PenPad

PenPad - PDA600

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: Connecting to a PC; Add-ons for PDA600; How do I program it?; Trivial fact; External links

The PDA600 is one of my favourite Amstrad projects which probably has something to do with the fact that I was the Project Manager!

Unfortunately, The whole PDA concept was a bit of a plot that failed and as we were left with huge stocks of the PDA600 we have recently sold them all to Tandy (Radio Shack). This does have the hugh advantage that you can now buy one for £50 (which is less than half what it cost us to build them!)

LATE NEWS: I just heard on the grapevine that apparently Tandy have now sold on a large quantity of their stock to a company called "Surplus Technology" in the US. See below (under "Add ons") for details of how to contact them.

LATER NEWS: On 25th Nov 97 Jeff Lloyd was kind enough to email me to say:- I just ordered a PenPad from Direct Mobile for $US 50. As of today, they have 150 units left. Visit them here.

PC connection

As this has lead to a recent surge in sales I am repeatedly asked one question - are there any add ons for it and, specifically, is there a PC connection available.

The answers are yes and yes. Many Tandy branches stock the Eden Windows Organizer program for £19.95. This comes complete with a connection lead and in a Windows program duplicates all the functions of the PenPad so you can keep a diary, address book, etc. on both your PC and the PenPad and synchronise the data between them using the link. It serves the secondary purpose of keeping a backup of your data on your PC's hard disk. Further, it allows data to be converted to CSV and BMP format for use in other programs.

On 21st May 98 Julian Smith from Morgan Computers contacted me to say that they had just got a whole lot of Eden Organizer kits (complete with cables) in stock at the very reasonable price of £5 (+VAT). They can be reached at www.morgancomputers.co.uk

There are two companies (who work closely together) who have developed and stock a range of other peripherals for the PDA600 including the spreadsheet program. The companies are SCA Products of Worthing in Worthing, Sussex (click here to email them) and C*Star Software of Birkenhead near Liverpool.

See the next section on "Add-ons" for more details of where to get connection kits etc.

Add-ons for PDA600

As noted above a company called Surplus Technologies in the US have a large stock of PDA600's and associated add-ons including the Windows Organizer software. They sell the Organizer program for $69 and PDAs for $100. Their address is as follows:

Surplus Technologies
400 E. Centre Park
DeSoto, TX 75115
USA
(214) 228 9987

Click here to visit their web site.

There is also a company in Germany called Wiedmann who specialise in PDA600s and their add-ons. Their address is

WIEDMANN
Unternehmensberatung & Handel
Hauptstrasse 45
D-73553 Alfdorf
Tel.: +49-7172-3000-0
Fax.: +49-7172-3000-30

Some of the things they stock:

128K SRAM card 98.90 DM
256K SRAM card 149.50 DM
512K SRAM card 264.50 DM
PDA/NC100/NC200 lithium battery 11.50 DM
Eden's Organizer for Windows 149.50 DM
Their own transfer program
 (PDA600.EXE) 138.00 DM
PenCalc Spreadsheet for PDA600
 on 128KB SRAM card 213.90 DM
ditto on 256K 264.50 DM
Games on 128K card 149.50 DM
PDA600 249.55 DM
They also stock spare parts such as
 pens, digitisers, etc

Development

I've written quite a lot about software development for PDA's in the file's held in my library within GO UKIT on Compuserve. However the files have recently been added to my web archive so I suggest anyone interested in development have a look in my file archive. It can be very easy and there is a shareware Z80 assembler called Table Assembler that is almost all you'll need.

Trivia

Interesting fact number 37 is that we got about 95% of the way through developing a replacement for the PDA600 called the PIC700 that included a radio pager but it ran hugely over budget and schedule and was eventually shelved a few months ago - shame, it was brilliant.

Links to other web sites

Contact details for Eden Group who developed a large part of PDA600.

Direct Mobile USA (sell them for $79.95)

Amstrad PDA600/CPC page

Thomas Hommes PDA600 page (English)

Thomas Hommes PDA600 page (German)

Site that compares PDA600/PIC700 to other PDAs

Great "museuem" of calculators and organisers (including PDA600)

More details will appear here as I build these pages.

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