Repairs / Fixes - hermocom

A Backlight for the HP Palmtop

2009-10-14T12:31:07+00:00

Archived 2012-10-10:
This product is not offered or supported by hermocom anymore and this article may be outdated.

This article is related to the Palmtops HP 100LX, 200LX and 1000CX. The HP OmniGo 700LX may be compatible enough, too (untested). For the 95LX, some info from this article may be used, but in general the 95LX is not compatible.

Please note that I don't offer backlight upgrade installation service anymore. But backlight do-it-yourself kits are still available for sale. Please refer to the HP Palmtop product catalog.

An alternative screen lighting device, which is much easier to build and install than the backlight, is the LED-light.

Contents of this page:

Related pages:

The backlight installation instructions
http://www.backlight4you.com - the place where the backlight upgrade kit was sold
http://www.palmtoppaper.com - Thaddeus Computing, a sponsor of this project
http://www.rundel.net- Thomas Rundel, a sponsor of this project

Introduction:

One of the biggest disadvantages of the Hewlett Packard DOS palmtops is that they don´t have a backlit screen, thus they are unsuable in dim light conditions and in the dark.

There are ways to illuminate the screen without upgrading the palmtop with backlight: For example I developed the "LED light", which is a quite convenient alternative to backlight. Some people use battery-driven LED lamps, which can be mounted on the screen of the palmtop or on your head. But all these solutions require you to carry another device around and most of them even with extra batteries.

The backlight is the ideal solution for palmtop users who often need to illuminate the screen without much trouble. You simply switch on the palmtop, press the backlight hotkey Fn-X and the screen is readable, whereever you are.

How to get the palmtop upgraded:

Since I have stopped backlight inbuild service, the only way to get your palmtop upgraded with backlight is to buy the backlight upgrade do-it-yourself kit and - well - do the upgrade yourself. Here are the details:

The upgrade kit (basically, an EL foil and a driver module for it) can directly be ordered from backlight4you.com for about 60 EURO.
English: backlight4you.com HP backlight upgrade kit
Deutsch: backlight4you.com HP backlight upgrade kit

If you want to install the upgrade yourself, please consider that a quite high skill level is needed: You have to take the palmtop entirely apart, even opening the screen module. Before you decide to do the upgrade yourself, read the installation instructions (see next paragraph) carefully to see if you will be able to do it yourself! And please consider that replacement screens are extremely hard to get, and if you get one, it will be expensive.

Please read that installation instruction sheet carefully before you decide to do the upgrade yourself!
Click here to read the installation instruction sheet!.

The backlight kit does not contain any tools necessary for the upgrade process.

Detailed technical information

Further technical information can be found on the installation instruction sheet, technical info about the upgrade is in the introduction, and a usage guide for the software control of the backlight can be found in the driver section.

Here are a few pictures so you can see how the backlight upgrade affects the contrast and overall-readability of the palmtop screen. Please be aware that it is extremely difficult to take pictures of SCD screens and light sources which represent the real contrast and colors of the items, so I took one picture which shows the actual color of the backlight upgrade:

(Actual look of the backlight upgrade)

The following pictures are taken with another camera than the picture above and thus the color of the backlight is falsified and it looks darker than it really is, but the pictures show the contrast relations quite well:

Since the original reflective foil on the back of the LCD screen is replaced by an Electroluminescent (EL) foil, the crispiness of the screen is reduced a bit. This may be considered a disadvantage, but it can even be convenient for the eyes in very bright light.

1: unmodified screen

2: modified screen - backlight off

3: modified screen - backlight on

Compare the appearance of an upgraded palmtop to the appearance of an unmodified palmtop under different light conditions:

(in bright light - left: modified, but backlight off; right: unmodified palmtop)

(in dark light - left: modified with backlight on; right: unmodified palmtop)

(in very dark light - left: modified with backlight off; right: unmodified palmtop)

(in very dark light - left: modified with backlight on; right: unmodified palmtop)

You can see that the backlight upgrade decreases the contrast of the screen, which makes the screen less readable under a certain light intensity threshold, but as soon as you go below that threshold, you can switch on the backlight and the screen is very well readable again.

And here are some results of current measurements I have done to calculate the backlight´s impact on battery life. All values have been measured in the battery circuit, with a battery voltage of 2.6V (1800mAh NiMH rechargeables), no AC adapter attached, in pure MS-DOS mode, i.e. without System Manager running. Light sleep mode is entered automatically by the palmtop after a very short period after the last keypress, so the "normal" mode is active during a key is pressed permanently. In light sleep mode the current sometimes changes heavily and periodically, so I give current ranges rather than specific values:

current (mA)		Backlight off	Backlight on
2 MB Single Speed 200LX	normal mode	76	137
2 MB Single Speed 200LX	lite sleep	43	98
32 MB Double Speed 200LX	normal mode	91	166
32 MB Double Speed 200LX	lite sleep	25-50	89-115

You see that the current draw is in average about doubled with activated backlight, so if you always use the backlight, the battery life will be decreased by factor 2.

Some pictures and data points of my research work

I began to work on the backlight project in August 2002.

First I bought some components to build an inverter module for the EL panels which I got from Thaddeus Computing for research. As the main component I used the Sipex SP4403EU chip and built the surrounding electronics very similar to the suggestion on its data sheet. The first working circuit was still a bit large for the palmtop, but I compressed it when it worked and that smaller one fitted where it was intended to fit: Into the hinge tube.

This solution worked well, but it needed very much power, so the batteries only last 1/6 of the time they last without the backlight switched on.

Then I found out that Stefan Kächele (www.backlight4you.com) also worked on a backlight solution for the 200LX palmtop, and we combined our knowledge and experiences and optimized the inverter / EL foil combination, so the final backlight product would shorten the battery life approximately only by factor 2 in case the backlight is always switched on.

Another issue were the optical charateristics of the involved screen layers. Simply removing the reflective layer of the screen and replacing it with the EL foil did not work, because due to some reason, the contrast did suffer very much in that case, the light of the EL foil was darkened very much when penetrating the screen.

The solution was to put a thin transparent foil in between the screen´s polarizing foil and the EL foil, this established a certain distance between the two, and the contrast problems vanished. I tried different kinds of transparent foil, and then we choose the one which offered the best contrast with and without backlight switched on.

What about the other HP DOS palmtops (95LX, OG700LX)?

The screen module of the OG700LX is identical to the screen module of the 200LX, so the backlight upgrade should generally also work with the 700LX. However, there are the following problems, which may be solved some day, but they aren´t yet:

The case of the 700LX is totally different, so the technician who installs the upgrades has to learn to upgrade a 700LX before he can do that reliably. This requires a 700LX for trial. If you can offer one (no guarantee that is will survive that), please do so!
I don´t know if the CPU pin we use on the 200LX for software control of the backlight is also free in the 700LX. Since the 700LX has some additional features, it could be that that I/O pin is used for something else. If that´s the case, the backlight can only be switched via hardware (SMD switch)

Regarding the 95LX: No research has been done regarding the 95LX, and I won´t do anything into that direction. There are many unknown factors; in general, it seems possible to use the backlight kit also for upgrading the 95LX, but I don´t know if the screen is similar enough to the screen of the 200LX (its light transition properties for example, the general design and so on). Also software control using a GPIO pin of the CPU and a special driver would probably not be possible. Another unknown factor is where we can get the necessary power to drive the backlight, maybe the PCMCIA 5V supply can be used (as on the 200LX).

Special Thanks to:

Thaddeus Computing for supporting me with left-over material from their own backlight project and with replacement parts for my research work. Without them, I wouldn´t have been able to come up with a working backlight solution!

Rundel Datentechnik for supporting me with hardware parts for research

Stefan Kächele (backlight4you.com) for sharing some of his research results with me, and to be so cooperative that we can finally offer the long-awaited backlight upgrade to the palmtop community!

Stefan Peichl for writing the backlight driver, which makes it so convenient to use the backlight

Eric of battlequest.com for proof-reading the installation instructions

The HPLX mailing list and its very knowledgable and creative community, which helped me in many ways to get this project running.

Build an HP 200LX Car Charger

2013-12-08T14:02:20+00:00

Archived 2013-12-08
This page has been archived and some links may not work correctly anymore. No updates of this page will be done anymore.

Here is a document written by me, which describes a self-made car charger for the HP Palmtops:

CLICK HERE

Ethernet PCMCIA cards (HP 200LX in the LAN)

2015-03-15T19:34:36+00:00

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.

HP Palmtops - My Service

2009-10-11T12:49:41+00:00

Interesting links:

Looking for a successor for the HP Palmtop? Have a look at the OpenPandora and Pyra Linux Palmtops!
If you need repairs, upgrades and spare parts: Please contact Michel Bel (Netherlands, Europe) or Thaddeus Computing (USA).
Join the community: There is still (or again, after a pause) the HPLX mailing list, where still a lot of helpful people are around. Me included (as of 2019/2020)
If you need software for your Palmtop, browse the S.U.P.E.R. palmtop software archive. In case the main link does not work, try this mirror: http://mizj.com/

My service:

hermocom was one of the last few supporters worldwide for the MS-DOS-based Palmtop PCs made in the 1990s by Hewlett Packard.

These are the HP Palmtop PC models 95LX, 100LX, 200LX, 1000CX and the OmniGo 700LX.
I can mainly help with the 100LX, 200LX and 1000CX models. The other ones you can ask me about, too, but I am not too experienced with them.

Although "hermocom" does not exist anymore, I am still here, if you have a question.
Have a look into my HP Palmtop knowledge base, a collection of articles about various topics, which may answer some of your questions already, or give you new ideas in order to find solutions.
Software packages and drivers in the HP Palmtop Software download area.
Please contact Michel Bel (Netherlands, Europe) or Thaddeus Computing (USA) for repairs, upgrades and spare parts.

Until 2014 I also offered:

Repair service (worldwide)
RAM upgrades
Speed upgrades
Backlight upgrade kit
Spare parts, accessories and special offers

Since my interests have moved on to new topics (e.g. photography), I don't have the time anymore to care much about he HP Palmtops. But I still appreciate them as probably the best ultramobile computers, that have been available by now. :)

Information about RS232 serial communication / how to connect serial devices to the Palmtop HP 200LX

2009-10-21T12:46:22+00:00

Archived 2013-12-08
This page has been archived and some links may not work correctly anymore. No updates of this page will be done anymore.

See also these useful resources:

HP connectors and link cables: http://www.keesvandersanden.nl/calculators/link_cables.php
The HP Cable Table: http://holyjoe.org/hp/cable.htm

Contents of this page:

Introduction:

This page describes the basics of the RS232 serial communication standard which is used by all standard PCs, most palmtop PCs (e.g. the HP 100LX, 200LX, 1000CX and 95LX, which are described in detail here) and many peripheral devices, such as modems, cellular phones, mice, scientific equipment etc.

You will also get concrete advice how to connect serial devices to your HP 200LX (or similar) palmtop.

General RS232 information

RS232 describes the standard for serial data communication between PCs and peripheral devices, such as modems, mice etc. and between PCs. Nowadays RS232 is replaced by USB more and more, but it is still an important standard, especially in the world of mobile devices, such as palmtop PCs and mobile phones.

There are two kinds of devices (from the viewpoint of RS232 communication): DTE and DCE. DTE stands for Data Terminal Equipment and means the "terminal devices", i.e. the PC or a simple terminal or in our case the palmtop; in general a device with a keyboard and a screen for manual data input and output. Printers are also DTE, because they act similar to a screen.
DCE stands for Data Communication Equipment, i.e. modems, mobile phones etc. To be honest, I cannot say for sure if mice are DTE or DCE. Does someone know?

You can connect two devices with RS232 in three combinations:
The usual connection is a DTE-DCE connection, e.g. if you connect a modem to your PC. This is done with a straight-through 1:1 serial cable.
The other kind of common connections is a DTE-DTE connection, for instance, if you connect two PCs in order to exchange data between them. For that kind of connection you need a so-called null modem cable.
The third kind of connections is DCE-DCE. You need a so-called tail circuit cable for that, but since this is a very uncommon kind of connection, I won´t describe it here.

