My advice, if you get one, would be to clearly define in your own mind
what it is you want to do with it. I use mine as a cross between a
business machine (window95 on hard disk) and leisure machine & PIM
(remove hard disk and use internal flash rom to host PCDOS 7 and various
DOS software). When you know what you want to do, then get the machine to
suit.
No it doesn't. It has a battery from IBM (Part No 84g7953), but I am told
Sony sells them as well (last about 15% longer apparently). I can only
assume then that it is standard of sorts.
However, I am creating a cradle that will take standard D-Cell batteries
and plug into the Main connector. This will be so I can have emergency
power when I'm far away from anything remotely like a Sony Centre!
I got the one, but it does re-charge resonably quickly. I would expect
that having two would make life a lot easier.
Well, I got mine with 8 meg. It can go to 16 and higher, but above 16
would definately be bootleg.
Okay, the HD pluges into the PCMCIA slot, so if the drive is PCMCIA V2.1
(apparently V2.0 will not work), then in theory it should work.
The display on my machine is very clean and crisp. Small - but clear. I
personally have no trouble with the size of fonts under 95, though my
collegues have said it was too small.
I got a power supply, battery etc. as you would expect. The power lead
can work in the States (so I am told). Over here in England I use a
standard 9 volt adapter and have no problems. (The PC110 works is meant
to work on 10.5v). To carry the thing around in, I use an old Compaq
portable carry case. In it, I can snuggly fit the PC110, Docking station,
power lead, a few disks, the HD (when it is in it's supplied pouch) and a
mouse.
Without the docking station, there is no RS232 that I can see (I could
be wrong), though there is a custom connector for keyboard and mouse.
It's 2*type II PCMCIA slots which will work as 1 type III.
My HD is Type III and therefore I have no additional room for
a pcmcia modem.
Douglas Krone at Dynamisim
Dynamism used to supply the PC110 and may have some units or spare parts. However, the supply of PC110 units has almost run dry.
Which version of Windows 95?
If you're currently running Windows 95 on an IBM PC110, I strongly
recommend upgrading to Windows 95 OSR2 if you can. OSR2 is an "OEM System
Release" of Windows 95 which is not sold to the public, but which is available
to Microsoft Windows developers for compatibility testing, as part of the
Microsoft Developer Network subscription.
OSR2 solves at least two annoyances with Win95 on the PC110:
- It can power down a PCMCIA hard disk during idle time, without needing
PCMCIA drivers to be loaded. This can increase battery life noticeably.
- It has an option that removes the screen redraw when you wake up the PC110
from "sleep" mode.
Little things, but useful.
Amanda Walker
ROM Password
To remove a password
- At the password prompt, type the password, then a space, then Enter.
To change a password
- At the password prompt, type the password, a space, the new password,
another space, the new password again, then Enter.
Can I use Graffiti on the PC110?
In short, no. To my knowledge, the only app. that uses the digitizer is Personaware and this is Japanese only.
Is there any way to change the internal 2400 modem to a faster one?
There's no known way to change out the internal modem. What can be done is:
run Win95 on a Type 3 hard drive, but when you want to do some serious
web surfing, have Win 3.1 on a 20MB Flash card and boot it and then
have a 28.8 modem in the other slot.
Sound Drivers in Windows95
Windows 95 will recognize the internal sound card as an ES488 AudioDrive but may not work.
If you remove this driver and install the Sound BLaster driver, it will, but you will not get Volume Control on your Taskbar.
A solution is to keep the ES488 AudioDrive driver and just manually change IRQ number from 7
to 5 in Control
Panel->System->Devices->Sound..->ES488->Properies->Resources
Does the PC110 pen pad to work under Windows 3.x/Windows95?
In short, the answer is yes. A small driver has been written that allow you to use the touchpad as mouse in Windows 3.1/Windows95. Goto the download area to grab this great piece of software.
What about 256 colours in Windows?
Robb Woldman wrote to me recently to tell me of his experiences getting to grips with 256 colours on his PC110. Below is a synopsis of his information.
For those that cannot wait...
Firstly, Rob e-maild T-Zone in the States about 256 colour drivers....
Hi Chuharu,
Geri Abaya gave me your name and told me that you might be a good
resource for a PC110 problem I have run into. (She said you had
something to do with the original PC110 project team?)
Forgive me, this e-mail is a novel. Plese bear with me. I feel you
should hear everything I have run through to fully understand the
solutions I have already tried.
I hope you can help me; here's the deal:
No matter what I have tried, I can not get English Win95 to run in 256
color VGA mode. I feel that I have exhausted all possibilities and I
hope you might offer some insight into this problem for me.
Background on Installation:
First off, let me say that the way I installed English Win95 was that
I formatted the hard drive using a "Format D: /s from the PCMCIA slot
in my Desktop WIN95 PC. Secondly, I put the HD back in my PC110 after
having copied the WIN95 directory from the CD into my PCMCIA HD, and
then ran setup. Finally, using a Dos7.0J boot floppy disk, I ran "Sys
D:" so that my flash rom remained bootable into Japanese DOS (so that
I could continue to use Personaware and the Canon camera that I bought
for the PC110.)
