Subject: New life for a mailstation

From: "niklaus37217" <niklaus37217@...>
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 22:41:25 -0000

Since these are showing up everywhere, has anyone though of
reprogramming them into a functional PC assistant type device? 
What I think would be workable might be 
1 keep the flash update facility.
2 keep basic email ability
3 dump the spell checker and add some sort of programming facility.
4 add parallel port data exchange drivers and support for a simple
terminal emulation. 

What would be good would be something of the functionality of one of
the alphasmart laptops. Mailstations have a much faster processor and
much more memory than the old tandy 100s and there is still a market
for the tandy laptops.

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From: "Cyrano Jones" <cyranojones_lalp@...>
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 23:37:05 -0000

> reprogramming them into a functional PC assistant type device? 

If you can program in z80 assembler, "we have the technology".
We just need some code now...

> 4 add parallel port data exchange drivers and support for a simple

There are at least 9 pages of 16k each available, without dumping
anything (except the out of date tv listings, etc.).  But I agree,
the spell checker is useless, and that is at least another page or 
three.

After loafing for several weeks, I've got back to looking
at this project, and made a lot of progress figuring out
how to integrate new apps into existing mailstation firmware.

I also have figured out how to dump the rom before erasing it.  :-)
(I started typing it up last night, but conked out before I
could post it.)  

It turns out that you can add the "Yahoo" type of app to 
*all* the mailstations, whether they have the yahoo/mycidco 
menu item or not.  They show up as icons after "settings"
if there is no yahoo folder!  
 
By yahoo type of app, I mean adding code that takes the 
place of the yahoo data.  I am not talking about adding
tv listings or weather or news.  The yahoo data is stored
as an executable program, and this program can be anything
you want (given that somebody writes the code).

--CJ

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From: "John R. Hogerhuis" <jhoger@...>
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:10:51 -0700

> much more memory than the old tandy 100s and there is still a market

A good first step would be to port the SDCC Z80 target "standard
library" to work with the debugger loader.

My intent is to finish my port of CamelForth to MS... probably a day's
work, but it's just one of a list of projects I have going at the
moment.

-- John.

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From: "Neil Morrison" <neilsmorr@...>
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:53:02 -0700

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "niklaus37217" <niklaus37217@...>

> 3 dump the spell checker and add some sort of programming facility.

Why? There's plenty of room already.

Neil

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From: "Cyrano Jones" <cyranojones_lalp@...>
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2005 14:20:58 -0000

> library" to work with the debugger loader.

I'm not sure I understand...  Do you mean work with
as far as console i/o?  Or loading?

> work, but it's just one of a list of projects I have going at the

Looking forward to it!

--CJ

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From: "John R. Hogerhuis" <jhoger@...>
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 00:28:15 -0700

> as far as console i/o?  Or loading?

Both. sdcc already has a z80 target, But to do a simple program like
hello world someone needs to create an init and connect to whatever low
level i/o routines we have available.

> > work, but it's just one of a list of projects I have going at the

It wasn't too hard to port to WP-2, another z80 laptop. Three or four
little subroutines to port, and you can start testing high level forth
code interactively at the prompt.

-- John.