Abusing a 90's Brother Word Processor

[@ActionRetro]

Use my code ACTIONRETRO and the link shakerandspoon.com/actionretro to get $20 off your first Shaker & Spoon box!

[@jasedxyz]

your first!

[@Toonrick12]

Just as long you don't do RAID, I'm fine with any sponsors you do.

[@FeasableOption]

Forgive me for going off topic but What's the t-shirt you're wearing? It seems familiar yet I can't put my finger on it.

[@ActionRetro]

@@Toonrick12 haha thats one i wont do, and they’ve tried 😂

[@minty_Joe]

Do they include a recipe for the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster? 42!

[@joelavcoco]

As for the general low power of this thing in 1997, you have to remember that everybody's Grandma (literally) was being told they needed a computer and email. They always said they didn't want anything 'complicated' or 'fancy' -- they just wanted an appliance that 'just worked' without any confusing options. That's who this kind of thing was aimed at. They didn't want to run Wolfenstein 3D. They just wanted to do simple, basic stuff. And, realistically, a '386/SX with 4M of RAM was probably enough to do that. Of course, sometimes getting the 'simple', 'basic' thing to interoperate with the real world can get very complicated. As someone else mentioned, you might see if the SOC has UART pins, and then you can hook up a serial terminal for Linux. Also, if you can figure out the parallel port pinout, you might be able to rewire it, or build a dongle to get some of your parallel port devices to work, depending on how weirdly nonstandard it is.

[@ActionRetro]

I think that's one of the reasons I like this thing so much. It's repurposing old technology with a lightweight and simple interface to make a useful computer experience. You're absolutely right.

[@eDoc2020]

This has a regular serial port so that avenue should work. Adding something along the lines of console=ttyS0,9600n8 to the boot.bat should make it accessible at 9600 8n1.

[@mstcrow5429]

That would run Wolf3D great.

[@scottlarson1548]

I could picture my mom in the 1990s typing away on something like this at the dining room table. Best of all she could put it in a drawer when she wasn't using it because would want a big computer taking up a lot of space?

[@mstcrow5429]

@@scottlarson1548 Big computers always look cool.

[@darkwinter6028]

You’re probably going to need to generate a custom scan code map and re-compile the kernel to get it working with Linux.

[@GdotWdot]

Time to invite NCommander over for some retrotech BSDM.

[@ActionRetro]

Spoilers...

[@monkeyman767]

@@ActionRetro ohhhhhhh

[@aziztcf]

@@GdotWdot Yes daddy make it hurt

[@Solaceon]

@@ActionRetro OMG PLEASE!!! Dude I'd watch the hell outta that.

[@ChartreuseKitsune]

Those F5 and F8 shortcut keys are actually features of MS-DOS (At least in MS-DOS 6 but I also believe it is part of 5). They're for when you mess up your Config.sys and want to diagnose or repair your errors. Nothing special for the geobook, but nice that ROM-DOS still has those and didn't disable them.

[@ActionRetro]

Oh sweet, thanks for this!

[@kathrynradonich3982]

I was about to say the same thing. Very useful features

[@juliedunken1150]

@@ActionRetro it’s not true, I’ve gone back and read my DOS 6 manuals and they do not list as a option.

[@juliedunken1150]

@@kathrynradonich3982 then you were about to be wrong

[@kathrynradonich3982]

@@juliedunken1150 it isn’t wrong F5 has been a feature since at least MS-DOS 5 and I’m pretty sure it worked on 4.01 and 3.3 but I could be wrong on those two. F8 I’m not sure how long it’s been a feature but definitely 6.2 and later

[@rmcdudmk212]

The fact that it ran a 386 into what looks like a childs toy amazes me. These would be great to use as a case for a home made Raspberry Pi portable system.

[@CommodoreFan64]

That's what I thought with the last video, convert the ⌨️ scan codes, and pop in a modern lcd. Just use an example of one that needs repair,and keep these original.

[@HisDivineShadow]

I think the kids call them cyberdecks.

[@segaboy9894]

Also, this would be a great distraction free tool for writers.