Other parts of the RS232 specification:

Signal voltages: -5V to -15V (logical 1), +5V to +15V (logical 0) on the sender side, -3V to -15V (logical 1), +3V to +15V (locical 0) on the receiver side. Typically on a standard PC +/-12V is used.
Maximal cable length: 50 feet at 19200 bps, 3000 feet at 2400 bps (you can go much higher without troubles in most cases)
Connectors: The most common RS232 connectors are the DB-9 and DB-25. They exist each as male and as female variations, in most cases the DTE has a male and the DCE has a female connector (although this can be different in some cases).

The 200LX serial port looks like this. It is also a DTE device:
```
[backup battery, IR] [1 2 3 4 5 ] [12V DC jack]
                     [6 7 8 9 10]
      
```

Signals: The following table is valid for the connectors on all DTE devices, including the 200LX palmtop, since its pin numbering is identical to the DB-9 pin assignment standard:

DB-9 / |  DB-25  |  Signal  |  Direction    |  Description
200LX  |         |          |               |
-------+---------+----------+---------------+----------------------------
    1  |      8  |    DCD   |  Modem -> PC  |  Data Carrier Detect
    2  |      3  |    RxD   |  Modem -> PC  |  Received Data (by DTE)
    3  |      2  |    TxD   |  PC -> Modem  |  Transmitted Data (by DTE)
    4  |     20  |    DTR   |  PC -> Modem  |  Data Terminal Ready
    5  |      7  |    GND   |               |  Signal Ground
    6  |      6  |    DSR   |  Modem -> PC  |  Data Set Ready
    7  |      4  |    RTS   |  PC -> Modem  |  Request To Send
    8  |      5  |    CTS   |  Modem -> PC  |  Clear To Send
    9  |     22  |    RI    |  Modem -> PC  |  Ring Indicator
   10  |      1  | prot.GND |               |  Not on the DB-9. Protective ground:
       |         |          |               |  Shield of plugs and cable are connected here

The DB-25 has much more signals, such as a second transmission set, but they will not be described here.
DCD, DTR, DSR, RTS and CTS are so-called handshaking lines, which the devices use to exchange information about their status. If they are needed and used depends on the kind of data transmission you run and on the software which handles the transmission. In the section below you can read more about handshaking.
For a detailed explanation of the signals please click here!
If you want to learn more about the RS232 standard please refer to RS232 references on the Internet, or read this very complete TTY summary by Chris Blum (uart.txt, 100kB).

Anomalies of the serial port of the HP 200LX

Connector: The 200LX needs a special connector, see above. The pin numbering is identical to the numbering of a DB-9 connector. In addition it has a pin 10, which you can connect to the shield of cables and plugs. Please don´t connect that to pin 5 (signal ground), since some power supplies of PCs are defective and thus the metal housing (which is connected to all shields) may lead a high voltage which could damage the serial port electronics.
If you want to build your own plug which fits into that connector, please see here.
Signal voltages: The 200LX is a battery-driven device, which is designed to save power whereever it can. So it does on the serial port. The signal voltages are lower than on standard PCs, namely up to about +/- 6V idle voltage. This still meets the RS232 specifications, but it may lead to problems if you connect power-hungry devices which are powered by the port itself. So some mice or other pointing devices don´t work and especially some data cables for cellular phones may have trouble with this, if they are powered by the computer, not by the phone.
Also the maximal cable length may be reduced by these low signal voltages.
UART: In modern PCs the 16550A UART (Universal Asynchron Receiver / Transmitter) is used which has a FIFO buffer built-in. The palmtop only has a 16450 compatible UART and thus has no FIFO buffer. That is the reason why the maximum speed which data can be transmitted at over the serial port may be limited depending on the way the software is programmed. With a very effectively programmed software (assambler-written) you can still use 115.200 bps if your palmtop has the double-speed upgrade. With a single speed palmtop 57.600 bps should work. If you use more complex software packages such as WWW/LX or Nettamer, you may be limited even more in transmission speed. 38.400 bps (double speed) or 19.200 bps (single speed) should always work without problems, even if the processor has much more to do than sending and receiving data over the serial port.
Power management: The serial port of the palmtop can be switched off to save power (the driver chip of the serial port drains power whenever it is not explicitly switched off). If the port is not used, it should be switched off to save power. But if you want to use it, you must make sure it is switched on, otherwise some software may run into troubles saying that no device is connected or a driver is missing or similar things. The power of the serial port can be controlled by the built-in program serctl. type in (or use in a batch file) serctl /w to switch the serial port on and set it to "wired" and use serctl /o to switch the port off again. serctl /i switches the port on and sets it to use the IR interface instead of the wired port.
LXPRO by Stefan Peichl is a TSR which can control the serial port via hotkey (and many other useful things), SETCOM1 is also written by Stefan Peichl and can be used in batch files to control the serial port just as serctl does, but you can in addition set the port speed and bit patterns.

Cables and adapters for use in serial communication lines

Here various kinds of cables and adapters are described, including 200LX-specific ones:

The straight-through serial cable

This cable is mostly available with 25 pin connectors (DB-25) on both sides. It has one male and one female connector. You can establish any DTE-DCE connection with it, since it connects all pins exactly 1:1. In case one of the ports you want to connect has only 9 pins, you need a 9pin-to-25pin adapter. There are also 9pin-to-25pin cables and 9pin-to-9pin cables available, though.

The null modem cable or null modem adapter:

This one comes in many variations. What they all have in common is that the RxD and TxD lines are crossed, so you can establish a DTE-DTE connection with them (e.g. connect a palmtop to a PC to exchange data between them).
Some of these adapters or cables don´t have any more lines than RxD, TxD and ground, these are the cheap ones. Others have so-called loopback handshaking in the plugs, so handshaking is only faked for software which fails without signals on the handshaking lines. This is no real handshaking of course. If one device wants to say to the other one "I am ready, please do your job", it actually says that to itself. Vice versa, if a device is told to do its job by the line which says "the other device is ready", it actually is told that itself is ready. In more detail, when loopback handshaking is used, on every side the lines DCD (1), DTR (4) and DSR (6) are electrically connected and so are RTS (7) and CTS (8).
You should usually prefer real handshaking, so you should use a partially or full-featured handshaking null modem cable / adapter. This one has all handshaking lines, and these are also crossed in the correct way. See circuits below. If you cannot use a full-featured null modem for some reason, make sure to enable software flow control ("Xon/Xoff") on both ends in the software you use. This replaces the RTS/CTS hardware handshaking mechanism.
You can read more about handshaking in the section Handshaking mechanisms at the bottom of this document.
Null modem cables and adapters come with almost any combination of connectors on both ends. Try to find one which fits your needs, so you don´t have to buy expensive gender changers or 9-25-adapters.
Following you see a few circuit layouts of null modem cables:

"dumb" null modem without handshaking (only 3 wires needed)

loopback handshaking null modem (also only 3 wires needed)

partial handshaking null modem (7 wires needed, RTS and CTS of one party are connected to DCD of the other party)

full-featured null modem (8 wires needed, the safe choice, RI is not connected, usually it is not needed. Connect it too, if you need it!)

The null modem adapter which comes with the connectivity pack of the 200LX is a full-featured null modem adapter and has two male DB-9 on the ends ("5181-6639"):

And this is a full-featured mini null modem adapter (one male and one female DB-9 end):

The 9 pin to 25 pin adapter

These have usually all lines which are available in a DB-9 connector. They simply map the 9 pin layout to the corresponding pins of the 25 pin connector. They have either a male DB-9 and a female DB-25 or vice versa:

The Gender Changer

Gender changers simply change the gender of a plug. Their wiring is 1:1 and there are 2 kinds:
Female to Female and
Male to Male.
They can have either DB-9 or DB-25 connectors on their ends, I have also seen some which have DB-9 on ont side and DB-25 on the other side. The latter ones are combined 9pin-to-25pin-adapters and gender changers.
Here are examples of a 25pin male and a 9 pin male gender changer:

The 200LX connectivity cable (F1015A)

This is not a serial cable, but a full-featured null modem cable with a 200LX plug on one end and a female DB-9 on the other end. Is is designed to connect the palmtop to a PC. So, if you want to connect a modem, a mouse or a cellular phone (or any other device which is usually connected to the serial port of a PC) to the palmtop, you need one more full-featured null modem adapter in series to this cable to re-do the null modem wire crossings. Such a null modem adapter comes with the HP connectivity pack. Read on for more information.

A short 1:1 serial adapter for the 200LX

You can easily add a "standard" serial port (i.e. a male DB-9 connector) to the palmtop, so that you can simply plug in any device which you can also plug into a serial port of a PC. Either build the adapter yourself, it could look like mine:

(simply connect all pins 1:1, instructions to make a 200LX plug are available here), or buy such an adapter from Rundel Datentechnik (Item #1098).

The serial to parallel converter

This is an active electronic device, which converts serial data into parallel data (but usually not vice versa! You need a so-called "bidirectional" serial to parallel converter to have both directions of conversion). It is needed if you want to connect e.g. a parallel printer to the palmtop. Such a converter is expensive (usually 30 .. 100 US$) and available either as one box with two connectors or as a cable with a box on one end. A cable which fits directly into the 200LX serial port is offered by Thaddeus Computing. Usually these converters have one DB-25 connector on the serial input end and a Centronics parallel printer interface on the other end. Most of these converters are unidirectional, that means, they cannot be used for bidirectional parallel devices (such as Iomega ZIP drives, Memory card readers etc.) and the data transmission may be limited by the 200LX serial port. Try with 9600 bps and go higher and higher until you don´t notice any speed improvement. Take care that you can adjust the speed of the converter, e.g. with DIP switches. If you cannot, the speed is probably hard-wired to 9600 baud.

How to connect device X to the palmtop

This section describes what you need in order to connect a specific device (or a kind of device) to the palmtop HP 200LX.

Another PC (for file transfer or Internet connection sharing)

You only need the HP connectivity cable. Maybe you need a 9pin to 25 pin adapter on the PC side.
You have several options of software to use if you want to transfer data between the palmtop and the PC over the serial line:

Filer on the palmtop, Total Commander with HPLX communication plugin on the Windows-PC (very reliable and fast, recommended!)
Filer on the palmtop, Transfile Win200 on the Windows-PC (easy to set up and to use, but some shortcomings in usability)
MS-DOS Interlink / Interserver (interlnk, intersvr), comes with MS-DOS
Laplink Remote Access (you had to buy a copy for the PC)
ZIP (this is not PKZIP!) (very fast and reliable command-line tool)
X-Finder and X-Finder Server
(said to be very reliable and fast)
Kermit
(command line tool)
Win32 Filer (connection between a Windows PC and the palmtop´s filer application)
Norton Commander offers a file transfer connection, similar to the filer of the palmtop

...and probably many others. Please note that the palmtop may not be able to handle high-speed transmission, depending on the kind of software you use and the clock speed of the palmtop the data rate may be limited to 57600, 38400 or even 19200 bps.

You can also use the connection to another PC to share one Internet connection between this PC and your palmtop. This means you have to run a program on the PC which lets you use the existing Internet connection of the PC (no matter if via modem, DSL, Ethernet, ATM, wireless LAN or whatever) over a PPP connection over the serial port. Such software exists for Windows 9x and is called MochaPPP. If you run Linux on your PC, you can easily configure IP masquerading, IP forwarding (with iptables) and the pppd as PPP server for the serial line. Please visit my Internet connection sharing page for detailed instructions!.

A modem

You need either
The 200LX connectivity cable , a full-featured (!) null modem adapter and a serial cable (the serial cable usually comes with the modem), or you need:
A 1:1 serial adapter and a serial cable .
You may also need a gender changer and / or a 9pin-to-25pin-adapter if something doesn´t fit together.
Regarding Internet and fax software recommendations, please have a look onto my mobile-hplx page !

A cellular phone

(Please note that you can also connect a cellular phone via IrDA to the LX, if the phone is IrDA capable!)
You need either
The 200LX connectivity cable , a full-featured (!) null modem adapter and the phone-specific data cable, or you need:
A 1:1 serial adapter and the phone-specific data cable.
You may also need a gender changer and / or a 9pin-to-25pin-adapter if something doesn´t fit together.
Regarding Internet and fax software recommendations, please have a look onto my mobile-hplx page !
Please note also that there are problems with some phone-specific data cables. Some data cables don´t use the DCD line, which can cause problems, and some data cables are designed to be powered by the PC´s serial port, which can cause problems if they need too much power. For further information have a look onto my mobile-hplx page .

