radiance32 wrote on 2021-02-14, 20:56:

Also, i'm not sure if it was you, but you (or someone else) pointed to "yahoo auctions" for looking for things like an SCP-55 PC […]
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Also, i'm not sure if it was you, but you (or someone else) pointed to "yahoo auctions" for looking for things like an SCP-55 PCMCIA soundcard and a such,
but after some googling it seems that there are only 4 yahoo marketplaces all for asian countries.
Which one should I look at ? The japanese one ? Could you provide a link to the right one ???

Cheers,
Terrence

It's this one https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp
Sold SCP-55s FYI https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closedsearch/clo … scp-55&b=1&n=50

Bondi wrote on 2021-02-14, 22:01:

radiance32 wrote on 2021-02-14, 20:56:

Also, i'm not sure if it was you, but you (or someone else) pointed to "yahoo auctions" for looking for things like an SCP-55 PC […]
Show full quote

Also, i'm not sure if it was you, but you (or someone else) pointed to "yahoo auctions" for looking for things like an SCP-55 PCMCIA soundcard and a such,
but after some googling it seems that there are only 4 yahoo marketplaces all for asian countries.
Which one should I look at ? The japanese one ? Could you provide a link to the right one ???

Cheers,
Terrence

It's this one https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp
Sold SCP-55s FYI https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closedsearch/clo … scp-55&b=1&n=50

Thanks a lot 😀 I'll keep an eye out for one on this site, google seems to translate it pretty good, so I hope to find one soon 😀
Do you think there is a higher chance of finding an accurite doubleslot on that site than on US ebay ? (since the 200LX was VERY popular in japan during it's heydays...)

Cheers,
Terrence

radiance32 wrote on 2021-02-14, 22:04:

Thanks a lot :) I'll keep an eye out for one on this site, google seems to translate it pretty good, so I hope to find one soon […]
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Bondi wrote on 2021-02-14, 22:01:

radiance32 wrote on 2021-02-14, 20:56:

Also, i'm not sure if it was you, but you (or someone else) pointed to "yahoo auctions" for looking for things like an SCP-55 PC […]
Show full quote

Also, i'm not sure if it was you, but you (or someone else) pointed to "yahoo auctions" for looking for things like an SCP-55 PCMCIA soundcard and a such,
but after some googling it seems that there are only 4 yahoo marketplaces all for asian countries.
Which one should I look at ? The japanese one ? Could you provide a link to the right one ???

Cheers,
Terrence

It's this one https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp
Sold SCP-55s FYI https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/closedsearch/clo … scp-55&b=1&n=50

Thanks a lot 😀 I'll keep an eye out for one on this site, google seems to translate it pretty good, so I hope to find one soon 😀
Do you think there is a higher chance of finding an accurite doubleslot on that site than on US ebay ? (since the 200LX was VERY popular in japan during it's heydays...)

Cheers,
Terrence

It's definitely worth keeping an eye on Yahoo as well. A lot of LX200 were sold there and four are for sale right now. Yet I haven't found any Doubleslots. But looks like was sold in Japan too, there is this website about it http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA003628/dslot.html

>Doubleslot Replica

Regarding your other notes about making your own doubleslot, do you have any experience designing/assembling electronics like this? If so I can likely help you with some information if required about the authentic doubleslot. It is not too complicated, but following their design would allow use of the same software.

btw that 2slot isa pcmcia controller, I have one of those. There is no need to take one of those apart you can buy the components from mouser/digikey still (double pcmcia socket etc)

Video for fun, HP200LX logging into a Novell Netware 3.12 server via the Accton 2216 PCMCIA Card: https://youtu.be/QEtzK3pLQmQ

yyzkevin wrote on 2021-02-15, 01:33:

>Doubleslot Replica […]
Show full quote

>Doubleslot Replica

Regarding your other notes about making your own doubleslot, do you have any experience designing/assembling electronics like this? If so I can likely help you with some information if required about the authentic doubleslot. It is not too complicated, but following their design would allow use of the same software.

btw that 2slot isa pcmcia controller, I have one of those. There is no need to take one of those apart you can buy the components from mouser/digikey still (double pcmcia socket etc)

Video for fun, HP200LX logging into a Novell Netware 3.12 server via the Accton 2216 PCMCIA Card: https://youtu.be/QEtzK3pLQmQ

