I think we have the tech to bring back some of these older cool looking handhelds. The form factor with some more up to date hardware and software would make a killer combo.
I think we have the tech to bring back some of these older cool looking handhelds. The form factor with some more up to date hardware and software would make a killer combo.
The Beepberry and Pocket CHIP are not unlike these, though they have a portrait form factor and a more raw aesthetic. Small, wide LCDs can be had; it’s tiny keyboards that are hard to get. I’ll add that I don’t value tiny keyboards much: it was a netbook keyboard that first made my wrists hurt, and since that time, I need my keyboard to fit my hands far more urgently than to fit in my pocket.
Earlier than these, I have an HP 95LX: a handheld equivalent to a PC-XT, with a 40x16 character mono LCD and one megabyte of battery-backed RAM, with DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 in ROM. The keyboard is made of HP calculator keys, which were often lauded. It would be somewhat promising for a mod, except it’s vintage enough that hacking it up would be a shame.
I have a Psion 5mx and there’s a Debian port for it which is crazy. I’ve been on the fence about installing it for similar reasons.