A pointing device (e.g. a mouse)

Why could someone want to use a mouse with the palmtop? Well, there are a few possibilities: MS-Windows 3.0 can be run on the palmtop in real-mode (the picture shows a mouse with a self-made connector, not with the cables described here), so you could use MS-Word 1.1 and MS-Excel 1.0. There are also CAD and drawing programs which run on the palmtop.
You need either
The 200LX connectivity cable , and a null modem adapter or you need:
A 1:1 serial adapter .
You may also need a gender changer and / or a 9pin-to-25pin-adapter if something doesn´t fit together.
Don´t forget to load a suitable mouse driver and note that the serial port has to be switched on all the time during the mouse driver is loaded and you use the mouse. The best option is to do that in a batch file. Say, your application which uses a mouse, is named app.exe and your mouse driver is mouse.com and can be unloaded with mouse.com /u. Then you should always start app.exe with the following batch file:

@echo off
serctl /w
mouse.com
app.exe
mouse.com /u
serctl /o

This makes sure the serial port is always ready for the mouse and the driver can instantly see the mouse.
Technical info: Most mice use the TxD, RTS and DTR lines as power supply. The PC receives the mouse signals via RxD. GND is also needed, of course.

A serial printer

I have never done that, so I can only explain theoretically:
You need either
The 200LX connectivity cable , and a 9-to-25-adapter (or the "printer adapter" which comes with the connectivity pack, this seems to be a simple 9-to-25-adapter)
or you need:
A 1:1 serial adapter and a null modem cable
You may also need a gender changer and / or a 9pin-to-25pin-adapter if something doesn´t fit together.

A parallel printer

You need either:
The 200LX connectivity cable , a null modem adapter and a serial to parallel converter ,
or you need the "Greenwich cable", which is sold by Thaddeus Computing.
or you can use one of the programs OMNIPRN and COM2LPT to use a printer which is connected to your desktop PC. The desktop PC then acts as a serial to parallel converter.

A Thermometer

You need the instructions to build a palmtop thermometer ;-). Please see here .

The serial port of the HP 95LX

The HP 95LX has only 4 pins (ground, TX, RX, shield). You can use a female connector with 4 pins in 1 row (2mm grid) as a plug for the 95LX´s port. Such a connector can be found for example as CD-ROM audio connector (These flat black ones).

If you look on the serial port of the 95LX, the pins lead the following signals:

 
_______________
| A | B | C | D |
 \_____________/


A: shield ground   (if connected to a standard DB9 connector: connect it to the housing)
B: TX              (Pin 3 of a standard DB9 connector)
C: RX              (Pin 2 of a standard DB9 connector)
D: signal ground   (Pin 5 of a standard DB9 connector)

If you want to make a normal serial cable (e.g. to connect a modem to the 95LX), use the wiring described above for the DB9 connector. To make a null modem cable (e.g. to connect the 95LX to another PC for data transfer), swap pins 2 and 3.

With that information and combined with the tables and drawings above, you should be able to build any cable you need for the HP 95LX. But be aware that because of the missing control lines, some software could get into trouble. This can probably be avoided if "software flow control" is enabled on both sides (XON/XOFF), since the hardware flow control lines (CTS/RTS) are missing.

Handshaking mechanisms

For serial data transmission, there are two kinds of handshaking:

Hardware handshaking (RTS/CTS) and
Software Handshaking (Xon/Xoff)

Independant from that, there are two more control lines: DTR and DSR. They are only important at the beginning and the end of a data transmission. This is also called "handshaking", but doesn´t mean the handshaking during the data transmission. See below.

DTR/DSR: These control lines assure that there are really two devices present which want to communicate with each other: First, the DTE sets DTR "high", then the DCE answers setting DSR "high".
These two lines are kept high during the whole transmission process. If the transmission has to be interrupted (because of a modem hang-up for example), the DCE drops the DSR to "low" so the DTE knows the transfer is finished.
RTS/CTS: These are the actual flow control lines: The sender sets RTS "high" (ready to send), the receiver answers setting CTS (clear to send) to "high". If the receiver needs a pause (buffer overflow, for example), if drops CTS to "low", so the sender knows it has to wait with further transmission until the receiver has set CTS "high" again. This way it is assured that no data is lost.
Xon/Xoff: This method can be used if no RTS/CTS lines are available. It is simple: If the receiver cannot handle more data (due to a buffer overflow, for example), it sends the Xoff character (Ctrl-S, ASCII 0x13) to the sender, so the sender knows it has to wait with further transmissions until the receiver sends the Xon character. If the receiver is ready again, it sends Xon (Ctrl-Q, ASCII 0x11) and the sender continues to send data.
the DCD line is only used by modems. It is set to "high" by the modem to let the computer know it has detected the carrier tone of the modem on the other side (i.e. it has a connection to the other side).

Mobile Phone compatibility with HP Palmtops

2009-10-22T08:35:26+00:00

Archived 2013-12-08
This page has been archived and some links may not work correctly anymore. No updates of this page will be done anymore.

How to connect your HP 200LX (or similar models) to a mobile phone for Internet access, sending fax, sending SMS or exchanging other data

Please note: This article is about 10 years old. It does not reflect the state of the art in mobile communication technologies anymore. Especially the section about the different mobile phones is outdated.

Contents of this page:

NEW: Nokia´s built-in SMS editor

How to send faxes with the palmtop

Security update for the fax setup (recommended!)

Related pages:

Introduction:

If you want to go online with your palmtop (HP 100LX, 200LX, 1000CX; the 700LX has this capability built-in, so this page is not relevant to the 700LX) using a mobile telephone network, you need a cellular phone. There are also PCMCIA cards that have a GSM modem built-in, e.g. the Nokia Card Phone), but as far as I know, all these cards don´t work in the palmtop, because they draw too much power from the PCMCIA slot (maximum is 150mA). Note that these cards are ´phones´ by themselves - I don´t speak about the cards that build a connection to a mobile phone. These cards may work - see below!

Now you have to decide, which cellular phone you´ll buy - nowadays there are lots of possibilities.
In general, there are three possibilities to connect a cellular phone as a modem to the palmtop.

via PCMCIA card
via serial cable
via infrared
via Bluetooth

(The fourth is not realizable yet, because of the lack of a bluetooth module for the palmtop. But hopefully some day we will have a serial port Bluetooth dongle for the palmtop, maybe even integrateable into the housing of the palmtop - see section "New Technologies").

All these possibilities have advantages and disadvantages:

1. Older phones often are only capable to connect to a computer via PCMCIA cards. These cards are expensive, and you have to sacrifice the only PCMCIA port of the palmtop. So you can´t use a memory or another PCMCIA card simultanously. Also you have to be SURE, that the PCMCIA card for the phone doesn´t draw too much power from the palmtop: 150 mA is the maximum. So don´t try to use a card that´s more power hungry, it could destroy your palmtop! Also make sure that it´s possible to talk to the data card as to a standard modem (that is, with the Hayes AT commands), otherwise all the standard communication software will have trouble!
Somebody reported that the Nokia data card with an older Nokia phone works well.

2. A serial cable connection is a very reliable connection, but the phone has to have a serial data port. Also you have to buy a data cable (most of them are pretty expensive) and use the HP connectivity cable, a null modem adapter and this data cable; all three in series. This combo would be quite bulky.
Another alternative is to make a data cable by yourself. It´s not that easy, because you cannot simply connect a few pins of the phone´s port to some pins of the palmtop´s port. The cable has to inculde some active electronic parts, because all phones I know use other signal voltages than the standard RS 232 ports. I described how to make such a cable for the Siemens S25 phone on another page. This cable also works for the Siemens S35i, C35i and M35i phones. The advantage of such a self-made cable is that you can make it as long as you prefer and because you don´t have to carry around three different parts for the cable. A third option is to make a short HPLX-to-DB9 adapter which you can plug into the LX and which you can directly connect the bought data cable to. Pleas have a look on my HPLX RS232 page. There you can find more details about a serial connection via data cable.
If you plan to make a cable for another phone than the Siemens ones that I mentioned above, please do a search on the web to find the various sites that describe cables for other phones. Maybe other phones need different electronics between the palmtop´s RS232 port and the phone´s data port.
You can use cable connections with all kinds of communication software that talks over serial port to a modem. A simple terminal emulation, like the built-in Datacomm, an internet package like WWW/LX, LXTCP or Nettamer, pppd, sshdos, Goin Postal... please have a look into the Software section of this page!

3. If you want to connect the phone and the palmtop via Infrared, be aware that that there exist two very bad problems:

The palmtop´s IR port is not IrDA compatible by itself
The palmtop´s IR port is heavily disturbed by the electromagnetic field that surrounds the phone´s antenna

For the first problem exists a very good solution called WWW/LX. At the moment, WWW/LX is the only software for the palmtop that can talk to an IrDA phone and use it as a modem. WWW/LX is a software package, made by D&A Software, that includes an IP stack (WWW/LX), an email and news client (Post/LX with News/LX) and a web browser (HV). WWW/LX is a commercial product. You can buy it either directly from D&A Software or (preferrably if you live in Europe) from Thomas Rundel in Germany. Of course, WWW/LX also works with serial cable connections, PCMCIA connections, PCMCIA analog modems, PCMCIA ISDN cards and Ethernet cards.

For the second problem, there is unfortunately no soultion by now. You have to live with it and try to find work-arounds. See the list of phones below to see how bad a phone causes this problem and how it may be avoided. If you want to learn more about this problem, and maybe even can help to solve it, please see my EMI problem page! In general, every phone causes this problem when it is used with the LX via IR. Some phones produce less interference, some more.

Make sure your cellular network provider allows data calls! Maybe you have to ask them to provide this service to you, maybe you even have to pay for it. I recommend that you make this clear before you decide which phone to buy, because maybe you want to change your network provider when you see that you have to pay too much money for data calls. :-)

Note that as far as I know all WAP capable phones have a built-in modem, so if you have a phone that´s WAP capable, it´s quite sure that you can use it as a modem. It only depends on if the modem is usable from out of the phone - either via serial cable or via IR.

By the way: For those who have had troubles with Windows 98 and IrDA because of these strange "virtual" devices Windows 98 sets up, please read my IrDA page!

Short phone overview

To give you a first idea which phone brand may be suitable for your needs, I give you a short overview here with the most important features and drawbacks of the three biggest phone brands: Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson. This overview is only relevant to newer phones, not for phones which are older than approximately two years. This is due to the technical improvements which come with time. For more detailled information please read the big phone list below.

Nokia phones are good for you if you need much compatibility, love bells and whistles (like ring tones, pictures, games...), want to use IrDA for a palmtop connection, don´t need a data cable connection and if you don´t always need the latest technology, but rather a quite reliable and well designed product. Well, some people say, Nokia phones are not at all reliable. Software is buggy and crashes often. I cannot comment on that, since I have never used a Nokia phone.
Siemens phones are your choice if you donot want to use IrDA for a palmtop connection (except for SMS sending, which works very well), but rather like cable connections. Siemens phones are also technically very well designed and are fairly easy to use due to a sophisticated and easy to understand menu system. I even think they are mechanically more robust than any other phones.
Ericsson phones offer (at least these days - end of 2001) the best support of new technologies like bluetooth and high speed / packet data services while keeping prices low. IrDA works flawlessly, cable connections should also be possible without problems (although this has not been tested extensively, because IrDA works so well). If your phone doesn´t need to have the best look and feel (Ericsson makes very good technology, but in my opinion a rather poor design) and if you tend to play with new features (serious ones, not games, multimedia and so on), consider buying an Ericsson phone! Also, Ericsson phones are very robust compared to Nokia or Siemens phones.

List of phones and their features:

Please note that I don´t have any interest in advertising for one of the companies whose phones I describe. The following list is intended to be as unbiased as possible, describing advantages and disadvantages of each phone. Since I rely on reports of users whose experiences I publish here, there may be errors in the following list. But these errors don´t have anything to do with my private opinion or interests. The same is true for the software I describe. I myself use only the Siemens S35i and D&A Software´s ´WWW/LX´.

