Resurrecting an HP 200LX (or 100LX, 1000CX) that was unused for a long time

Recently (January 2018) I was asked by a former 200LX user by email, how to resurrect a 200LX that might have upgrades in it (maybe a RAM upgrade, maybe doublespeed). The user could not remember how to get it to life again with all its hardware components and asked me to guide him.

I did, and I thought this might help others, too, so I share that text here with all who might be interested in resurrecting their ancient marvel.

Here is what I wrote to him:

Always remember to put main batteries in first, backup battery second. Because the backup battery will be used to power the RAM as soon as there are no main batteries inserted. Always use a fresh backup battery (CR2032 Lithium coin cell) with negative pole facing upwards.
After inserting main batteries, the Palmtop should boot into the Application manager. If it doesn't, check, if there is a PCMCIA card inserted. If there is a card inserted and it contains a config.sys, the boot procedure will use the config.sys from the card and the system may not boot up as expected.

First, there is the self test  implemented in the BIOS (start it with switching the Palmtop on using the keyboard combo ESC-On). That test routine is able to detect the amount of installed RAM, EXCEPT if there is a larger memory upgrade installed. Those larger upgrades were not addressable using the standard address lines of the processor, but needed 1 or 2 additional I/O lines of the processor so they could be addressed, hence they needed a special software driver to be available in any way to the system. Everything up to 4MB was addressable directly and would be detected by the self-test. 8MB upgrades were either "natively" addresed or only accessible via additional lines (i.e. needing a driver) and everything larger than 8MB was, IIRC, only accessible using a driver.
Hence, if the self-test tells you that there are 1MB or 2MB installed, it doesn't mean that there isn't maybe a, 8, 32, 64 or 96MB RAM upgrade installed. ;-)

If it says "4MB" or "8MB", there are only 4MB or 8MB installed, as 2MB of the 4MB are located on a daughterboard, and there cannot be two daughterboards installed. RAM upgrades always come on a daughterboard, except some(!) 8MB upgrades, which were soldered directly onto the mainboard.

If the power-on self test isn't readable, i.e. the letters are blurred, mixed up, shifted or something like that, there is a speed upgrade installed. The speed upgrade blurs the screen on most devices and needs a software driver ("doublespeed driver") to make all affected parts of the system work normal again. Affected are: Screen readability, frequency of beep sounds from the speaker, the serial port (baud rate is approximately doubled and won't sync well with the peer), function of some PCMCIA cards. Also the overall system speed is affected, but that's the wanted effect, which is not reverted by the driver. All software runs double as fast as before.

However, if the screen of the self-test is readable, it doesn't necessarily mean there is no speed upgrade installed. As I said above: Readability is only affected on most, not all devices. You can check presence of a doublespeed upgrade in the "timer" item of the self-test. It will report "Not OK", if a speed upgrade is installed.

I have packed a bunch of drivers for some speed and RAM upgrades as well as the backlight upgrade into ZIP files that you can use as CF card images: Simply unzip, put the contents into the root of a compatible CF or flash card, put the card into the slot and power on the Palmtop so that it boots. This will go into a driver installation routine, which will try to make a good job detecting what hardware is installed. Not fail-safe, but a little help maybe.

Please drop me a line, if you need such a card image.

Remember that if you have a larger memory upgrade that creates an additional drive in DOS, you will need to swap drives C: and F: (or at least you *should* do that, so that standard software saves its stuff on the larger drive). That also means, that the config.sys loading the RAM upgrade driver (and doublespeed driver, if applicable), needs to be installed on the small native drive, and a small autoexec.bat that swaps the drives also resides there, but another autoexec.bat that's executed afterwards needs to reside on the larger drive. The one on the smaller drive passes control over to the one on the larger drive after swapping drives, if I remember correctly.

 

In case you want to resurrect a doublespeed LX and need to transfer the doublespeed driver via serial port to the Palmtop before you can install it, there is a method to make the serial port work normally even without the driver. I quote here the sectoin from the Times2Tech doublespeed driver documentation, that describes that method:

Note: All keys within <> are referencing a single key on the palmtop keyboard.

We realize that some palmtop screens are extremely hard to read when the speed upgrade driver isn't running, so you may have to work blindly when entering the debug scripts below. It is best to start from the DOS prompt outside of System Manager and not from a DOS shell within System Manager.  To exit System Manager do the following key sequence: 

<&...><MENU>AT<ENTER>

This DEBUG script temporarily fixes the screen and totally restores the use of the serial port: 

   DEBUG 
   A 
   MOV AL,1E 
   OUT 22,AL 
   MOV AL,FD 
   OUT 23,AL 
   MOV AL,21 
   OUT 22,AL 
   MOV AL,01 
   OUT 23,AL 
   RET 
   <ENTER> 
   G 
   Q 

You can also try to set your baud rate to be half of what the PC is using and you should be able to transfer files as well, but this method is not guaranteed to work.

 

Also check all the other articles about the HPLX Palmtops: View all HP Palmtop Articles. They might also give you hints for your procedure of resurrecting your Palmtop!

