SOME INFORMATION ABOUT THE HP100LX PALMTOP

(The following is an extract from the file: palmjdic.inf, in which
Jim Breen describes the HP100LX in the context of using it as a hand-held
Japanese Dictionary)

The system I have been using is the HP 100LX Palmtop PC, a hand-held and 
fully functional PC measuring about 16x8cm.  

A  few  words  about  the  Palmtop.  It  comes with many Mb of preloaded 
software: Lotus123, database, editor, HP Calculator.  CCMail, Phonebook, 
Appointment manager, XTREE-like Filer, Stopwatch, etc.  All this is in a 
"D:"  drive  in ROM.  The basic systems have 1M of CMOS of which 640K is 
DOS's memory and the rest a RAMdrive (C:).  In an  expansion  slot  (A:) 
goes  a  8x5x0.5cm "Flashdisk";  I have a 10M version,  which comes with 
Stacker installed,  so there is plenty of capacity  for  JDIC  etc.  The 
processor  is  an 80186,  which seems to perform at about the speed of a 
12Mhz 8088.  There is an Application Manager which looks after  programs 
through  Icons and pop-down menus,  or you can run programs from the DOS 
prompt.  Curiously,  powering the system off only turns off the display, 
the applications stay there. I have only rebooted twice. 

The  Palmtop has a CGA display.  Unlike earlier models,  the 100LX has a 
full 80x25 line screen,  i.e.  640x200 pixels in high-res  CGA.  I  have 
always found the aspect ratio of high-res CGA pretty poor for display of 
the 16x16 kana/kanji, but the crisp LCD of the Palmtop combined with the 
rather  flat  aspect  ratio  make  the  display  every  bit as good as a 
monochrome VGA. 

The Palmtop  has  a  serial  port  and  built-in  Kermit,  Xmodem,  etc. 
protocols.  An  optional  Connectivity  Pack  enables files to be copied 
back and forth between a PC and a Palmtop,  and for them to access  each 
others files.  It also contains PC versions of many of the applications. 

Of course,  the keyboard (full QWERTY) is tiny, and you can forget about 
two-handed touch typing.  I have developed a one-handed  "hunt-and-pick" 
which works well, particularly as it has a "sticky" Shift key.