Book of Sigmarion III: Chapter 3 The Sigmarion Clan reunited

A couple of weeks ago the Solo Champion summoned the old Sigmarion clan (I, II, III) by NTT DoCoMo (the actual manufacturer was NEC) on Yahoo! Japan via Buyee, an international package forwarding service specialized in online shopping.

At first I chose to have all three devices packed up together and shipped via DHL, which was faster and cheaper than EMS. However, the big box was returned to Buyee the very next day by DHL due to exceeded limit of the amount of batteries allowed in one package. Oops.

It took another couple of days for Buyee to process the returned package, refund the DHL fees, and rerun the shipping instructions step. This time I chose Japan Air Small Package, priced almost the same as DHL with a bit longer delivery time. 

Book of Jornada: Chapter 11 Venture into the ultimate world of Ultima

At last, the Solo Champion answered the calling from Ultima I, a groundbreaking quintessential classic CRPG in the 1980s. I still remembered when the game was out I was a very poor school kid.  Without any pocket money, let alone any gaming or computing gadgets, I found my pure joy and excitement munching the walkthroughs in computer magazines in the library during lunch breaks day after day. 

Book of Jornada: Chapter 10 Beware! The Ogre is coming!!

Ogre, my all-time favorite turn-based tactical game, both on PC and on tabletop, now runs great on my Jornada under PocketDOS!

Champion, fight on!

Book of Jornada: Chapter 9 Capture Video Display Editor (VDE) for DOS

Yesterday I started a thread on hpcfactor discussing PocketDOS (which doesn't seemed to get mentioned much there). A fellow member there recommended VDE (Video Display Editor). I wasn't aware of this program until the forum post. Then I checked out the dedicated website for VDE and started to learn more about the app.

Book of Jornada: Chapter 8 The Famed City of GrandView 2.0

Having completed the Quest for WordStar 7.0D, the Solo Champion visited the famed city of GrandView 2.0 for carousing.

GrandView 2.0 is one of the best outliners for DOS by the good old Symantec.

Book of Jornada: Chapter 7 The Quest for WordStar 7.0D

WordStar was one of the first full-fledged word processors and a major player back in the 1980s. Many professional writers (including George R. R. Martin) swear by this archaic but effective program. There is no reason not to run it under PocketDOS on my Jornada 720. 

Champion, let's go!

Book of Jornada: Chapter 2+ Revamped Battery Pack Duo

Yesterday I bought another pair of Sanyo 18650 cells which are claimed to hold 3,400 mAh. The previous pair worked so well (over 16 hours runtime!) that I found no excuse not to revamp the other aging battery pack. 

Side Quest 2: The Battle of VM

Background

In the beginning of the HPC era, there was HPC Explorer for WinCE 1 & 2. Then Microsoft's ActiveSync became the dominant synchronization method since WinCE 3. Then after the official end of development of the Handheld PCs, Microsoft pulled out Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) for its Pocket PCs and the later Windows Mobile products.

When I started using the Handheld PCs a month ago, I researched the way to have my handhelds communicate with the PC. It turned out that Windows 10 has already dropped its support for its own mobile devices for good. Not even WMDC is working without certain tweaking.

Random Encounter 3: Wholesale Handheld PC in 2020!

The "Handheld PC"s do survive after all these years of mocking and disregard. And actually more new ones keep coming out on the market, even by wholesale.

If you are curious of what "Handheld PC" can mean as of 2020, take a look here and I guarantee these are fun machines.

😁 

Random Encounter 2: The horde of DOS-based palmtop computers. Big Time!

Even though I was a PDA loyalist during 1990s (and a super recent HPC convert), I was totally unaware of the existence of so many 486 and even 386 full DOS palmtop computers during those years (perhaps except for the HP's). How come? I suppose these machines were being targeted at the very high-price niche market, and definitely not to poor college kids like me.

http://www.tankraider.com/DOSPALMTOP/list.html

[Another fantastic website in Japanese (thanks, stingraze!) http://www.funkygoods.com/nazopa/ ]

The keyboard of many of these seem so touchtypable. Many run on AA batteries too (some even for WEEKS). This must be LosTech ... And quite close to my ideal device.

 

And they do look like the real precursors of the CE Handheld PCs, don't they?

Book of Sigmarion III: Chapter 2 SlashToShift

The major roadblock for me to get into using my Sigmarion III is the unconventional keyboard layout, especially the punctuations and various symbols spread all over the place.

