You quickly get used to good things. At the time of writing this article, it is difficult to imagine a modern person without a smartphone. It contains almost our entire life: phones, notes, calendar, audio and video calls, music, games, payment systems, neural network assistants, social networks and much more.
If you look at the life of a person trying to keep up with the times 24 years ago, then in his hands, most likely, we will see a device that you would not see today. We are talking about PDAs, or, as they were often called, handhelds. Of course, it’s hard to surprise’s experienced reader: many people had handhelds. But among these PDAs there was an interesting specimen that had a PCMCIA board form factor and was connected to the computer via this interface. Interested? Then welcome to cat.
A little history
Xircom was founded 35 years ago in Thousand Oaks, located 15 miles from the City of Angels. From the very beginning, the founders decided to focus on creating devices for laptops that provide additional functionality. This company was one of the first to create the Xircom NetWave PCMCIA adapter for wireless communication at a speed of 1 Mbit/s. Her portfolio also included network cards, modems, USB controllers and memory cards.
Xircom engineers were fans of the PCMCIA connector, and for good reason. Most laptop computers of that time had the appropriate ports, and the compact dimensions of expansion cards were very similar in size to credit cards, which made it possible to save space and carry them in a wallet or small bag.
Let’s say right away that the REX 6000 was not a unique development from Xircom. For the first time, a PDA in this form factor was created by another company – Franklin Computer Corporation. The most famous model, REX-PRO5, was built on a Toshiba processor that emulated the good old Zilog Z80. True, it supported input exclusively using the movement and confirmation buttons. Franklin’s earlier models never supported user input at all. Any change to data had to be made on the laptop, and the PDA could only display it.
Appearance
Let’s start with the fact that this is the smallest full-featured PDA in the world. Its dimensions comply with the PC Card Type-II specification (8.57 x 5.4 x 0.5 cm). This miracle of technology weighs only 40 grams, and is powered by two CR2016 lithium “tablets”. These batteries are enough for about six months of use. The choice is explained simply: other batteries simply would not fit into such a thin case. In addition, they could be replaced one at a time, thereby eliminating the possibility of losing data from RAM.
The device was equipped with a monochrome resistive touch screen with a resolution of 240 by 120 pixels. Alas, there was no support for handwriting input, like in Palm. Any data could be entered from a virtual keyboard, using a stylus or hardware buttons on the right side of the gadget. In the documentation, of course, you can find a proud mention that you can operate the device with your finger, but this is not entirely true.
You’ll actually be able to type text with your fingernail, but you won’t be able to work directly with your finger. In addition, this screen is quite fragile, so the same documentation says to never carry the device in a pocket or bag without a protective case and never poke the screen with anything other than the included stylus and finger. No metal!
Sometimes the screen stopped responding adequately to pressing both touch and physical buttons. Therefore, there was a small hole in the back of the device that had to be poked with a paperclip, which corresponded to a soft reset of the device. In practice, this meant that any data not saved in the device’s ROM would be lost, and the screen calibration would also be lost. The freeze condition occurred infrequently, but sometimes it happened right during active work with the device.
At the bottom of the screen there is a strip containing 7 touch buttons that call pre-installed applications:
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Calendar
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The address book
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To-do list
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Notes
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Web browser
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Calculator
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World time
Five buttons on the side are responsible for the following functions:
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Home — return to the home screen, as well as turn on/off the device’s power. If the button is pressed while data is being entered, the current operation is canceled and any unsaved data is lost.
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Back — return one screen back. Just like with the Home button, pressing Back cancels the current operation and any unsaved data will be lost.
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Select — select the highlighted option or launch the selected application.
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Up — scroll up or highlight the previous option in the list.
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Down — scroll down or highlight the next option in the list.
Hardware filling
The “iron” part of the Xircom REX 6000 was produced by the Japanese giant Citizen Watch Company, so there were no complaints about the build quality. The main firmware of the device was written by programmers from Starfish Software (one of Borland’s subsidiaries). These same guys at one time created the first wireless synchronization system TrueSync, for which they were later bought by Motorola for $325 million.