[@allalphazerobeta8643]

Cheaper Apple eMate! The 386 was built in to some non-smart satellite phones. EEVblog #721 - Globalstar Satellite Phone Teardown if you want to see it.

[@greenaum]

Yeah! Let's kill a quirky piece of history so we can have another case for yet another fucking Raspberry Pi that will end up decorating a shelf. There's already hundreds of things you can put Pi's into, that have better LCDs. Get a broken PC laptop or something where the motherboard's gone. Must be a million of 'em. Meanwhile this GEOS-brick is gonna be with us forever. Nothing to go wrong.

[@RynoDBones]

I bought one of these at an auction in 1999 for $15. Gave it to my girlfriend at the time because she didn’t have an actual computer. It was really pretty great for what it was needed for.

[@drstkova]

We ported our web browser to GEOS (jee oss) in the mid 90s and had several of these laptops. At the time companies were searching for accessible devices that weren’t computers to allow normal humans to use the internet. Magic cap, Sony, and brother all had competing devices. GEOS was a nightmare to code. So much so we had a song about it. “Put another arrow in, indirection hooligan. Lock but don’t unlock again…”

[@ran2wild370]

It looks like I was mistaken when I wished GEOS to be the Unix DE :-))

[@drstkova]

@@ran2wild370 What’s a “DE”?

[@steveballmersbaldspot2.095]

@@drstkova I'm assuming he means "Desktop environment"

[@billpg]

Hey Neil. I still have nightmares of those .goc files.

[@ran2wild370]

@@drstkova Desktop environment like CDE, KDE & GNOME 😀😀

[@storydtechtiverobertjones464]

I recently found one of those impossible to find NB-80C models. They were not available in any of the electronics stores-at least near me at the time. There were plenty of the NB-60 models. I used one back when it was still possible to use with dial up connection. I used it for email and word processing mainly, as the browser was not capable of showing pictures on the web. It was text only and slow as heck, even in the 90s. The NB-80C was capable of viewing photos…though not so much now! It has taken me years to track down a working model. I loved using it for my early writing projects, and it was mainly nostalgia that kept me searching for the higher end model. Thanks for the video!

[@segaboy9894]

Honestly, I think there was some value there. When I was a kid, I had a Brother Word processor in my room and in those days, and my grandma had one too! Sire, I wanted something that would play games, but in 1998, we really just needed a reliable word processor! 😀 These were reliable machines that came with a warranty.

[@Astinsan]

A lot of them were z80’s. You could get them to a dos prompt too.. it required very little modifications.

[@rancdsk8]

yea i had one of those that had a standalone monitor with a floppy drive that was given to me by a relative bc they had just bought a new computer and I needed a word processor for school.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Sad to see that the Wolfenstein gods weren't smiling on you on this occasion... Maybe next time. Ah... LOADLIN... Now that takes me back! 😎

[@Cowclops]

I'm thankful that you have the guts to do in-video sponsorships that aren't for gray market windows keys or VPN services, those kinds of sponsors are huge mismatch between "way over played" and "not really a desirable product."

[@grimmpickins2559]

I really appreciate the fact that you double-downed on this one, because, wow, trying to use these... I am starting to miss the retro-Apple shenanigans... and despite being a fan of those shenanigans, it isn't all I do either. I have a guilty love for early 2000-2010s tech (my favorite Macs are the g4 MDD and 5,1 Mac Pros...). I love word processors (I used ones before this that we're much, much worse), because, when you're writing, the rest is a distraction - so my oldest computers are 'writing systems' and, honestly, I just smile at the old school layout. I really appreciate the new "ad sponsor". As a Country Club type chef, Saturdays are one of those few days where I don't have late days, or dinner services (yeah, it sounds weird to me too). The first thing I do when I get home on Saturday is crack a beer (or cider, or etc.) and look for your Saturday video. Cheers, buddy!

[@jeremygregorio7472]

I had GEOS for the commodore 64 and used to write School papers with Geo write. I bought it as a kid into this day I couldn't tell you why but I just really wanted it.

