I'm a geek, doing geeky things and often write some short articles to remind me what I've done and to potentially help other geeks out if they have similar interests....
IBM PC 110 (Palm Top PC 110)
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So.......my journey with these little devices started way back in around 1994/5-ish... cutting a long story short (for once), a certain individual who owned a mobile phone shop asked me to write a custom invoicing system for him that integrated to Sage and did all his accounting/invoicing, thereby saving him a fortune in time/effort and made everything "sorted" for the accountants. He had one of these IBM PC 110 devices, it was running Windows 95 and it was frikkin' awesome. It was the smallest laptop/palmtop device I had ever seen and it was frikkin' awesome. I had to have it. We agreed that I'd do the software and he'd pay me with the device. I recall I even worked over the New Years eve night time (much to the displeasure of certain 'other halves' at the time) to get the software finished on time, so I could get into the shop for Jan 1st and get it all installed/setup before the January sales/rush. anyway, I did the job, even networked all the PCs up too. The gentleman in question was very happy and then broke the news that he'd "broken" then device. I said I'd take it anyway. He started to get annoyed and then got very annoyed as I pushed it further. I then said, okay, fair enough and I wrote him out an invoice for £1000 (fair amount of dough back in the day), he picked it up, laughed, screwed it up and threw it at me. He laughed and asked, "what am I going to do?". I knew what I "wanted to do", but y'know reality kicked in.... I just smiled, wished him a happy new year and walked out of the shop. I cursed a few times. I met up with Frank. Told him I wasn't too happy. Frank had a chat, came to nothing. Lesson learnt. I was still about 150hours of coding effort down and minus an IBM PC 110....was in the dog house back home, but, I did get the last laugh (unintentionally, but still amusing). Within the software I had installed, I had used a shareware version for the database driver, it was something to do with Borland, Paradox rings a bell, anyway, after 15days of the new software working away wonderfully, it then just stopped. Completely. I remember Frank asking me what I'd done (as he'd been asked to go and have a look at it). I was as surprised as he was. I then ran up the code on my own PC and there we go, I had the same issue...I debugged it and yep, the shareware drivers now wanted a license key to carry on. Oh how I laughed, I didn't tell anyone, not even Frank (hello Frank!) about the solution. I did ponder going back to the shop and asking for the IBM PC 110 as immediate payment and I'd fix the software, but, well...y'know... I learnt quite a few valuable lessons during that little exercise...but I still ended up empty handed.
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Roll forward to about 2017-ish.... whilst wandering the internet I stumbled over some people who were showing off their IBM PC 110 devices and were showing how the LCD screens all crack up and then the Japanese treat them as "Junk". BTW - these devices were only ever sold in Japan, they were never sold elsewhere. The issue with the LCD screens is due to the humidity and a fault with the LCD screen design. Why not just replace the LCD screen with a new / old stock one? Well...you can't they don't exist. If, and that is a huge, IF, you can get an original new / old stock LCD screen it is about $1000 on it's own with no guarantee it will actually work. So a huge gamble.
(Yes, I have "about" 5 of the devices now!)
I found a lovely web site called buyee.jp, where you can surf the Japanese Yahoo action site for such devices and basically, if you win, the device is shipped to them, they then charge you fee's for handling, packaging etc... and then they send it via courier (variety of versions & prices) to you and then you get hit with customs charges (based on the value you paid for the device - something I'll come back to later!) and then you receive the device and jump up and down with glee, because you've gotten a few extra pieces that you weren't expecting....
I digress & I talk too much, which always amuses me, as I'm actually an extremely introverted person...but I had to become extroverted in order to get by in the world.... I'm more at "home" when I'm not dealing with people. But, as my dear old mother used to say, when I was a kid, "Computers don't talk back, but people do & you have to live in a world of people". funny how times have changed.
Here are some glorious photo's of the devices I have acquired (of course there will be more than one!), the extra equipment etc... and a couple of demo videos of my "precious", yes, a fully functional and working LCD screen device.
The above photo shows the size of the IBM PC 110, it is actually plugged into the "docking station", that is why it appears to be very thick. The docking station doubles the height, but as you'll see later on why you need one. You can also see a variety of CF Cards that I picked up along the way with the devices. they didn't need a lot of space, remember, these were primarily DOS-era devices, so did NOT need GBs of HDD storage.
One extra peripheral that I did manage to get my hands on, was an authentic PCMCIA CD-ROM (in fact I got two, you'll see later), it plugs into the device itself (not the "docking station") and those ridges at the back house the batteries...yes, this is also a portable CD music listening device too!
Here's a demonstration of just how bad the LCD screens go... the one on the left has gone completely, the one on the right has the crazy paving effect, both are useless.... BUT, they still boot up and are fully 100% functional, so, not quite "junk" just yet....
These two lovely beauties are so clean and look like they have just come out of the factory. I believe the left-hand one has a working LCD screen, but it's a bit touch and go, the contrast tends to fade away over time, but again, great examples. Maybe one day, if someone figures out how to get replacement LCD screens and I replace them they'll be restored back to their former glory.
Right, back to the "precious"...yes, the fully working functional device. Excuse my appalling mobile phone camera - it's very far from the best! But you get the jist - this device boots up and you have a nice crisp clear LCD screen. BTW- yes, this has the 20MB memory upgrade too.
It still makes me smile when it boots up and you end up at this screen, oh btw - it takes about 5 seconds to get to this point, yes, a huuuuuuuuge amount of time to wait isn't it! LOL....
Okay, so this device has 2 CF cards plugged into it, one on the left and one on the right. The one on the left gets mapped as a C:\ drive, the one on the right as the E:\ drive and an onboard drive is the D:\ drive. The D:\ drive is where the DOS boots from and if fixed inside the device.