The heart of the device, just like in the previous model, was a Z80-compatible processor from Toshiba, operating at a frequency of 4.3 MHz. Applications for it could be written in C or assembly language using a cross-compiler Z88DK or SDCC (Small Device C Compiler).
The RAM here is very tiny – only 32 KB, but the permanent memory is quite decent. In total, the device has 3 MB of flash memory, of which 2 MB is available to the user. It can be roughly estimated that approximately 800 pages of text with 2,500 characters per page could be written inside the device.
The device also has a simple piezo speaker designed to emit a sound signal for notifications, and it could also make clicks when elements are activated with the stylus. This made it possible to provide minimal feedback, including when entering data from the keyboard.
Interface and applications
The device turned on, or rather woke up, by pressing any hardware key. The interface was divided into three pages: Today, Main and Extras. The first page was a running Calendar application, open on today’s date with a schedule for the day. On the second Main page there were pre-installed applications, as well as a Controls icon that called up the main settings of the device. The third Extras page contained any additional installed applications.
On the settings page you can set the current date/time, turn on/off sound effects, look at the battery status and set an access PIN code (from 3 to 10 digits). In addition, you can check how much permanent memory is occupied, recalibrate the screen, set user information, and also look at device information, namely Product ID and Version ID (firmware version).
Standard applications do not stand out as particularly noteworthy. The calculator here is the simplest, without additional features such as calculating trigonometric functions and plotting graphs.
The note editor is also as simple as possible, allowing text input in ISO/IEC 8859-1 (Latin-1) encoding. There is a small clipboard that allows you to perform Cut / Copy / Paste operations familiar to any user. Also in the context menu there is an option to select all text. Once created notes can be protected from changes using the Lock function.
Content and Synchronization
There are three ways to sync data between your device and computer. The first and most obvious is to insert the device into the PCMCIA slot and use the Intellisync for REX application, which must be installed from the included CD. This application serves as a bridge between a PIM (Personal Information Management) application, such as Microsoft Outlook, and the device.
The application runs on only two operating systems: Windows 98 and Windows 2000. Predecessors like Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows CE are not supported. In addition to Microsoft Outlook, support for Lotus Notes, ACT!, Organizer and many other PIM applications was announced, but it was never implemented.
To be fair, we should mention that the kit included a fairly simple version of a PIM application called IntelliSync MobileDesktop from Puma Technologies. In general, you could cheat and upload your contacts to CSV, upload them to IntelliSync, and after a couple of minutes get them on the device.
The second and third methods were intended for computers that were not equipped with a PCMCIA slot; it was possible to optionally purchase a docking station with USB or RS-232. By the way, the standard web browser application could only work when the device was in the docking station, which seemed to hint at the need to purchase it.
The web browser here was supposed to work primarily with the resource http://www.rex.net, which they wanted to make into a kind of center of attraction, or, as it is fashionable to say these days, a super app. Weather forecasts, newsletters and more slag content – all in the best traditions of wap-resources of the beginning of the millennium. But this was not destined to come true, and since August 2001, anyone who visited this resource was greeted with an unpleasant message:
The thing is that in March 2001, Xircom was absorbed by Intel, which considered further development of the portal and the REX devices themselves inappropriate and completely canceled this project.
The first portal, listed as an alternative, worked until 2005 and really helped many device owners find and install custom applications, as well as receive more or less adequate advice on use.
The second community portal lasted until 2013, but was also closed (farewell post). This is where the story comes to an end.
Conclusion
The Xircom REX 6000 sub-handheld was a highly unusual device that combined the features of a personal organizer and an ultraportable computer the size of a credit card. Probably, now it would be possible to implement something similar on the basis of modern single-board computers and an e-Ink screen, but there is no practical sense. Smartphones and smart wearable devices leave no chance for such gadgets in terms of practicality and versatility.
At the same time, such devices may be of interest to collectors and can be found on eBay and various flea markets for an adequate price. Docking stations are also available, but as an experiment, you can raise your local version www.rex.net and download fully up-to-date news feeds using regular XML and IntelliSync MobileDesktop as a PIM application. And quite a few custom applications in REX format have been created.
Have you ever used a similar device? We are waiting for you in the comments.
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