Tablet machines and W9X?

I had an idea that a large-ish tablet might also have standard mouse and
keyboard sockets, effectively making it a standard PC with fairly high screen
resolutions. I need to run W98 SE on it, even if I also run other OS's on it.
Is this possible, or are they all ARM CPU's and suchlike, not compatible
enough to be used like this?

I want to find a cheap portable way to use W98. The main unit must be solid,
likely to withstand being treated like a large book, and not an open tray of
144 eggs! So laptops are out of the question, those thin screens and
vulnerable hinges will not do.

I'm very unfamilar with what might be ideal, or cheap (ideally both), so any
suggestions count so long as they are based on experience with something. I
want to avoid finding out the hard way, if something looks awesome, but
breaks if I breath on it thw wrong way. If it's as abuse resistant as a good
ELO touchscreen, so much the better, but I do not need it to be a
touchscreen. It just has to be a screen and CPU in one piece (no hinges), be
portable, and strong enough to stand a lot of use.

MotoFox confucius-
wrote in
:

If you can track down an XO-1, try it. Yes, I know it's a laptop but it's
probably about as solid and rugged a laptop as you could possibly hope to
get, and the screen flips around so it can be used like a tablet. Haven't
tried running 98 on mine yet (it's still on crappy old Mandriva 2008.1) so
I can't comment on how well it'd work, but it's worth a try.



Too many moving parts... Way too many. That's what I want to avoid. I think
you're right that the touchscreen would work in W98 though. While it's not
vital for me, it is likely that emulating a mouse demands that at some point
the hardware connects via serial or USB like a mouse does. To do anything
else just puts a burden on OS designers who might be less willing to support
the device if makers are deliberately obstructive.


About the kind of machine I want, I'm amazed they haven't existed for years!
A vertically oriented or leaning surface is much more easily cooled than a
flat one that is insulated or even heated on one side. Fitting a screen on a
hinge is harder to engineer than fitting it into a deck and covering it with
a tough transparent layer that is easily and cheaply replaced if scratched.
Spare acrylic sheets could have cost little more than a fiver! People would
have paid ten, and the makers could have made good money out of that. The box
could have had rubber grips on one edge, and a pull-out bracket on the back
like a photo-frame, and have standard keyboard sockets (or Bluetooth) and
been supplied with a small travel keyboard, leaving the user with more choice
later. It might not have been the best idea for ACTUAL laptop use, but it
would have been better almost everywhere else. It could also have been a more
ideal fusion between desktop and portable machines, yet apparently no-one
considered it! At least, not until about 15 years, more like 20, after it
became practical to build them. Now, EVERYONE seems to want one, some will
risk looting a shop to get one! The question is, why didn't they want one
before? Did makers just tell they they didn't, and make them somehow beleive
it?

On 18 Mar 2012, Lostgallifreyan wrote:

About the kind of machine I want, I'm amazed they haven't
existed for years! A vertically oriented or leaning surface
is much more easily cooled than a flat one that is
insulated or even heated on one side. Fitting a screen on a
hinge is harder to engineer than fitting it into a deck and
covering it with a tough transparent layer that is easily
and cheaply replaced if scratched. Spare acrylic sheets
could have cost little more than a fiver! People would have
paid ten, and the makers could have made good money out of
that. The box could have had rubber grips on one edge, and
a pull-out bracket on the back like a photo-frame, and have
standard keyboard sockets (or Bluetooth) and been supplied
with a small travel keyboard, leaving the user with more
choice later. It might not have been the best idea for
ACTUAL laptop use, but it would have been better almost
everywhere else. It could also have been a more ideal
fusion between desktop and portable machines, yet
apparently no-one considered it! At least, not until about
15 years, more like 20, after it became practical to build
them. Now, EVERYONE seems to want one, some will risk
looting a shop to get one! The question is, why didn't they
want one before? Did makers just tell they they didn't, and
make them somehow beleive it?

They HAVE existed for a while, I own one of these from the mid
90s for example:

http://www.toshiba-europe.com/bv/com...ucts/notebooks
/t200/index.shtm

It has a standard serial, VGA and PS/2 keyboard port but the
parallel port is miniaturised. It's a fairly tough (and
weighty) machine but probably far underpowered for what you
want.