Siemens phones:

General notes:
Siemens phones are generally (in my opinion) very well designed phones, the menu structure is easy to understand and they are customizeable, so that often used functions are easily accessable and only the less often ones are hidden inside the complex menu structures. However, one drawback applies to all Siemens phones: They have a low-power IrDA interface. That saves battery life of course, but it makes IrDA connections for Internet access with the 200LX almost impossible. It may work for some specific combinations and situations, but usually you have more problems than you want to have. Thus, if you want to use WWW/LX with your phone and use IrDA rather than a data cable, I cannot recommend you to buy a Siemens phone.

Siemens S25: IrDA port, wired port, no WAP, data connection speed limited to 9600 bps.

My self-made data cable works without any problem. The baud rate of the S25's wired port is fixed to 19200.
Note: If your cellular network provider supports V.110 connections (=ISDN) you can use the init string "ATB29" and the dial string "ATDI<number>". You will then get a CONNECT as soon as you dialed, so you have to wait abt. 15 seconds less until you have a working connection. The connection speed isn't increased by this, though.

Siemens C35i and M35i: wired port, WAP, no IrDA port, connection speed limited to 9600 bps

More information here.

Comments: Works without problems with my self-made data cable (tested) and any communication software.

Siemens S35i: IrDA port, wired port, WAP, connection speed limited to 9600 bps

More information here.

Comments: My self-made data cable works without any problem. The best IR-eye-to-eye-distance for IrDA communication is abt. 18-20 cm says Günther, who bought this phone in May 2000. He also says, when he wraps the S35i with aluminium foil (and leaves a hole for the IR, of course), he can even establish an internet connection without any EMI errors. However, I still get errors with aluminium foil. The baud rate of the S35i's wired port is fixed to 19200.
Here the ISDN connection init string works, too, see comments of the S25!
For further questions you can contact guenthereisele@yahoo.de.

Siemens S40: IrDA port, wired port, WAP, supports HSCSD up to 57600 bps

More information here.

Comments: Nothing known about compatibility to the 200LX, since no one has tested it by now.
Since this phone is actually designed by Bosch, it differs in general from all the other Siemens phones. So IrDA may work. It has yet to be tested.
HSCSD is not supported through the IrDA interface, so you need a data cable to make use of the higher data rates of HSCSD. And unfortunately, the data cable port of the phone is not compatible to the S35i and S25 (and S45).

Siemens SL45: IrDA port, wired port, WAP, MP3-Player, connection speed limited to 9600 bps (no HSCSD, no GPRS)

More information here.

Comments: Nothing known about compatibility to the 200LX, since no one has tested it by now.
I have heard that the data cable port of the SL45 is compatible to the S35i / S25 port. Can anyone please confirm that? Can the same data cables be used?

Siemens S45 and ME45: IrDA port, wired port, WAP, GPRS

More information here.

Comments: Nothing known about compatibility to the 200LX, since no one has tested it by now.
But these phones are the real successors of the S25 / C25 - S35 / C35 / M35 line, so I think compatibility should not be a problem. At least the data cable port is compatible.

Ericsson phones:

For older Ericsson phones (e.g. the T28s) there exist IrDA dongles. One user reported that such a dongle worked in combination with the CF788 phone and the Palmtop. I don´t know if these older phones have the possibility to attach a data cable, but since the IrDA dongle has to be connected somewhere to the telephone, I think they have. And in this case the question remains, if such a dongle would be a real advantage compared to a data cable.... For use with the palmtop it wouldn´t, I think. But on the other side some of the Ericsson phones use the IrDA protocol also over the wired port. The only software that would be able to use these IrDA-speaking Ericsson phones at all (either over cable or over IR) would be the WWW/LX suite by D&A Software, since this is the only software which is able to use the IrDA protocol (even via the data cable, set the parameters port=-1 and IR=0 in this case in the www.cfg).

So far I can say that the following Ericsson phones don´t use IrDA over the wired serial port, so they are also usable with other software than WWW/LX:
the R380 (the one with the big touchscreen under the keyboard)
the R520 (GPRS, HSCSD, IrDA, Bluetooth, big size)
the T39m (GPRS, HSCSD, IrDA, Bluetooth, small size) and
the R320s (see below).
If you plan to send or receive faxes with your phone, take care: Some Ericsson phones cannot handle faxes. This feature is explicitly diabled in these models. So read the features lists carefully!
There are now even different kinds of Ericsson data cables available. The old one, the DRS-10, misses the DCD line (about DCD: see my RS232 page), so some software can have problems (e.g. Goin´ Postal). The new cable, DRS-11, has a new chip inside, the MAX3386 (instead of the MAX3232). And it has the DCD line. You can also build your own data cable as described here. That self-made data cable has an "emulated" DCD line (always high) which works with Goin"e; Postal.

Ericsson R320s: IrDA port, WAP, I don´t know about wired port and connection speed limit

More information here

Comments: works via IR with the LX. Not extensively tested yet, but I´ll soon provide more information
For further questions you can contact Martin Bergvill or/and ebbeh@online.no

Ericsson SH888 and I888:

The phones only differ in their look and the I888 uses 900 MHz and 1900 MHz, the SH888 uses 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. So they should work exactly identically in combination with the palmtop.
These phones are known to use the IrDA protocol through the wired port.

IrDA port, wired port (speaks IrDA!!, comment see above), no WAP, connection limited to 9600 baud.
More information here.

Comments: This phone is reported to work well with the palmtop via IrDA. But be aware that this phone is a quite old one, so its features are probably not up-to-date anymore. The best IR-eye-to-eye distance is reported to be about 30 cm. Another user reported that 10-15 cm is a good distance.
For further questions about SH888 you can contact ebbeh@online.no and office@praktiker.at

Ericsson I888:

Here's the report of an I888 owner: Using the WWW/LX suite I have succeeded in exchanging emails, phone books and SMS while connected over IrDA to the I888. I get about 25 Character lost for 100kB of information exchanged. I can position the I888 from 30cm to 1 meter away from the 200LX with no apparent difference in transmission quality.
One additional note: SMS reception via PDU need a special switch which Stefan Peichl was kind enough to include in the latest PDU release.
For further questions about the I888 you can contact leurquin@bigfoot.com

NEW: Ericsson T39m and T68: IrDA port, WAP 1.2.1, Bluetooth, HSCSD, GPRS, triband, voice record, and it is very small!

More information here

The T39m and the T68 are basically the same, only the design is different. But technically and from the palmtop point of view, they are identical.

Martin Bergvill reports: The T39m has the size of a credit card+arial and weights 86 gram. I have used it for a couple of days and I must say that I am impressed. The supplied battery (which uses the new LiPolymer technology) has a standby time of max. 300 hours. The special big battery has a standby time of 700 hours!
Regarding the EMI problem: I have tested with Ring.com. If I have the HPLX and the T39m about 5cm apart I get disturbances. Abive that I get no disturbance at all!

I have got HSCSD to work with the AT string ATZ+cbst=0,0,1;+chsn=4,2,0,12 with 38400 baud.
GPRS also works with WWW/LX, but due to a firmware bug in the T39m/T68, you need a modified version of WWW/LX v3 to make it work. Please ask the people at D&A Software for that version.

Nokia phones:

General note: The Nokia phones´ IrDA ports have in general a very much larger working range than the IrDA ports made by Siemens. So you can work around the EMI problem here by keeping a distance of abt. 30 cm between the IrDA port of the phone and the infrared port of the palmtop.

For data cable users: Nokia currently offers two different kinds of data cables. The one you need is the DLR-3P! Don´t buy any other cable, since the other cables won´t work with the palmtop! Can anyone tell me if the DLR-3 works, too?
Ressources for nokia data cables: Selfmade DLR-3P, Nobbi´s Datenkabel Seite (German).

Nokia 61xx: No serial port, only usable as a modem with optional PCMCIA card or with a GSM-Nota cable

More information here (6110).
More information here (6150).

All phones of the Nokia 61xx-series don´t work on a direct way with the LX as a modem, because they don´t have a built-in modem. Some models (I think all non-US models) have an IR port, but this is only for data exchange between phones or for use with a Windows-Software. So none of these phones works as a modem for the LX! You can use (some of?) them as a modem for a Windows machine, if you use the Windows software modem called "Nokia cellular data suite". There´s no chance to make this work on the LX via infrared!

But there are two ways to to use the Nokia 6110 or 6150 as a modem: One solution is to use an optional PCMCIA card. There is a manufacturer called OPTION who makes such PCMCIA cards. There are probably other manufacturers, too. One person reported success using an OPTION card with a Nokia 6110 as a modem for the HP LX. If you have questions about this OPTION PCMCIA card and how to make it work with the HP Palmtops please contact pierrot@palmtop.com.

The other solution is the "GSM-Nota" cable. A user reports: "I use my Nokia 6110 with my HP200LX with the aid of something called a GSM-Nota cable. It's basically a cable with a small battery powered matchbox sized adapter box stuck in the middle of it. One end plugs into the phone and the other plugs into the serial port of the HP. They're very popular in the Psion world and usually are sold with a Psion compatible serial connector on the end. I discovered that the company that makes them also makes them with a standard 9 pin serial connection which I then connect it to the HP using the Connectivity cable and the null-modem adaptor. The cable then makes the Nokia respond to standard Hayes-AT commands. It works for SMS messaging (Stefan Peichl has incorporated compatibility for the GSM-Nota into PDU.COM at my request), address book and for data. It is a superb solution for those of us stuck with the Nokia 61xx series.

You can find out more about the GSM-Nota at http://www.idware.fr and http://www.exportech.co.uk (the guys I bought mine from)."

If you have further question about the GSM-Nota cable please contact surreal@compuserve.com.

Nokia 6210: IrDA port, wired port, WAP, connection speed up to 14.400 bps, with HSCSD up to 43.200 bps

More information here.

Comments from a user:
I can now say that the combination of the Nokia6210 and HP200/WWWLX3-Post works very well (as well of course the cable link). I have actually very little EMI-disturbances but sometimes there is the message after the run of: "xxx bytes lost/fram error/GSM disturbance(?)). As you write the distance can be rather long between the IR-ports which reduces the problem. I have also succesfully installed PDU which works well too integrated in the PostLX.
For further questions please contact jacob.waern@swipnet.se. Regarding HSCSD, please have a look at the HSCSD section.

Nokia 6310: IrDA port, wired port?, WAP 1.2.1, GPRS, HSCSD and Bluetooth

More information here.

Comments: Works at least via IrDA with the 200LX and WWW/LX for GSM and HSCSD Internet connections.

Nokia 5610: IrDA port, wired port?, WAP 1.2.1, GPRS, HSCSD and FM Radio

More information here.

Comments: Works at least via IrDA with the 200LX and WWW/LX for GSM and HSCSD Internet connections. GPRS not tested yet.

Nokia 7110 / 7110e: IrDA port, wired port, WAP, provides data connection speed of up to 14400 bps (depends on network provider if it´s usable or not)

More information here.

Comments: Tested via IrDA with WWW/LX. The optional data cable is called ´DLR-3´ but was not tested yet.
The phone stores SMSs on both the SIM card and the phone´s internal memory, so it takes a lot of SMSs. The Robot/LX script that allows you to send / reply SMSs via the LX is now adapted to this special storing behaviour.
It´s also possible to transmit entries of the LX´s phonebook as a vcard to the 7110 / 7110e via IR. The tool you need for this is called IR.EXE and is available from ftp.dasoft.com. With phone software version 4.84 and above there should be no problems. The version 4.73 has got problems.
For further questions please contact Martin Bergvill.

Please note: There are several versions of data cables for the Nokia 6210 available, some of them only work with special Windows software to upload logos and ring tones and to send SMSs. Be sure that you have an original Nokia DLR-3P cable. This seems to be the only one which works with standard software.

Nokia 8210: IrDA port, wired port is also present (under the battery), no WAP, data connection speed is limited to 14400 bps (depends on network provider)

More information here.

