Thinkpads Forum

Ever since I came to know about the IBM PC110 palmtop computer and saw this ad, I have wanted to own one. I am a huge fan of the HP 100LX, a ~1994 palmtop PC/PDA that I own and use almost every day. The PC110 is IBM's attempt at making a palmtop PC - infact a superior attempt since it comes with a complete range of accessories including a docking station, floppy drive and many more. My fascination for these machines lies in the fact that they can run a full version of DOS (PC110 can run even windows 95) and thus are an amazing portal to the wonderful yesteryear DOS applications.

I have had the good luck to find a almost new, unsused PC110 (top-of-the-line YDW model,20 MB RAM and all the accesories) recently for a reasonable price. It arrived yesterday and I picked it up today evening ... I just unboxed it and love it already , it looks like a tiny thinkpad! It is even more desirable than the venerable HP 100LX I have. Note that the PC110 was a japan only product and it is pretty rare to find one today, and is impossible to get one that is new.

I am putting up a webpage about this small palmtop computer. The page is not complete, I'll be updating it with more pictures and text in the next 2 weeks.
Link: http://grove.ufl.edu/~psrivats/pc110.html

As you can see from the specs listed, this is almost a full fledged computer. Some might think that the 33 Mhz CPU and 20 MB of RAM are absolutely useless, but the fact is that a machine like this will run DOS, windows 95 and earlier versions of Linux very well, and is very usable even today if set up properly.

Since this was a japan only model, the machine has a japanese edtion of Personaware (personal information management program) running on top of a custom version of PC-DOS (japanese). As of now the machine is not really usabale since I cannot read japanese, but there are a few websites (Dan Basterfield's pages are a great resource) that explain how to set up the PC110 with various OSes. I have not managed to find a copy of windows 95 yet, but eventually I will be installing it on the PC110.

UPDATE:
I finally managed to install windows 95 on the PC110 ... uploaded a cpla pics in the link above. Many thanks to Ray and Erik!

introductory review with pics coming soon ... watch this space!

HOLY EXPLETIVE!   you found one near-mint still in the box!

i'm thoroughly impressed!   (...and equally jealous. )

what are you going to do with it since it's so rare?   i'd almost be afraid to use it.

If you need a second dock, check this out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0286004978 (currently has TWO "new-in-box" units)

erik wrote: what are you going to do with it since it's so rare?   i'd almost be afraid to use it.

Thanks Erik I do plan to use it (very carefully), what is the point locating a machine like this and having it sitting boxed?

Ray, thanks for the link ... I don't envision using the dock much except maybe the floppy adapter ... eek, I gotta buy some floppies (and look for a machine with a floppy drive). if only the PCMCIA slots were 32-bit!

What about that compact flash slot? That seems like the most promising part! Can you boot from it? Knoppix and DSL claim some pretty low system requirements.

And post some pictures of that bad boy up and running!

sparta.rising wrote:What about that compact flash slot? That seems like the most promising part! Can you boot from it? Knoppix and DSL claim some pretty low system requirements.

And post some pictures of that bad boy up and running!

The compactflash card supposedly accepts only rev.1 cards, not sure if I'll be able to locate one today ... I will try with a couple of cards I have sometime next week (on loan to a friend currently). If I can get a CF card working in this, I'll be extremely happy!

Here's a brand new one in the box from Yahoo Japan auction:

http://page6.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f71539401