IBM 4612 Sure Point Mobile Computer

[NeXT]

This thing popped up on ebay late last month and I swore it was some sort of a scam listing because it was $25 and the seller had a bunch of negative feedback for non-delivery. Weird IBM stuff like this is normally snapped up instantly and it looks like this had been listed for a while with no bites. With Paypal protection in mind I tried for it anyways and yesterday afternoon a box from Florida arrived with the handheld and the docking station shrinkwrapped from storage. I'm so used to ebay sellers running as a business I forgot about the old days of ebay when rather than one or two days it could take up to two weeks for a seller to clear the payment and ship your item. Not only did this arrive within ebay's scheduled delivery window, it did so before Christmas. This dude's getting positive feedback.

Remember how in the early 90's several companies tried to take a stab at this whole tablet and mobile handheld computing thing? IBM did it several times. We had convertible Thinkpads, full-on tablets and of course the Simon. Supposedly this thing could take the role as a mobile POS terminal. The dock allows you to attach all of IBM's standard retail devices using their weird connectors but you can also undock it and carry it around. Options included a barcode scanner, wi-fi and a multi-track card reader. On the inside though it's a 486 PC with SoundBlaster support.
Pen Computing did a review of it when it was still very new in 1996. - https://www.pencomputing.com/old_pcm_website/PCM_11/surepoint.html
RCRwireless did a news blerb on it in December 1996. - https://www.rcrwireless.com/1996121...m-announces-wireless-retail-inventory-devices
Ardent has a 2-page Quick Start sheet for it that covers the features and options. - https://ardent-tool.com/media/PS2_MOST/ACROREAD/TSSFACT/TFSPOS/4010001.PDF
Mine was missing the battery but the FRU listed by chance matched another listing from our above seller who had five packs and the charging bank, so I grabbed that too and am waiting for it arrive.
There's also an IBM archive out there that contains most of the support files needed for DOS, OS/2 and Windows. (I have since made a local copy of this) Unfortunately it doesn't include the copy of Windows, which is Microsoft Windows for Pen Computing. For those who have never played with that, it's an OEM-only build of Windows 3.x that in addition to the "penabled" features also uses a different display and digitizer driver that's often unique to each model of the product. Winworld has WfPC for the IBM OEM, however like I said above it can vary between models (drivers for the 730T do not work on the 730TE and so on) and that download would not be compatible with this handheld. In reality there is no one download of Windows for Pen Computing. If the system doesn't come with a hard drive the odds are very high you are screwed.

Good news is that it arrived with the 260mb PCMCIA hard drive and the Wi-Fi card still buried inside the handle, so I can say there is now an archived image of the hard disk for the 4612.
Bad news is I can't share it yet becauseeeeeeeeeeeeeeee......

The previous owner was Disney, explaining why it was in Florida. This looks like it was used for a few years in the 90's as a hospitality support system, presumably at the resort and then got liquidated. While this thing alludes that on boot it fires up the wireless card, spins up a Netware client and Windows comes with a skinned AS/400 GUI client there are a few things I've found so far to indicate not everything was stored remotely (or they had some templates that were not just bogus addresses), so I need to very carefully sanitize the drive image before it's safe to release. It's about 64mb in size.

Worse news is this thing has a standby battery in it.

Better news is that I think the boards are all okay. The whole unit and the cradle are disgusting and need a full strip-down and cleaning because the Florida weather and poor storage has not done thing thing any favors and the corners, pockets or really anything that was in contact regularly with hands or what looks to be food is growing mold. Somehow the rubber components on the other hand are perfect! The LCD and touchscreen are also not doing too hot.

The LCD is suffering badly from vinegar syndrome and the polarizer is starting to bubble. The digitizer is also either sunburnt, well worn or something was sprayed on it to clean the glass and it reacted and fogged it.

I can find nothing else about this. I can't even find another unit in someone else's hands. This seems to be the only one known currently to still exist. I would love to find more information about it because IBM was famous for making really niche products that did make it to commercial availability but were never heard about again.

 

[bitshox]

Back in 1991 IBM released this thing called the PCradio that was basically a mobile data terminal in subnotebook form with PC DOS in ROM. It came with an optional thermal printer above the keyboard and an optional cellular modem. The 4612 looks like the PCradio crossed with an Apple Newton. I would love to see it in action.

The polarizer shouldn't be too hard to peel off and replace, and depending on how it's constructed you might be able to repair the digitizer too (polishing kits seem to work on scratched-up Newton screens according to what I've read).

 

[bitshox]

Computerworld had a column on it where they gave a street price of $3445 and said that it was optioned with OS/2:

I dusted off the research databases to see if there was any deeper coverage, but unfortunately all I could find was references to this being pilot-tested at Long John Silver's and at various European department stores:

According to this book, IBM sold at least 1000 units in China in a 3 month period, which isn't too bad of a sales figure given how obscure this thing is otherwise:

 

[NeXT]

I knew of the PCradio as I briefly saw a bunch of them on ebay but the Computerworld article is new to me! Good find!
1000 per month units sold to china sounds like a great start, but unless that was perpetual I'm not sure if that means good things for every one else. I can't find much for Long John's pilot testing.

 

[bitshox]

I knew of the PCradio as I briefly saw a bunch of them on ebay but the Computerworld article is new to me! Good find!
1000 per month units sold to china sounds like a great start, but unless that was perpetual I'm not sure if that means good things for every one else. I can't find much for Long John's pilot testing.

Yeah the 1000 unit figure isn't great, but it does prove that IBM manufactured it at scale and that it isn't just a few loose prototypes floating around.

IBM reused the Sure Point name for their POS touchscreens, making research rather annoying.

Spelunking through the Wayback Machine, I was able to find the original listing from 1996 on IBM.com, which gives a lot more detail about the unit (including an even rarer landscape model!):

 

[NeXT]

Well after another few weeks, the four Ni-MH batteries and the 4-slot charging station arrived. What I'm interpreting from this seller is that he's extremely slow, but if you are patient things would eventually ship out and arrive before the estimated delivery window.

They are a disaster. This got put away as-is and all four packs not only leaked and destroyed the packs (as well as the intelligent charge controller inside the packs) but also leaked down into the charging station and caused a substantial amount of leak damage. In addition the station was shipped as-is with the batteries left in the station. The station arrived okay but all four batteries shattered and were bouncing around inside the box.

The other issue is I have yet to get the computer to power on. There is no power button and while the cradle probably works (we see the screen lit in the listing) I can't tell if there's an interlock I'm missing or there is a soft-power button I'm not seeing. Until new details or information surfaces I have stabilized and separated the batteries from the old shells and repacked everything for storage. (but it's still in easy reach!)