Hi yyzKevin, great video 😀

I wonder what would happen if you mount a drive that's like 1TB large? does it work ???
When you do a dir command, does it report like xxx gigabytes free or something or does it just show a garbage number or crashes due to an overflow? 🤣

I guess it won't be possible as I don' think your NetWare 3 server will support modern multi-terabyte hardware or not ?
I have many horrible memories of Netware 3 and 4 (with NDS) from back in the days when i worked as an IT support kid when i was 18 years old in Belgium in a large company 😀

I have a silicom ethernet PCMCIA card in the mail that is also supported by the 200lx, which is going to arrive in 1-2 weeks,
and I was planning on doing the same, but instead mounting a share from my home Linux Samba and NFS fileserver,
either via SMB/CIFS over TCP/IP (with DOS lanmanager or something) or, via Sun PC-NFS using NFS over TCP/IP instead.

I'd prefer the SMB protocol though as NFS is a pain in the *ss the setup 😉 Especially on dos as these old Sun PC-NFS clients
only support archaic versions of nfsv2 which is ancient and modern Linux machines will probably have issues with it...

About the double-slot stuff, unfortunately, as I mentioned in my previous post in the sound forum, I don't have any experience with electronics,
other than some medium-quality soldering skills, but definitely no PCB design skills, so I would have to find someone else to design the PCB...
Are you capable of designing a PCB on your computer and sending the files to a PCB manufacturer like PCBway or some other service that provides low-volume PCBs for a project like this ?

Cheers,
Terrence

>netware
this a little random project I was working on but I have not had type to do more on it. https://lab.yyzkevin.com
it does not have sound, and you have to click inside the terminal window to type. basically it boots a virtual machine that RPL boots from a real netware server. 3.12 though no NDS, I am using an old version of IBM Lan Classroom that requires bindery etc.

I did not test how far you can go, my netware server has 8GB.

>nfs/smb
I have never used nfs on dos, smb/cifs for a short number of years, it would be nice to do though. Currently I have a windows2000 machine that connects to the netware server via ipx, and tcp/ip to a windows share and runs a file sync program 🤣, this is how I realtime synchronize files between my windows10 desktop and my netware 3.12 server.

>doubleslot
I could totally copy the doubleslot design, I am not sure I want to open up another project just yet still trying to close off some others. it is totally possible though, and I think total cost would be about $50 if you use normal sources, as that double slot pcmcia socket is not cheap through digikey/mouser. I thought of a more expanded version of it, almost like a "docking station", having some card functions onboard like a uart, parallel port, etc. lots of ideas

by the way I got my doubleslot from facebook usergroup for the HP95/100/200LX

yyzkevin wrote on 2021-02-15, 03:18:

>netware this a little random project I was working on but I have not had type to do more on it. https://lab.yyzkevin.com it do […]
Show full quote

>netware
this a little random project I was working on but I have not had type to do more on it. https://lab.yyzkevin.com
it does not have sound, and you have to click inside the terminal window to type. basically it boots a virtual machine that RPL boots from a real netware server. 3.12 though no NDS, I am using an old version of IBM Lan Classroom that requires bindery etc.

I did not test how far you can go, my netware server has 8GB.

>nfs/smb
I have never used nfs on dos, smb/cifs for a short number of years, it would be nice to do though. Currently I have a windows2000 machine that connects to the netware server via ipx, and tcp/ip to a windows share and runs a file sync program 🤣, this is how I realtime synchronize files between my windows10 desktop and my netware 3.12 server.

>doubleslot
I could totally copy the doubleslot design, I am not sure I want to open up another project just yet still trying to close off some others. it is totally possible though, and I think total cost would be about $50 if you use normal sources, as that double slot pcmcia socket is not cheap through digikey/mouser. I thought of a more expanded version of it, almost like a "docking station", having some card functions onboard like a uart, parallel port, etc. lots of ideas