[@xenotiic8356]

I appreciate the honesty of "I just wanted to make cocktails" XD

[@singletona082]

the funny thing is? So long as those produced files on disks word perfect could open atschool? I'd have loved either of those in the 90s. Bonus points for infocom games or the like.

[@jimian2007]

I once thought computers dedicated to be 'word processors' are limited to Japan, and I'm quite surprised they were sold outside of Japan as well! Sometimes these vintage word processors would appear in Japanese dramas.

[@handlesarefeckinstupid]

Word processors were a thing way before Japan became a tech thing.

[@KC9UDX]

They were everywhere in the USA in the 80s

[@JeffreyPiatt]

The Amish buy computers like this with the Internet features removed along with any multimedia.

[@kissingfrogs]

lack of sleep philosophy is the best sort of philosophy, You had me laughing out loud for that and many others

[@orchishgrunt7888]

The CD-ROM driver MSCDEX usually worked in conjunction with another driver loaded from the config.sys. For example, the Windows 98 startup disk included a series of CD-ROM drivers, including OAKCDROM.SYS. The syntax in the config.sys was, IIRC, device=oakcdrom.sys /d:mscd001, with the autoexec.bat file containing mscdex /d:mscd001 (the mscd001 part could be anything you like, but you'll want to avoid something that matches a filename, as it would mess up when reading files with that name). There's probably another driver for the parallel port and PCMCIA card drives. I hope that provides some clues that help out :)

[@monkeyman767]

Loving the looks into these weird little machines, amazing the functionality that GEOS manages to squeeze out of it's relatively poor specs

[@RickTheGeek]

Was the same on the Commodore 64 version too… it was utterly amazing what it could do (although admittedly very slowly) on even a stock 64!

[@jnharton]

Just remember that people used the original IBM PC for real business purposes. It had an Inte 8088 clocked at 4.77 MHz and the base spec was 16 KB of ram. - Relative is absolutely the key word there.

[@reidster87]

I remember seeing the greyscale model in the Popular Science October 1997 issue. Another magazine had a full page ad around the same time. I was fascinated by the idea of a greyscale LCD as all I'd seen in person at the time were monochrome/1-bit or some pretty dim passive passive matrix colour displays. The photos in the magazines made the Geobook's display seem bright and contrasty, but with way more detail than the monochrome displays I'd seen, since a lot less dithering was required. Seeing it in this video, I'm inclined to believe that the $699 Geobook had a pretty good display for word processing and productivity. A bottom of the barrel 1997 Windows laptop would cost you about $1700 and would have a pretty lousy display.

[@boneske]

Can't wait to see what you do next with these portables.

[@ozzelot3349]

I loved that Bad Apple demo! This thing would... indeed be bad at being an Apple, I guess.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

Pretty much all parallel storage devices and PCMCIA devices need drivers to work in DOS. Not just MSCDEX.EXE, but also .sys in CONFIG.SYS.

[@TheReimecker]

I love the fact that you can see motif as a toolkit in geos

[@t.gadway6729]