Once Win95 was loaded, I changed the ESS interrupt from 3 to 5 to get
it working, removed the PCMCIA Plug and Play driver, along with the
Joystick, added a COM1 port for the built in modem, and that was all I
needed to do to get Win95 running with no conflicts.
VGA Problem:
Here's the problem...
WIN95 detected a Chips & Technology Accelerator. It loaded up in 16
color mode, and when I go into display, I can choose between 16 and
256 color mode. When I choose 256 colors, the system says it needs to
restart, and then reboots. No problem. However, in the process of
restarting, something happens about midway through the reloading, and
the PC110 suddenly shuts down and automatically reboots a second time.
Now, it goes to the screen asking which mode you would like to go to.
When I choose normal (#1), it reboots back to 16 colors and tells me
that there is a problem with the settings for my display adapter.
Okay...that's fine because all the documentation people on the net
have sent me told me to remove the C&T accelerator, and go with the
C&T Super Vga driver. So I tried that. Now this is the really weird
part. When it restarts, it does go into 256 color mode. However,
there are two very noticeable problems. The most major of the two is
that the bottom area of the screen (just a tiny bit bigger than the
taskbar in width) is competely scrambled. Everything else on screen
is in 256 colors. The 2nd and more minor thing I have noticed is that
when you move the pointer around the screen, there is some minor
screen flicker that happens.
I have tried numerous other drivers such as the standard VGA setting,
the drivers on one of my PC110 disks that comes up with C&T 65535 9pt
or 10pt 256, and even downloaded some drivers of the www.chips.com
site but nothing seems to work. Whenever I reboot in 256 color mode,
the PC110 just dies during the restart process, and then reloads (the
second time) back to 16 color mode while also bringing me back to that
mode select menu (safe mode, command prompt, normal, etc.). The only
time I have ever successfully got 256 colors in Win95 is with the C&T
Super VGA driver but I have already told you the problems with that.
Net Testimonials:
I have put my problem out on the net in the comp.sys.palmtops board.
To date, I have received 6 responses. Five of them said that when
they loaded Win95, they never had any problem whatsoever. They just
toggled over to 256 color mode and that was that. However, before I
thought I was just cursed, the sixth response came in. This user
(like myself) had just bought a new PC110 and had the EXACT SAME
PROBLEM. She is hoping that I can find a solution because she doesn't
know what to do either. So I know I'm not crazy.
Is this a hardware defect? It doesn't seem likely because my 256
color mode works wonderful in DOS applications, as well as on the
Japanese DOS flash. However, I can't figure out why I would have a
problem that 5 out of 6 people didn't have any trouble with
whatsoever.
One final thing:
Originally, when I first installed WIN95, I tried it with WIN95 OEM2.
When I had the display problems, I reformatted to the Original WIN95.
Neither seems to have made any difference. I am still working with
the original version of Win95.
Rob then asked me for some information, but alas I can't even get 256 colour to work on Windows 3.1, let alone Windows 95. However, Rob found out some more stuff and e-mailed me this....
Actually, here's what I am starting to hear...
- The 256 color VGA problem is memory related. Everyone seems to be using the
same drivers. The fact that it works with some and not with others has nothing
to do with the drivers themselves. It has to do with the 20 meg upgrade. The
upgrade seems to require some sort of change to the PC110 memory settings. I
don't know yet, but my educated guess would be some sort of tweaking and
balancing to the settings in the easy setup menu, and the display adapter part
of control panel. It's frustrating because I talked to a lady in Hong Kong that
had an identical problem; she took it back, and while they were able to fix it
(rather quickly I might add), they told her about the memory conflicts but
refused to elaborate on what they did.
- I heard back from Amanda and she thinks that when you install the 20 meg
upgrade, there is also a Flash Bios update that needs to be performed somehow.
That one, I can't really gather what would have to be done.
This is happening to enough people that I would love if we could either add it
to your page, or to the FAQ as an open item or something, because there is some
critical information that is obviously being left out of the installation
process. Yeah, life goes on with 16 colors, but why shouldn't the PC110 be
perfect, especially when the capability is there but the information is not
available.
Robb
..the Solution
Seamus, pop open a bottle of champagne!! Believe it or not, we can now
close the chapter on 256 display problems in Win95!!!
Here are the patch files, and, some modifcation notes of my own:
First off, let's go through what we have here...
There are 2 files, loaddskf.exe and biosup.dsk.
Loaddskf.exe is a small program that expands the biosup.dsk file.
Biosup.dsk contains: autoexec.bat, config.sys, command.com, ibmbio.com,
ibmdos.com, command.com and xpatch.exe.
- Format a floppy "format a:"
- Boot up into DOS (I booted up into Japanese DOS7/V, I don't know whether it matters...)
- At a c: prompt, type "loaddskf /f biosup.dsk a:" This will create a system disk with the patch upgrade files. The key file to all of this nonsense is the itty-bitty xpatch.exe.
