I hope you like my HP 100LX & 200LX Palmtop based content on my brand new channel. Please help the channel grow by clicking the like button and consider subscribing and hitting the bell icon to get alerts of new videos with demonstrations, tutorials and let's play sessions on these wonderfully nostalgic pocket computers... If you have any technical questions about the hardware, software and configuration of what you see in these videos, feel free to ask me here in the comments section!
I wrote the patch to get Minix to run on the HP200LX a long time ago. Glad to see someone still playing around with it. I also used to provide a good portion of the speed and memory upgrades (up to 96MBs) for the US and Germany back in the day. Feel free to host any of my drivers and software you come across which are all basically public domain these days. I don't think I have any of the source code anymore but if I come across it, I will send it your way if you are interested. Cheers, Mack Baggette
Im messing with a HP Jornada 690 with JLime running. Its amazing what you can do with some of these older palmtops, STILL! :-) Thanks for the videos as always and look forward to more to come :-) Im gonna have some videos of the JLime experiment on the 690 posted in the next week or so. :-)
This was great! Thanks for sharing your progress. I have a soft spot for Minix ever since I saw true multi-tasking on my parents 286 back in the early 90s, so it's particularly fun to see it running on the type of hardware I drooled over as a teen.
Thanks :) If only the 200LX had a 286 CPU and 1MB or more memory, I'd be able to actually run a decent application on it besides just the OS (due to memory constraints)...
Excellent video! (like all your other videos....) Thanks for continuing to make and share them with everyone! Very educational to see what you can do with the 200LX. Would be great if you could show (if possible...) other programs that can run on Minix....like text editor, spreadsheet, etc Look forward to seeing your upcoming videos.
Hi, There aren't really many good productivity or graphics applications for it, as it doesn't support a graphical user interface (the X11 windowing system), it's much more useful as a C development platform, and as a server, especially a web and/or database server, which is what I'm going to make out of this system in the upcoming part 2 of this video...
@@archimark5060 My plan is to finish configuring minix 2 on the 200LX and ironing out some last quirks, and build a better kernel, with networking support and PPP and SLIP installed and ready for use during the next week. All of this will be done in the next video, and since i'll be making the system into a real webserver that viewers can go to and browse, i'll put the final, complete/finished MINIX images on it, so people can download it from there...
Regarding text editing, in the video at various times when editing a file I use the VI editor, a very popular, small but powerful text editor for UNIX, which comes with nearly all versions of Linux and UNIX in some form. There's also mined, a text editor that's installed by default on minix systems. Also, in the /export/contrib directory with all the software I downloaded, there's a source code archive of the well known pico editor that's commonly used on linux... I tend to use VI as it's already pre-installed on most UNIX and Linux systems and it's compact and a very capable editor... If you want fancy WYSIWYG text / word processing, you really need a larger operating system on more modern hardware, eg an i386 or better CPU, so you can run Linux or Minix 3.0 and run the X11 windowing system for a graphical user interface. Minix2 on an XT class machine like the 200LX is way too small (memory-wise) to be able to use X11... :(
@@HPPalmtopTube Thanks for all your info and input.....fwiw, I use nano for basic editing, easy to use....it's too bad that 200LX can't use a simple linux distro....but understand situation.
You are lucky, HP 48 series are incredible good calculators (I think the best ever), and real pocket computers (not only calculators). On other side HP 100LX has a slightly better LCD display than 200LX (horrible LCD, very low contrast), although not by much. It is a shame 100/200LX had so bad LCD compared to lower resolution 95LX (much better contrast).
You need a 32MHz crystal, specific for the 200LX. I've got some being shipping to me so contact me at terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com and when they arrive I can sell you one. The installation is very easy it's just a simple 2 wire through-soldering job... anyone can do it with a soldering iron and some soldering braid ...
