perhaps parallel and ISA network) - it's also quite slow and mine has a bad line(s) in the display
as well.

I've always been interested in "old computers" (see "Daves Old Computers") and the PoQet was more of
interests in seeing/trying one of the first truly portable/handheld PCs rather than as a daily-driver.

I wanted to be able to easily put stuff on/off of it so I could test/experience how fast (slow) it was, and
to have a working XT platform to test other stuff on (sadly after a major health incident I started downsizing
so I can eventually move closer to a city and gave away my actual XTs)

Yes, you need at keast one drive cards, technically you CAN put stuff on the RAMdrive over serial
for testing - but if you want anything "permanent" you'll need a drive card. You might be able to
find a PCMCIA SRAM card that works - but I've not tried (and they aren't common either)

Agreed. Not really useful for much. The HP 200LX is far more useful as a palmtop.

My interest has always been in oddball old computers. If you search around my name, it is almost always some odd or obscure system.

My main interest in the palmtops are actually to find the perfect computer companion for my 80s robots (Hero, RB5X, etc...) To that end, an internal wireless serial port would be the cat's pajamas. Though this would suck down batteries like crazy and there is literally no room inside the Poqet. It would have to be external.

Btw, yeah, don't open your poqet if you do not need to. I just assumed that nearly all had been opened by this point for repairs. I keep seeing references to a schematic out there but I have not stumbled on it yet.

Information on known working SRAM cards would be interesting. If it just expects naked parallel SRAM, then some glue with a pico and an SDCard should net you something interesting. (at least I THINK a pico would be fast enough to catch raw parallel ram reads/writes, and fetch the appropriate bytes to/from a naked SDcard... )

Not a project I feel like doing mind, just I can see how it could be done.

wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 15:23:

Information on known working SRAM cards would be interesting. If it just expects naked parallel SRAM, then some glue with a pico and an SDCard should net you something interesting. (at least I THINK a pico would be fast enough to catch raw parallel ram reads/writes, and fetch the appropriate bytes to/from a naked SDcard... )

Not a project I feel like doing mind, just I can see how it could be done.

My understanding is that it is a PCMCIA connector, but prior to well-established standards. As such, it would typically be some sort of ISA type interface, maybe utilizing LIM EMS. It would certainly need to have some sort of bios extension to make it appear as a drive. If a modern card were produced, something along the lines of EXT-IDE might be useful.

A pico has proven to be fast enough for ISA level access, so that should work.