Oh, look on the E:\ drive we have quite a range of assorted DOS based software.
A nice crisp and clear Monkey Island demo shows the screen off lovely AND the speed is perfect, this device is a 486SX at 33Mhz and this game runs spot on, forget your emulation software on Raspberry Pis!
One of the neat features of the "docking station" is the ability to plug in a VGA monitor, press [Fn][7] and boom, it switches to an external monitor.
As a teaser here, I'm showing a 5" LCD screen that I have managed to find on the good old internet that would make a great LCD screen replacement, possibly....
Can you tell which screen this is running on?
Okay, there you go - it's switched over to the external monitor.
For a bit of a size check, there is the external monitor held up above the IBM PC 110 device.
There's the back of the external 5" monitor, it can handle a variety of inputs, not just VGA. It's a great little device - I have about 3 of them I think.
Again, as you can see, it's lovely and crisp too. I just need to find a way to get that, but inside the casing :-)
Right, back to the CD-ROM drives, well, there you go....
And there are the re-chargeable batteries that mean you can use this as a SONY Discman style CD-ROM drive.
In fact, guilty as charged - I wondered where that ORB CD has gotten to!
There is also a 3.5" floppy drive - 100% crucial to have one of these in order to install DOS onto the device - as you will be this numerous times, trust me!
Here's one of the devices showing how the internal CMOS battery tends to explode and make it all cruddy inside and mess the device up.
Around the back, it's pretty simple, except that is a custom connector for the keyboard/mouse, it's not usb - I never noticed that before. Hmmm.... I wonder if I could find a way to get a cable for that?
On the left hand side, there is a dual PCMCIA slot.
The front houses the little LCD screen that shows the battery status and the speakers. The theory was that you could also use this device as a phone. The left hand circle is actually a speaker and the right hand circle is a microphone... feels a bit odd holding it up to your head.
One the right hand side, you have a CF Card slot and the volume on/off switch.
On the bottom, you have a nice long connector that you use for......
...connecting to the "docking station". Actually, it's that little connector that sends the data signals for the VGA external monitor, so, maybe one day, someone will figure out how that could be used to power a different LCD rather than tinkering with the internal motherboard.
On one side, you have power connector and two PS/2 connections for external Keyboard and Mouse.
The other side has the custom connector for the 3.5" Floppy drive
Around the back we have an RS232 port (?) a parallel port (for printers?) and a VGA external connector, for, well you know what for.
On this particular device, I have an IBM Microdrive 340MB that slides into the PCMCIA slot, it's not the same as a CF Card, even though it looks like it, it's a proper mini little hard drive, you can always tell a dead one by the clonking noise and no spin noise
Down the other end, there is a 256MB CF Card that slots in itself, without the need for a PCMCIA casing.
Ah, the battery. Yes, the IBM PC 110 is a portable device, therefore it needs a battery to power it. I have about 5 of the original IBM ones, I think 1 of them kind of works and gives about an hour of usage. However, as they were based on the Camcorder devices of the time, you can get a new battery that will slot straight in!
I believe it has a bit more capacity, so lasts a bit longer - I think I did a test once (a few years back now) and it was happy to be used non-stop for about 2hours on a single charge. Very good for what it is.
I managed to get a new charger too, you slide the battery onto it and just plug it into a 5v 1amp mini-usb cable and X amount of hours later and you have a fully charged battery.
Of course, one device had to be sacrificed in order to see "how it all works" inside, where all the main components are, etc..etc... I still keep it, as it's too rare to just throw away (even though I know I should), but y'know, maybe one day if that new LCD screen appears, I can put this one back together and we have a working device again!
Ah, yes.... so the boxes that the devices originally came in. I have 2 of them. They both have slightly different content, the first one has the PC DOS (Japanese edition) and a manual (again, in Japanese)
The second has the same, but has this "Power Up" Disk (I honestly cannot remember what it is for or does - I'll remember to check it again one day).
I also picked up a bit of IBM PC 110 "related" materials too.....
Here's a genuine magazine full page article for the device from back in the last 1990s.
And here I have 3 books on usage of the IBM PC 110:
I'm not sure how IBM Japan got that middle book cover past the lawyers (maybe they were less up themselves back in the 90s?), but I suppose it does market itself to the Manga type usage / market from back in the day.
I'll do some articles (don't hold your breathe) on using the IBM PC 110 with MS-DOS, in the future. I might even get the Wifi card working with one of them (and then the rest), it should be the same config/setup as the Handbook 486 (in theory).... but what to do with it then?..... hmmmm....
Here's a BASIC video that show the device in action:
Oh and here I'll put the bookmarks that I have in my web-browser that I've collated over time:
Actually THIS is pretty friggin' awesome! This guy has 3D printed a new casing to fit a new LCD monitor that should work with the IBM PC 110. CHECK IT OUT!
I need to contact this guy and get a status update - he seems to have been working on this up until last month, so maybe he needs some help? No help needed, he's got it all sorted.
It sounds like he's found a working solution (by making a new adapter/convertor PCB) and using a 5" LCD screen that you can get for about £50... great news, it sounds like the "other" devices might get some life back into them yet!!!
Latest video of the new TFT and the 3D printed surrounding (I just printed one of these, they are snap tight shut and fit perfectly - just waiting on the new screens to arrive)
Here's a very recent (read that as AFTER I WROTE THE ABOVE PAGE) YouTuber review of the IBM PC 110 - it's by LGR (Lazy Game Reviewer) and I do actually believe that the device he is showing was sent to him by Kevin, yep, the guy above who is a genius for coming up with an alternative TFT screen so more IBM PC 110 devices can live again.
I actaully learnt a few things from the LGR video - I didn't appreciate that the devices were only for sale for 1 year. wow!
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