Comments: Read the comments of Nokia 8810!
Someone found the circuit diagram for a data cable for the 8210. Here is the pinout of the 8210's wired port and here you can see the circuit diagram for an MBUS datacable. But note that the MBUS cable is as far as I know not the one you need for a modem connection! Please refer to the links above in the general notes for a universal data cable which may also work for the 8210.

The 8210 is reported to work only reliably at 38400 baud via IR.With a lower baud rate, there seem to be problems with html and news. Notwith email. So maybe you should test it before you buy. Note that you need a double-speed upgraded palmtop for reliable connections at 38400 baud!
For an ISDN connection (V110) you can use the init string "AT&F+CBST=71,0,1". This will result in a much faster "CONNECT" than with the normal connection protocol. This only works, if your cellular network provider supports ISDN connections. Note that an ISDN connection will NOT increase the speed, only the CONNECT will be done abt. 15 seconds faster.
Maybe, if your net provider supports it, you can use a 14400 baud data connection, if you use the init string "AT&F+CBST=14,0,1". Try it!

For further questions please contact stora.my@spray.se.

Nokia 8810: IrDA port, no wired port, no WAP, data connection speed limited to 38400 bps (says the prospect - but which network does support that?? )

More information here.

You have to switch the 8810 off and on again after an IrDA online run, because the software (V. 4.05) has a bug. I don´t know if this bug is removed in newer software versions. If you don´t do this ´reboot´, the next IrDA online run won´t work properly.

Nokia 8850 / 8890: IrDA port, I don´t know about wired port, no WAP, data connection speed limited to 9600 bps

More information here.

Comments: Not tested yet, but should work just as the other newer Nokia phones.

Nokia Orange 5.1 (old phone, the same as Nokia 2110?) wired port or PCMCIA card necessary, no WAP, no other ports, connection speed limit 9600 baud.

Sorry, I didn´t find any URL providing more info about this phone!

Comments: Tested with WWW/LX. No problems known. For further questions please contact aj93@dial.pipex.com.

Motorola phones:

Motorola i1000plus / i500plus / i700plus: wired port, no IrDA, no WAP, don´t know about connection speed limit

Comments: works with HP connectivity cable, null modem adapter (either HP or Motorola) and Motorola´s data cable which comes with a whole kit which includes Windows software and a manual. But for the LX you only need the data cable from this kit.
You have to use a special initialization string for making it work as a modem for the LX: AT&FX4.
The phone i1000plus was tested with Goin´ Postal and WWW/LX. Since the two other phones have the same internal modem, they should also work as the i1000plus does. For further questions about the i10000plus you can contact evilla@terra.com.pe.

Motorola Timeport: wired serial port, IrDA?

There are more than one Motorola phone which are called "timeport". I don't know anything about them, but if you can provide informations, please don't hesitate to do so.

For further questions you can contact citroen@stad.dsl.nl and/or gnassi@attglobal.net.

Another user wrote:
"I can confirm that the Motorola Timeport L7089 (the one without the WAP browser) works fine with the HP200LX over IRDA. I haven't been able to purchase a serial cable - they are very hard to find. The only thing that doesn't work over IRDA is sending a fax. It apparently does work over a cable but I can't confirm this."
If you have further questions please contact surreal@compuserve.com

Motorola Startac 85596A (analogue): works with AAPEX Data ClipperCom World V.34 data fax 33.6 PC card modem.

This modem is a PCMCIA card modem that combines a normal landline 33.6 modem with a cellular modem. You have to make a special cable in order to get both to work together.

If you have further questions about this combo, please email palmtop@ihug.co.nz.

Sagem phones:

General information (by Radek Svagr):

Nearly all Sagem phones (including older 7xx and 8xx series) have an internal modem. But, and this is also the case for the 930, it is blocked in software. So when you buy the phone, it doesn´t support Data/Fax modes; you can handle SMS and phone book transfers only. But it is quite easy to activate the modem so you will get a better phone (higher models lie 840 or 940 have an already adtivated modem, but they are more expensive of course).
One method how to tune the Sagem phones is described on http://www.volny.cz/sagemak. It is quite simple and you can activate more features than a modem (memory for 50 SMS, 35 own melodies, 200 phone book entries etc...). Tuning software is on http://www.sagem.de.vu. The cable is common type with MAX232 or very simple with 2 Transistors which I use without problem. Schematics for this cable are available here:
Connector of the Sagem phones
Data cable with MAX232
Simple data cable with transistors
The parts will fit into an RS232 connector.
Personally I tested the following models: MC840, MC930, MW930, MW936.

Note: As everywhere are exceptions, as far as I know, series 91x and 92x of Sagem phones seem to have no modem. Also I don´t know about the new 3xxx models, but they support AT commands so they probably have a modem.

Sagem MW (MC) 930: Wired port, communication speed limit: 9600 (GSM), serial port spped with PC adjustable from 2400 to 19200 bps, using a tuning software up to 38400 bps. Supports V.110 (ISDN). WAP browser in MW series.

Before you start communicate with the modem, you must press C on the phone, because the modem goes into sleep mode after a few seconds of inactivity. If you have further questions about Sagem phones, please contact Radek Svagr

other phones

Bosch 908: wired port, no IrDA

No URL found. Try www.bosch.de

Comments: Tested with WWW/LX and ACCIS4. No problems known. If you have further questions, please contact lassekarlsson@mail.com.

LG InfoComm TM510 wired port, triband.

More information here

Comments: The proprietary fax/data transfer kit (79.99 US$, according to a zdnet review) is needed, it contains a cable with a box in the middle. This box contains the electronics and an additional phone port, which you can probably connect the charger or a headset to, even while using the data cable. For the connection to the palmtop you need the HP connectivity cable and an additional null modem adapter (see my HPLX RS232 page)

If you have further questions please contact Mike Kopplin.

CDPD modems and phones:

The following info has been provided by Bruce M. (an HPLX mailinglist member):

CDPD devices which are known to work with the HP 200LX:

Mitsubishi T250
Novatel Wireless Sage
Motorola Personal Messenger 100C (discontinued)

I expect that the following would also work:

PCSI Ubiquity 2000
Uniden Data 2000
Tellus Monarch

About the CDPD service:

CDPD exists since about 1996 in the US. The service uses the same frequency as the analog cell phone system called AMPS that was the first and is the most widely deployed cellular system in the US. Rather than using an analog telephone to dial in to an ISP, however, when a CDPD modem is activated, it joins the network much as an 802.11 wireless modem would join a wireless LAN. But the speed is much lower, with a theoretical bidirectional throughput of 19.2kb/s (typically more like 9.6kb/s in practice), and the first-hop round-trip latency is typically between 0.5s and 1.5s. The two biggest CDPD networks in the US belong to Verizon and AT&T. Verizon covers nearly the entire northeastern part of the US.
Thanke, Bruce, for the info!

If you can provide more information that is relevant here, please drop me an email with as much of information as you can provide! I´ll then publish it here. It was great if you allowed me to publish even your email address as I did it above with some email addresses of phone users.

Test with different phones connected to the HP 200LX:

Here you can see a posting of Jaques Belin to the HPLX mailing list. He tested several phones with the HP 200LX using different pieces of software. This is a very good review, especially if you are planning to buy a new mobile phone and if you know what software you will use.

Read the review (ASCII text file)

How to send and receive SMS with the Palmtop:

You can not only use the cellular phone as a modem, but you can also write your SMS on the palmtop and then send it with the phone and use the palmtop as a huge archive of received SMSs. Stefan Peichl and Tony Hutchins cooperated in developing PostPDU, which is a plugin for Post/LX for very convenient SMS handling. It is based on Stefan Peichl´s PDU.COM, which converts text messages to a format the phone can handle. PDU.COM can also be used as a stand-alone program if you use a data cable. If you use IrDA, you have to use WWW/LX with Post/LX (and preferably also Post/PDU).
PostPDU even supports splitting large messages up into more smaller ones (max. 160 characters) and it supports mass SMS, i.e. you can give multiple telephone numbers in the To: field and the SMS is send to all these numbers.
The clue: You don´t even need a registered version of WWW/LX to use Post/PDU. Since the demo version of WWW/LX is limited to 16kB data transmission per session, and since SMS does not need much of that, you can easily send and receive many SMSs per session (exact amount not known, but I estimate it to be abt. 40 SMSs per session)!
For download of the needed components, click here. You need the packages WWW/LX, Post/LX, Robot/LX and PostPDU.

Nokia´s built-in SMS editor

Thanks to Niels Keetlaer from Holland for this tip:

By my information all Nokia phones do have a build-in sms-editor. (I mean, not the editor one can use to enter messages from the phone, but an editor which can be reached when a serial link is established). I have only tested this with my 2110 which came with my 700lx for I do not have [access to] any other 'wired' Nokia phone. It is faily easy to access this editor. First you need to setup the physical link (doh) by dock the nokia into your 700lx or plug in a cable or use it's infrared capabilities if possible. Open this connection, you can use any terminal(program) as long it's euhm.. well normal [and can handle serial links]. Usually you will gain access to the modem (you might be accessing via a modem card, like I do with my 700lx) and can give the usual AT commands. There is an AT command to enter the SMS-editor, which is AT*C. Now the phone will go into an SMS-editor and will no longer accept any AT commands until you exit the editor. You can get help by entering HELP (how suprising). EXIT exits (suprised?). I don't know much more for I have never really used this. [the build in app in my 700lx is way easier to use...] Nice thing to know when using the 700lx: You can connect to the modem, even when the phone is turned off. You can try stuff, eg. ATDT(phone number) which results in a NO CARRIER. Unknown commands will result in 'ERROR', and so will AT*C when the phone is turned off. You really have to turn on the phone (and wait a little while) before the AT*C command works.

How to send faxes with your palmtop

In general, it is not possble at all to send a fax via infrared. This is because WWW/LX and IR.EXE are the only programs which support the IrDA protocol, and no fax software can interoperate with WWW/LX or IR.EXE. This implies also that you cannot use these strange Ericsson phones which use the IrDA protocol even on the wired port.

So you only can send faxes written on the palmtop with your mobile phone, if you have a data cable. (Exception: There are SMS to fax gateways available, so you can send an SMS to a special gateway number, the gateway converts your SMS into a fax and forwards it to the fax machine you have addressed in your SMS. Ask your cellphone service provider for the correct gateway number and be aware that your faxes will be limited to about 150 characters!)

Once you have a working palmtop - data cable - mobile phone connection (test with a terminal emulation, send an AT and look if you get back an OK), you can begin to set up a fax program on your palmtop. I recommend bgfax in conjuction with 2bgfax, which enables you to add a hand-written signature to your fax. If you want a simpler setup, you can use qfax. Or you use my special setup:

I have a combination of 2bgfax and qfax running on my palmtop, controlled by a single batch file "lxfax.bat". This combination lets me simply call "lxfax filename", then opens a text editor with a fax template (sender information, receiver information, fax header, signature). I can then write the fax text, close the text editor saving the file, lxfax calls 2bgfax to convert the text file to a fax file and then calls qfax, which sends the fax.

Here is my lxfax.bat file:

@echo off
REM LXFAX.BAT written by Daniel Hertrich 08-31-00
set faxpath=c:\fax
if not "%faxpath%"=="c:\fax" then goto error
if "%1"=="" goto error
c:
cd %faxpath%
copy templ1.fxt %1.txt
:editfax
pe %1.txt
2fax %1.txt 000new.fax
view /cga /p26 /A4 /MO 000new.fax
choice /c:se Send fax or Edit once more
if errorlevel 2 goto editfax
setcom1 6nw
echo.
echo Next choose 000new.fax as file to be faxed, enter fax number and
echo choose "FAX" as file type! Then "SEND".
echo.
pause
%faxpath%\qfax
setcom1 o
move %1.txt sent /-Y
move 000new.fax sent\%1.fax /-Y
goto end
:error
echo ERROR!!!
:end

As you see, you need the additional utility "setcom1" by Stefan Peichl. This is needed to set the COM port parameters to the correct values in order to let qfax talk to your phone. Which setcom1 parameters you really need depends on your phone, the "setcom1 6nw" works for the Siemens phones (19200 baud, n81). The second call of setcom1 switches the COM port off again.
Here PE.EXE is used as the text editor.