by the way I got my doubleslot from facebook usergroup for the HP95/100/200LX

It would be awesome if we could somehow, as you say, create a sort of HP200LX all-in-one expander.
An example would be a box, with it's own power supply (through a USB port) so it can power multiple current-hungry cards (eg cards that require more than 150mAh, which is the maximum current the HP200LX can provide to a PCMCIA card in it's single PCMCIA slot. It would have 2, 3 or 4 PCMCIA slots type 1, 2 and 3 (the thicker card type that does'nt fit into the palmtop itself), and also adds a UART providing an additional RS-232C port as COM2 with speed up to 115K baud (which can be configured with a dip switch or something similar to become a null-modem serial port, so you can plug a serial DB-9 connector mouse straight into it without requiring a null-modem adapter, a parallel port configured as LPT1, a CompactFlash slot which supports cards up to 2GB in size through the acecard3 DOS driver, an integrated sound solution (an adlib opl3 chip for example, with headphone jack output, a jockstick port and an integrated 10MBps RJ-45 ethernet interface. It's more like a sort of desktop "docking station" device, which would be like one of those desktop docking stations that some laptops had during the 2nd half of the 90's and early 2000's...
Also, to make it portable, a litium-ion battery inside the device that can power the device for 5-6 hours or so, and, recharges via the USB power input...

That would be a massive project though, and it won't be easy to design, manufacture and it would cost a pretty penny 😉
But, i'm pretty sure every 200LX-nerd out there would want to buy one of these as it would turn your 200LX into a full featured desktop PC-like system ...

Sounds like heaven to me 😉

Hi again yyzkevin,

I let my imagination loose and made a quick 5 minute 3d model of "The Imaginary Penultimate Expander" for the 200LX 😉
This would be a device that slides into the PCMCIA slot on the left of the HP Palmtop, similar to those Amiga 500 hard drives that attached on the left of the A500.
The PCMCIA card that goes into the Palmtop hold the device in place (hopefully), and multiplexes the PCMCIA bus to the 2 card slots and all the other features inside,
so to the card services, it just looks like a large bunch of PCMCIA cards...

I tried to put everything a DOS Palmtop user would ever need into one expander device,
it's way too optimistic though, I don't think its possible to build something like this at the small size of the expander in the images,
it would have to be larger, and have less functionality/connectors to be buildable and affordable 😉
But it's a great "target" to try and design and build something as close as possible to it...
It could also be built to work in other machines too, besides DOS HP Palmtops...

Although it's a very quickly built and crude 3d model, the dimensions of everything are correct, i looked up all the dimensions of the 200LX, PMCIA cards, CF card, etc...,
except for the DB25 and DB9 ports, I eyeballed those from a photo, and I think they are a tiny amount too large...

Front View

Rear View

Wireframe isometric top view with text labels

This penultimate device has:
* 2 PCMCIA slots, for 2 Type 1 or 2 Type cards, or one Type 3 card (which is too thick to allow for 2 Type 3 cards so it fits into the bottom slot and takes up both slots)
* a headphone 3.5" stereo jack on the front, and a 3.5" stereo line out jack on the back. These could be connected, for example, to an internal opl3 and/or some buffered digital audio chip inside, or simply a COVOX clone on an additional parallel port.
* An extra DB-9 RS-232C port as COM2, which is connected to a UART in a straight fashion, unlike the palmtop's built-in COM1 port and cable, so you don't need a null modem adapter and can connect a serial mouse directly to the COM2 port.
* A D25 parallel port as LPT1
* a female RJ-45 socket, connected to a 10Mbps PCMCIA LAN chip out of a PCMCIA network card that's supported by the 200LX.
* a CompactFlash card slot on the front capable of using standard (up to 32/64 MB), or, up to 2GB cards with the acecard3 driver.

Power is provided through a USB Type-C connector at the back of the device.

All these features would be connected as PCMCIA devices on the PCMCIA bus, of which, I'm still not sure how many PCMCIA devices are supported on a PCMCIA 2.0 bus. (I need to do some further googling/searching for this information, and I hope it's more than 2 😀 🤣
But I have read that the PCMCIA 2.0 design is based on the 16-bit ISA bus, so I have a hunch it should support more than 2 PCMCIA devices and all the functionality in this unicorn expander might be possible, but in a bigger box 😀 🤣 ...

Anyway, this is just a purely fantastical idea that I don't think will ever be created, but it's a great design goal to try to build something resembling this with less functionality, but as close to it as possible...
I don't think it will be possible to cram all the necessary hardware into the size of this expander, so a real-world, realistic one would have to be a bit larger, or, features will have to be removed...
Actually, you probably won't be using the PCMCIA slots a lot of the time as nearly everything you would ever need is already provided in the expander...