--
__ __
#_ |\| | _#

Computer Nerd Kev wrote in
:

On 18 Mar 2012, Lostgallifreyan wrote:

About the kind of machine I want, I'm amazed they haven't
existed for years! A vertically oriented or leaning surface
is much more easily cooled than a flat one that is
insulated or even heated on one side. Fitting a screen on a
hinge is harder to engineer than fitting it into a deck and
covering it with a tough transparent layer that is easily
and cheaply replaced if scratched. Spare acrylic sheets
could have cost little more than a fiver! People would have
paid ten, and the makers could have made good money out of
that. The box could have had rubber grips on one edge, and
a pull-out bracket on the back like a photo-frame, and have
standard keyboard sockets (or Bluetooth) and been supplied
with a small travel keyboard, leaving the user with more
choice later. It might not have been the best idea for
ACTUAL laptop use, but it would have been better almost
everywhere else. It could also have been a more ideal
fusion between desktop and portable machines, yet
apparently no-one considered it! At least, not until about
15 years, more like 20, after it became practical to build
them. Now, EVERYONE seems to want one, some will risk
looting a shop to get one! The question is, why didn't they
want one before? Did makers just tell they they didn't, and
make them somehow beleive it?

They HAVE existed for a while, I own one of these from the mid
90s for example:

http://www.toshiba-europe.com/bv/com...ucts/notebooks
/t200/index.shtm

It has a standard serial, VGA and PS/2 keyboard port but the
parallel port is miniaturised. It's a fairly tough (and
weighty) machine but probably far underpowered for what you
want.


A bit.. But it does have a 'transflective' display which is good. For
whatever reason, displays that will work in bright daylight or sunlight seem
to have gone out of fashion.

I think I came across the T200 in a seaarch a few months back (And some tiny
DOS-based machines), when lookign for small machines that might run W98. MOst
were allegedly decaying, or expensive museum pieces. That's what led me to my
earlier conclusion, because that doesn't imply continuity. Laptops have
plenty of that, but I never liked them. Eee machines are a rare exception.
Lots of cheap power there. I just wish I could get that in a single deck,
with a tough screen cover. A weird quirk of computer history is that people
tended to try to separate the VDU from the CPU, and bind the keyboard to the
VDU in portable machines. I think better results would have happened if
pepole had tried to combine CPU and VDU wherever possible, and keep keyboards
separate like most other peripherals. At least, applying this method to LCD's
would have worked better, maybe not with CRT's, which may be why the bad
logic persisted long after people got rid of CRT's.

Lostgallifreyan wrote in
:

bind the keyboard to the
VDU

To the CPU, I mean...

In message ,
Lostgallifreyan writes:
[]
apparently no-one considered it! At least, not until about
15 years, more like 20, after it became practical to build
them. Now, EVERYONE seems to want one, some will risk
looting a shop to get one! The question is, why didn't they
want one before? Did makers just tell they they didn't, and
make them somehow beleive it?
[]
Basically, CPU + display in one unit.

When the Ees and netbooks first started to appear, one or two appeared
(may still be available) with the CPU box (including RAM and HD - most
don't have an optical drive) in a little box, without display, but with
standard - I think it's actually called VGA - fixings on the box, so
that you could fix them to the back of a flat-screen monitor, using the
holes on that monitor that were put there to allow wall-mounting. These
would produce a fairly small and rigid unit. I guess they didn't really
catch on because of the lack of small, battery-powered, monitors to
attach them to. So-called all-in-one PCs do exist, but seem to be very
much a niche market: you don't hear much about them, and they seem to
have settled around the 18-22" size, for home users who want a neat
system, rather than portable sizes.

A bit.. But it does have a 'transflective' display which is good. For
whatever reason, displays that will work in bright daylight or sunlight seem
to have gone out of fashion.

What I could never understand is why display manufacture (with the
exception of whatever it is e-readers use) has persisted in fighting
ambient light with brighter and brighter backlights: an LCD panel is
basically transmissive, so I couldn't (still can't) understand why the
option of using a diffuser (even a sheet of paper!), so that you could
actually _use_ ambient light, has never been offered. Actually, I've
seen it in one range of Sony cameras - the one I saw was one that had a
floppy drive in it (!), but anyway, it had the backlight shine through a
diffuser that extended to a strip at the top of the camera: if you were
using it in bright conditions, you turn the backlight off, and sunlight
comes down from the strip and you can see the monitor screen fine. But
I've never seen anything similar on anything bigger (AFAIK even today's
tablets all still use a backlight). My main reason for wondering about
this was/is battery life: OK, today's backlights (I'm guessing mostly
LEDs these days) are more efficient than when they first started using
them (electroluminescents?), but the principle still applies.
[]
with a tough screen cover. A weird quirk of computer history is that people
tended to try to separate the VDU from the CPU, and bind the keyboard to the
VDU in portable machines. I think better results would have happened if
pepole had tried to combine CPU and VDU wherever possible, and keep keyboards
separate like most other peripherals. At least, applying this method to LCD's
would have worked better, maybe not with CRT's, which may be why the bad
logic persisted long after people got rid of CRT's.

