[Arm-netbook] Future case idea: subnotebook/PDA with QWERTY keyboard

Christopher Havel laserhawk64 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 2 16:08:48 BST 2016


*All* handheld computers are a mess. Google up the PSION Organizer II some
time. My example was made the year I was born... 1986. There are two PCBs
and a ribbon cable inside your average Org2, and the traces on the
motherboard are positively draconian -- they have a habit of jumping from
one side to the other three or four times on their way to the ribbon
cable...

Here, have a picture --> http://archive.psion2.org/org2/images/circuit.jpg

That's just the *top* side of the mainboard... there's a 36-key keyboard on
the other side, along with another plate of spaghetti traces! Mind you
that's the deluxe "LZ64" model, although it's not really any more
complicated than the rest of 'em. For the curious... the three chips at the
top are LCD drivers, HD44780s. The big chip below and to the left is the
HD6303-series CPU (sort of an enhanced Motorola 6800). Below that is the
RAM (all 64k of it, lol) and what I suspect is an early gate array, and
below *those* would be the ROM. Note that it actually uses chip
resistors... the cheaper ones used carbon strips deposited on the board.
Not kidding!

Why do I care? There's a small community still, based around that thing,
and I (not quite realizing what I was getting into) volunteered myself to
reverse-engineer it. I *think* I might've made a mistake...
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