For something more realistic, buildable and affordable, maybe just a device of similar size/dimensions, but just the following functionality:
* 2x PCMCIA Type 1 and 2, or 1 PCMCIA Type 3 card
* A DB25 LPT1 port at the back
* an opl3 chip (adlib compatible) with the headphones 3.5" stereo jack on the front and the line-out jack on the back to connect to a pair of speakers...
* a USB Type-C connector at the back for power.
* All the rest like CompactFlash storage, ethernet and/or an additional serial port can be done with cards in the 2 PCMCIA slots 😀

And, if there is any room left, maybe a small one-cell lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery, that's charged by the USB Type-C power supply/regulator IC.
This doesn't need to be a big battery, just enough to power the unit for 2-3 hours would be a great start, something like a one-cell 1200mAh lithium-ion pack.

Cheers,
Terrence

PS: https://lab.yyzkevin.com very cool, all in a browser window 😀 but it asks for a username after I launch the IBM classroom lan manager...

>lab username is guest

that is a nice render. I could build the circuit board for that in a day or so, mostly. an issue though is, when the onboard LPT1 is enabled I believe I would need to disable one of the slots. And, the OPL chip when enabled would use that same LPT port, otherwise we would need to disable a second slot. The OPL would be presented via lpt so OPL2LPT software and patches etc could be used.

I think, because it is so easy, that I would put the uart in it attached to an ESP8266 virtual wifi modem.

i need to hookup the doubleslot and see what it is doing, I suspect it is presenting two single-function cards as one multifunction card. I will hook it up and see how the CIS is presented to the host etc, I need to learn more about the limited (nonstandard?) pcmcia implementation on the LX

Some current PCMCIA Development I am playing with. This is the HP200LX again logged into a netware server, this time over wifi through the esp8266 pcmcia card

yyzkevin wrote on 2021-02-15, 06:34:

>lab username is guest […]
Show full quote

>lab username is guest

that is a nice render. I could build the circuit board for that in a day or so, mostly. an issue though is, when the onboard LPT1 is enabled I believe I would need to disable one of the slots. And, the OPL chip when enabled would use that same LPT port, otherwise we would need to disable a second slot. The OPL would be presented via lpt so OPL2LPT software and patches etc could be used.

I think, because it is so easy, that I would put the uart in it attached to an ESP8266 virtual wifi modem.

i need to hookup the doubleslot and see what it is doing, I suspect it is presenting two single-function cards as one multifunction card. I will hook it up and see how the CIS is presented to the host etc, I need to learn more about the limited (nonstandard?) pcmcia implementation on the LX

Some current PCMCIA Development I am playing with. This is the HP200LX again logged into a netware server, this time over wifi through the esp8266 pcmcia card

Hey yyzkevin,
Thanks, I built and rendered the images on my SGI Octane2 Irix system from 1995,
the same one seen in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dI9fg8A3sM
I also borrowed it for a few weeks to LGR (eg, clint) for a review which is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDxLa6P6exc&t=2s

You seem to have the experience and knowledge to produce a board for an expander like this,
but do you think you have the time necessary to help to design the board and getting it all working?

I could help in other ways, I could do the design of the expander, make 3d models for 3d printed cases and get them printed with my friend's 3d printer,
and provide funding for getting a company like PCBway to produce a set of starting boards,
source the components and I'm pretty good with soldering so I can help solder a first small batch of prototype boards...

Are you willing to try and build this with me? Do you think you have the free/available time to do it?
There is no rush, so it doesn't matter if you do it tomorrow or next month 😉

Give me a day to think this through and I'll get back to you, maybe in the meantime, if you have the time, you could have a look at your accurite doubleslot,
and try to figure out how the bus works... if it's just a simple ISA-like multiplexed bus, or if it's like you say, "I suspect it is presenting two single-function cards as one multifunction card.",
and if that allows us to build an expander like the realistic version with the additional LPT port and an OPL3 chip I mentioned in my post with the 3d renderings... (or something similar like what you are talking about)
Or, we could ditch the opl3 chip and go for an integrated network card instead... ? what would you prefer?