I think you're right. (All-in-one units with CRTs did exist - I think
the Osborne 1 may even have run on batteries, it was certainly heavy
enough! - the best example possibly being the original Amstrad word
processor [even had most of the printer electronics in it!], but these
were mostly aimed at reduction of number of boxes rather than
portability, CRTs being both too heavy and too power-hungry for that to
be a realistic aim [especially with the batteries of the day]).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

When the Ees and netbooks first started to appear, one or two appeared
(may still be available) with the CPU box (including RAM and HD - most
don't have an optical drive) in a little box, without display, but with
standard - I think it's actually called VGA - fixings on the box, so
that you could fix them to the back of a flat-screen monitor, using the
holes on that monitor that were put there to allow wall-mounting.

That's a really good idea. I have a couple of smaller ELO monitors (12") that
have those standard VESA bolt-hole fixings. (Not sure why it's called VESA, I
thought that was some old video standard around 486 time...) A box like that
might be the single best way I can make use of those.

Anyway, if you (or anyone) can name me anything specific enough to reduce the
hideous Google SNR I'll get onto it.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

So-called all-in-one PCs do exist, but seem to be very
much a niche market: you don't hear much about them, and they seem to
have settled around the 18-22" size, for home users who want a neat
system, rather than portable sizes.


Expensive too, I just had a look... For that kind of money I'd do what I
already do, get some good industrial standard kiosk-type open frame monitor,
and an ITX, and put them in one box. I was going to, anyway, until I decided
it would be too big and expensive to do. I bought a portable 3U rack cabinet,
then decided I didn't want to cut it up so I put a bass guitar effect unit
and preamp in there... Finding a balance between cheap and ideal is very
awkward. My current best balance is NOT at all portable.

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

What I could never understand is why display manufacture (with the
exception of whatever it is e-readers use) has persisted in fighting
ambient light with brighter and brighter backlights: an LCD panel is
basically transmissive, so I couldn't (still can't) understand why the
option of using a diffuser (even a sheet of paper!), so that you could
actually _use_ ambient light, has never been offered.

Indeed. I tried to work out one, but never found a display cheap AND good
enough to warrant the effort and risk. It may be easier than I thought
though. Basically, take the back off, as for accessing backlight tubes to
replace them. Leave it off, placing a bright diffusing panel behind there to
reflect sunlight up through the panel, and shroud the top so it doesn't
overheat, and to prevent bright distractions around the periphert from makign
it useless. The arrangement would be messy though. Either that, or neat,
small, and useless because it won't gather enough light to evenly backlight
the screen.

Standard transflective LCD's for baclit monochrome graphics are good. I'm not
sure if there is any specific reason why colour ones don't do the same thing.
Colour rendering is NOT an issue, it can do that in the dark, in bright light
it only has to be clear, with enough colour differentiation to be useful.
Maybe colour isn't the problem, but contrast might be.

When I had a small Dell PDA (X50V) I noticed that in sunlight I could detect
a flickering that I can't see when it's backlit in a room. That might also
have stopped them making it more reflective, but I think a bit more
reflectivity at the expense of some backlight loss might have been a better
compromise. Ten years ago firms really DID design a machine with thought for
outside use, these days they all seem to think we're only allowed to use them
in homes and offices, and treat the sun as if it's their worst enemy.

In message ,
Lostgallifreyan writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

When the Ees and netbooks first started to appear, one or two appeared
(may still be available) with the CPU box (including RAM and HD - most
don't have an optical drive) in a little box, without display, but with
standard - I think it's actually called VGA - fixings on the box, so
that you could fix them to the back of a flat-screen monitor, using the
holes on that monitor that were put there to allow wall-mounting.

That's a really good idea. I have a couple of smaller ELO monitors (12") that
have those standard VESA bolt-hole fixings. (Not sure why it's called VESA, I
thought that was some old video standard around 486 time...) A box like that

(I _think_ I remember it as long cards that plugged into - I think - PCI
[might have been ISA!] slots but had an extra connector further out. But
that could have been something else.)

might be the single best way I can make use of those.

Anyway, if you (or anyone) can name me anything specific enough to reduce the
hideous Google SNR I'll get onto it.

Netbox seems to be the keyword, though Asus have now made theirs with
little legs. But the MSI Wind one - which I suspect is no longer in
production, but you might be able to find _something_ similar - was the
one I was thinking of. See for example
http://vr-zone.com/articles/official...pecs/6285.html
A quick look on Ebay and elsewhere suggests they are rare though )-:
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they
ever
press charges." - Jack Handey