Thanks for reviewing one of my favorite laptops. I originally bought them as a distraction free working environment it has since turned into a time sink of absurd proportions. Now that you have one of these rabbit holes yourself here's a few tips to save a little time. GEOS, the real thing: It's able to run the actual GEOS software from Breadbox. I believe the OS is open source now, including the assembly source code. The way to get it to work with the Geobook's proprietary keyboard is to extract the keyboard driver from the Geobook itself and replace the Breadbox GEOS driver with it after you have installed or copied the OS to a flash card. The driver can be found and extracted by running the Breadbox GEOS file manager from in the Geobook, not the native manager. This is because the Geobook copies the files it needs from ROM on to a half meg RAMdrive labelled D, which is hidden in the Geobook file manager. The Breadbox file manager can acsess it. Once completed you'll have a GEOS laptop that isn't limited to one program at a time in full screen mode. DOS: There are many more DOS programs than GEOS ones so it might be more usefull that way. I think the difficulty you had with the DOS programs you tried were because they were games that needed the direct access to the keyboard for speed. I've tried hundreds of others like word processors, grammar checkers, planetariums, spreadsheets, and paint programs and they mostly work. IIR the config.sys and autoexec.bat are in ROM so anything like mouse drivers and XMS memory managers need to be put into memory after boot with utilities like devload or ctload. Devices for changing system parameters like files and lastdrive can be found in the QEMM(95?) memory management program. I have found no way to set DOS=high or DOS=umb. I think EMS memory works on it. Maybe. In DOS, most text editors are useless for modern users as they input a line ends character(s) at the end of every line instead of at the end of paragraphs. Exceptions are Talisoft's PC Word, PC Tools' editor, Flexpad by Kramer, TinyEmacs, and of course MS Word and Works. If you find pressing F5 or F8 to get to DOS at startup tedious try replacing the GEOS.INI on the F drive with a blank file. It should start up in DOS with an error message about fonts or something. Bad Design: Something you might want to look at is the poor connection between the body of the laptop with the screen. Pry the covering (the 1"X1.5" curved part) off by squeezing the inner part (near the screen) to unhook its "claws" from holes in the laptop body and lift up. Inside you'll see a metal rod through the bottom of the screen chassis with a metal pair of screw holes... which are screwed into a flimsy plastic strut from the body itself, IIR. Two NB-60's I've had have snapped there rendering the screen wobbly. Perhaps lubrication at the base of the metal might have prevented this? I don't know. You might find a better solution. MSC: Outside of Breadbox GEOS I have found multitasking on the Geobook to be almost impossible with the exceptions of Dosamatic and GEMXM. Windows 3.1 also runs like Linux on it: no keyboard. The trackpad also seems to have no DOS drivers for it. Anyway, have fun with these Fisher-Price laptops.

[@PearComputingDevices]

Years ago I sold Geoworks otherwise known as Newdeal on very low end hardware. I did this because I found that many customers back in 1997 just wanted to get online, they didn't know or care what OS was technically on it or even the specs as much as something just working. This idea is what lead me to selling BeOS powered desktops too. Geos just worked, that's all many cared about. Ironically my boss claimed this would be a dumb idea, yet we sold boatloads of Geos powered devices.

[@aziztcf]

Got a romdump of the BIOS? Would love to check if those scancodes could be easily converted to a standard format.

[@DimNussens]

Your whiteboard gags are killing me man, please keep them in!

[@eekee6034]

The sponsor bit reminds of a phase Matt Lowne's channel went through: Flying incredible interplanetary missions [in Kerbal Space Program] while reviewing cheap whiskey! XD Well all right, it wasn't always _cheap_ whiskey, and Matt has a tendency to natter on about anything and everything anyway, but it was kind-of funny. Hahaha! That box bit is the best! Eek he's breaking out! XD Ah, the same discovery method I use. Yes, very good. (Doesn't work on things like the Zaurus where you have to hold odd combinations at boot.) That VAIO CD-ROM drive does indeed look cool. I want one! :D Demoscene \o/ I forgot to copy my SuSE 7.2 VM from my old computer. It was the Linux I had the most fun with around the turn of the century, though to be honest, some aspects of it -- or any other Linux in those days -- were utterly horrible. That was fun to watch!

[@zach446]

nice hoovies garage shirt!

[@SJ-co6nk]

There was a demo floating around of PC-GEOS for x86, we played around with it around 2000. It was actually very impressive.

[@joshmyer9]

My first thought was to tap off the modem's serial for a console to log in. Annoyingly enough, that modem chip (Rockwell RCV336ACF R6749) hangs off the ISA bus, so there's not an easy RS232 port to tap off. It is a full 33.6, though, which surprised me. There may be a drop-in 56k replacement, though, in case you want to get on the Information Superhighway at nearly double the speed!! The Elan SC300 does have a 16450 compatible UART interface, though, so you might be able to get serial in that way. I forget if that DE-9-lookin' port next to the SoC is a serial or not. Updating a scancode table should be straightforward, but getting a functioning 2.0 build environment and then successfully rebuilding the LOADLIN binary seems like a reasonable amount of work. Hopefully your Linux friends have already done all that work, and have a VM running slackware 3 or whatever to build it for you =) It'd also be pretty neat to get a dump of the flash ROM for these once you've got Linux up. I imagine that Ghost would run off the CF as well, if you can find it, though I forget what goofiness it uses to compress images. This is a neat, if slightly twisted, series of videos.