I'd be really interested both in getting hold of RAM upgrades and in trying minix as well. I've got a 100LX that I swapped a 2MB 1000CX motherboard into. If SLIP or PPP was working it would be easy to add a bluetooth module (better for battery) or ESP8266 or ESP32 to connect to the world!
Hi, Welcome to the channel, if you go to my channel page, you'll find my email in the about section, send me an email and I might be able to help you obtain a RAM expansion board. Also, watch my "opening your 100/200lx for repairs and upgrades" video for more information about RAM upgrade daughterboards and the required header for them...
Interesting how you get around the HP200LX not having a way to do a 'pure' boot. At 36:45 we see your autoexec.bat settings. What are your config.sys settings?
Hi, I don't have the config.sys handy as I don't have this install on a 200LX at the moment (it's all archived on my fileserver), but the config.sys is a standard one, there's nothing needed in the config.sys to boot dosminix from DOS.
@@HPPalmtopTube Is conventional memory reallocated by the Minix boot? And separately, have you ever got a LFN driver working on your HP200LX which allows writing of LFN? (only StarLFN works for me and it's read-only )
Excellent video..Really enjoyed it. I have just found one in good condition but the system language in Latin . Do you know how to change the system language on this computer ?
Hi, The integrated software is in ROM, and it's soldered to the motherboard... I've never seen a ROM for sale anywhere, so I don't think you'll be able to change it... I'd recommend buying a 2nd one, in bad shape, with a broken screen or hinges or whatever, but a working motherboard. Then, just transplant the working motherboard into your 200LX and you'll have an English machine... (You might have the wrong labels printed on the keys of your keyboard, I'm not sure what keyboard layout they use...)
Just saw this - and picked up a mint 200LX with 4MB RAM upgrade today! I would love to get a copy of DOSMINIX 2.0.2 if you still have it. Also potentially interested in a crystal upgrade but I want to find out if this unit was upgraded already.
Hey, sorry for the late reply, but where did you get the 4MB RAM upgrade ? Are there others for sale that you know of ? Send me an email at terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com and I can send you my dosminix archive... I also have crystals for sale if you want one... If you run the 200LX without the 32MHz driver in your config.sys (clkup32.sys) your screen will display incorrectly, the left 20 or so pixels of your screen will be shifted. This is because the upgrade in speed requires certain system timers to be corrected for the faster speed. If your palmtop does'nt do that (eg it's got a %100 working screen display) without the driver loaded, it's not doublespeed upgraded... I can sell you a crystal if that's the case...
@@HPPalmtopTube Funny enough, I think the board was swapped at some point because the sticker on the bottom says 4 MB but the palmtop only has 2 MB! It was a local find at a thrift store. I will keep an eye out for palmtops on the local markets for you. It's been through a full reset and does not have the driver, so I am confident that I do not have the crystal upgrade yet.
@@cdhamma Open it up (watch my 200LX dissassembly video for a howto) and take a picture of the top and bottom side of the motherboard, and email them to me and I will be able to tell you what the situation is.... my email is terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com
Hi, This was a very cool video; I'm interested in doing the same with my 200lx, but haven't been able to find the exact patched version of dosminix 2.0.2 you used; where did you find it?
I'm definitely interested and I hope you get Minix 2.0.4 on it. I've got doublespeed and 8MB of RAM on mine. Wish I can interface an ESP32 to it over the PCMCIA port...
The only one that runs is dosminix 2.0.2 (which is patched to run on a HP 200LX and also to make it's RS232 port work), and it does'nt support PCMCIA devices... Unfortunately the patches themselves aren't available only the full distribution... Unless you are a operating system C programmer and you can write drivers and would like to develop support for PCMCIA devices and the ESP32...
@@strredwolf That's interesting, there's a user called yyzkevin on the VOGONS.ORG forum who had the same interest, getting the ESP32 working on the 200LX. Maybe you can search for his posts about it on the VOGONS forum (there's a long thread about him making a PCMCIA sound card that's easy to find with the forum's search function. You might be able to share some knowledge with him...
