The MIPS ThinkPad, Kind Of | Hacker News Reader

The MIPS ThinkPad, Kind Of

oldvcr.blogspot.com

166 pointstodsacerdoti34 comments

I have a small collection of Windows CE devices (https://imgur.com/a/Mn15nab) because a few years ago I wanted something pocket sized with a physical keyboard to program on (I use a Comso Communicator now). All of the ones I have are ones with a SuperH CPU.

The Jornada 690 palmtop, with a 133 MHz SuperH-3-DSP and 32 MB of RAM, is my favorite and most used, since it has a good Linux distribution (although fairly aged now). I've used it to help develop code for homebrew 32X and Dreamcast projects (I don't have to upload the code to anything when I want to test it, and GDB is a lot more reliable when you have memory protection).

The Compaq Aero 8000 is a laptop similar to the WorkPad, but it has a 128 MHz SuperH-4. The SH4 gained superscalar execution, 50% more cache, and an FPU over the SH3, so the Aero is actually significantly faster than the Jornada despite the small clock reduction. (IIRC, PDF rendering would take about 50% more time on the Jornada) The display is a 800x600 passive matrix LCD, but it has static image quality on par with an active matrix LCD, with none of the smearing you'd expect... however, the ghosting is still pretty bad.

The Aero 8000 has 16 MB of RAM built-in. It has a SO-DIMM slot for more RAM and can be upgraded to 64 MB, but when I found RAM that worked, I only got half the amount. Apparently, some GPIO lines are multiplexed with the memory data lines, so using the GPIO limits you to a 32-bit data bus instead of the full 64-bits, meaning half the 64-bit PC100 SO-DIMM was unusable. When I got a working 128MB PC100 SO-DIMM, I was able to get it to recognize 64 MB of RAM. (The Dreamcast uses an SH4 variant that multiplexes GPIO with address lines instead.)

The code you debugged: how did you test against the 32X/DC hardware? Or was this just trying out algorithms?

I wrote and tested SuperH assembly on the Jornada. The 32X and Dreamcast both use a SuperH CPU like the Jornada, so if the assembly works on the Jornada (baring some instruction set differences), it works on the others.

In particular, one thing I worked on blitting code for the Jornada and 32X. It would draw directly from RLE compressed graphics which would save RAM and speed up some operations. Like if there was several transparent pixels in a row, it could skip over the pixels in one go and instead of having to read each transparent pixel, compare it to the transparent value, then skip over it.

Thanks for the pictures, that was useful. I feel like I might be part of a microscopic minority, but I'm always looking for a pocket-able Linux box with as good as possible keyboard. My current best is a GPD Pocket 2, but it's stretching the "pocket" aspect and battery life isn't amazing. I'd love to see a modern version of the Jornada 690 (notably better display).

The MNT Pocket Reform is an interesting option, but the current design is far too thick for a daily spot in my pocket.

I had one of these in college and it's probably still in storage somewhere. I couldn't afford a full laptop to put Linux/BSD on, and this was an affordable device to try installing NetBSD onto. Though I succeeded with NetBSD, memory was at such a premium on the CF card that it seemed silly not to just use the OS on the ROM that didn't use up any storage.

I mostly used it to run "Pocket Word" to take notes in class and ActiveSync to sync it to my PC. Plus it had enough memory to fit _one_ MP3 which I could use play over and over. Most people at the time thought I had an actual Thinkpad.

I remember the laptop market from 20 years ago; lots of variability between laptops in terms of:

- hardware support (drivers),

- hardware quality,

- pricing,

- online knowledge availability

Those days, you had varying quality between laptops of different vendors, but also between laptops of the same vendor, and even between laptops of the exact same production line.

These days, So much has been improved in terms of smoothing the UX, from hardware support to quality assurance. It's a completely different experience.

Acer laptops were super common back then at universities, at least here in Australia. I think they'd hit a sweet spot - they were affordable enough for students, and would probably not fall apart over the course of a three or four year degree, although the plastic case would be starting to get quite precarious by the end.

Hardware seems so much more reliable these days, especially accessories like power supply bricks.

Every single HP, Acer or Asus laptop from those days I saw in the wild had major issues.

I'm not sure what the cause was. Could have just been users.

Too cheap / uneducated to value extra ram or storage, then as a result of it being crappy and slow they didn't care about it and ended up tossing it around. Them on top of their other issues they would have problems like busted screen hinges, batteries that don't charge. Mouse pads that don't work etc.

