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The Typeframe PX-88 Portable Computing System
- ZeroConcerns 11mo agoYeah, lovely... But can we please stop retconning obsolete technology into something to strive for? The Epson, Tandy, Psion and Nokia almost-like-a-laptop systems of the time were pretty neat, but not magic. Really: you could lock me into a room with just a pencil and a ream of blank sheets, and nothing of value would come out, and that's not because of the technology or the distractions, but just... well...
- pjdesno 11mo agoThis is tempting. I fairly frequently leave my phone in the office and take a clipboard full of lined paper and a ballpoint to a place where I can write without access to the internet - I've got a number of published CS papers and at least one funded grant where a significant amount of writing was done in longhand on paper. Of course this would require a bit of software work and maybe a brain swap to make it into the sort of portable typewriter that I'm really looking for, but given this as a starting point it should be fairly easy. One question I have - what is the finished weight?
- iberator 11mo agoFun and nostalgia IS value! Same as minimalism. It's fun to push old hardware to the limits and develop software/hw for it (such us wifi for apple 2 from 1979 hehe) Clunky hardware has one advantage too: It's usually a single tasking tool. Great for focus and running away from WWW. Your kid can play pac-man and Tetris without fear of popups, credit cards, scams, hate and porn.
- iamnothere 11mo agoTo each their own. If there were a Psion that supported modern email, calendar, and task standards, with wifi sync, I would carry it most days. I basically never make phone calls anymore, and I always found the old greyscale LCDs to be very legible. Caveat: such a device should not be infested with shitty spyware like everything else these days.
- freetanga 11mo agoIsn’t that a Palma from BOOX? And I believe there were 1-2 competitors (Hisense phone?)
- iamnothere 11mo agoThose don’t have physical keyboards, and all run Android which rules them out. I also prefer old school greyscale LCDs to e-ink, as e-ink has issues with ghosting and slow refresh. The closest modern device is the Planet Computers PDA, which can run Linux, but it can’t run mainline Linux and it has a modern color screen that uses too much power.
- wowczarek 11mo agoI was going to mention Planet before I saw your follow-up comment. I bought their Gemini, and it seemed interesting for a while, but being a phone with a keyboard, still effectively a phone, battery life wasn't great and again a phone, my default was never to shut it down, and it would always be out of juice if not used for a while. Eventually it outdated itself sitting in a drawer; just didn't feel right. The external notification screen seemed like a good idea but too clunky for general use, and then the awkward fingerprint sensor position and accidentally touching things when opening / closing. I was actually considering it during my post-BlackBerry withdrawal period, but it just didn't cut it, and while it had the roots behind it and some seemingly nice productivity software, a Psion it just wasn't.
- fmajid 11mo agoI wish they made their keyboard into a standalone Bluetooth device, it's far better than anything else in its size class.
- lproven 11mo agoBluetooth is a PITA. This is the 21st century version of an axiom: it's an XKCD. https://xkcd.com/2055/ https://xkcd.com/2055/ Pairing is a pain, charging is a nuisance, battery life is a constant worry, responsiveness is dodgy... there is nothing good about it. Give me something built-in, cabled, and always-on. Wireless is for fashion victims.
- exasperaited 11mo agoI know a few people who would love a device that gave them only the things they need and none of the rest. A great keyboard, enough room for writing. I use an iPad with a keyboard when I need this kind of “writing room” thing, but I know someone who uses an ancient electronic typewriter. FWIW when my disorganisation is catastrophic, I go out for a walk, leave my phone at home if I can, sit on a bench, and try to organise my life in one side of A4. And then if there’s a task that I can start by writing, I do it there, with a pen.
- DannyPage 11mo agoThe website design and product reminds me of the c100 - https://caligra.com/ https://caligra.com/ But this makes a lot more sense, can DIY, and uses the full body with the embedded touchscreen.
- fmajid 11mo ago$2000 seems ridiculously overpriced. They are based in the City of London and I suspect they are cargo-culting the Bloomberg Terminal, hence the name.
- F7F7F7 11mo agoMeh. When I see Developer Terminal I’m thinking more Mac OS Terminal where I live out my days and nights than Bloomberg’s Terminal. I know Bloomberg’s is iconic in the financial world but that’s a different persona. Also, before the responses to me start to pile up, yes: I am aware of the UNIX underpinnings that NextOS/MacOS relies on for Terminal and the influences thereafter.
- bitwize 11mo agoHoly crap, the front copy on this web site even reads like an 80s PC Magazine ad.
- jhbadger 11mo agoNeeds microcassette drives like the original PX-8 (which I actually had for a time, although after it was discontinued and sold by liquidators for a fraction of its former list price). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_PX-8_Geneva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_PX-8_Geneva
- c22 11mo agoIt looks like there'd be room to stick one to the right of the screen, above the main board. I'd prefer a minidisc drive, though, to bring it into the 21st century.