[@jnharton]

Modems are ultimately just a way to get a long distance direct serial connection…

[@linuxuser145]

i would try and solder the missing ports just to see if it works lol

[@bkucenski]

Cheap, underpowered, computers have been a staple product for decades. These days, anything with M.2 storage is going to work pretty well. I picked up a mini PC last year with eMMC for about $100 that is completely useless. I picked up one for $200 a month ago with an M.2 and not much better processor and it's super smooth to work with. I haven't put it through many paces, but not wanting to chuck it against the wall just based on how the mouse moves on the screen is a huge improvement. It'll be nice when any kid can get a perfectly usable computer for a few hours at a minimum wage job and start learning skills that will pay way better. I was making perfectly decent middle class income with $400 laptops for awhile.

[@tarstarkusz]

mscdex is NOT a cdrom driver. The driver goes in config sys file. mscdex is universal cd extension for dos. It tells dos how to deal with the file system. It is not the driver. A generic driver absolutely will not work with a parallel port CD rom. You need the backpack driver.

[@richjamjam]

A whois on those DNS IP addresses shows Earthlink as the ISP. That could match up with ELN in that username maybe? There's no reverse DNS on them tho. Fascinating!

[@knightcrusader]

For those Backpack drives, you need the drivers that came with it since its a parallel port interface. It should work if you can get those loaded. If its a true standard PC they should work on that parallel port, even if its gimped in nibble mode. I can get them to work on PC/XT systems.

[@Underestimated37]

You’ve got to remember to give your whiteboard guy a drip water supply or he’ll dehydrate and escape.

[@knghtbrd]

Someone else commented that you're going to need a scancode map patch for Linux … it's probable that the weird-ass memory *has* a driver for Linux, the question is whether or not it's going to be detected. (If your CF card was still connected, my bet is your CF card was hda…) Debian bo was the first version of Linux I ever actually got working properly on my machine. I screwed up my installation within 24 hours. I was attempting to upgrade from bo stable to hamm testing (what would eventually become Debian 2.0…) I later got help to do the upgrade properly and wrote the instructions for how to do it. Still, it's very cool to see the very first version of Linux I got to run on my machine, even if you weren't able to. Believe it or not, you ought to be able to get hamm working on that thing, again, given the right kernel. You might even be able to run slink. Beyond slink, the 4MB RAM is going to become a bit too tight, I'm afraid. And I don't know if X11 is an achievable target using XFree86 on any libc6 machine. You might indeed be limited to bo in that case, even with a newer kernel.

[@KohanIkin]

Yep, you were right about the CF card, noticed that it was recognized in the Linux boot sequence at 17:23 - "hda: CF CARD, 485MB w/1kB Cache, LBA, CHS=987/16/63"

[@sebastian19745]

When loading Linux, there were no stuck key? The ones with scancode 70 and 6a(112 and 106 in decimal that do not exist on regular IBM keyboard)? Try a (BASIC) program to see the scancodes for your keyboard. Maybe the kernel hunged up because it tried to figure what to do with that keyboard input(s); you got buffer overflow from the keyboard at one point and the error message came when you pressed a key.

[@Mac84]

I want to see it go online and print out things, in that order!

[@nrg753]

Haha that was great! Looking forward to more on these bizarre machines.

[@IvyANguyen]

This was cool to watch. Blast from the past. My middle school gave me an NB60 around April 1999 on a grant that paid for it. About 9 months later I tried to boot it up and the OS was gone and it only showed what looked like a DOS prompt A:\. The manual had no instructions on what to do if the OS had a malfunction and there was no recovery disc included.