Over last couple of weeks I was searching for an old Japanese app called SlashToShift. The app enables the user to redefine the values of many of the keys. Despite the fact that all the links on Japanese websites are dead, and nifty.com is in a way immune to the grand WaybackMachine (the largest online archive of websites, living or dead), I finally managed to track down a copy on some obscure Chinese software download website. 

Since the original documentation and the app interface are in Japanese, I prepared a brief user guide in English for those who are interested in using this app on their Sig3. https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/1087/QTA_Software/SlashToShift/version_1.50

Random Encounter 1: HPC poetry!

Came across this amusing poetry in my random youtube searching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB5jJ2T4YmY

Poem One

There once was this thing from HP.

That fit in your pocket, you see.

A caveman would stare,

and pull out his hair,

and wonder, "What could this be?"

Side Quest 1: I see, I come, I Slay!

Interlude

Just wanna touch base with my blog here. It's not very easy to persist in blogging every single day. Not because of losing momentum, but simply due to real life matters: family, work, etc. just like what every typical mortal is living through. Although it was not really part of my intention, writing blogs here has become a special treat for myself. Despite quite a few draft blog posts are already sitting in the pipeline, a solid block of quiet moment and peace of mind is still much needed to complete them.

Similar to scripting the adventures of different HPC heroes in individual "Books", I am thinking of starting a Side Quest series to talk about different cool programs and experiences when using my adorable small old devices.

******************************************

Side Quest One: PocketSlay

I assume many oldtime gamers have already known this title so well. Truly, the almost 30 years old Slay is a stroke of genius. The fun and challenges it provides are astronomically greater than its tiny footprint. This is the only game I play to death on PCs, Android, and finally the HPCs.

Besides Slay, the author's other titles are still prevailing! http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/index.html

The best part is Slay for HPC has become Exemptionware (i.e. GRATIS!): https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/218/Sean_OConnor/HPCSlay/version_2.0

I see, I come, I Slay!

Book of Jornada: Chapter 6 HPC Notes Professional v4.3d - First Victory!!

Thanks for the help by hpc12, a new installer has been uploaded to hpcfactor.

He verified that the installation did work for the HPCs (on his mobilepro).

However, I still got the same error (missing the CAB installation step) when running the new installer.

I began to suspect that the issue had to do with my using WMDC (Windows Mobile Device Center) on my Windows 10 PC. In fact, ActiveSync errors began to pop up after the latest update two days ago. Oh, thank you and congratulations, Microsoft, you have scored yet another victory of killing your own software ... 

Then, the Solo Champion recalled the brief encounter with the Casio Cassiopeia Fiva MPC-103 in a dream. So he set out to seek this fabled lady warrior.

Book of Jornada: Chapter 5 A New Danger! HPC Notes 4.3 Professional! Go Fight!!

HPC Notes was said to be one of the killer apps on the Win CE platform, similar to Bonsai for Palm OS. 

After several previous failed installation efforts, I removed the previous installation and went over again using the updated upload on SCL. During installation, there was the same popup windows letting me to choose what to install. Again I didn't see any option for HPC or PPC. 

Then at the end of the installation process, there was only a notification saying the Palm OS file will be installed during next HotSync. Right after I close the installation window, a small popup saying "Starting ActiveSync Manager" appeared for a couple of seconds and then disappeared. Nothing happened on the HPC end.

Is it just me or has anyone successfully installed this version?  😢

Book of Jornada: Chapter 4 By the Power of DOS!!

Today I sent an email to the developer of  PocketDOS asking about how to purchase a license, as the link on its website seems broken.

After half a day (timezone difference I suppose), the developer responded with a working link to the order: https://order.shareit.com/cart/add?vendorid=14287&PRODUCT[164077]=1  

In a split second I went ahead and placed an order with paypal, costing around USD$25. A bit pricey, but definitely worth it. Remember this is not just one piece of arcane software. It is a key to the gigantic wealth of treasures and artifacts of the ancient lost tech!

After several minutes I received another message from PocketDos asking me for my Owner Name and System ID in order to generate a unique Unlock Code. Having sent the information to them, the unlock code was delivered in a short while. 

Now the vault is opened! It's going to be a long, long adventure deep into the great ancient realm of DOS!!

[UPDATED 20201030]

A very nice touch of PocketDOS is the function keys (F1-F10) at the bottom of the display, in addition to being clickable/tappable, actually correspond to the exact position of each of the physical application hot keys on the Jornada's keyboard.