I'm off to bed, it's late here in New Zealand 😀
Cheers!,
Terrence

PS: Love your project.... The WIFI stuff is very interesting, maybe that could be an option for an expander? WIFI connectivity 😀 what kind of wifi protocols does it support and how fast is it approximately ???

Cheers,
Terrence

I posted on vogons using my 200lx some time ago:
Re: Posting Challenge-Oldest Browser, OS and hardware.

Several books about the 100/200lx were published in Japan, like the hardware/software/internet bible series.
The hardware bible has chapters about serial, parallel and pcmcia devices, did you know you can use a gps card or a fm radio on the 200lx?

Greystone also made a pcmcia extender with an optional power supply, to be used with power hungry cards or type III cards.

Some software links for the palmtop:
http://mizj.com/
https://www.vector.co.jp/vpack/filearea/dos/util/machine/hp
Could anyone try the emm200 driver and report if it works on their machine, along with the rom version number, please?

lolo799 wrote on 2021-02-15, 13:52:

I posted on vogons using my 200lx some time ago: Re: Posting Challenge-Oldest Browser, OS and hardware. […]
Show full quote

I posted on vogons using my 200lx some time ago:
Re: Posting Challenge-Oldest Browser, OS and hardware.

Several books about the 100/200lx were published in Japan, like the hardware/software/internet bible series.
The hardware bible has chapters about pcmcia serial, parallel and pcmcia devices, did you know you can use a gps card or a fm radio on the 200lx?

Greystone also made a pcmcia extender with an optional power supply, to be used with power hungry cards or type III cards.

Some software links for the palmtop:
http://mizj.com/
https://www.vector.co.jp/vpack/filearea/dos/util/machine/hp
Could anyone try the emm200 driver and report if it works on their machine, along with the rom version number, please?

Hi lolo799,

I noticed many of those books you mention while browsing the yahoo Japanese auction site...

One issue though, I tried to make a user account on it, but it starts the registration process by asking your mobile phone number,
to send a key to, that you need to enter as a verification to create your account, and, it doesn't accept a New Zealand mobile phone number,
I *think* it's only for Japanese phone numbers or maybe the US too, not sure, but the limit of 10 numbers for the number would make it impossible
for me to enter my New Zealand mobile number with the country code added, and there is no option to select a country or add a country prefix...

So I'm afraid I won't be able to use yahoo auction in japan unless someone with a Japanese mobile number can help me, or some other trickery can be used.
Also, I don't speak Japanese, I'm solely relying on chrome to translate the pages to English, and it's not %100 perfect, some words are strange/incorrect,
and many buttons contain Japanese words as graphics, so they are not translated... Do you speak Japanese or are u from Japan ???
If I had access, I definitely would like to buy some of those books you speak of...

Regarding the EMS memory drivers for the 200LX machines, I have managed to get neither TREMM nor the EMM200 drivers to work...
The EMM200 driver loads but when I run the "mem" command, there is no mention of any expanded memory.
When using the TREMM driver, during boot it says something like "no contiguous segment found",
and when I use the "mem" command, it does report the correct amount of expanded memory present, but the amount of available EMS memory is 0.

I have tried many times, to create a contiguous swapfile of small and large sizes, even after doing a full hard reset (erasing the ram drive),
then booting from d: and immediately making the swapfile on the freshly initialized, empty C: ramdrive, and it always complains about the non-contiguous memory segment error.
Also tried to defrag the drive first, then create a swapfile, but same results...
I don't know if it's actually complaining about the swapfile being non-contiguous, or,
if this has something to do with not being able to create the EMS memory itself...
I've tried this on 3 200LX machines, one 1MB and 2 2MB with one of the latter having a 32MHz crystal and using the clkup32 driver in the config.sys BEFORE the EMM driver...
I think these 2 expanded memory simulators simply don't work on my specific units I tried them on...
Therefore, you're doing a good job collecting BIOS version to try and figure out what machines they support and which ones not...

I can get you the BIOS versions of these machines if you want, just tell me exactly where to find them....

Cheers,
Terrence

PS: What do you think about the expander idea above ??? any input or suggestions? what would be the ultimate set of features you would want it to have built-in ?

When you open the page of an auction on Yahoo, there is a banner for "overseas customers" leading to a 3rd party company called Buyee, you can register there and bid using that service, they'll reship stuff to you.