[@madmax2069]

Man, laptops of that era had pretty horrible screens. It's pretty bad when you see ghosting when deleting words in a text editor. Seeing that reminds me of a laptop that was being sold at Toys"R"Us. It had a black n white screen (maybe non backlit dot matrix screen, but could have been grayscale). It was a full on laptop, I don't think it was running windows though (I could be very wrong about that) I remember seeing it around the late 90s to early 2000s.

[@krypticmac]

wish you would have checked out the extra chips to see what they was. other wise great video

[@MyComputerStudios_]

This thing runs from an SSD out of the box, super nice

[@EasyMac308]

Maybe time to make the Geobook a reverse sleeper; put a wrap on it, add some RGB, custom Action Retro logo on the back... Get access to the internal serial and use a terminal emulator on the geobook to do terminal stuff with an embedded pi zero. Someone mentioned looking at the datasheet for that SOC. Perhaps it's got pins for a standard keyboard on it, too, either AT or PS2.

[@Sb129]

You need special drivers in DOS to use that Sony Vaio CD drive, I had that problem with my actual Sony Vaio notebook until I found a disk image that had the drivers built in. I have also noticed that CF-PC Card adapters seem to be compatible with anything and everything.

[@cuttinchops]

Such dramatic arm/hand movements on each syllable, oh brother :)

[@cmantac6588]

As always, great video! Love the inclusion of Linux on keeping older products alive. Currently watching and typing form an ol' 2009 MacBook Air with a 1.86Ghz Core2Duo, 2GB of ram with a 1.8" PATA 120SSD; running Lubuntu 22.04 Jami Jelly. I can't have more than 4 tabs open on Firefox otherwise it will be come unresponsive. Always interested to see what older tech you plan on throughing Linux at. Also, I'm from Pittsburgh so, hello from the other side of PA!

[@mr.e.b.4697]

There is a guy named dosdude1 that can take your 2009 MacBook Air and bump up the ram to 4gb. He has a video on that in here and he has a storefront

[@mr.e.b.4697]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/j3Oli4J8j7Rob9k

[@escgoogle3865]

I had to toss some upgrades at my bare bones 2gig 2009 MBP to get it useful. Snow Leopard was great, but with 8gigs of ram and some dosdude1 loving I'm feeling modern running high Sierra.

[@gameboyexe303]

you teased us with the webrowser, we need to see frogfind on this maschine :D

[@VeerMaharaj]

Serious Mark Ruffalo vibes. Even the voice. Its just mindblowing.

[@mrgrumpy888]

I really do miss the "anything goes" culture of 90s computing.

[@UNSCPILOT]

And the wild mess of different storage mediums, everything is SSDs, HDDs, and SD cards now with even bluray looking to be in danger of death. Course, I'm also a weirdo whose revived a floppy-disk loading FF75 Mavica camera and am trying to find a decent floppy drive that my PC can actually use

[@MattExzy]

I remember doing work experience at a Radio Shack/Tandy in the late 90s as a kid. The shop owner was showing me how he re-ordered stock - I suggested USB cables, since it was becoming more of a standard, and I flippantly mentioned 'oh yeah, USB, it's even on the new iMac from Apple..' "APPLE?!" he replied... 'Oh no, we don't want anything that Apple does, people won't buy that, no, that's a bad idea...' - anywho... RIP Radio Shack/Tandy.

[@jnharton]

@@MattExzy Such a shame. Especially when Apple has frequently led the way.

[@RealJonDoe]

These are not meant to be general use laptops. Think of them more as the chromebooks of their time. They were a word processor for someone that needed to get on the internet, or even a larger personal organizer. Prices as a personal organizer, they were about right. While you could maybe find a used windows desktop at the time, you would be hard pressed to find a windows laptop for that price, used, they were still prohibitively expensive. AS for the backpack, you need to load backpack.sys in the config.sys before that drive will run with mscdex. The files are out there, here's hoping you can edit the bootup files. As for Linux, there is a good chance that the system is using ROM mounted in place of part of RAM, making it somewhat irreplaceable, which is going to cause issues for a number of applications as well.