Book of Jornada: Chapter 3 Essential gear (WIP, constantly updating)

List of my essential programs and tools (WIP)

PRODUCTIVITY

HP PIM suite (HP Quickpad, HP Viewer, Tasks, Calender, Contact): Good enough for my personal PIM needs

Pocket Word: Fast, super lightweight, effective

SpreadCE: More powerful than Pocket Excel, less heavier than Planmaker

ListPro (3.0): Need to study the manual. Extremely flexible and full of potential for different purposes.

Mobipocket Reader (4.3): From the Jornada Central CD. Other versions seem not working.

Adobe Reader (2.0): Simple though limited PDF reader. Just works.

MDict (3.0): The most useful dictionary for HPCs. Tons and tons of dictionary databases, if you put a little effort to look around...

PocketC: For learning some C programming

BasiCE: For learning Basic on the fly (looks like for MIPS and SH3 only...)

Book of Jornada: Chapter 2 Chou Henshin - Ultimate Rising Form (battery powerup)!!

CHOU HENSHIN!!  (Japanese, meaning "Super Transformation")

Exalted by the revival of his fellow Sigmarion III with enhanced stamina, my Jornada 720 is inspired to transcend his Ultimate Form to reach an even more potent level.

So today he once again visited the Solo Champion, who invoked the powerup ritual on Sigmarion III. Knowing the upcoming challenges ahead, the Solo Champion immediately prepared the necessary tools again and proceeded to the altar.

Book of Jornada: Chapter 1 Henshin! The Ultimate Form!

HEN--SHIN!!!

Even after the partial transformation of the system board from J720 (Japanese ROM, 32MB RAM) to 728 (English ROM, 64MB RAM), my Jornada 720 was still in a burning need for a replacement keyboard. And today, the wait is over!

I got this J728 VERY cheap from a junk seller on an online second hand market in mainland China. He originally asked for RMB120 (around USD$15), but since it's no longer possible to ship batteries across the border from the mainland to Hong Kong, he agreed to sell only the machine to me for RMB100 (around USD$13). It's an awfully great deal, even though I am not actually looking for a working machine. I just need the parts, especially the English keyboard.

It turned out that the J728 was not in a very good shape. Apart from a small number of scratches and marks on the casing, the unhappy display refused to brighten up. With the power source in, I could hear the WAV playing during start up, but I couldn't see anything on the screen. It's quite likely that either the screen itself was dead or there's something wrong with the display controller.

An amusing bonus event is that I remember I asked the seller to remove the backup battery (an ordinary CR2032) from the bottom beneath the CF card slot. I even walked him through step by step as the seller was saying he knew nothing about the machine, let alone much English. From the circumstantial evidence I can deduce that trivial operation actually cost the black lever which was supposed to keep the coin battery in place!

On a positive note, this old machine has retained its chastity (all three red warranty seals being intact) after all these years.

Those five screws are the secret to solve the puzzle to release the keyboard (and the memory board inside) from the main body. 

So here they are. Despite their tiny sizes, there is still a salient difference in terms of key pitch. Specifically, the Japanese keys are just 13mm wide, standing in a stark contrast to the 14.4mm wide keys on the English keyboard. This may not be enough to appeal to those who simply find touch typing on the HPCs a suffering experience, but personally this is worlds apart. I can touch type on the English keyboard at normal pace with ease, but that's impossible when using the Japanese one. 

You see? My Jornada totally agrees with the Solo Champion on this one.

I understand this can be purely personal preference. While many users would prefer the look and colors of the J728 casing, I strongly favor the deep dark bluish scheme of J720. J728's silverish bazel feels distracting, while on J720 the dark frame around the screen makes the screen look brighter and also seems to help me better stay in focus. 

So now, behold! My Jornada has finally completed the henshin into this (dark) Ultimate Form, just like what the legendary Kuuga did in the Millenium Year.

It's time to rock! 👿

Book of Jornada: Chapter 0 Know My Name!

Do you know...

"Jornada" = Spanish, pronounced as like "hor-na-da", meaning "working day".

An apt name indeed.

Here is what the user guide says:

The size and capabilities of the HP Jornada H/PC let you keep your most important business and personal information current and close at hand... Your HP Jornada is also the perfect companion to your desktop or notebook PC. It allows you to take vital business data and documents with you when away from the office, then easily transfer updated information back to your PC upon return. A powerful, reliable, mobile business partner, HP Jornada offers you the highest quality in performance and battery life as well as rich programs and utilities designed by Hewlett-Packard.