You need the following files out of the bgfax, 2bgfax and qfax packages (bgfax and 2bgfax can be found on www.hp200lx.net (search "bgfax"), qfax is available for download here (be sure to download the palmtop version!).

2fax.cnf
2fax.exe
2fax.fnt
qfax.cfg
qfax.exe
qfaxconf.exe
qfrec.exe (if you want to receive faxes)
reg.dat
view.exe

Throw these files into the directory c:\fax (if you want to use another path than I used, you only have to adjust lines 3, 4 and maybe 6 (drive) of the above mentioned lxfax.bat file), create a subdirectory c:\fax\sent, there all sent faxes will go, and edit qfax.cfg. CommPort and InitString have to be set there. CommPort must be 1 and InitString is set to AT&F&C1&D2 here, which works for the Siemens S35i.

Also create a file templ1.fxt which holds your fax template. Mine looks like this:

FROM: Daniel Hertrich                                             Address line 1
                                                                  Address line 2
                                                                  GERMANY
                                                                  Phone number
                                                                  Fax numer
                                                                  Email

TO:       [Receiver]

SUBJECT:  [Subject]

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Sir or Madam,



[here goes the text]


Kind regards

.INCLUDE:0,sign.pcx
Daniel Hertrich

The .INCLUDE command tells 2fax to insert the sign.pcx file here, which holds my hand-written signature as a black-and-white pcx graphic.
The template file and the pcx also have to be in the c:\fax directory.

Well, having all that prepared, I can now, whereever I am in DOS,

enter bgfax name , where name is a file name without file extension as which the sent fax should be stored in c:\fax\sent, then

edit my text file entering all needed informtion,

leave the editor saving the text file, then

2fax will convert the text file with the included PCX file to a FAX file and

the batch will open view.exe.

Choose 000new.fax to preview the fax and

when finished leave view.exe with ESC.

You will then be asked if the fax is okay and shall be sent, or if you want to edit it once more.

If you choose Send, qfax is started.

Select 000new.fax as the file to be sent,

enter the receiver fax number,

choose "fax" as input file format and

press "send".

Simply press enter if qfax asks for your registration number.

Security update: Added 08-sept-2001:

In order to protect this fax setup against abuse (your signature PCX file could be the key for criminals to get access to all your money!), you can put the signature PCX files on an encrypted drive, which you can create for example with "Secure Device".
Say, your signature file now is on the encrypted drive F:. You have to change the following things of your fax setup:

Put a "login f" (if you use secure device) into lxfax.bat, before the line ":editfax", to let 2fax get access to the signature file on F:.
Put a "logout f" (if you use secure device) into lxfax.bat, before the "goto end" line, in order to re-protect the encrypted drive when you are finished.
Change the .INCLUDE directive in the fax template to use f:\sign.pcx instead of sign.pcx
Add the line "if not exist f:\sign.pcx goto error" directly after the "login f" line, so you will get an error message (first a "drive not ready", and then an "ERROR"), if you have misspelled your passphrase, otherwise 2fax may run into problems, if the file is not available at processing time.
replace the line "move 000new.fax sent\%1.fax /-Y " by "del 000new.fax" in order to delete the ready-made fax file, which includes the signature. So only the txt file will be saved in the archive folder. You can recreate the fax file everytime you need it by invoking the 2fax command (2fax sent/txt_file fax_file).

Now you have to enter your secdev pass phrase everytime you start lxfax, only if you have entered the pass phrase correctly, 2fax will be able to access the signature file and insert your signature into the document.

How to synchronize a mobile phone with the HPLX (phone book, organizer etc.)

The phone book / contacts / vcard

There are several ways to send phone book entries or even the whole phone book from your phone to the LX or vice versa.
In general, you can use every terminal emulation to do that, because the exchange of phone book entries can be controlled by AT commands. Lists of AT commands for the different phones can be found below (section "AT commands").

In order to down- or upload a whole phone book automatically, you have to use a scripting language which can be used within such a terminal emulation. The simplest way is to use Robot/LX together with WWW/LX. There is a robot script available (phone.scr) which can do exactly this: Download or upload a whole phone book, either from / to SIM card memory or from / to internal phone memory. If you use WWW/LX and Robot/LX, this works either via cable or via IrDA. A standard terminal emulation can of course only be used via cable due to its lack of IrDA support.
This way of exchanging the whole phone book has been tested by me on the Siemens S35i with success, but I had to comment out the lines 10..15 of phone.scr ("select memory" and "set character set"), otherwise it didn´t work properly.

If you only want to exchange single contacts between the phone and the palmtop, the simplest way is to use the OBEX protocol, which is implemented into the free(!) software IR.EXE by D&A Software. Every IrDA capable phone should support OBEX. This works only via IrDA, and you don't need a license of WWW/LX for that.
Please note that with my Siemens S35i, this procedure doesn´t work for some reason. Maybe it is my fault, maybe the phone doesn´t support it. But Martin Bergvill has had success with his Nokia 6210.
OBEX (=object exchange) exchanges, as the name says, objects. In the case of contacts this is a vcard object, which holds the contacts data of one person.

In general wou will want to do the following:
Mark a plamtop phone book entry, export it as vcard, start IR.EXE to send this vcard to the phone.
Or, in the other direction:
Mark an entry in the phone´s phone book, choose in the phone´s menu "send as vcard via IrDA", start IR.EXE on the palmtop to receive the vcard, import the vcard into the phone book of the palmtop.

You will probably ask now, how a vcard looks like, and how the phone book of the palmtop can ceonvert entries from / to vcard. There ist the great capability of the palmtop´s built-in applications to define so-called "smart clips" (see palmtop manual). Martin Bergvill wrote the following report:

"Some backgroundinfo. I had a Nokia 7110 and I wanted to transfer what I had in my phonebook on the Hplx to the phone. The 7110 supports more info under each nameentry, but most new phones on the market supports Vcard in some way.

I found some info on how Vcards are supposed to look like and I went to "work". I used ir.exe made by Andreas Garzotto.

I first added a Smartclip I called "Vcard" in the phonebook on the Hplx:

The Vcard smartclip looks like this:

If you have a cellphone that does not support more numbers/info per name then your Smartclip should only have this info:

BEGIN:VCARD
N:>Namefield<
TEL:>Phonefield you want transferred< END:VCARD

(My Hplx phonebook has been modified. I have added a field for email and also some more fields. I have two fields for Worknumbers/Jobbnummer. That is why my Smartclip looks the way it does. The 7110 also has room for emailaddress/address/notefield. See mybook.gif).

When the Smartclip was ready I made a macro that chooses the Vcard Smartclip in the phonebook and then copies the info to the clipboard and opens Memo and paste it there. Then the macro saves the file.

My macro looks like this:

You have to write your own macro so that it chooses the correct Smartclip in you phonebook.
What I do I just selects/highlight the entry I want to transfer and then hit Fn+F1. The macro does all the work. It copies the info I need to Memo. Saves the file and then runs a file in the Application manager.

The icon looks like this.

That is it. The phone beeps that it has received the Vcard and I can add it to my 7110´s phonebook. 7110 supports several numbers per name. When I get an entry transferred it shows the work/jobb numbers with a little factory beside it in the display on the 7110. Also Home/hjem cellphone/mob is showed with its own icon. Very nice.

I have now sold the Nokia 7110 to my father. I bought a Nokia 6210 and all the above worked without any changes to the setup. I now use an Ericsson T39m cellphone. It does not have the memory to hold the notefield so that could be removed from the Vcard. But it does support the rest."

For sending a vcard from the phone to the palmtop, the steps are pretty identical:
Send a vcard from your phone, receive it with ir.exe oget vcard.vcf, and then import the vcf file into the palmtop´ phone book. This last step has not been done yet by anyone, so I cannot provide a solution here. But please feel free to develop a solution and email it to me! :-)

The calendar / appointments / vcal

There is not yet any easy way to exchange whole appointment books between a phone and the palmtop.

But it should be possible to send single appointments as a vcal OBEX object to the phone, similar to the way described above for the vcard.
If anyone really has a need for that, please develop a way and email it to me. I will gladly add it to this page.

Collection of related software:

Internet software for the palmtop with links to the makers´ home pages:

WWW/LX version 3 is an internet software package for the palmtop by D&A Software. Provides all you need for internet on the palmtop. The only software which is IrDA compatible!

IR.EXE by D&A Software is free software which can be used for various IrDA applications (vcard, vcal exchange, IrDA printer emulation...)

LXTCP is a free software that provides an IP stack and several client programs to the palmtop. About the same functionality as WWW/LX, except that it doesn´t have IrDA capabilities and there´s no web browser for it. But there´s an (also free) addition called ´cc:lxpop´ that lets you use the built-in cc:Mail program for email. LXTCP is made by Rod Whitby, cc:lxpop is made by Brian McIlvaine.

NetTamer: A shareware product that integrates an IP stack, a web browser, an email client and some more features. Also no IrDA!

Goin´ Postal: A very nice software package for email made by Steven Lawson. Includes a dialer and an email client.

SSHDOS, which is a DOS SSH client, usable with dosppp for example, see next item.

dosppp, which is a PPP packet driver for DOS, providing a TCP/IP stack to clients like sshdos, for example.

PDU and PostPDU: Send SMSs written on the palmtop with your mobile phone. Made by Stefan Peichl and Tony Hutchins

Quickstar Fax (qfax), a HP palmtop fax program. See section "How to send faxes" for usage!

www.hp200lx.net, category "Communication" of the SUPER data base for every other piece of communications software you are looking for!

New technologies:

Bluetooth

With time there come new technologies which enable mobile, i.e. wireless communications. A very interesting technology is Bluetooth, which is a standard to connect several computer peripherials wirelessly to each other. Mobile phones equipped with Bluetooth are just put on the market, first models are available from Nokia.
So it would be great if we could let data cables at home, don´t worry about electromagnetic interference in the IR receiver electronics and just establish a Bluetooth radio connection from the palmtop on the table to the mobile phone in the pocket to let the latter establish an Internet connection through the GSM or GPRS network to the ISP. Wouldn´t that be great?

Well, theoretically it is possible: There are already RS232-Bluetooth dongles which you can plug into any serial RS232 port. For the operating system of the computer this connection looks just as a serial cable connection. Unfortunately these dongles aren´t available yet. And the first ones which will be available end of 2001 made by Brainboxes will require an external power supply. So you had to carry around the dongle, an HP to DB9 adaptor, a null modem adaptor, an external power supply and your bluetooth phone. Not really convenient, IMO. ;-)
Leaving away the bunch of adaptors would not be difficult - just open the dongle and attach a self-made HP plug to it. But I don´t know if the external power supply could be replaced by a direct wiring to the 200LX´s main batteries for example. We will have to wait until the first ones become available to test this.
There are lots of Bluetooth PCMCIA cards available. But probably no one of these work in the Palmtop, because you need special drivers for them. Windows drivers, of course. The only chance would be if someone ported a driver from Windows to DOS. In addition these cards may draw too much power from the PCMCIA port. I don´t know about the power requirements of Bluetooth cards, but if they exceed the 150mA limit of the Palmtop´s PCMCIA slot, they are totally useless.

HSCSD

: (some companies market this service as HSCD or HSMD)

HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) can easily be used if you already own a mobile phone which works together with the palmtop and is HSCSD-capable. HSCSD simply opens more than one GSM channel by using more timeslots and thus offers n times the capacity of one GSM channel (n is the number of used channels, up to 4 channels can be used, so a bit rate of max 14.400bps *4 = 57.600bps can be used).
Ask your mobile phone network provider if you can use HSCSD and make sure your phone supports it. You probably have to use a special INIT string to enable HSCSD. Look at the section AT-commands of this document in order to find out about the commands needed for special founctions of your phone.