Thanks :) You're the first to post a comment :) It's fun to hear other enjoy this video, as it's my largest yet and I put quite a bit of time into researching and producing it :)
@@HPPalmtopTube Is there a function to align the screen alignment function? My device is slightly moved to the right. It's normal when it's in Dos mode.
Hey, I was a UNIX (Solaris, Irix and Linux) systems engineer between 1998 and 2007, and then I changed careers in 2008 and went into 3D graphics software development... I started the luxrender project and then developed octanerender, which I sold to OTOY after 2 years...
This is epic. so.... i found my old PC3000 and a PC3100.... still missing SRAM Cards and Cables..... but about to hack it. What im asking myself is ... isnt there an sram emulator card anywhere? or anything that i could use to get that cf driver on my sharps? mmmmh.
what kind of cards does it accept ? If it's PCMCI, you can buy a 5MB or 10MB PCMCIA flash card, use it to copy the CF driver onto the palmtop, then use a CF to PCMCIA adapter to use a CF card...
This was 2 years ago when I made the video, probably some unremarked lines in my autoexec.bat that I used with another CF card... Not a problem though...
I hope you like my HP 100LX & 200LX Palmtop based content on my brand new channel. Please help the channel grow by clicking the like button and consider subscribing and hitting the bell icon to get alerts of new videos with demonstrations, tutorials and let's play sessions on these wonderfully nostalgic pocket computers...
If you have any technical questions about the hardware, software and configuration of what you see in these videos, feel free to ask me here in the comments section!
I wrote the patch to get Minix to run on the HP200LX a long time ago. Glad to see someone still playing around with it. I also used to provide a good portion of the speed and memory upgrades (up to 96MBs) for the US and Germany back in the day. Feel free to host any of my drivers and software you come across which are all basically public domain these days. I don't think I have any of the source code anymore but if I come across it, I will send it your way if you are interested.
Cheers,
Mack Baggette
Thanks for your contributions! :)
Im messing with a HP Jornada 690 with JLime running. Its amazing what you can do with some of these older palmtops, STILL! :-) Thanks for the videos as always and look forward to more to come :-)
Im gonna have some videos of the JLime experiment on the 690 posted in the next week or so. :-)
Would be cool to see a video of JLime running on your palmtop. Please keep me posted :)
This was great! Thanks for sharing your progress. I have a soft spot for Minix ever since I saw true multi-tasking on my parents 286 back in the early 90s, so it's particularly fun to see it running on the type of hardware I drooled over as a teen.
Thanks :) If only the 200LX had a 286 CPU and 1MB or more memory, I'd be able to actually run a decent application on it besides just the OS (due to memory constraints)...
Great video! Btw, the backtick is at Shift + Period (the one on the numeric keyboard)
Thanks :)
Great video!
Now I feel like playing with an old Minix
Excellent video! (like all your other videos....)
Thanks for continuing to make and share them with everyone!
Very educational to see what you can do with the 200LX.
Would be great if you could show (if possible...) other programs that can run on Minix....like text editor, spreadsheet, etc
Look forward to seeing your upcoming videos.
And forgot to mention that it would be great if you can share your Minix install with us. Thanks!
Hi,
There aren't really many good productivity or graphics applications for it, as it doesn't support a graphical user interface (the X11 windowing system),
it's much more useful as a C development platform, and as a server, especially a web and/or database server, which is what I'm going to make out of this system
in the upcoming part 2 of this video...
@@archimark5060 My plan is to finish configuring minix 2 on the 200LX and ironing out some last quirks,
and build a better kernel, with networking support and PPP and SLIP installed and ready for use during the next week.
All of this will be done in the next video, and since i'll be making the system into a real webserver that
viewers can go to and browse, i'll put the final, complete/finished MINIX images on it, so people can download it from there...
Regarding text editing, in the video at various times when editing a file I use the VI editor, a very popular, small but powerful text editor for UNIX, which comes with nearly all versions of Linux and UNIX in some form.