It should display the version number during boot, or you can run debug and type d F000:FF00

A pcmcia docking station sounds like a good idea, keeping portable, I'm not too sure how heavy it would get.

About features, I can't think of anything at the moment, other than what you listed already...

Found that website, is it yours yyzkevin? https://hackaday.io/project/52693-200lx-modules

re: books
I have many of those books, but I do not speak japanese. I use buyee to purchase from Yahoo auctions, it is great. Maybe I should not tell you as we will be competing on same items perhaps!

re: doubleslot
I played around with it for a few minutes. When no special driver is loaded, you can use the bottom slot as if it was in the machine I do not notice any difference except that the power is offloaded to the external power adapter. The top slot cannot be used.

When the doubleslot driver is loaded, you can then also use the top slot, at least for certain types of cards. I do not have a printer port to test with, but my ethernet card works allowing me to use the ethernet and also have my flash card.

When you load the doubleslot ATA driver a hard disk letter is assigned and you can use a flash card or microdrive etc in the top slot as well as your regular flash card in the bottom slot.

I need to play around a bit more, but I had issues using the ethernet card while the doubleslot ATA driver was loaded, but generally I do not think this scenerio would be in use.

https://imgur.com/gallery/tTVJUUW

re: expander
What I am comfortable to design/make a prototype for is,

1. A duplicate design of the doubleslot
2. An onboard 16550 Uart
3. An onboard parallel port (maybe ECP)
4. An onboard ESP8266 Wifi Modem
5. An onboard OPL2LPT

Limitations.
1. when uart is enabled it will disable one of the external slots
2. when the parallel is enabled it will disable one of the external slots.
3. it is possible that above 1/2 would both be the same slot (top) meaning both onboard function could not be used at same time. I need to understand better what the limitations are with the doubleslot design.
4. when ESP8266 modem is enabled, external RS232 port is disabled
5. when OPL is enabled, external DB25 printer port is disabled.

If possible I need somebody to dump the CIS off a printer card the HP200LX supports and give me the raw dump

lolo799 wrote on 2021-02-15, 21:32:

Found that website, is it yours yyzkevin? https://hackaday.io/project/52693-200lx-modules

No but that is nice. The thing that is great about the HP 95/100/200LX is that we get that nice pin header on the right side for a serial port. It is easy to make custom cables, or little dongles etc.

The problem is my daily retro driver so to speak, is an IBM PC110 and it has no serial port accessible without the docking station, so that is what sent me down the path of designing an ESP8266 PCMCIA Card. Then along the way I learned about the HP palmtops and made some changes to the power supply to stay below 150mA while transmitting on Wifi, but some users mentioned how the card would have limited use in the HP given that it removes the ability to have the flash storage. Enter the Doubleslot, I got it to try and learn how I could present both my serial function and a storage function in one card, in a way supported by the HP.

And here we are.

Hi Kevin, I'm waiting at the doctor's office right now (I am having my gallbladder removed with surgery at the hospital in 2 months), but when I get home in a few hours I'll make that raw dump of the parallel pcmcia card and send you the Cic driver / enabler that's on it...

I think your proposal for the features of the expander are very good, and somewhat close to what I was thinking of and described in my thread with the 3d renderings...
I am also very excited about the wifi feature you are suggesting... 😀

If you want I would like to design the housing and get some 3d printed in aluminium or something a bit more strong and quality looking that a standard home 3d plastic printed part..

I'll make a more detailed response and get you those parallel port card files in a few hours when I'm home, but, can you tell me how to get the raw dump of it ? What's the best tool to use under msdos on a 200lx ???

Lolo -> I will also get you those BIOS versions...

Cheers,
Terrence

There were a handful of fax/modem cards sold for the palmtops that also had flash memory on them, to avoid that chicken and egg problem of connectivity through pcmcia but low storage...
Or the serial port floppy drive, which was a computer in disguise if I remember correctly, one such model was also sold for the series of hp 48 calculators.

yyzkevin wrote on 2021-02-15, 21:51:

re: books I have many of those books, but I do not speak japanese. I use buyee to purchase from Yahoo auctions, it is great. […]
Show full quote

re: books
I have many of those books, but I do not speak japanese. I use buyee to purchase from Yahoo auctions, it is great. Maybe I should not tell you as we will be competing on same items perhaps!

re: doubleslot
I played around with it for a few minutes. When no special driver is loaded, you can use the bottom slot as if it was in the machine I do not notice any difference except that the power is offloaded to the external power adapter. The top slot cannot be used.

