neckspike

contemplating a crab's immortality


SpindleyQ
@SpindleyQ

The Trans Phone keeps popping up in my field of internet vision, and I just need to say, somewhere, that I worked on a later revision of this product in, like, 2002. (Most of the work was done by the guy I shared my cubicle with, but I helped out now and then.) By then it was called the iCit Telecenter. I have one in my basement, it looks virtually identical to this, just a lighter grey, and with a SVGA touchscreen instead of screen buttons. When you folded up the keyboard, it would show banner ads in the little rectangle of the screen that was still visible. Under the hood the Telecenter was a 486 PC with like... 10mb of flash storage, running QNX 4. They contracted out the software to the company I was working for, but ran out of money to pay us with. IDK if they ever sold any.


SpindleyQ
@SpindleyQ

Nobody asked me to, but I dug it out and booted it up. I largely remembered correctly; it's a 75MHz 486 with 16mb of RAM and an 8mb DiskOnChip, which is... kind of a wild device, honestly. I won't get into it here because nobody cares, but getting it back to the point where it attempts to boot into QNX was a big victory for me today. Unfortunately I definitely did not leave it programmed with its original firmware, but it looked more or less like the bottom screen here.

Probably gonna pull the DiskOnChip, toss in a big ol' CompactFlash drive, and make it run Doom.


SpindleyQ
@SpindleyQ

It's basically unplayable thanks to the cheap keyboard that has no rollover on the arrow keys, meaning I can't turn and move forward at the same time
And the ghosting on the cheap LCD is pretty bad

But I know everyone wants to see the next generation Trans Phone run Doom, so here you are


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in reply to @SpindleyQ's post:

I pretty much put myself through university working on Little Doomed QNX PCs. I also worked on the Netpliance i-Opener, which sold at a substantial loss because they assumed they'd make it up in internet subscriptions. However, once it hit Slashdot that someone figured out how to put a hard drive in it and boot Linux without ever signing up for their service, well.

in reply to @SpindleyQ's post:

that moment in "unreal estate" where the guy pulls open the cyberdeck and it has a keyboard and screen inside

(sorry if this is wrong, it made a strong but vague impression on me)