There's also mined, a text editor that's installed by default on minix systems.
Also, in the /export/contrib directory with all the software I downloaded, there's a source code archive of the well known pico editor that's commonly used on linux...
I tend to use VI as it's already pre-installed on most UNIX and Linux systems and it's compact and a very capable editor...
If you want fancy WYSIWYG text / word processing, you really need a larger operating system on more modern hardware, eg an i386 or better CPU, so you can run Linux or Minix 3.0 and run the X11 windowing system for a graphical user interface. Minix2 on an XT class machine like the 200LX is way too small (memory-wise) to be able to use X11... :(
@@HPPalmtopTube Thanks for all your info and input.....fwiw, I use nano for basic editing, easy to use....it's too bad that 200LX can't use a simple linux distro....but understand situation.
I’ve got a 100LX , a 95LX and a couple of HP48s as well. This is very interesting
cool :) I'm not really into graphing calculators like the HP48 myself, but whatever floats your boat :)
You are lucky, HP 48 series are incredible good calculators (I think the best ever), and real pocket computers (not only calculators). On other side HP 100LX has a slightly better LCD display than 200LX (horrible LCD, very low contrast), although not by much. It is a shame 100/200LX had so bad LCD compared to lower resolution 95LX (much better contrast).
Bloody excellent. Lovely system and great project!
Thanks :)
Great step by step instructions! Do you have a tutorial on how to upgrade the 200LX for double speed, and where to download the drivers?
You need a 32MHz crystal, specific for the 200LX. I've got some being shipping to me so contact me at terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com and when they arrive I can sell you one. The installation is very easy it's just a simple 2 wire through-soldering job... anyone can do it with a soldering iron and some soldering braid ...
I'd be really interested both in getting hold of RAM upgrades and in trying minix as well. I've got a 100LX that I swapped a 2MB 1000CX motherboard into. If SLIP or PPP was working it would be easy to add a bluetooth module (better for battery) or ESP8266 or ESP32 to connect to the world!
Hi, Welcome to the channel, if you go to my channel page, you'll find my email in the about section, send me an email and I might be able to help you obtain a RAM expansion board.
Also, watch my "opening your 100/200lx for repairs and upgrades" video for more information about RAM upgrade daughterboards and the required header for them...
Superb video, thanks!
Excellent content!
Much appreciated!
Excellent. Learnt a lot.
Interesting how you get around the HP200LX not having a way to do a 'pure' boot. At 36:45 we see your autoexec.bat settings. What are your config.sys settings?
Hi, I don't have the config.sys handy as I don't have this install on a 200LX at the moment (it's all archived on my fileserver), but the config.sys is a standard one, there's nothing needed in the config.sys to boot dosminix from DOS.
@@HPPalmtopTube Is conventional memory reallocated by the Minix boot? And separately, have you ever got a LFN driver working on your HP200LX which allows writing of LFN? (only StarLFN works for me and it's read-only )
That was a great video!
Thank you!
Excellent video..Really enjoyed it. I have just found one in good condition but the system language in Latin .
Do you know how to change the system language on this computer ?
Hi, The integrated software is in ROM, and it's soldered to the motherboard...
I've never seen a ROM for sale anywhere, so I don't think you'll be able to change it...
I'd recommend buying a 2nd one, in bad shape, with a broken screen or hinges or whatever, but a working motherboard.
Then, just transplant the working motherboard into your 200LX and you'll have an English machine... (You might have the wrong labels printed on the keys of your keyboard, I'm not sure what keyboard layout they use...)
Just saw this - and picked up a mint 200LX with 4MB RAM upgrade today! I would love to get a copy of DOSMINIX 2.0.2 if you still have it. Also potentially interested in a crystal upgrade but I want to find out if this unit was upgraded already.
Hey, sorry for the late reply, but where did you get the 4MB RAM upgrade ? Are there others for sale that you know of ?
Send me an email at terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com and I can send you my dosminix archive...