Now here's the tricky part:
Remember my original problem? Well, let me refresh your memory... My
instructions were to boot up with this disk and everything would update
automatically. Autoexec runs xpatch and everything should work. Well, it
doesn't. I was getting the flashing cursor followed by a 4 and my system
froze up. When I type "xpatch ?", I got a message "not yet.".
Here is the way I finally got it to work.
I booted up from the newly created floppy (which if you haven't noticed
already, loaddskf /f creates a 720k disk from your 1.44 3.5"). However,
instead of waiting for everything to execute and then freeze my system, I
hit F5 halfway through the boot process, which gave me a message saying
that
my config.sys and autoexec.bat were being bypassed. I landed at an a:
prompt. I typed "cls" and "enter" to clear the screen (for no good reason
other than to follow the original autoexec.bat step by step. I assume this
does nothing one way or the other). Finally, I just typed "xpatch" at the
a: prompt. This time, instead of a flashing cursor and 4, I got a
message "OK".
I cold booted back to dos normally, put the floppy in and typed "xpatch ?"
at the A prompt. This time, the response said "completed.". I put my HD
back in, and loaded Win95. I switched the display properties to C&T
Accelerator and 256 colors. Lo and behold, it worked!
I hope you will be able to post these files to help others who have gone
through the same nightmare I have. Heck, maybe for them, it won't be so
bad. :)
What's this about a DOS Web Browser from IBM?
WebBoy overview
|
 WebBoy is a DOS based Web Browser which has e-mail capabilities. It's small footprint allows the utilisiation of older (386, 486) PC's to access Intranets and the Internet.
Due to the huge interest in this product, I have created a Web Site specifically for it. Click here to transfer to it.
|
Compact Flash Information
Randy Stauffer contacted me about how he is using a 15meg capacity compact flash card.
I read of your travel problems using the DOS CIM, etc. Just FYI, I've bought
one of those compact flash cards (called smart picoflash in the 110 manuals)
with a capacity of 15MB. On it I have a complete Windows 3.1 installation
(without some of the junk like character map, etc., and also with no help
files), along with WinCim version ? (can't remember). I've also got a remote
client for my business email connection via a Citrix WinView dial up. I use
the little 4MB flash that came with the 110 for addresses, etc, and intend to
eventually install your English PersonaWare modules there.
In any event,
using the compact flash you can install a mimimal version of Windows along
with WinCim and have a GUI for your WWW and Email use. Also extends battery
life significantly - gets close to 3 hours using the Sony NP530 series
battery.
Thanks for all your work on your 110 pages - you've really managed to bring
together all the stuff that I spent hours searching for last August when I
got my 110. I can now bookmark your page and dump the hardcopy printouts....
Randy Stauffer
Additional Information.
I got the compact flash at TZone in Sunnyvale, CA (I live in the general area), and it cost
around $200 - $250 USD. I got the battery at an Electronics store called the
Good Guys here, and it cost around 70 USD.
Setting up Personaware
from and orig. post to the PC110 list by Seamus Waldron.
From the main PW screen hit F12 and select F10, this shows you your
Personal Secretary.
The top half of the screen show you what you have to do today.
Top left is Schedule, top right is Information, below schedule is To Do
List and to the right of that is your Biorythm for the day.
Bottom half of the screen is what is happening in the Near future.
Left hand side is Schedule, right hand-side is To Do List and Information.
Note :- Schedule is Purple
To Do List is Blue
Information is Green
Press F5 and you will be given a "fortune" based on your blood type.
You Get :
Business (xxx) Money (xxx) Love (xxx)
Luckies :---
Lucky Number : x
F6 will display secret information
From the main screen again.
F11 brings up a Setup/Exit dialog box.
Startup
Form Shows
Modem o Fax
o Other [ ]
o None
Alarm o Schedule
o Other
Secretary o Auto Time [ ] : [ ]
o Menu
[ Okay ] [ Cancel ] [ Help ]
Panel
Form shows
Click of Mouse button to start application
o Single Click o Double Click
[] Exchange between top title and bottom title
[] Display Help
[ Okay ] [ Cancel ] [ Help ]
Cancel
Help
Exit PersonaWare
From the Main Screen
Choose Personal
First form - Password Input
( I think this comes up after you have setup info for the first
time )
Password [ ]
[ Okay ] [ Cancel ] [ Help ]
Second form - Personal
Name [ ] Blood type [ ]
Birthday [ ] [] Sec. Something I don't know [] Sec.
Home Zip [ ] tel. [ ]
[ ] <- Address
Office Zip [ ] tel. [ ]
[ ] <- Address
FAX [ ] tel. [ ] email [ ]
F8 For Next Page
Number
Insurance Card [ ] Iss. Day [ ]
Drivers License [ ] Exp. Day [ ]
Passport [ ] Exp. Day [ ]
Card Number Exp. Day Service
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
F8 For Next Page
F7 For Previous Page
Anniversary Memo
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
[ ][ ] [] Sec.
F8 For First Page
F7 For Previous Page
F1 help F3 Aborts F4 Saves F5 Change Password F7 Previous F8 Next F12 Exit