I do believe my Jornada 720 (728 ROM) still lives up to its name. Here we are talking about two full decades (720 was produced in 2000). This is what is meant by solid consumer technology and truly user oriented design, not greedy money grab or quixotic experiment.

Why the Handheld PCs in 2020?

Today the Solo Champion got struck by an existential question: Why the Handheld PCs instead of hot chics like GPD Pocket 2 or Lenovo Yoga One?

Short answers:

1. True instant on: The CE programs are so small that they are all running in ramdisk (the small RAM). No hibernation or PC style suspend is necessary. UMPCs and Netbooks can't compete with that.
2. Elegant form factor: I am so obsessed with the handheld body. The stylish look of the Jornada (esp. 710/720) is so unassuming, inspiring and motivating. On the other hand, netbookish designs are too commonplace and too large to fit in one hand. Most UMPCs look too complicated to my taste. I don't really fancy playing with rotating/flipping displays.
3. Super long battery life: After replacing the old dead cells with new ones with much higher capacity (mAh), the revived battery packs can keep my HPCs running for more than 10 hours.
4. Minimalistic feel: As just mentioned, the CE programs are so compact yet effecient. Just a tiny fraction of memory size, resource (both hardware and software) requirements, power consumption, startup speed (Pocket Word pops up in the blink of an eye, vs. Office 365). 
5. Offline-ness: This is so retro and so anti-tech. The truth is my personal data is safest if it's not online. You can even think of the HPCs as a palm-sized memory storage device with a touch-typing friendly keyboard and a spacious screen.
6. Enduring legacy: Those HPCs still surviving the talks to this date have stood the test of time. These are the legendary warriors in the great hall of fame.
7. Low cost: For one GPD Pocket 2 I would be able to acquire 8 or even 10 of these good old HPCs on the used market today. How cool is that!

... How about nostalgia? In my case, I am new to HPCs, so I consider myself immune to this affliction. :)

Challenges accepted!

New quests for the little Solo Champion

1. Master HPC2000 and Jornada 720
2. Replace the Japanese keyboard on the J720 with an English one (incoming mail...)
3. Test out Debian 9 on Jornada 720
4. Tweak Sigmarion III, especially remapping the Japanese keys
5. Run Bonsai on both Jornada 720 and Sigmarion III
6. Repair the vinegar symdrome inflicted PC110 with a new polarizer film
7. Install Debian on Fiva MPC-103
8. Revamp the battery cells in the overclocked (200MHz) Toshiba Libretto 50M (touchscreen model)
9. Repair and replace the badly cracked case of Toshiba Libretto 110CT
10. Find a small touch-typable USB keyboard, cannibalize/transplate it to a customized protector case, 3D print components for holding my smartphone on the back flip = A universal HPC kit for smartphone! 
11. Building on 10: 3D print a frame for a Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB) and install it under the keyboard, together with several huge capacity 18650 mAh Li-Ion battery cells. Voila! A truly unique and infinitely customizable Handheld PC!

A reply to another mobile warrior

This is the main content in my reply to a message from another veteran mobile warrior.

For the moment, I still consider Jornada 720/728 the best HPC for me. The form factor is just so right. None of my smartphones or portable computers can beat that. Sigmarion 3 (or possibly 2) comes close. In comparison, Sig3 is more responsive and has a gorgeous screen (because of its smaller size in higherresolution), But I don't like the unconventional keyboard layout. Unless I can find a way to hack the keymapping, I would stick with my J720 as my primary HPC.

Convictions of the Solo Champion

Call me paranoid but it's so common and dubious for smartphone apps to ask for all sorts of permissions. Google should have put the permissions field before everything but I suspect it got deliberately pushed to the least accessible and visible position of the App info menu ... Perhaps I am just too stupid to figure out why an ordinary dictionary app needs to "Read phone status and identity" (IMEI? IMSI?), "View network connections", etc. iOS is no better I gather.

My personal conviction is if possible I won't let the web know more about me than necessary. My worst fear is just that everything (files, data, keys, even fingerprints, voice and facial images) stored on my "smart" device is contantly being monitored and data-mined day and night. Big data is a universal mixed bag. I don't know maybe it sounds like an apparent self-contradiction for geeky folks like me who both embrace and reject technology at the same time.

As stated before, the ideal mobile gear fpr the Solo Champion is a supercharged smartphone for networking and browsing, plus my offline brilliant handheld computer(s) to manage most of my personal data. This way I won't win big love from the Grand Big Data, but I would live happier and enjoy a bigger peace of mind. 