Every ThinkPad I saw tended to be solid without any issues.

As long as you stayed away from the Aspire line and choose one from the Travelmate line they were good value for the money.

In germany we had the (in)famous brand "Gericom", that build thick, hot, loud Pentium 4 laptops, sold mainly by the large retailers like Media Markt. They inevitably broke down (often literally!) after the warrany expired.

Thinkpads were unreachable for most, though there were good discounts to be had for students.

I figured Gericom was an off-brand until reading it here. A friend of mine in high school had a Gericom Hummer - desktop P4 chip with some insane heat pipes and a large fan, and a single desktop DIMM slot for memory. The bottom came off in two pieces: one for the mainboard, one for the "other stuff" like the hard drive and battery. I'd never seen anything quite like it.

I actually have 2 of these.

- The First had the Rom chip and ram removed from it and has a bit of wear.(by a goodwill that likes to strip computers)

- The second is in near mint condition, as if it has never been used. It works without issue. I had to find a power supply for it, since neither came with one.

I have been contemplating replacing the guts on the one missing the rom chip, since I have no idea where to find one of those. It should be able to fit a raspberry PI inside, alone with a much higher quality screen, but I don't really feel like figuring out the keyboard/trackpoint connections/software.

I had one of those, and recently donated it to someone while clearing out a bunch of stuff. There was a thing you could get to boot it off a CF card, and I ran NetBSD from a 1GB IBM MicroDrive on it.

Do you mean running the booter .exe from the card manually, or making it autoboot NetBSD from the CF from a cold start? I haven't seen anything saying the latter was possible, though a lot of people would have liked it. It doesn't seem possible on my Jornada 690 either.

You ran a program that you stored on the card that booted the card, from the WinCE desktop. I don't think it was ever possible to boot external media directly.

Right, that program is still provided as part of the standard distribution. Well, at least that much works, anyway!

Wow they made such a cool laptop.. And then ruined it with Windows CE :( Though admittedly CE was way more suited to mini-laptops than the touchscreen handhelds it was often used for (think Dell Axim)

I wonder if there's any modern OS that would still run on this.

NetBSD will run very well.

Oh yeah of course, I forgot. NetBSD runs on anything! :)

He mentions a bunch of non-intel laptops from history but misses the Acorn A4 from 1992, which was an ARM based machine https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/A4.htm....

I wonder how much work it would take to put together a replacement ROM card with FreeBSD on it.

A lot of work, FreeBSD doesn't have support for the CPU. Running NetBSD on it but not loaded from Windows CE would be easier.

It isn't obvious from the article whether the machine uses mask ROM or Flash. Some Compaq and HP Windows CE machines used Flash ROM that could be overwritten with a Linux bootloader and flash filesystem.

Pretty sure it's mask ROM. IBM indicated the only upgrade means was to replace the ROM card.

I had mine running NetBSD with X and twm from a CF card. No web browser with 16 megs of RAM, but still somewhat usable for very simple things.

Dillo, Links and Lynx would run on that.

NetBSD was what I was thinking of, I remembered that years ago you could sort of kexec into it from many different Windows Mobile devices.

I have done the equivalent for StrongARM machines, run NetBSD directly from the flash chips on the board without having Windows CE. This was to help with board bringup of Windows CE systems that we were manufacturing.

For the same experience now, just buy a Pinebook Pro.

Or a used ARM Chromebook. An Asus C100P in good nick is still quite nice IMO, aside from the lack of updates.

Official updates wouldn't matter if you were running NetBSD on it.

FreeBSD has just dropped MIPS support in 14-CURRENT.

the x86 version of this was the ThinkPad 240x https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_240

The 240 series were very externally similar, but a bit thicker and weighed more and also had larger TFT screens.

This is so cool. Is it at all possible to find some of these second hand?

In general, patience and luck can eventually get you one for cheap. Unless it's something super rare and sought after, like an apple 1 or voodoo 5 6000, every now and then something like that might pop up at a Goodwill, local flea market, local electronics recycler, maybe even a smaller version of craigslist.

But specifically buying these things from collectors or sellers specialized on old/vintage systems is usually quite expensive.

Here’s one that sold on eBay earlier in the month for $65 USD, with seemingly competitive bidding. Not a bad price, but the one in the article would fetch a much higher price, considering the state and completeness of its packaging.

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