[Robert’s Retro] is one of those great YouTube channels that shows us the ins and outs of old and obscure computers. [Robert] likes going a step beyond the traditional teardown though, repairing and upgrading these old machines. His latest project involves giving the ZEOS Pocket PC a fully-functional serial port.
If you’re unfamiliar with the ZEOS Pocket PC, you might know it as the Tidalwave PS-1000—it’s a pretty straightforward clone. Originally, these machines could be had with a proprietary serial adapter to enable them to interface with external peripherals. However, like most obscure cables and connectors from three decades ago, they’re virtually unobtainable today.
To solve this problem, [Robert] decided to hack in a traditional DE-9 connector instead. Commonly referred to as the DB-9, this is the most common serial port design used on IBM PCs and compatibles. Getting the larger port into the compact PC required some careful hacking of the case, as well as delicate soldering to hook up the pins to the right signals on the tightly-packed motherboard. This video does involve cutting some vintage plastic, but overall it’s a very neat mod that is handled with due respect and care.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen him upgrade a classic portable computer, either.
This brings back memories to when I used packetradio om UHF on a DOS device like this (HP)…
can you provide more detail on this? I’d love to try it on my HP 200LX!
Sure, it was a simple Baycom modem, no TNC, with SP Super Packet and the Baycom program as well. There was a light version of DOS installed as I remember, dont know the exact details bout that.
Use a reticulum network
“If you’re unfamiliar with the ZEOS Pocket PC, you might know it as the Tidalwave PS-1000”
Yea that’s real effin useful, could have put a link to a wikipedia page or something
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeos_Pocket_PC
The HP 100LX/200LX were very similar devices from the same era and fairly ubiquitous within their niche – I was surprised that the Zeos Wikipedia page mentions Tidalwave’s other main competitor, Poqet, but not HP.
I’m not sure I’d refer to any of them as “practical” but to this day, there’s something very enjoyable about having a tiny but full-featured MSDOS palmtop that runs for days off of two standard AA batteries, and this is a neat hack to add a bit more utility and convenience, especially given how hard it is to find a working proprietary serial cable these days..
The HP models also had their own unique serial port connector, but I don’t think they had enough space to sneak a proper rs232 port in there. On the bright side, the HP port is basically just a set of recessed 1mm pins, so in a pinch you can bodge a connection using a few dupont wires.
it’d be nice to be able to buy old school palmtop keyboards like that but with modern functionality. i think they’d be good for some portable projects.
Now you can solder some resistors where that parallel port was and a bodge wire back to the beeper amp. Then you can have Covox Speech thing or Disney sound!
I actually briefly ran a BBS on my zeos palmtop, with an external 14.4 modem and 100mb parallel port zip drive (I still have the special cables for mine). It sure wasn’t fast, but it worked.