A Keyboard Repair Process with Graphite Paint

Fellow Palmtopper Rodolfo provided information about his efforts to fix a broken keyboard. THANKS for sharing!

See also: Tutorial: Disassembly of a 200LX 

Hi Daniel,

I´m going to try to describe in my poor english exactly what i did. Unfortunately I don't have pictures for the whole process. What it happened was that I previously (I did not know how to do it) use cyanoacrylate super glues to stick on graphite in powder in every bubble of the keyboard, where I saw it was an erosion marks. Well, that was a big mistake because the blend (which got hard after drying) was to thick and irregular, and when the keyboard was assembled some of the keys did not move at all, and others did not make contact. When I tried to clean it up with isopropyl alcohol, it didn't work. Then I thought that the keyboard was destroyed because that glue agent is extraordinarily strong and every spot was hard.

Next day, I decided to use a mini drill with a spherical stone. I used it very gently in every spot (concave parat of bubble) and when I finished the whole part was completely transparent. Then I bought Graphite paint for re-paint remote controls contacts and with a cotton swab (for inner ear) I stamped (painted) the graphite pain spots, I painted three coats in every bubble (you have to wait half an hour between coats), and the result was perfect.

To repair two keys (the top part with the keys you press to type) they have one of the two supports to the frame that has every key were broken, and I used the same cyanoacrylate super glues to glue them to the frame.

 

 

 

 

 

The built-in self-test (BIOS) ESC-ON

Here is how to use the built-in self test routines of the HP Palmtops:

  1. Make sure the Palmtop is switched off and has good batteries

  2. Make sure there is no FLASH-based memory card inserted (this is for safety: Attention: NEVER EVER use the "Plug-in RAM card test", while a Flash (ATA flash, Compact Flash) card is inserted. This test is only meant for SRAM cards and it will destroy flash-based cards (or at least their contents, but it will maybe even render them unusable).

  3. Hold the ESC key pressed and shortly press the "ON" key. The Palmtop will switch on and directly boot into the self-test menu.

Note for Doublespeed-upgraded Palmtops: If you have the doublespeed upgrade installed, the screen might be unreadable due to distorted font, because the doublespeed driver is not loaded and cannot be loaded at that stage. Connecting the Palmtop to an AC adapter might help in this case to make the screen more readable (internally some voltages and thus feequencies might change slightly, that may make a difference). If that doesn't help, you would need to use the test "blindly", as far as this works. E.g. the keyboard test can be used blindly, if you know how it works. A second Palmtop with a readable screen helps in this case - simply do everything on both palmtops in parallel. 

If the screen is readable, and you want to check wether you have a doublespeed-upgraded Palmtop or not, use the "Timers" test:

  • If the results are in the 10.000 range, 10.700 to 10,913, it is single speed
  • If around the 21400, it is a times2tech exact double speed (31.xxx MHz crystal).
  • If around 21840, it is a 32.000 Mhz double speed version.
  • There were even faster crystals, e.g. 40MHz, which lead to higher values shown in this test. But they don't work reliably on many units and may make the system instable. 


Note
: The keyboard test may need a little explanation: During the test there are numbers displayed that denote the key you need to press in order to test it. The numbers mean: 

First place: key row
Second and third place: key column.
E.g.: 104 means "1st row, 4th column", i.e. "Now press the F2 key".

You are asked to press all keys consecutively, left to right and top to bottom. A high beep means "key OK". A low beep means "You pressed the wrong key" and no beep obviously means "key not pressed". If you pressed the key but don't get a beep, it  thus means "key is bad". ;-)

 

If you see this "RAM4 bad" message or something similar, you may just have destroyed your flash card with the RAM card test :-( :

HPLX self-test menu

Ethernet PCMCIA cards (HP 200LX in the LAN)

It is possible to connect the HP 200LX to a local area network (LAN) using a PCMCIA Ethernet card. 

Hardware:

Since the PCMCIA slot is occupied by the card, all software that is used to comunicate via LAN needs to be installed on the RAM drive (C:).

Three cards are known to work with the HP 200LX:

  • Netgear FA411
  • Accton EN2216
  • Silicom Ethernet PCMCIA card (this one may have compatibility problems with the doublespeed upgrade)

 

Software:

For communication via LAN you may use the WWW/LX software suite by D&A software. You can find WWW/LX and its companion programs in the S.U.P.E.R. archive or on the D&A software website.

You can find an example of a quite complex WWW/LX configuration, that I used for many years and that includes usage of an Accton EN2216 ethernet card, here

Another example setup – by Ted Heise – is described here.

 

 

Do you like to support me?

Dear fellow Palmtopper!

If you like, you may reward me for the work I put into this website with a donation.

 

For a donation in US$:

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Your donation, even if it's just a single USD, will help me to:

  • finance the server that hosts the site
  • justify time I spend with maintaining the site and do not spend with earning money otherwise (wife is watching! ;D)
  • just continue to be motivated :)

Since my company "hermocom" does not exist for many years anymore, I am now spending my spare time and private money for all of this. Thank you very much! 🙂

Yours truly,
Daniel Hertrich