- ErroneousBosh 11mo agoMy first thought too :-)
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- b800h 11mo agoLaunch a Kickstarter to make pre-built versions of this IMMEDIATELY.
- mikerg87 11mo agoAny comment on the battery life? My TRS-80 model 100 could get about 2 full work days on two AA batteries.
- shakna 11mo agoA Pi on a 3.7v, with touchscreen and keyboard... In my experience that is in the range of 4-6 hours. Though, considering all the model 100s I keep staring at are in the range of $600-1000, tradeoff seems acceptable.
- rwl4 11mo agoThese kinds of products are drop dead gorgeous to me. Any time I see a device that has an Amiga 500 form factor or similar, I feel a compulsive urge to click buy. But after many, many of such purchases, I've learned my lesson. I buy it, I play with it a little bit, but the reality is my phone, iPad, or my laptop can do every single thing better. Maybe not with the same swagger. But ultimately, as I get older I realize I'm trying to produce with the least friction possible, and usually these devices have either highly constrained touch interfaces, shrunken keyboards, or both. I've always said that if somebody would create a new HP 200LX device with the same chicklet keyboard that I'd buy it in an instant. But now I realize that "ideal" device for me just reaches back to my contextual memory of state of the art devices of the time. A time when we couldn't type on a 6" screen, or use a detachable keyboard. So a chiclet keyboard you could thumb type at 40wpm was a revelation. But we have come a long way. In the end, alas, these devices really are just a novelty, at least for me.
- nxobject 11mo ago> But now I realize that "ideal" device for me just reaches back to my contextual memory of state of the art devices of the time. I think as well about that… as well as the work I do that pays my bills, and how efficiently I need to do it to keep my job. I get nostalgic after Psions. Small clamshell designs are great - I can do work on the go without lugging a fragile laptop! Well, no, actually - I need to do things in R, _quickly_, at a speed and efficiency that wasn’t possible back in the 90s. And by the time I’m done I don’t have any patience for the virtues of “distraction free computing”! Edge to edge high resolution screens that can simultaneously show graphics and an terminal and a ChatGPT session. The ability to constantly pipe large datasets into memory to and from disk, while holding up to R’s profligate use of memory. I’m just not meaningfully productive otherwise. So: I would love this, but it would be a toy that I’m sure I’ll use for a bit while I wax nostalgic about the mythical days people did everything on a VT-100.
- anthk 11mo agoSSH with Mosh it's your friend.
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- exasperaited 11mo agoInstantly in love with the 80s ad design cues in the website design. Disappointing that the 3D design files are Fusion, though; this is fully within FreeCAD’s scope.
- protocolture 11mo agoI honestly need ~5 of these. But the sequel product might suit my use case even better. Wondering if I can make this cheaper. Merge some of the parts together into a single piece. Instead of the Power Hat and battery I could maybe just squeeze a commercial Power Bank inside.
- gorgoiler 11mo agoThe sequel product does indeed look pretty rad: https://www.typeframe.net/docs/ps-85 https://www.typeframe.net/docs/ps-85 The keycaps are the semiotic iconography designs created for Alien (1979): https://wharferj.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/ron-cobbs-alien-semiotic-standards/ https://wharferj.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/ron-cobbs-alien-se... …not that anyone here didn’t already know that, I’m guessing!
- protocolture 11mo agoYeah that was my interest. I want these as terminals for my Alien RPG game.
- weddpros 11mo agoI dearly remember seeing a PX-8 in the hands of a person (was it by a pool?) and thinking "it would be so nice if work could look like that". It must have been Byte magazine? I was a kid in France, now I'm working remotely from Bangkok: dreams come true after all.
- Animats 11mo agoWhat does the red PANIC button on the keyboard do?
- Hackbraten 11mo agoI'd expect it to be a synonym for Escape, inspired by the mechanical keyboard subculture.
- Animats 11mo agoAw. I was expecting it to bring up a connection to an AI help system.
- c0nsumer 11mo agoThis is really neat, but it bugs me that the screen isn't centered on the keyboard.
- chaostheory 11mo agoI would get rid of the screen and replace it with projection glasses.
- hulitu 11mo ago> The Typeframe PX-88 Portable Computing System So it is a Raspberry Pi 4 c with 2 microHDMI and a strange keyboard. You need an adapter to connect it to a monitor or TV. Oh, no. It has a very small touch screen as a display. I'm sure gnome-session will look great on it.
- rcarmo 11mo agoI like this kind of thing, but like many on this thread have mixed feelings. nostalgia vs the cyberdeck concept vs practicality don’t really yield a good enough appraisal. Still, it’s a nice design. But the iPad Mini I’m typing this on (even without a physical keyboard) can do so much more.
- spants 11mo agoI used to sell the Epson Px8 and the NEC 8201, referenced here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/fhfmzn/the_long_and_potentially_quite_boring_story_of_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/fhfmzn/th... Nice bits of kit, but as I am old now.... my eyes don't work as well as needed for these small screens.