When the doubleslot driver is loaded, you can then also use the top slot, at least for certain types of cards. I do not have a printer port to test with, but my ethernet card works allowing me to use the ethernet and also have my flash card.

When you load the doubleslot ATA driver a hard disk letter is assigned and you can use a flash card or microdrive etc in the top slot as well as your regular flash card in the bottom slot.

I need to play around a bit more, but I had issues using the ethernet card while the doubleslot ATA driver was loaded, but generally I do not think this scenerio would be in use.

https://imgur.com/gallery/tTVJUUW

re: expander
What I am comfortable to design/make a prototype for is,

1. A duplicate design of the doubleslot
2. An onboard 16550 Uart
3. An onboard parallel port (maybe ECP)
4. An onboard ESP8266 Wifi Modem
5. An onboard OPL2LPT

Limitations.
1. when uart is enabled it will disable one of the external slots
2. when the parallel is enabled it will disable one of the external slots.
3. it is possible that above 1/2 would both be the same slot (top) meaning both onboard function could not be used at same time. I need to understand better what the limitations are with the doubleslot design.
4. when ESP8266 modem is enabled, external RS232 port is disabled
5. when OPL is enabled, external DB25 printer port is disabled.

If possible I need somebody to dump the CIS off a printer card the HP200LX supports and give me the raw dump

lolo799 wrote on 2021-02-15, 21:32:

Found that website, is it yours yyzkevin? https://hackaday.io/project/52693-200lx-modules

No but that is nice. The thing that is great about the HP 95/100/200LX is that we get that nice pin header on the right side for a serial port. It is easy to make custom cables, or little dongles etc.

The problem is my daily retro driver so to speak, is an IBM PC110 and it has no serial port accessible without the docking station, so that is what sent me down the path of designing an ESP8266 PCMCIA Card. Then along the way I learned about the HP palmtops and made some changes to the power supply to stay below 150mA while transmitting on Wifi, but some users mentioned how the card would have limited use in the HP given that it removes the ability to have the flash storage. Enter the Doubleslot, I got it to try and learn how I could present both my serial function and a storage function in one card, in a way supported by the HP.

And here we are.

Just a quick question, does the PCB design software you are using support exporting the final PCB design to a 3D file format ? (Like wavefront .OBJ, .3DS, or similar ?) Or if you can just tell me what software you use, I'll find out myself...

Lolo -> I have my double speed daily use 200LX with me here and when doing a reset when it's asking to erase the ramdrive, it reads: "copyright 1984,1985 Phoenix software associates ltd Version 1.02 A"
Is that what you need ?
EDIT: I tried the debug command you mentioned, but I just get a dozen or so hex line dumps full of random ASCII characters, can't see any version string or anything in there...

I have currently about 12 HP 100lx and 200lx machines in stock at home, if you want I can check all the bios versions and if you want me to test the EMM200 driver on any specific one with a specific BIOS version, just ask...

EDIT: I will check out the buyee link, thanks for the info ! 😀 Hopefully I can locate an SCP-55 soon, and I'm also going to buy some of those books / HW bibles...

Cheers, Terrence

lolo799 wrote on 2021-02-15, 23:11:

There were a handful of fax/modem cards sold for the palmtops that also had flash memory on them, to avoid that chicken and egg problem of connectivity through pcmcia but low storage...
Or the serial port floppy drive, which was a computer in disguise if I remember correctly, one such model was also sold for the series of hp 48 calculators.

Yes I am aware of the newmedia one, however as it was described to me it was a ROM with some communication utilities and not a flash. There was one for sale on ebay recently but they would not ship to Canada, and the listing was gone before I could do anything. It was just a loose card no dongle with a HP unit. Do you remember the names of any others? I will do more research myself.

radiance32 wrote on 2021-02-15, 23:33:

Just a quick question, does the PCB design software you are using support exporting the final PCB design to a 3D file format ? (Like wavefront .OBJ, .3DS, or similar ?) Or if you can just tell me what software you use, I'll find out myself...

