I showed a variety of handheld and palmtop devices at the Southeast Michigan Vintage Computing Club. These devices were made between 1994 and 2002, during which improvements to resolution, contrast, color, and lighting requirements were highly sought after, especially for handheld devices. The improvements are not linear with time, as consumer devices were managing tradeoffs in display quality with price and battery life.
HP 200LX
1994 August
320 x 200 pixels
2-bit grayscale
TFT LCD (no backlight)
Aimed more at business users, the HP 200LX ran Lotus (that’s what the LX means) and MS-DOS 5 programs on the go, powered by 2 AA batteries. This device is fairly new to me, and I’m still learning its capabilities.
It features an 80186-compatible processor and 2 MB of storage. There’s limited connectivity on the device: a PCMCIA slot, an infrared port supporting an early version of IrDA, and a serial connection but with a 2mm 5x2 header instead of the more familiar DE-9.
Palm III
1998 March
160 x 160 pixels
2-bit grayscale
TFT LCD with green backlight mode
As hinted at by the name, the Palm III was not the first personal digital assistant, but it was the first to include a backlight, as well as an infrared port for early wireless communication between other Palm devices or computers. While the resolution is quite small for text, and the contrast quite low, the electroluminescent backlight improves readability in low-light situations. Later devices (like the Palm IIIx, IIIe, and IIIxe) improved the grayscale contrast, before color screens were widely available.
This device features 2 MB of SDRAM for user data storage (batteries must be changed quickly to avoid data loss) as well as a 16 MHz CPU based on the Motorola 68000 chip family. There were thousands of applications produced for Palm OS over the years, including a C compiler that could run on the device for programming on-the-go. But actually developing applications for Palm OS would make use of MetroWerks CodeWarrior for PalmPilot which included an IDE, comprehensive documentation of the subset of C that these devices supported, and even an emulator to test your program on different devices.
Gameboy Color
1998 October
160 x 144 pixels
15-bit color (56 colors at a time)
TFT LCD; no backlight
This device shows the limitations of color screens in the late 1990s. While the display can render tens of thousands of different colors overall, it can only render 56 colors on the screen at the same time. The screen is passively lit, presumably to save on power since the device runs on only two AA batteries.
It’s powered by a 8 MHz processor that defaults to 4 MHz to remain backwards compatible with the original Gameboy. While maybe not a computer in the traditional sense, the Gameboy could run different programs by inserting hardware cartridges into the back, and offers plenty of vintage console gaming.
Sony CLIÉ PEG-T415
2001 October
320 x 320 pixels
4-bit grayscale
TFT LCD with green backlight mode
Compared to the Palm III, this device should showcase the pinnacle of grayscale displays: featuring higher resolution, contrast, and grayscale depth. However, this particular unit has some damage over time, including a lithium ion battery pack that expanded as it began to fail. You can still appreciate the screen quality with just the right viewing angle and lighting angle. The green backlight also helps with visibility.
It runs Palm OS 4, with a 33 MHz CPU based on the Motorola 68000 chip family and 8 MB of RAM. The CLIÉ devices have one of my favorite features which is a Jog Dial™ that allows for quick scrolling with one-handed operation.
Another standout feature of the T415 is how little it weighs, at slightly more than 4 oz. The lithium ion battery helped keep weight down, as well as expand the battery life even as the device added features over its predecessors.
Sony CLIÉ PEG-T615
2002 March
320 x 320 pixels
16-bit color
TFT LCD with backlight mode
Don’t call it vintage! At only 24 years and 5 months, this device is not quite 25 years old at the time of the show. You probably wouldn’t mistake it for a contemporary high resolution OLED display, but when the backlight is on it’s not dissimilar to what we’ve come to expect in terms of brightness and contrast.
The hardware specifications are almost identical to the T415, except for the color screen (of course) and double the RAM at 16 MB. The Palm III was released 4 years before this device, but they are quite the contrast: not only in terms of the display, but also the compute specifications and the switch to rechargeable lithium ion battery packs as the primary way handhelds were powered.
Sony CLIÉ PEG-NX70V
2002 October
320 x 480 pixels
16-bit color
TFT LCD with backlight mode
This device isn’t even 24 years old, but it really illustrates how quickly things are changing. The screen area has expanded 50%, although otherwise it’s the same screen technology as the T615.
However, it runs Palm OS 5 and we’ve switched to an ARMv5 200 MHz processor which is enough to start handling audio (and in some cases video) playback. There isn’t support for Bluetooth yet, but a rear compact flash slot supports an 802.11b card accessory for limited internet access. Not to mention the full keyboard, acknowledging some of the shortcomings of Palm’s clever-but-slow Graffiti text input system. And what’s this at the hinge - a VGA (0.3 megapixel) camera incorporated into the device! This is an early peek at what smartphones would become, several years before the iPhone and even a year before the first color Blackberry.