[@Underestimated37]

I’m not shocked they’re fairly low spec, as they were made by Brother and IBM as the answer to the eMate, considering that the DOS it’s running is a third party clone and not true DOS, it does really well.

[@SockyNoob]

So IBM helped make these? Interesting

[@Underestimated37]

@@SockyNoob yeah, it was originally a project aimed at the education market. I suspect the processor is an ibm version of the 386, I’m pretty sure they had a license to produce them from intel before intel decided to stop allowing second source production of their processors (with the 486 and pentiums that started I think)

[@gentuxable]

Mscdex alone will never work. Not even for internal IDE drives. Under DOS you have to load a .sys driver via config.sys and set mscdex to bind to the same device name. Either look at the output when the sys driver loads or specify explicitly. Mscdex is just the DOS piece to map letters and such, it doesn’t know how to talk to the drive itself. Maybe you find a sys driver for your drive online.

[@MarkParkTech]

Those "secret" hidden f-key bypasses are part of standard MS-DOS... it's in the documentation. However, it's fair not to assume they'd be there in ROM-DOS, whoever produced that.

[@pongusikya]

It's almost like Japan had a huge ワープロ market in the 90's and they tried to market them internationally.

[@SockyNoob]

I thought Brother was an American brand though

[@tauon_]

I’m assuming whichever company that wrote GEOS is Japanese

[@pongusikya]

@@SockyNoob そうと思ったけど en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_Industries

[@DerekWitt]

The closest I’ve been to using GEOS in the 90s on my own computer was GEM on my Amstrad PC1512DD. it had 8086 , 512kB RAM and an infamous 20MB RLL hard card. I actually had it dual booting DOS 3.31 and minix. Minix was a bear to run in such low ram. The funny thing is that it used AA batteries for its cmos and clock.

[@Miasmark]

f5 and f8 are normal startup interrupt keys for ms-dos.

[@SockyNoob]

Oh boy these are about to become expensive if this video takes off. Not hard to see why, these are incredibly charming little things. I love it

[@tauon_]

does it have a PS/2 port? you could plug in another keyboard and try booting Linux that way

[@BrainSlugs83]

I wonder if you can plug in an external keyboard... maybe via pc card (since that's got the ISA bus...) or via solder points... Again though... the keyboard issues might not be caused by thir BIOS, it might be caused by ROM DOS? Try booting from MS-DOS? Also MSCDEX won't work on its own. You need a cdrom.sys loaded for MSCDEX to work. (You should LOADHIGH the cdrom.sys and LH.exe the MSCDEX though.) If you can't get it to boot an external device or floppy... maybe there's a key combo for that? or you could try pulling the ROM-DOS chip (assuming it's a different chip from the BIOS). And maybe dump the BIOS/ROM DOS chip... we could probably make a patched version than translated the scan codes (if it is tuft BIOS causing it).

[@zsombor_99]

Yeah, sadly, the biggest problem of these is the non standard keyboard ‒ what a shame! 😶

[@solsburian]

The GeoBook uses PC/GEOS 3. This was also used in the first Nokia Communicator phones (you can hack that variant to run in DOSBox) and was also available as a standard PC (running DOS or Windows) install by Brother (Brotherworks 98) and NewDeal office 3.x. The big thing about PC/GEOS 3 was it included a TCP/IP stack, however it seems Geoworks did not provide a stand-alone web browser, so there are differences between the browsers supplied by Brother, Nokia and NewDeal (Skipper/Webmagik). Breadbox Ensemble 4.13 (based on PC/GEOS 4) will likely work on the GeoBook and has a more up to date (and more stable) web browser etc.

[@zaxchannel2834]

Maybe one of those parallel port adlib cards could give it audio?

[@InitialiseDisk]

I think you can control the the Wolfenstein menu with the mouse. Btw I love the whiteboard guy!

[@Dex99SS]

Ahh yes.... the "does this one do anything, damn it" method. I employ this with most unknown devices. . . Usually step 1 tbh.

[@sadmac356]

I mean for me, step one _when possible_ is "rtfm". Otherwise yes

[@zarkeh3013]

12:40 -ish a Mac person tries to DOS. heh, also F5 and F8 are MS-DOS things along with Config.Sys and Autoexec.bat which f8 steps through. I had a few too many lol's already!

