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My Police Computer

Lisa,

Is your Ricoh the tablet PC with the built-in CD? Does it have any other quirks I should know about? (It's on my wish-list, so (hopefully) I'll have one soon).
BTW, I never had any problem getting an IBM 730TE to recognize any of the several PCMCIA drives I threw at it. The IBM 360PE is another story though, as it is somewhat picky about what drives it likes, including the internal IDE, not just the PCMCIA ones.

--T
 
Erik,

Unless your computer has some kinda program built into it, you won't be able to access the serial ports without an operating system. Some computers do have such software in ROM, but usually you'd know about it cause it would probably boot up to a menu of some kind to allow you to use the ports.

--T
 
If you get one let me know I have all the drivers etc for the tablet to get the pen working. I'm running mine under win95 with an 802.11b card.

These are kinda picky about what drives they like to boot from and they won't boot from cdrom at all how silly. Anyways what I'm doing with mine is using a 2.5 laptop to CF board attached to the cdrom's cable. This allows me to use a CF card as my boot device. Fast low power draw and not likely to get toasted when dropped :)

There are some memopry tricks with them to that I'm fiddling with now as a few more MB of ram would be nice.

Oh yeah I've found that on my 730T it's fine as long as the drive's first partition is under 512mb, not an uncommon limitation in older hardware.

Terry Yager said:
Lisa,

Is your Ricoh the tablet PC with the built-in CD? Does it have any other quirks I should know about? (It's on my wish-list, so (hopefully) I'll have one soon).
BTW, I never had any problem getting an IBM 730TE to recognize any of the several PCMCIA drives I threw at it. The IBM 360PE is another story though, as it is somewhat picky about what drives it likes, including the internal IDE, not just the PCMCIA ones.

--T
Click to expand...
 
Ok, I'll keep that in mind if I get a chance to pick one up. I've seen a couple come up on eBay, but for some reason missed 'em.
BTW, what kind of processor does it run? (I'm thinking 5x86 or Pentium).

--T
 
Just an old 486dx2-50

katey

Terry Yager said:
Ok, I'll keep that in mind if I get a chance to pick one up. I've seen a couple come up on eBay, but for some reason missed 'em.
BTW, what kind of processor does it run? (I'm thinking 5x86 or Pentium).

--T
Click to expand...
 
You need to install "card & socket services" on the computer before the PCMCIA slots can be used under DOS. You can get the C&S programs from the manufacturer's website. There will usually be a card driver, a socket driver, an ATA driver, some kind of drive initialization (format) program, and mebbe some other stuff. If the card is brand-new, it'll certainly need to be initialized before you can use it. (Assuming it's the right type in the first place). Is there a battery slot on the card anywhere. If so, then the battery may need replacing, and if not, it's the probably wrong type of card. (SRAM vs DRAM). Also, check for a "write protect" switch, and be sure it's set properly.

--T
 
SOmething you may want to try is get a flash/sd/smc/etc memory card for a camera or something and a pcmcia adapter for it. I use a smartmedia on my laptop for quick and painless transfer of files from laptop to laptop and whatever has a card slot on it. That way you'll have no problem putitng dos on it as your laptop will see it as a new harddrive (just like mine does) and treat it as such. Then you can put the dos files on it and even win3.1. When I saw that you got an Apple card for an IBM compatible I wondered if it would work. Apple stuff and IBMpc stuff normally don't like to talk, but then again ram is ram and memory is memory so it might with some sweet-talking. Plus, those cards and adapters are pretty common and SmartMedia (as opposed to other types like SecureDigital and CompactFlash) is cheap cause it's considered obsolete (go figure). Still works great though. Just my $0.02.

Nathan
 
You shouldn't need any special drivers for that card, just the normal Card & Socket Services for your computer (usually available from the manufacturer, dependant on the p'ticular PCMCIA hardware installed).

--T
 
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