EddieDX4
Veteran Member
A few years ago, I saw something on eBay that sparked my curiosity. I searched and came up with very minimal information, but enough to convince me to buy it, which I did. Luckily, nobody else bid on it (seeing how obscure this was at the time, I wasn't surprised), so I won it for a mere 99 cents plus $49 shipping...
The person who sold it was the original owner. I believe he had purchased it in 1990 or '91. The machine was immaculate, and he included all of the original manuals (a stack, literally), keyboard, mouse, all of the installation software, and even a VHS introductory tape it came with from the factory.
The machine, a Canon Navigator HD40, is an all-in-one system with:
- Built-in thermal printer (IBM/Epson compatible), mainly used for fax printing
- Fax modem (9600bps, I believe)
- Phone handset
- Matching black keyboard and mouse (my HD40 is black, there was also a gray'ish model)
- 2x CPUs; A NEC V30 (for main PC fcuntions/DOS) running at close to 14mhz, and a NEC V50, used to handle the Navigator background tasks (sending/receiving faxes, answer, etc.)
- 640KB RAM for the main system, and 128K used along with the V50 and the Navigator tasks (this loads its own BIOS via a DOS level driver during boot up)
- 9 ~ 10" grayscale EGA (640x350, 16 shades of gray) touchscreen display
- Built-in high-density 1.44MB floppy drive
- 40MB HDD (there was a model sold with dual-floppies, no HDD).
The Navigator portion of the system uses a GUI. I believe this takes advantage of the memory on the secondary board (the one with the V50 CPU and 128KB). This is speculation, so I'm hoping someone out there has more information about this. The machine uses MS-DOS 3.30, and I've been able to play many old DOS games with it. I installed Flight Simulator 4.0 and set it to EGA 16 color mode, and it looks very nice on the grayscale display. I also played Leisure Suit Larry 1, and the PC speaker music played happily.
Canon also included a portable bubble-jet printer, to be used with the Publish-It! DP suite that came bundled with the machine. The owner included this, as well.
I decided to start a thread on the Navigator HD40 system because, even after a few years, I am still having a hard time finding much information. I'm afraid its history and uniqueness will be lost in time.
I will take pictures to add to this thread, in an attempt to catalog and preserve its existance. If anyone else has any details (or corrections to my information), happens to own one, or would like to help track down information, please feel free to join in.
EDIT: Pictures added! They're linked from Photobucket, and I saved them in a fairly small size, so it should have minimal impact on bandwidth... But, if it's too annoying, I'll switch them to links, instead. I also grouped them by relevance. I might replace a few of them (exterior pictures, mostly) with better ones when lighting conditions improve (daylight). Crappy phone camera.
The person who sold it was the original owner. I believe he had purchased it in 1990 or '91. The machine was immaculate, and he included all of the original manuals (a stack, literally), keyboard, mouse, all of the installation software, and even a VHS introductory tape it came with from the factory.
The machine, a Canon Navigator HD40, is an all-in-one system with:
- Built-in thermal printer (IBM/Epson compatible), mainly used for fax printing
- Fax modem (9600bps, I believe)
- Phone handset
- Matching black keyboard and mouse (my HD40 is black, there was also a gray'ish model)
- 2x CPUs; A NEC V30 (for main PC fcuntions/DOS) running at close to 14mhz, and a NEC V50, used to handle the Navigator background tasks (sending/receiving faxes, answer, etc.)
- 640KB RAM for the main system, and 128K used along with the V50 and the Navigator tasks (this loads its own BIOS via a DOS level driver during boot up)
- 9 ~ 10" grayscale EGA (640x350, 16 shades of gray) touchscreen display
- Built-in high-density 1.44MB floppy drive
- 40MB HDD (there was a model sold with dual-floppies, no HDD).
The Navigator portion of the system uses a GUI. I believe this takes advantage of the memory on the secondary board (the one with the V50 CPU and 128KB). This is speculation, so I'm hoping someone out there has more information about this. The machine uses MS-DOS 3.30, and I've been able to play many old DOS games with it. I installed Flight Simulator 4.0 and set it to EGA 16 color mode, and it looks very nice on the grayscale display. I also played Leisure Suit Larry 1, and the PC speaker music played happily.
Canon also included a portable bubble-jet printer, to be used with the Publish-It! DP suite that came bundled with the machine. The owner included this, as well.
I decided to start a thread on the Navigator HD40 system because, even after a few years, I am still having a hard time finding much information. I'm afraid its history and uniqueness will be lost in time.
I will take pictures to add to this thread, in an attempt to catalog and preserve its existance. If anyone else has any details (or corrections to my information), happens to own one, or would like to help track down information, please feel free to join in.
EDIT: Pictures added! They're linked from Photobucket, and I saved them in a fairly small size, so it should have minimal impact on bandwidth... But, if it's too annoying, I'll switch them to links, instead. I also grouped them by relevance. I might replace a few of them (exterior pictures, mostly) with better ones when lighting conditions improve (daylight). Crappy phone camera.
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