palmtop.dev

HP 200LX Double-Speed and RAM Upgrade How-To

2022-03-27T02:21:42+00:00

The ability to hack and upgrade the HP 200LX is one of the reasons that this device has continued to remain incredibly popular compared to its contemporaries. Palmtop users have clamoured for more performance and more storage since the release of the original 512KB HP 95LX, with all manner of hacks developed both during their heyday and since. Users have come up with advanced hacks to install as much as 128MB of RAM in their devices, but HP themselves almost seemed to gift an upgrade path to users with a built-in connector for installing more RAM. Some devices even come with the 0.05” mezzanine connectors installed, allowing RAM upgrades to be as simple as adding a daughterboard. And if it’s speed you need, you can double the clock with a simple crystal swap. Bryan from HackDads walks us through both in the video below.

HP 200LX Double-Speed and RAM Upgrade Overview

back up your device and remove all batteries
disassemble the device to access the motherboard
desolder the original crystal, starting with the can; flip over the PCB and heat through-hole leads to remove
use a solder sucker to clear old solder from vias in preparation for the replacement
remove old solder from the mezzanine connector to facilitate installation (skip steps 5-7 if your board already has the connector installed)
solder one corner of the mezzanine connector in place, then the opposite corner, in order to align it correctly
solder each pin on the mezzanine connector with fine solder, making sure to feed solder from the opposite side of the pin to where the iron touches in order to prevent cold joints
reassemble the device
reinstall batteries
download and install the TechSpeed driver in C:\SPEED and add device=c:\speed\spd31.exe to CONFIG.SYS to correct display issues

TCP/IP and Web Browsing on the HP 200LX

2021-09-13T04:07:28+00:00

Once you’ve configured networking on the HP 200LX, you may be wondering what to do next. Many of the connected applications we use today require a TCP/IP stack. While operating systems such as Windows 95 and above include such networking essentials, the same is not true of MS-DOS. This means that extra work is required to cruise the information superhighway from your palmtop. One solution is the mTCP library and TCP/IP application suite. While it is not a TSR that adds TCP/IP support for use by whichever applications you care to use, it includes a number of utilities that may satisfy all of your networking needs. These include a DHCP client for automatically configuring your connection, PING for confirming connectivity, a Telnet client, an FTP client and server, and even an HTTP server.

To get started with mTCP, download the latest binaries and unzip them on your modern computer. Once extracted, the files total over 1MB, and even for a 2MB 200LX, that’s a big chunk of the available onboard storage, which is the only place you can put mTCP, given that your PCMCIA slot will be occupied by your Ethernet card. When transferring files to your palmtop, you may wish to exclude FTPSRV.EXE and HTTPSERV.EXE, which are each over 100K - since the battery-powered 200LX is probably not the best device to use as a server. You can save more space if you find that there are other EXEs in the collection that you end up not using often - the library is built into each app, so you can run as many or as few as you like, with no concern for dependencies.

One thing that you will want to ensure you have regardless of the tool you use is a configuration file. Copy SAMPLE.CFG from the included SAMPLES directory to the name of your choice (for example, 200.CFG) and at minimum, update the packetint setting. For the Socket Low Power Ethernet CF Card used in our previous post, the interrupt is 0x66. If you are using DHCP, then most of the other settings can be left as-is for now. If you named your config file 200.CFG and extracted mTCP to a folder of the same name, you’ll want to add the following to your AUTOEXEC.BAT:

MTCPCFG=C:\MTCP\200.CFG

After doing so, reboot your device (with your Ethernet card installed, configured, and connected) and change directory to C:\MTCP. The first tool you will want to run is DHCP.EXE. This will automatically update your CFG file with your assigned local IP address, DNS, and gateway settings. If you are not using DHCP, or want a static IP, you can update these settings by hand. After completing this step, try PING 8.8.8.8 to ensure you’re connected able to talk to the internet. Feel free to play with whichever tools you like at this point, but some highlights we enjoyed with this setup include:

downloading files directly from the S.U.P.E.R Site with HTGET.EXE
downloading, modifying, and uploading a web page with FTP.EXE
connecting to TELEHACK using TELNET.EXE

Bonus: Browsing the Web

The tools included with mTCP are extremely useful, but there’s one common internet application missing that most people use daily: a web browser! Thankfully, another project built using the mTCP library can fill this need: the MicroWeb web browser for 8088 class machines. Download the latest MICROWEB.EXE from the releases page on the project repo, copy it to the same C:\MTCP folder as the other tools, and run it with the /C option to force 640x200 CGA mode, then start surfing the web! You will probably want to invert the 200LX’s screen using ON+/ (or the software’s own F2 command; for some reason the /I command line option does not seem to work with CGA), and you will discover fairly quickly that many modern web sites force HTTPS, which the 200LX cannot handle, since it lacks the processing power to decrypt data in real time. However, proxy services such as FrogFind can be used to strip modern sites of their JavaScript, CSS, and encryption, making them far easier to view on older machines, and MicroWeb will redirect HTTPS URLs to the service automatically. As the name implies, FrogFind also includes a search engine, since most users are accustomed to tossing vague terms into an omnibox rather than painstakingly entering actual URLs. Since there is no mouse available on most palmtops, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with MicroWeb’s keyboard shortcuts. While MicroWeb does not support images at this time, let alone JavaScript and CSS, and is limited in what it can load by available RAM, it is still an incredibly useful tool for consuming online information.

Quick and Easy Networking on the HP 200LX

2021-09-12T04:56:42+00:00

When the HP 200LX was released in 1994, the most common communication device was the modem, but as the popularity of local networking and the internet increased, more PCMCIA Ethernet options began to appear on the market. The 200LX’s particular PCMCIA implementation, and the limited amount of power that it is able to supply mean that the number of compatible options is somewhat slim. But thanks to the ubiquity of the NE2000 chipset, viable options can sometimes appear in unexpected places. Socket’s Low Power Ethernet CF Card, designed for Windows CE devices, launched a decade after the 200LX, but its foundation on the venerable NE2000, as well as its low-power design, make it a great way to get your palmtop online.

Configuring the LP-E Ethernet CF card for use with the 200LX is relatively simple and trouble-free. First, grab LxCic from hplx.pgdn.de. This replacement for HP’s own CIC100 adds support for a number of additional card types, including networking. Next, download lxeth10b.zip, with contains the LXEN2216.COM Ethernet driver. Add both of these to your AUTOEXEC.BAT as indicated below, and use REM to comment out CIC100.EXE if it is currently being loaded. The /L flag on LXCIC.COM loads it memory-resident (TSR), and the 0x66 refers to the network card’s software interrupt.

LXCIC.COM /L
LXEN2216.COM 0x66

Restart your device with the LP-E Ethernet CF card and suitable CompactFlash adapter inserted, and voila: you have Ethernet! But what can you do with it? We’ll explore that in our next post!

HP 95LX Turns 30!

2021-04-23T12:14:28+00:00

(and palmtop.dev turns 0)

On April 23, 1991, Hewlett-Packard Company unveiled project Jaguar — better known as the HP 95LX Palmtop PC. In celebration of this monumental anniversary, we are launching palmtop.dev - your source for comprehensive software development and exploration information for the modern palmtop user!