Rant on! ☝

Found a bunch of pole arms in my treasure chest!

Sunday. Cleaning up clutters at home. Found something more in the treasure chest I took over from my (ex-)gadget fan.

It turned out to be a bunch of replacement stylii for the HP Jornada (6xx/7xx). They are one-piece hard plastic without the spring mechanism as in the original design. There are 9 of these in total. Not sure who made them.

There are some scratch marks around the middle part of the barrel. But they all look fine otherwise.

[Update 20201016]

I've just wrapped and packaged the stylus for Rob. It should be on its way either this afternoon or Monday morning. Learned a new small trick today. A simple rubber eraser can do something good about minor scratches on plastic surface. Now the stylii all look a bit better now.

I have twins today!

Yet another box from the nation of the rising sun again!

Ordered on 30 Sep, arrived today (3 Oct). Super fast.

Dream, dream, dream...

What if ...

Casio Cassiopeia Fiva MPC-103, HP Jornada 720

Would also be nice if I can make use of this super cheap usb keyboard.

Does it ring a bell, HPC fans? Yes, it's the exact same thing on the massive cheapish nameless CE netbooks back in the days...

 

 

Book of Sigmarion III: Chapter 1 Revival of the Ancient Warrior (Part II): An experiment of solder-free battery repairing

Previously in the Book of Sigmarion III ...

The battery is dead! The cells are dead dead!

The only means to resuscitate the dead battery pack is by replacing the dead cells inside. They are 3.7V 18500 (NOT the much more common 18650!). 

My little champion proclaims, "Here came the rescue, my friend!"

Book of Sigmarion III: Chapter 1 Revival of the Ancient Warrior (Part I)

HOMECOMING

Here arrived my Sigmarion III, the 3rd generation of Handheld PCs by DoCoMo (a major mobile service provider in Japan). 

I won the bidding on the Japanese Yahoo auctioning site. This item only cost a bit more than 5,000 yen. An excellent deal in my opinion. In fact, from time to time the Japanese sellers would describe their listed items as "junk". However, more often than not things would turn out to be (much) better than expected. I have a very high respect for the Japanese for how they take great care of things they own, especially collection items and gadgets. As you can see, everything is in such an excellent condition. If the box had been (re-)shrinkwrapped I would even have believed that this is a (like-)new machine! 

Prelude: A New Beginning of the Old Legends

I. THE OLD LEGENDS

Like many midlife working adults in large modern cities, I grew up during the advent of the internet (still remember irc, mailing lists, Netscape and Eudora?) and personal computing devices of the 1980s, I have witnessed and lived through many generations of gadgets: from the boxy metal heavy personal desktops, to the minuscule PDAs in the 90s and beyond, to the UMPCs mostly as an expensive passing fad for the niche, then to the low-cost but cheapish Netbooks since mid 2000s, and finally at this point, the golden age of the ubiquitous Smartphones.

I was once a loyal follower of PDAs. My first love was a Palm III. Then I moved on to Handspring Prism, and then a couple of Sony Clie (NR70V, NX73V), the much deprived Abacus Wrist PDA, and finally a Handera 330 (still having it today!). I did use a Pocket PC (iPAQ 2210) for several months but the PPC platform just failed to win my favor on many counts. 

The year of the Millenium marked not only the would-be-but-never-was Apocalypse, but also the birth of truly converging devices. Traditional PDAs and handhelds were quickly exiled to legacies and forgotten, thanks to the emergence of Web 2.0 as a new infrastructure of daily communications, which went hand in hand strongly with the rise of iOS and Android smartphones as the ideal all-in-one mobile solutions.

A sidenote: The Nokia N900, a truly usable Linux phone (I'm looking at you, PinePhone), was my initimate companion at one point. But two years later, I just found no words to say "No!" to my mobile service provider's FREE offer. So I switched to the gift LG Optimus G (Android 4.1) and never looked back since then.

Smartphones = a dream come true!?

But it is still too early for my dream to realize. I have always been feeling a sense of uneasiness and insecurity, worrying about yielding too much privacy automatically, unwillingly, and permanently to the world wide web especially the big manupulative moneymakers (conspiracies!). Although I develop no love for social media in general and more so MMO gaming, I still find myself spending a huge chunk of time every day feeding on online content, YouTube clips, podcasts, patreon channels, news feeds ... I even manage part of my day job online using my Android phone (now LG Q6+, still Android OS 8). 

So perhaps it's time to call for a moment's respite and take stock of my gadget experience.