Micro Palm PC/4000: Part 1

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The Clueless Engineer

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Published on November 7, 2023 4:06:38 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYC32jD33a0

Duration: 37:41

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This is an interesting machine from a company called Micro Palm Computers (Clearwater, Florida) in the late 80s/early 90s. All the chips look to be date stamped 1988.

I can't find much information about this machine or its bigger brother, the PC/5000. The information I do have can be found on Github:

https://github.com/0ddjob/MicroPalm-PC-4000

This is the only information I could find on the Web about it (in German), an article from 1992:
http://www.cowo.de/a/1133979

It's apparently an MS-DOS compatible machine running on an 80C88 with a 20x8 character, backlit, graphics capable (120x64) screen with 256KB of system RAM and 512KB of storage (I think), and has a 50-pin DD50 connector. I think it has 8KB of display RAM.

The unit is quite well sealed, would survive a drop and weighs about 1Kg (without batteries).

It only runs on batteries: three C-size, alkaline or rechargeable NiCd. It came with a 120VAC charger than outputs 4.35V @ 200mA, connecting via the DD50 port. This won't run the machine.

I didn't have any C-size batteries handy so I used my bench power supply to power it - it drew about 150mA (without the backlight on).

The booklet I have refers to some other manuals that I've not been able to track down yet:
[1] PC/5000 User's Guide (MC10033),
[2] PC/5000 Technical Reference Manual (MC10034),
[3] MS-DOS User's Guide (MC10035), and
[4] MS-DOS Programmer's Reference (MC10036).

It also came with a 5¼" floppy disk labelled "Utilities Disk Rev 1.0 B P/N SW10015" containing:
[1] MS-DOS Ver. 2.25 commands & programs,
[2] Communications,
[3] SHELL, and
[4] Device Drivers

It currently doesn't get any further than a diagnostics routine - it won't boot indicating "Bad or missing \DEV\CON" and "Bad or missing Command interpreter".