Penpoint! was Re: 10 years

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Sat Oct 5 09:11:00 2002

   Thanks for the tip Bob. Mine does still have the original cells in it. Can they be replaced with standard NiMD cells or is the charging cycle wrong for them?

  Do you know if Fujitsu ever recalled or replaced the original cells?

    Joe

At 09:48 AM 10/5/02 -0400, you wrote:
>NEC VersaPad was based on a standard WinTel laptop design.
>
>They simply re-packaged it, eliminating the conventional clambshell
>chassis and keyboard.
>The LCD was the replaced with one having the Microtouch digitizer, and
>an internal serial
>port was dedicated to talking to the MicroTouch controller, some sort of
>8051 I think.
>
>So it dod not borrow any design from Fujitsu, but the very early NiMHD
>cells were from Fujitsu
>if I recall correctly. These were a disaster, a total disaster, very
>very unsafe cells.
>
>If your Fuji laptop has these old Ni-MHD cells, REMOVE then ASAP.
>
>What happens is this, the electrolyte is unstable in some portions of
>its charge cycle, and the battery
>control electronics accumulate error in this percentage of charge
>calculations (because the cell voltage
>does not change during charge/discharge very much).
>
>So once the calculated charge value is wrong, it begins to overcharge
>the cells slightly, and this
>causes the electrolyte to begin to form metal crystals (nickel if I
>recall correctly). These tiny, sharp
>crystals begin to perforate the semi-permiable ion membrane inside the
>cells.
>
>In this condition, the cells become very unstable. They can start fires
>if your charger is stupid enough, it
>does not take much once the cells are screwed up.
>
>My advice it to remove the cells from your battery pack if you suspect
>they are early Ni-MHD technology.
>
>Joe wrote:
>
>>Bob,
>>
>> Is this machine related to the pen top Fujitsu computer? I have one but haven't used it in a while. The dammed batteries are about worthless in it, they go dead in a few days even with the machine off. Anyway mine has two (IIRC) PCMCIA slots and runs the pen version of Win 3.1. It's actually a pretty neat machine, you can detach the keyboard completely and run everything via the pen. Also it has SRAM for memory so you can turn it off then turn it back on and everything is exactly the way that you left it.
>>
>> I THINK I remember reading that this machine would support PenPoint but I've never seen a copy of it.
>>
>> Joe
>>
>>At 06:41 PM 10/4/02 -0400, you wrote:
>>
>>>People actually remember Penpoint!
>>>
>>>I'm afraid I had a small hand in 'killing' Penpoint.
>>>
>>>Back when I worked at NEC, we had done a lot of work on a tablet-based
>>>portable PC called
>>>a VersaPad. The VersaPad was a fairly slick little 486SX based machine
>>>with a paper-white
>>>mono VGA display and a MicroTouch digitizer. It used an active,
>>>RF-linked 'pen' stylus with
>>>mouse-like buttons, etc.
>>>
>>>You had your choice of operating systems, Microsoft's Windows for Pen
>>>Computing, a hacked
>>>up version of Windows 3.11, or Go's Penpoint, a strange OS that was
>>>centered around the idea of
>>>an electronic book.
>>>
>>>I was sent from NEC to Go's offices, along with a BIOS engineer, to
>>>assist Go Inc. in their efforts
>>>to port Penpoint for the VersaPad. Given this assignement, I sat down
>>>with a prototype and a stack
>>>of PenPoint documentation. As strange as Penpoint was (to me) at the
>>>time, I found it easy to learn
>>>despite the gesture-recognisers inability to deal with my nearly
>>>unreadable handwriting style.
>>>
>>>But then things got ugly.
>>>
>>>The VersaPad had 2 PCMCIA slots, and Penpoint supported an array of
>>>smart card, flash and SRAM
>>>cards. Penpoint had absolutley no concept of a physical volume or
>>>device name, so when you inserted
>>>a PCMCIA card, a small book-like icon appeared on a GUI 'shelf'.
>>>
>>>Apparently the VersaPad was the only Penpoint machine that supported 2
>>>PCMCIA slots, something Go
>>>had never forseen in their low-level O/S design. This was a feature
>>>thought to be critical for a major customer
>>>who had asked NEC to develop the strange little VersaPad machine in the
>>>first place.
>>>
>>>Turns out I could pop a card into slot 0, and get its icon as normal. I
>>>could then pop a second card into slot
>>>1 and see another 'book' icon appear. But when I removed the first card
>>>and its icon disappeared, the identical
>>>icon for the card in slot 0 slid down the 'shelf' into the position that
>>>had held the icon for the card I'd just removed.
>>>
>>>Re-inserting the card in slot 0 now generated an icon on the OPPOSITE
>>>side of the icon for the slot 1 card, so
>>>there was no way to relate either PCMCIA card icon to either physical
>>>slot, as the GUI presentation depended
>>>on the order of insertion. The way this OS worked, with 2 PCMCIA slots,
>>>you were sure to delete files from
>>>the wrong physical volume, or not know which physical bit of media
>>>actually held your data. It was nasty.
>>>
>>>When this bug was replicated by the NEC BIOS enginer on the trip with
>>>me, we reported this bizzare bug to Go's team.
>>>Later that day, 90% of the engineers we were sent to support were called
>>>into 'urgent' meetings.
>>>
>>>In the end, Go's assesement was that Penpoint would have to be
>>>fundementally re-engineered to fix this issue. The changes needed would
>>>be to dramatic that the project was canceled. This was a bug they just
>>>could not fix, and
>>>without the ability to use a PCMCIA modem and data-card, NEC's customer
>>>for the VersaPad would be forced to abandon the Penpoint application and
>>>retool for a Windows for Pen Computing application. The result of this,
>>>and some really major issues with early Ni-MHD battery cells was enough
>>>to kill the complete VersaPad project.
>>>
>>>A few VersaPad's still exist, and I probably even have a copy of
>>>Penpoint, a tragically flawed Penpoint mind you, for these rare beasts.
>>>I had a small stack of VersaPads, and recently sold some at the MIT
>>>flea-market to people wanting to use them as controllers for mobile
>>>robots.
>>>
>>>If there is any real interest, I'll go dig one out and see if one of the
>>>2 remaining machines has Penpoint still installed.
>>>
>>>Anyway, I was not to happy Penpoint went away. I think I would prefer
>>>Penpoint as an O/S for my MobilePro 450 over Windows CE, but it has been
>>>a long time since I've used either one.
>>>
>>>Say, how old is a NEC MobilePro anyway? Hmm, nope, thats off-topic!
>>>
>>>Patrick Rigney wrote:
>>>
>>>>>On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Patrick Rigney wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Now that's what I call collectible. I really wish I still had
>>>>>>
>>>>>my EO 440...
>>>>>
>>>>>>:-(
>>>>>>
>>>>>I have one ;)
>>>>>
>>>>>Sellam Ismail Vintage
>>>>>
>>>>Very cool... is it still working? I'd love to see pix; many memories. I
>>>>worked for Go shortly before they merged back together with Eo and then...
>>>>"went". --Patrick
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Attachment Converted: "C:\EUDORA\Attach\Penpoint.htm"
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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Received on Sat Oct 05 2002 - 09:11:00 BST