Martin Bergvill provided following HSCSD INIT strings for the Nokia 6210 (the "analog" strings establish a conventional HSCSD connection, the V.110 (=ISDN) strings use the ISDN protocol to establish a link and thus you will get the "CONNECT" 15-20 seconds earlier. There is no difference in connection speed, and not all network providers and telephones can use V.110, but if they can, it saves you time (15-20 seconds once per connection) and money):

9.6 KBit/s analog: +CBST=0,0,1;+CHSN=1,0,0,0
9.6 KBit/s V110: +CBST=71,0,1;+CHSN=1,0,0,0
14.4 KBit/s analog: +CBST=0,0,1;+CHSN=2,0,0,0
14.4 KBit/s V110: +CBST=81,0,1;+CHSN=2,0,0,0
19.2 KBit/s analog: +CBST=0,0,1;+CHSN=3,0,0,0
19.2 KBit/s V110: +CBST=81,0,1;+CHSN=3,0,0,0
28.8 KBit/s analog: +CBST=0,0,1;+CHSN=4,0,0,0
28.8 KBit/s V110: +CBST=81,0,1;+CHSN=4,0,0,0
43.2 KBit/s analog: +CBST=0,0,1;+CHSN=6,0,0,0
43.2 KBit/s V110: +CBST=81,0,1;+CHSN=6,0,0,0

For the Ericsson T39m, he has found that the init string ATZ+cbst=0,0,1;+chsn=4,2,0,12 works.

For lists of AT commands (also especially for HSCSD) for the various phones please have a look into the section AT commands below!

Be aware that your network provider will charge extra fees for a HSCSD connection, usually n times the price as for a simple GSM data connection (n is the number of channels you use, s.a.)

GPRS

General Packet Radio Service is a new standard in mobile telecommunications. It is a packet-based radio service which is optimized to transmit data and speech as data packets (just as the Internet), currently with a throughput of about 25 - 50 kbps. So you don´t establish a real link, but you can send or receive data packets whenever you want to. You are not charged by time anymore but by amount of data / speech transmitted over the network. This is of course ideal for sending an email on the road with the palmtop. :-) You don´t have to establish an expensive link just to send a 2kB-email. Imagine: If I want to send an email from my palmtop witht the mobile phone, I have to dial into my network provider, send the email with Post/LX and then disconnect. This all takes about 2 minutes. For 2 online minutes I currently have to pay about 0.15 US$. The GPRS prices are currently at a level of about 0.025US$ per 1kB (Mar 2002, Germany), i.e. if you send a 2kB email, with all overhead for SMTP protocol etc. maybe 3kB, you only pay 0.075 US$ for sending your email. See the advantage? ;-) On the other hd, for larger data amounts, GPRS is still much, much more expensive than a GSM connection. Ask your GSM / GPRS service provider for the current rates.
GPRS has become available and mobile phones which support GPRS are also availble (Siemens S45, Nokia 6310, Ericsson T39m, T68...).
If you intend to use the Ericsson phones with GPRS, you have to use a modified version of WWW/LX v3 for that due to a bug in the Ericsson firmware. Andreas Garzotto was so kind to develop a work-around for this bug. Please contact the people at D&A Software and ask for this modified version, if you need it.

UMTS

Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (also known as the 3rd generation mobile network or simply "3G") is not yet available. It will also be packet-based, as GPRS, but it will offer much higher bandwidth (up to 2 MB/s in the first stage). If someone besides me will still own a 200LX when UMTS becomes available, please report if you got any UMTS device working in conjunction with the 200LX!

AT commands:

Here you will find data sheets provided by the phone manufactureres and other collections of AT commands:

HSCSD and GPRS AT commands for Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola phones: HTML version and XLS version
AT commands for Nokia phones (Windows HLP (help) file, 380 kB)
AT commands for Siemens phones:
- Modem commands (35 kB PDF file)
- GSM AT command set (GSM 07.07, GSM 07,05, Siemens specific commands) (180 kB PDF file)
AT commands for Ericsson phones: In general go to http://www.ericsson.com/mobilityworld/sub/open/index.html, click on the device you want to have an AT command overview for (under "Mobile Devices"), click on "Documentation" on the left, then search for a link "Developer´s guidelines AT commands online reference" or similar to download the PDF document.
From my site you can directly download the AT command reference for the R520 and the T39m. Both are zipped PDF files, about 1 MB in size.

RAM upgrades

2009-10-10T18:45:57+00:00

Archived 2013-12-08
This page has been archived and some links may not work correctly anymore. No updates of this page will be done anymore.

This article is related to the Palmtops HP 100LX, 200LX and 1000CX. The OmniGo 700LX and the 95LX cannot be upgraded that way.

If you are interested in a RAM upgrade for your HP Palmtop, have a look at my HP Palmtop products page or contact me.

There are pages excellently describing do-it-yourself memory upgrades for the 200LX some of them without the need of a daughterboard:

The Japanese site http://home.r03.itscom.net/forestar/PJ128M.htm shows several different upgrades, from 16MB up to 128MB (!!) internal RAM.
The article Another memory upgrade by Carlos Izzo Videla describes a piggyback upgrade from 2MB to 4MB or 6MB of a 200LX with 2MB on-board memory (without using a daughter board)
The page http://www.upl.cs.wisc.edu/~orn/tech/200lx.html by Rudy Moore describes how to add 2MB to a 1MB or 2MB 200LX, ending up in 3MB or 4MB total memory.

For all upgrades involving a daughterboard, i.e. a RAM expansion module, you need a daughterboard socket (connector) on the motherboard. Some motherboards don´t have this socket, some do. 4MB 200LXs and 2MB 100LXs always have one. All 200LXs which don't have one installed have at least the soldering pads for such a connector. Here is the datasheet of the needed connector. You can buy such a connector from Thaddeus or Rundel. These models can be upgraded with a daughterboard: 100LX 2MB model, 200LX all models, 1000CX all models.

This is a 4MB upgrade daughterboard by Times2Tech which upgrades a palmtop with 1 MB on-board memory to 5 MB, a 2MB motherboard to 6 MB. This board is simply plugged into the RAM socket, no additional wires are needed:

This is an 8MB upgrade daughterboard by Times2Tech which upgrades every kind of basic configuration to 8 MB, because the on-board RAM is removed entirely:

This is a 32MB upgrade daughterboard by Times2Tech:

The following pictures show the additional wires which are necessary for the 32MB memory upgrade. Some pins of the CPU chip have to be removed from the mainboard and wires have to be attached to them. These are pins 24 and 25 from the right on the pin row which faces the battery compartment. The wires lead directly onto the memory upgrade board. Pin 24 (the right one) leads to the pad labeled "A1" of the Times2Tech 32MB upgrade board and pin 25 (the left one) needs to be connected to pad labeled "A10".
This is a very tricky job and not recommended to be done by people who are not experts!

The pictures below show the 64MB upgrade board. 3 additional address lines must be connected to the CPU for that kind of upgrade. The daughter board is much larger than the boards of the 32MB and smaller upgrades. There are also 64MB upgrades which have the same small daughterboard size as the other upgrades. Klick on an image to view a larger one with more details.

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

2018-01-27T09:35:26+00:00

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!

Speed upgrades (Doublespeed and others)

2009-10-10T18:50:56+00:00

Archived 2013-12-08
This page has been archived and some links may not work correctly anymore. No updates of this page will be done anymore.

This article is related to the Palmtops HP 100LX, 200LX and 1000CX, partially to the OmniGo 700LX. The 95LX cannot be upgraded in the way described here.

If you are interested to have your Palmtop upgraded by an expert, please have a look at my HP Palmtop related products page.

The double speed upgrade is a way to make the HP Palmtop faster. It will double the CPU frequency and thus approximately double CPU-intensive tasks. Also access to other hardware components in the Palmtop is done with higher speed, as the hardware components allow this. So, the screen updates are quicker with a doublespeed upgrade, for example.

The upgrade is done by replacing the original quartz crystal which clocks the CPU by one which is twice as fast. The original crystal is abt. 15.8 MHz, which lets the CPU work at a speed of about 8 MHz. The upgrade crystal should have exactly 31.673 MHz, which speeds the palmtop up to about 16 MHz. Such a crystal can be bought from Times2Tech. A 32 MHz (or even faster) crystal could also be used, but this may lead to some problems with time-critical hardware components, such as the PCMCIA port and the communication ports (serial and IR).

Position of the quartz crystal on the motherboard:

An original single speed quartz there is labeled 158 CP52.
The double speed quartz by Times2Tech is labeled F31.673.

If the quartz is placed accordingly, you may see if you have a single or double speed quartz installed by looking through the backup battery slot:

You can easily check, if you have a speed upgrade installed, if you are unsure:
First, close all applications and save all open files. You need to reboot in the next step.
Switch the palmtop off.
Press ESC-ON. This shuts down the running system session and brings you into a self-test routine.
If you can not read the screen, it is double speed for sure.
Else: Select "Timers" and hit Enter. The timer test runs.
If the timer is in the 20800 range or so, the LX is double speed, if in the 10700-10914 then single (original) speed.
Afterwards, reboot the palmtop by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del.

To make everything work with the upgrade, a driver is needed. For the Times2Tech upgrade, it is the spd31.sys or spd31.exe driver, which comes with the upgrade (or download it here).
If you use a 32.0 MHz or a 31.0 MHz crystal, you need the clkup32 or clkup31 driver. For crystals with speeds faster than that there is no special driver (and due to the risks of making the palmtop inoperational, it is not recommended to use such crystals).
There is another driver called clockup (download clockup.lzh here), which comes with source code and has a system clock correction feature. Maybe it can be used with exotical crystals. If you buy a crystal not sold by Times2Tech, make sure it is no overtone (harmonic) quarz, but the nominal speed is the main frequency. Otherwise you would need to filter out the (slower) main frequency.

Please note:
If another quartz than the exact doublespeed 31.673 MHz quartz (made by Times2Tech) is used, this may cause slight problems due to non-exact timings. For example it may be that the serial port / IR port does not work correctly anymore at higher baud rates. This usually does not happen, if you use the correct driver, but I have heard of cases where there are problems. It seems to depend on the specific hardware due to component value tolerances. If the quartz has been installed professionally, it usually is no problem to replace it by the original 15.8 MHz quartz again in case there are problems with the doublespeed upgrade.

Storage cards (PCMCIA SRAM, ATA, CF, SD, MMC etc.) and their compatibility with the HP Palmtops

2009-10-10T19:00:40+00:00

Archived 2013-12-08
This page has been archived and some links may not work correctly anymore. No updates of this page will be done anymore.

This article is related to the Palmtops HP 100LX, 200LX and 1000CX, partially to the OmniGo 700LX. The 95LX are mentioned, too, but most of the information is not relevant to that model.

Storage card support (SRAM, ATA Flash, Compact Flash)

You can use SRAM PCMCIA cards or linar flash cards (they are rare and expensive now!) and a lot of ATA Flash or Compact Flash storage cards in your 200LX, that does not exceed the capacity of about 128MB. Some 256 and 512 MB cars work, too.
There are even some 1GB or 2GB CF cards that work in the Palmtop, one user even reported that he used a 4GB card successfully (although it's unclear to me how MS-DOS 5.0 with FAT16 is able to address 4GB of disk space!)
Also, SD cards or MicroSD cards can be used, in conjunction with a suitable PCMCIA adapter. However, not all of those adapters work in the Palmtop. See the compatibility lists further down.

The 100LX is more limited regarding the maximum capacity of a flash / CF card. The Omnigo 700LX and the 1000CX are almost identical to the 200LX, so all cards working in a 200LX should also work in a 700LX and 1000CX. But note that support of larger cards (especially 128MB and above) seems also to be a matter of the BIOS version of the Palmtop. I have seen cards, that don't work in one 200LX, but work in a 200LX with a later BIOS version.

How to make a card work:

If a card doesn´t work instantly, i.e. is not recognized and usable as drive A: by the Palmtop, then try the following steps (and try after each step, if the cad works or not):

execute the built-in fdisk100 utility, which (re-)partitions the card
do a format a:
Reformat the card using a Windows computer, choose FAT, FAT12 or FAT16 as the file system (not FAT32!)
Use a partitioning tool, e.g. a GParted live CD, to make sure that there is only one primary FAT (FAT12, FAT16) partition on the card, and then reformat the partition with FAT12 or FAT16
Put the card into a digital camera and let that camera format the card
If you have access to a Linux computer: Connect the card to that Linux computer, find out, what device it is assigned to (dmesg usually outputs that information. If the card is attached to the USB port, it is usually something like /dev/sda). Proceed only, if you know exactly, what device your card is assigned to. Uing a wrong device node here may destroy data on another storage device! Then issue the command
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/??? bs=512 count=1
(replace "???" by the correct device name). Afterwards, re-try fdisk100 and format a: on the Palmtop.