I use Altium CircuitStudio but I may try creating this in CircuitMaker so I can share/collaborate on the design with others. That is my hope, that we can start this off and some others that know more can come join in once it has moved passed being just a dream to there being a proof of concept.

I am actually not sure how to dump the contents on the HP as it does not have a normal card services situation. Do you have any other laptops? I usually use showcis/dtpl.exe

I may look around for one to purchase so I have a physical reference.

yyzkevin wrote on 2021-02-15, 21:51:

re: books I have many of those books, but I do not speak japanese. I use buyee to purchase from Yahoo auctions, it is great. […]
Show full quote

re: books
I have many of those books, but I do not speak japanese. I use buyee to purchase from Yahoo auctions, it is great. Maybe I should not tell you as we will be competing on same items perhaps!

re: doubleslot
I played around with it for a few minutes. When no special driver is loaded, you can use the bottom slot as if it was in the machine I do not notice any difference except that the power is offloaded to the external power adapter. The top slot cannot be used.

When the doubleslot driver is loaded, you can then also use the top slot, at least for certain types of cards. I do not have a printer port to test with, but my ethernet card works allowing me to use the ethernet and also have my flash card.

When you load the doubleslot ATA driver a hard disk letter is assigned and you can use a flash card or microdrive etc in the top slot as well as your regular flash card in the bottom slot.

I need to play around a bit more, but I had issues using the ethernet card while the doubleslot ATA driver was loaded, but generally I do not think this scenerio would be in use.

https://imgur.com/gallery/tTVJUUW

re: expander
What I am comfortable to design/make a prototype for is,

1. A duplicate design of the doubleslot
2. An onboard 16550 Uart
3. An onboard parallel port (maybe ECP)
4. An onboard ESP8266 Wifi Modem
5. An onboard OPL2LPT

Limitations.
1. when uart is enabled it will disable one of the external slots
2. when the parallel is enabled it will disable one of the external slots.
3. it is possible that above 1/2 would both be the same slot (top) meaning both onboard function could not be used at same time. I need to understand better what the limitations are with the doubleslot design.
4. when ESP8266 modem is enabled, external RS232 port is disabled
5. when OPL is enabled, external DB25 printer port is disabled.

If possible I need somebody to dump the CIS off a printer card the HP200LX supports and give me the raw dump

lolo799 wrote on 2021-02-15, 21:32:

Found that website, is it yours yyzkevin? https://hackaday.io/project/52693-200lx-modules

No but that is nice. The thing that is great about the HP 95/100/200LX is that we get that nice pin header on the right side for a serial port. It is easy to make custom cables, or little dongles etc.

The problem is my daily retro driver so to speak, is an IBM PC110 and it has no serial port accessible without the docking station, so that is what sent me down the path of designing an ESP8266 PCMCIA Card. Then along the way I learned about the HP palmtops and made some changes to the power supply to stay below 150mA while transmitting on Wifi, but some users mentioned how the card would have limited use in the HP given that it removes the ability to have the flash storage. Enter the Doubleslot, I got it to try and learn how I could present both my serial function and a storage function in one card, in a way supported by the HP.

And here we are.

Hi again Kevin,

Attached is a zip file containing the contents of the Trans Digital Corp "Trans PC Parallel Port" PCMCIA card.
It's the same card I use in most of my videos with the CVX4 covox clone and the adlib compatible OPL3LPT...

These files are stored on the LPT card itself in ROM (I assume, it could be flash memory, but it's read-only), the CIC file is the enabler you have to run prior to using the LPT 1 port.

If you can explain to me how to "If possible I need somebody to dump the CIS off a printer card the HP200LX supports and give me the raw dump",
I'll be happy to do it and attach it to a reply here...

Cheers,
Terrence

if you run dtpl.exe -r 1 > dump.cis and attach that dump it would have what I am looking for. you need to run it on a laptop with normal card services though, does not work on the LX.

Do you have dtpl.exe on any of your laptops within the card services etc? I hate to attach/distribute .exe files if I can avoid it. I have it from some other developer tools.

http://www-pc.uni-regensburg.de/systemsw/techtool.htm the dtpl.exe inside pci&pnp appears to be same md5sum as my file.