software

Overview

The PC 110 comes with a stripped down version of PC Dos 7 and a PIM called PersonaWare. To receive calls whilst in Dos mode you get a TSR called coSession and also a program to convert sound files (wav <> tvc). There is also a Janpenese Dos only configuration program called PS2. If you buy the optional hard disk, you also get Windows 3.1(J).

Beneath is text from the Marko Schuste faq which is an absolute MUST read when you get your PC 110. All I have done is pretty things up.

In addition, there are now PersonaWare modules that have been converted to English, information of with is available here.

Finally, if you want to test drive PersonaWare, click Here for an interactive demonstration.

What's here?

General usage for non-Japanese reading user

(ESC=cancel/abort, ENTER=ok; F12=save&exit)

Generally I'd say: Just take a bit time and try everything out :) You cannot format your flash, you could only delete some files, so make a backup first :) Ok, serious: After starting personaware (say, after booting the PC110 from the internal flash-disk), use the mouse or cursor buttons to select an application and press Enter. Exit an app. with F12. In the most app. you'll come back at the same page the next time you start it. You can copy&insert text with ctrl-c/v/x (mark with shift-cursor). By pressing F1 you'll get help, of course always in Japanese, but you could see how special keys are assigned in this prg.). On the main screen you can turn on/off the button bar with F12 or pressing the mousebutton in the right bottom corner. The icons are generally easy to understand.

Advanced usage (and features on the main menu screen)

You can change each icon, picture, description from the main screen, you can also add and delete applications or move their position. It's possible to have more appl. installed than you can see on the screen (scroll with cursor or F7/F8). This are some of the keys&features on the main screen:

The icons are OS/2-icons, I found no programme for dos/win yet to convert or edit them :-( The pictures are 190x250 16color BMP-files with standard-color map. No problem here to convert and draw your own ones. All pictures&icons are located in \pw\system\ - where also exist some more icons and bmp-files used by the applications. For example, I've created a new background and new button-images and enhanced some other things. In \pw\data\ you'll find all files used by the applications: datafiles (schedule/address/..), .ini-files and so on. You'd like to have a look at some of the .ini-files, but it's most useless...

Description, help and usage for each application (general&advanced)

Schedule


If you'd view at the DEFAULT.SCD-file, you'd see the format of the file in the first line: date,time,to date,to time,subject,place,alarm,alarm lead time, repeat,repeat,every,start date,end date,note

This means it's only a ","-seperated list, this makes it very easy to convert to/from personaware!

ToDo List

Sorry, as I don't needed this yet, I cannot say anything :) However, from the DEFAULT.TDD-file: date,to date,subject,category,priority, done,done date,note

Notebook

Not many differences to the "main" operation things, buttons&tools. Should be no problem to check how it works.

DEFAULT.NTD calls its fields: date,time,subject,category,note

Address


If you'd view at the DEFAULT.ADD-file, you'd see the format of the file in the first line: yomi,name,category,home tel number,home fax number,home zip,home address,birth day,office,station,post,office tel number,office fax number,office zip,office address,email,photo file name,voice file name,note1, note2,note3

This means it's only a ","-seperated list, this makes it very easy to convert to/from personaware! And no, I don't see anything about "voice file" in the application. Maybe on newer versions ;) And no, the birthday isn't included into the schedule automatically, but it's displayd in the "info"-field of the secretary (It's like an adventure to find out and understand everything of this programme ;-) )

E-Mail

This is not a special email-programm, no, it's a terminal programme!

p.s.: Either it has no ansi/vt100 or I haven't find a way to activate it ;)

FAX

Telephone

Dials a phone number with the built in modem. If you have problems with one of the default settings, just try another one ;-)

IR Connect

As I have no other device with infrared port, I have no experience with this part yet.

World Clock

First you should get my english "city1s.txt"-file so you can see the name of the cities in english and not in japanese ;-) Should be installed in \pw\data\ - directory. I think you cannot add cities from the worldclock- application, you have to edit this text-file directly with an editor.

Calculator

Just a calculator. Really? No, it has more features you might have thought at the first look :) Press F6 to switch through its modes: scientific, measure/ weight/.. and financial.

Scientific mode: you can use "s" as sin and so on, look in the F1-help for the shortcut-keys.

measure/weight: you can change the kind of transformation with the button-list on the left. Here's a complete list, the first number is the line-nr of the left button-list and then the bigger buttons in the mid are listed from left to right, top to bottom (you'll see the english in the display): financial mode: too much japanese here. Look at F1 and the documantation for the formulas used here, maybe you could check it out..

Editor

First you have to choose the file you want to edit.


Note that this is an ASCII-editor, that means there are no styles or fonts saved.

Draw Memo

Here you can draw on the memopad and with the mouse (hold down left button)

Game

Instructions: Clear the table. Remove the tiles by clicking the left mouse button, however you can only remove at least two of the same tiles (above/under/ left/right). The more tiles you can remove at one time (they'll be highlighted when you move the mouspointer to them) the more points you'll get. F1-Help says (n-2)^2. If you remove one tiles-type completely (house/frog/orange/bird/ rose) you'll get bonus points. I cleared the table two times now with about 3100 points each.

Personal

This is your private area. First you have to define a password. Then you can input your private data: Name, blood (A/B/AB/0), birthday (year-m-d), secret, RH (blood/rhesus, + or -),secret, phone & address1, phone&address2, fax, mobile phone number, EMail


The birthday you enter here is used by the secretary (F10 from the main menu) to calculate your biorhythm.

DOS

Opens a DOS-Box. It seems that it is not possible to get the alarm of a schedule-entry if you started a dos-programm or exit personaware. Enter "exit" to return to personaware.

Power MGT

Starts the PS2-programme with its user interface. This can only be used within the japanese dos-environment. You can adjust here much more than with the command-line options of PS2. For example you could define here the low/med/ high-power-modes, it seems you could enter lcd&power timeout, and of course you can set everything else you could do from the commandline. I've not checked out yet how to spin-down the harddisk however. The small icon on the F12-key-label looks like it would spin down the HD too, but it seems to do nothing.

End of information from the Marko Schuste faq.

The Software I Use

When in Dos mode, I do either small note taking or play some games. On long journeys, my PC 110 turns itself into a glorified games machine. I do this by running a Spectrum Emulator. The executable for the emulator has been reduced in size using PkLite. The games are stored in snapshot files which are between 20 and 48k in size. This means I can have a wealth of high quality (though somewhat old - mainly from the mid to late 80's) games, with a low disk space penalty. All of this software takes up only 2 meg's of space, leaving 2 meg's for data and anything else I can think of.

Since creating English version of three key PersonWare modules, I now use it extensively. To find out more about these modules, click here.

I did have a Windows 95 installation, whach was pretty much as you would expect. I had deleted many of the system help files to free-up space.

Currently I have a multiple boot setup so I can run Dos/Dos Japanese/Windows 3.1. This is so I can use Personaware and Windows 3.1, get access to the Web and my E-Mail. I am running Microsoft Internet Explorer as my web browser.


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