No success yet?

Then you probably need the Acecard driver. Install it according to the instructions, reboot the palmtop and repeat the above described procedure. If that does also not help, your card is incompatible with your Palmtop.

Recommended brand: Sandisk!

The most recommended card manufacturer is Sandisk (former Sundisk; some very old cards may be labeled "Sundisk"), Sandisk cards are not the fastest ones, but this is not as important as compatibility, reliability and power economy, which are the greatest advantages of Sandisk cards. If you buy a card, take care that you do not buy one using the new NAND technology (Sandisk's "Ultra CompactFlash" are based on NAND flash for example). They are said to be faster, but they may not work at all in the HP palmtops because of the new technology used.
Simple Technology cards are also frequently used, they are faster than Sandisk, but far more power-hungry.

Get the "Card battery low" message?

Some cards which are not fully compliant to the standards, cause the palmtop to create a "Card battery low" message, which appears in the upper left corner of the screen and blocks palmtop usage until ESC is pressed (just like the main battery low message). If your card otherwise works well, but if you want to get rid of this message, you can use the programm killmsg by Mack Baggette, which is able to suppress BIOS messages. In order to suppress the card battery low message, put the line "killmsg /c" into your autoexec.bat. If you have a doublespeed upgraded palmtop and use Mack Baggette's SPD31 driver, you can use that one to suppress the messages. The command line switch /c does the trick.

Note, however, that the "card battery low" message has a meaning for cards, that actually have a battery! Flash or Compact Flash cards don't have a battery, because the memory technology used in such cards does not need additinal power to keep the data. But the old SRAM cards are based on SRAM (as the name suggests), and that kind of storage needs power to keep the data. Such cards uave either a battery tray with a Lithium battery, or they have an internal rechargeable battery. For such cards, the "card battery low" message is a serious warning, and you should immediately make a backup of the card's data and - if possible - exchange the battery, or recharge it.

Card compatibility list

Here is a list of setups which are tested.
Please note that the last update of the list has been done long ago, in about 2004. Please look carefully if the brand written on the card is really the manufacturer or if it is just relabeled. Sometimes you will find a small "made by Hitachi" in a corner of a card which is largely labeled CASIO or so. Please provide the manufacturer, not the label. To be sure, please put the card into the palmtop and run Stefan Peichl's LXCIC. It tells you in most cases who the real manufacturer is.

A few words about compatibility: In most cases the BIOS version of the palmtop and installed hardware upgrades will not affect the compatibilty of a storage card with the palmtop in any way. However, there are some cases in which e.g. a double speed upgrade prevents usage of a specific card, or where an early BIOS version (1.02A is the latest one installed in 200LX Palmtops) can lead to slight performance problems or even make a card unusable. So I have added BIOS and upgrade information to the list below. Internal memory upgrades do not affect usability of storage cards at all, as far as I know.

In the following lists, if not denoted otherwise, the given configurations work.

BIOS version:

Sometimes, support of a card or card adapter depends on the BIOS version of the Palmtop. In order to find out your BIOS version, either reboot the Palmtop (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and observe the first few lines of text displayed on reboot. Or, if that's not possible (e.g. due to the Palmtop having a double speed upgrade and text on bootup is unreadable), use the DEBUG command in DOS in the following way:

Terminate the ApplicationManager: [Menu] [Application] [Terminate All] [OK]
At the command prompt type: debug then d F000:FF00
Read the Version Number in the ASCII dump.
To quit from debug, enter q [Enter]
To return from DOS type "200" [Enter] ...without parentheses or brackets... :)

Compact Flash cards:

You need a CF to PCMCIA adapter for CF cards, be sure to get the adapter for the correct type of CF (I or II).

Latest addition 2011-12-30 reported by a 200LX user:

Sandisk 2 GB and 4 GB SDCFJ CF II cards work, with Acecard - That's what I use.
You can't format them in the palmtop, though. I use a XP/USB card reader from the command line for that. You have to specify an allocation unit size which will result in =< 65535 AU.
In Windows, open a command prompt, then type FORMAT /? to get a list of parameters. Note the A:size options; you want FAT16 - For a 2 GB card use 32K, 4GB use 64K.

Card				Palmtop		Compatibility
brand	capacity in MB	Type I=3mm II=5mm	model#	model	BIOS ver.	works with Doublespeed upgrade	driver needed	comments
A-1 Flash	256	Type I	-	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Apacer	128	Type I	-	200LX	1.01A	no	-	only tested in doublespeed palmtop, doesn't work.
Canon	8	Type I	FC-8M	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
EagleTec	32	Type I	-	200LX	?	?	-	Very power-hungry, crashes palmtop on write access when batteries get low. Not recommended.
Kingston Technology	64	Type I	-	200LX	1.02A	probably	-	-
Kingston Technology	128	Type I	High Speed CF/128 9902366-001.A00 641603	200LX	1.02A	some yes, some not.	-	Attention: Doesn't work with some double-speed palmtops!
Kingston Technology	256	Type I	THNCF256MAA	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Kodak	20	Type I	Sundisk SDP 5/3 0.6	200LX	1.02A	probably	-	-
Lexar	16	Type I	Marked CompactFlash USB Enabled 8x 16MB, P/N 2177, Rev A	100LX	1.03A	?	acecard	Card is USB enabled
Lexar	48	Type I	CompactFlash 48MB 4X	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	Card is USB enabled
Lexar	128	Type I	CompactFlash 128MB 4X (or 12X), marked CF128-04-266 and USB Enabled, P/N 2175, Rev A	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	Card is USB enabled
Memorex	64	Type I	-	200LX	1.02A	probably	-	-
PQI	32	Type I	P/N FC032	200LX	1.01A	-	acecard	problems reported, high power consumption, FAT problems, not recommended!, also strange that acecard driver is necessary.
PQI	64	Type I	-	100LX/200LX/700LX	1.02A	?	-	reliability problems reported, not recommended!, also causes "card battery low" message in some cases. killmsg can avoid that. Relabeled e.g. as HAMA.
PQI	64	Type I	P/N FC064, 5Q62D and 164822200007	200LX	1.02	yes	acecard	-
Pretec	all	Type I	-	200LX	all	-	-	reliability problems reported, not recommended!
Ritdata	64	Type I	-	200LX	-	?	on some 200LXs the acecard driver is needed	Labeled ExtreMemory
Ritdata	256	Type I	-	200LX	-	?	-	Labeled ExtreMemory
Robanton	256	Type I?	-	200LX	-	yes	acecard	-
Sandisk	8	Type I	SDCFB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	15	Type I	-	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	30	Type I	SDCFB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	64	Type I	SDCFB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended. Labeled "RCA"
Sandisk	80	Type I	SDCFB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	128	Type I	SDCFB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	160	Type I	SDCFB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	160	Type II	-	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	192	Type I	SDCFB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	256	Type I	SDCFB AR0203NX China	200LX	1.02A	probably	-	recommended
Sandisk	512	Type I	SDCFB Copyright 99 AX0110ML USA	200LX	1.02A	yes	acecard	recommended
Sandisk	1 GB	Type I	BB0206NK CHINA Copyright 99	200LX	1.02A	yes	acecard	recommended; seems to work in some devices (MP3 players...) where the 512MB card fails
Sandisk	2 GB	Type I	SDCFB (not the 'ultra' version)	200LX	1.02A	yes	acecard	recommended
Simple Technology	32	Type I	-	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Simple Technology	48	Type I	-	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Simple Technology	64	Type I	markings 90000-00756-032 and 001002-FL1-001	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Simple Technology	96	Type I	-	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Toshiba	64	Type I	THNCF064MMA	200LX, 700LX	?	?	-	-
Toshiba	256	Type I	THNCF256MAA	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	Labeled Kingston Technology, "High speed"
Transcend	128	Type I	-	200LX	1.01A	yes	-	-
Twinmos Mediastore (TM)	256	Type I	Ultra High Speed Serialno: 251M52069330136 P/N:FCF256S Made in Taiwan	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Verbatim	32	Type I	0441CT4E	200LX	1.01A	probably	-	-
Verbatim	128	Type I	021711	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-

The following pictures (thanks to Radek Svagr!) show the inside of a 10MB Sandisk CF card:

ATA Flash cards (full-size PCMCIA flash cards):

These cards fit into the palmtop without an adapter.

Card				Palmtop		Compatibility
brand	capacity in MB	Type I=3mm II=5mm	model#	model	BIOS ver.	works with Doublespeed upgrade	driver needed	comments
Epson	40	Type II	Ref AD40155C007, ATA 412SD12, 1994	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
HP	10.4	Type II	Sundisk SDP-10	200LX	1.02A	probably	-	Does not work with some newer laptops. This is a relabeled Sundisk card, 12V
HP	5	Type I	by Sundisk!	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	This is a relabeled Sundisk card, 12V
Kingston	10	Type II	-	200LX	1.02A	probably	-	power-hungry! Causes 100LX to shut down!
Kingston	32	Type II	DP-ATA/32	200LX	1.02A	probably	-	For some reason it says that the cards capacity is 63266480 bytes, but the card is only 32MB!
Sandisk	175	Type II	**A7131177A SDP5BH-175	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Sandisk	220	Type II	SPD-3B	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	256	Type II	SPD-3B	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	recommended
Sandisk	350	Type II	SPD-3B	200LX	1.02A	?	acecard	-
Sandisk	1.2 GB	Type II	SPD-3B	200LX	1.02A	?	acecard	-
Simple Technology / SiliconTech	48	Type I	SLATAFL48	100LX	-	?	acecard	-
Simple Technology / SiliconTech	48	Type I	SLATAFL48	200LX	-	yes	-	slightly faster than a Sandisk
Simple Technology	128	?	PN 90000-00753-109	200LX	?	yes	-	-
Simple Technology	160	Type I	STI-ATAFL/160	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	-
Simple Technology / SiliconTech	448	Type I	SLATAFL448	100LX/200LX	-	yes	acecard	-

Other card types (Memory Stick, MMC, SD...):

You need PCMCIA adapters for all the cards listed below.

2012-11-22: A user reported a standard microSD 2GB card (identified by Linux as Sandisk SU02G) to work very well without any driver using the Panasonic BN-SDAGP3 PCMCIA-to-SD adapter.

Card				Palmtop		Compatibility
brand	capacity in MB	card type	model#	model	BIOS ver.	works with Doublespeed upgrade	driver needed	comments
Sony	16	Memory Stick	-	700LX	-	?	-	works well with Sony MSAC-PC2 Stick-to-PCMCIA-Adaptor
EMTEC	32	MMC	AA0010JC TAIWAN (written on the backside)	200LX	-	yes	-	A MMC/SD-PCMCIA adapter is needed. LXCIC reports: PCMCIA ADAPTER So the adapter is recognized by LXCIC rather than the card, which explains, why the adapter is not cheap (~$40 on ebay). It seems to have the controller built in. The card powers down by itself, as reported by LXCIC. I had no success with a SD (Secure Digital) card, which has the same form factor as the MMC.
ExtreMemory	64	MMC	AB0206LV TAIWAN (written on the backside)	200LX	-	yes	-	A MMC/SD-PCMCIA adapter is needed. I use an adapter labeled "FREITAG Electronic" which is made only for MMC cards. It works flawlessly. LXCIC reports the adapter to be a "Panasonic ATA BN-MMAA 1.10".
Infineon	128	MMC	EG85918 a0229KKO	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	A MMC/SD-PCMCIA adapter is needed. I use an adapter labeled "FREITAG Electronic" which is made only for MMC cards. It works flawlessly. LXCIC reports the adapter to be a "Panasonic ATA BN-MMAA 1.10".
Sandisk	512	MicroSD	SDQCJP-512 AX05206CB	200LX	1.02A	yes	-	SanDisk microSD/TransFlash Adapter 2006-12-15A MADE IN CHINA Minolta CF Card Adapter SD-CF1 SanDisk CompactFlash PC Card Adapter
Sandisk	2GB	MicroSD		200LX	1.02A, 1.01A (200LX), 1.06EB (700LX)	yes	-