There are a handful of gadgets that do one thing so well that they become cult classics long after the company that made them has moved on or closed up shop. [This Does Not Compute] takes us through the history of the AlphaSmart word processor which started as an educational tool, but finds itself in many a writer’s bag today.
The original AlphaSmart bears more than a passing resemblance to its Apple contemporaries since the company was founded by two Apple engineers. The Cupertino company didn’t see the value in the concept, but didn’t lean on any non-competes to keep the pair from pursuing the idea on their own time either. What resulted was a dead simple word processor that could be had for 1/5 of what a new computer typically cost in the era, which was particularly attractive for the target market of schools.
After several successful years, the pressure of PDAs and then smartphones from one side and cheaper laptops from the other meant school districts no longer wanted single-purpose devices when they could have a fully-fledged computing experience for students. We wonder if that was the right call, with so many now wanting distraction-free devices, but it was the end of the road for the company either way.
Our own [Kristina Panos] and [Tom Nardi] have shown us the guts of the Neo and of one of its competitors, the Writer, respectively. If you have a Neo of your own in need of replacement keycaps, you can print them.
A 68000-style CPU running at 33mhz is more horsepower than I expected. That potentially exceeds the (desktop) Mac LC II that they were competing against in my public school. But they presumably don’t play Oregon Trail, which is a big down side for a teacher who just wants to distract the kids for 45 minutes.
I used two versions and hated both. I also helped at them up. Functionality was extremely limited, character display call clarity was poor, battery life was poor, the keyboards weren’t very friendly to long sessions, and they broke all the time.
I got an AlphaSmart Dana based on recommendations from this very blog, and use it for writing. I love it.
It starts up instantly, lets you write text, and doesn’t have distractions such as E-Mail or the web. It’ll go over a week on a single charge (take it camping), and it enumerates as a keyboard so you can transfer the text onto your computer into any program that has a cursor. Setup the receiving program, press “send”, and go get a coffee. It’s also physically robust.
I recently slipped while crossing a stream and got it half wet and shook it out and continued hiking. Other people have gotten theirs wet and it wasn’t a problem so I didn’t worry too much about it.
…except that now half the keyboard doesn’t work and I’ve tried everything and it won’t come back. I rinsed it in distilled water and IPA, but it’s just gone. (Any suggestions?)
I ordered a defective one online and am about to swap keyboards to get one working one, and then make a waterproof sleeve for the thing so that this doesn’t happen again. Sometimes it rains while I’m hiking.
This got me thinking about writing and alphasmart and how they’re not made any more and there’s no suitable replacement. A beefy SBC would more than suffice as a replacement, just add a flat lithium battery and case. Like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Microcontroller-Development-Capacitive-Peripherals-Interfaces/dp/B0CP3DYJ5K?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A3B0XDFTVR980O
So now I’m thinking about a hypothetical product: the aforementioned SBC with battery and case, a stripped-down version of linux that boots as fast as possible, all the common text editors installed, and a startup script that takes preferences from the user and sets the system to automatically start their favorite text editor at boot time.
You can pair a BT keyboard or plug in a USB unit, so you can use your favorite keyboard. The unit can transfer the data over Wifi, memory card, or like a keyboard in the manner of the alpha. Counting the keyboard It would be slightly smaller in the backpack than an actual Dana.
I have all the chops needed to complete this project with the exception of… interest and time. It’s just easier for me to swap the keyboard in my existing Dana and continue using that.
There might be a market for a distraction-free writing system. Lots and lots of writers bemoan their own weakness for running to E-mail or social media whenever they come to a difficult part or need to think through the issues, and lots of writers put themselves in a distraction-free environment for their writing. Such as hiking or camping.
The SBC solution would be an ideal modern solution for writers.
If anyone wants to make an AlphaSmart replacement product for writers, drop me a line. I have lots of resources to throw at the project, and maybe even some seed money.
Just not the time. I’m in the middle of writing a book, using my Dana. :-)
There’s a bunch of writer decks available, none of them are very popular. Various design choices come together to make any individual project less useful than an older Dana. Such as an e-Ink display with a 1 second latency between the typed key and the displayed letter, or a measly 4-line display instead of 6. Or implicit cloud upload, just go to the cloud to download your text (no thanks).
I just now found this project, but it’s in prelaunch.
https://prelaunch.com/projects/byok-bring-your-own-keyboard-the-ultimate-tool-for-distraction-free-writing
This looks like exactly what I described above. I guess great minds do think alike.
Try using any cloud wood processor on an ereader with a keyboard, or ssh and vim if you prefer. It’s a much more flexible approach, and allows for distraction free use or not as needed.
Wood processor?
When was the last time you saw Fargo?
The only text editor that you need is vim.
B^)
Thanks.
Emacs has a vim mode, I’ll try it and see how it feels. B^)
Hmm, maybe I should test that.
Does the vim emacs vim mode work inside the emacs vim mode? >:-)
But you also need the fortitude to use it, you need vim and vigour.
That sounds like the point of a Remarkable or Onyx Boox Nova. Browsing doesn’t happen much on monochrome e-paper.
Almost any ereader makes a good writing device as long as you have a decent keyboard, and both the clarity and line visibility are drastically better than the ones in the article.
There are several low production products and diy projects with keyboards attached to a small e-ink display that are totally fine, but overpriced in my opinion. Especially when I can use whatever word processor I want on an android tablet.
You could run CPM in emulation on the included ESP32, and use WordStar…
I’ve got maybe a dozen Pros and 2000s, and one 3000, kicking about; they’re just very compelling as objects. (I also have a dozen replacement keyboards for the Pro, which I got in a complete coincidence from a surplus place offloading them; it’s a pretty nice laptop keyboard.)
I used these in elementary school! I was struggling with handwriting output at the time and they thought being able to type my assignments would make things easier and more engaging for me. I thought they were interesting but really preferred to use a proper word processor on a computer, like AppleWorks.
I had forgotten about this. What a blast of nostalgia.
Lots of choice and nice gadgets. The one thing that’s always with me is my iPhone, and luckily speech recognition is very good, so i just ask Siri to start a new note and i can dictate my ramblings onto “paper”. Later on i can dump it into Claude.ai (or one of the others) and ask it to convert it into coherent writing. We live in great times.
o, and it’s IP67 rated, so it will survive the accidental plumb into water.
My school got me on of these bad boys in fourth grade because my handwriting was so bad lol. My very first hacking experiment was a few years later when I went to a different school which occasionally loaned a newer version (the Neo, I think) out to students. I had taken my own AlphaSmart apart many times since then and I was eager to do the same to the loaner. As soon as I got home I took it apart and found out it was basically identical inside in most major ways. I swapped the ROM chip from the newer one to my older one and I was amazed that it still worked! (The opposite did not work, iirc, but it’s been more than twenty years.) I was very tempted to just keep them swapped but I chickened out. Anyway, I still have it collecting dust in my project cabinets. I’ve always wanted to port a BASIC interpreter to it and make it into a little 8-bit computer with built-in storage. I’m sure if I don’t do it, someone else will eventually.