I also have crystals for sale if you want one...
If you run the 200LX without the 32MHz driver in your config.sys (clkup32.sys) your screen will display incorrectly, the left 20 or so pixels of your screen will be shifted. This is because the upgrade in speed requires certain system timers to be corrected for the faster speed. If your palmtop does'nt do that (eg it's got a %100 working screen display) without the driver loaded, it's not doublespeed upgraded... I can sell you a crystal if that's the case...
@@HPPalmtopTube Funny enough, I think the board was swapped at some point because the sticker on the bottom says 4 MB but the palmtop only has 2 MB! It was a local find at a thrift store. I will keep an eye out for palmtops on the local markets for you. It's been through a full reset and does not have the driver, so I am confident that I do not have the crystal upgrade yet.
@@cdhamma Open it up (watch my 200LX dissassembly video for a howto) and take a picture of the top and bottom side of the motherboard, and email them to me and I will be able to tell you what the situation is.... my email is terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com
Hi,
This was a very cool video; I'm interested in doing the same with my 200lx, but haven't been able to find the exact patched version of dosminix 2.0.2 you used; where did you find it?
Send me an email at terrence dot vergauwen at gmail dot com and I'll send you the archive...
I'm definitely interested and I hope you get Minix 2.0.4 on it. I've got doublespeed and 8MB of RAM on mine. Wish I can interface an ESP32 to it over the PCMCIA port...
The only one that runs is dosminix 2.0.2 (which is patched to run on a HP 200LX and also to make it's RS232 port work), and it does'nt support PCMCIA devices... Unfortunately the patches themselves aren't available only the full distribution...
Unless you are a operating system C programmer and you can write drivers and would like to develop support for PCMCIA devices and the ESP32...
@@HPPalmtopTube I'm a developer myself. Thinking going PCMCIA to ESP32 via an FPGA.
@@strredwolf That's interesting, there's a user called yyzkevin on the VOGONS.ORG forum who had the same interest, getting the ESP32 working on the 200LX.
Maybe you can search for his posts about it on the VOGONS forum (there's a long thread about him making a PCMCIA sound card that's easy to find with the forum's search function. You might be able to share some knowledge with him...
@@HPPalmtopTube I guess I'm joining that forum. I would love to make a PCMCIA card.
Great video
Thanks :) You're the first to post a comment :)
It's fun to hear other enjoy this video, as it's my largest yet and I put quite a bit of time into researching and producing it :)
@@HPPalmtopTube Is there a function to align the screen alignment function? My device is slightly moved to the right. It's normal when it's in Dos mode.
@@mahoraga1052 Do you mean that on the left of your LCD panel the first column of characters is missing or shifted to the right ?
@@mahoraga1052 Also, when you say it's normal in DOS mode, in what "mode" is it not normal ?
Yes lol
Curious what you've done since 2005 as a Linux Administrator.
Hey, I was a UNIX (Solaris, Irix and Linux) systems engineer between 1998 and 2007, and then I changed careers in 2008 and went into 3D graphics software development... I started the luxrender project and then developed octanerender, which I sold to OTOY after 2 years...
In any POSIX shell, you don't need backticks as you have $().
it's the pipe eg "|" symbol missing on the psion's keyboard, not backticks...
This is epic. so.... i found my old PC3000 and a PC3100.... still missing SRAM Cards and Cables..... but about to hack it. What im asking myself is ... isnt there an sram emulator card anywhere? or anything that i could use to get that cf driver on my sharps? mmmmh.
what kind of cards does it accept ? If it's PCMCI, you can buy a 5MB or 10MB PCMCIA flash card, use it to copy the CF driver onto the palmtop, then use a CF to PCMCIA adapter to use a CF card...
11:54 a bug! (look at the upper left corner of palmtop and you'll see it, *literally*) 🪰
This was 2 years ago when I made the video, probably some unremarked lines in my autoexec.bat that I used with another CF card... Not a problem though...