[@luheartswarm4573]

Never thought id see bad apple on a 386

[@the2323guy]

Cirno!!! The cirno who watches smoorez aswell!

[@luheartswarm4573]

@@the2323guy im a fairy of culture

[@the2323guy]

@@luheartswarm4573 hi cirno

[@rickkarrer8370]

PC slots + CF Cards are the secret gems of vintage tech.

[@JanuszKrysztofiak]

Since Linux no longer supports 386, I would try NetBSD.

[@HighFrictionZone]

You should try that hacked Windows 3.1 single floppy install, see if you can run that.

[@ActionRetro]

Ah I tried that, but it just hangs at launch. I think it doesn't understand the graphics on this thing.

[@chriswathen9612]

MSCDEX isn't a complete CD-ROM driver by itself, you need to add an entry for the device driver for the drive to CONFIG.SYS and then you run MSCDEX which presents the drive to DOS as if it were a network connection. Since DOS is in ROM you'll never make anything work on this which requires modifying CONFIG.SYS (your ZIP drive might though if you use GUEST.EXE rather than a device driver) unless the floppy drive supports booting and you can run your own version of DOS.

[@chumbusthings]

This is getting out of hand, now there are two of them! - Star Wars Episode 1

[@andrewrainville9453]

Awww, its too bad Linux won't fully work cuz of the keyboard.... But at least Touhou Bad Apple runs so that makes up for it!

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Fun!! Maybe you could put the 386 and put in a Raspberry PI. :) Thanks for sharing!!

[@garyjinx2013]

What? Swap an interesting historical tinker-toy for next year's washing machine controller and the year after's 555 ? What a waste :-( I've a drawer full of SoC boards, just above the drawer full of ancient scientific calculators.

[@damian9303]

If the motherboard on the laptop with the crappy dot matrix display matches the one with the far superior backlit grayscale LCD, maybe you can swap it for a color LCD easily?

[@NCommander]

My cursed computing senses are tingling :)

[@VK2FVAX]

I think this is perhaps the video of yours I've enjoyed the most that I've ever seen. I don't mind the mac stuff that's great because I'm also a fan but the variety is good. Some thoughts, check out Amstrad. They were making similar systems in the late 80's and early 90's running CP/M waaaaay past it's prime. I have a PCW6512. There's a bunch of other manufacturers. Thought on the linux keyboard, you can if the kernel supports it have console on a serial port @9600 bps, then hook up your serial termminal there and off you go and give it a console=/dev/ttyS0 or equiv. I know that thing has a modem port for the PPP software.

[@fnjesusfreak]

I wonder what a KEYB command (the full ROM-DOS does have one, though this is clearly a crippled one) would do for compatibility.

[@jarnoldp]

I actually used that Geo Book high school in my sophomore year. That was the early 2000s.

[@ActionRetro]

Nice! Have any fun tricks or secrets?

[@jarnoldp]

@@ActionRetro no… lol. But I did find DOS. And the tricks in the BIOS the same way you did 😂

[@kirishima638]

I'm absolutely fascinated by this vintage tech

[@jldwolfe]

I was really hoping these would be potential vintage game machines

[@moxlon69]

DOS based CD-Rom drives require a driver, as well as Microsoft CD Extensions (MSCDEX.EXE). I'm sure the LPT port CD-Rom drive, if still functional, would work if you had the proper driver and settings to input into config.sys to load at boot time.

[@goldenchild2504]

It'd be fun to try the ApplePC DOS apple2 emulator on this. I remember that ApplePC ran decently on a 386/33. (I used to love playing Rescue Raiders on ApplePC.) Too bad there's no gameport for a joystick, there used to be PCMCIA gameport cards.

[@andresbravo2003]

15:00 I should love this running on that.

[@tyttuut]

I hope the previous owner had a nice annavursurey. Or maybe he did will to forgot it.

[@mchenrynick]

That PC speaker is equivalent to sounds from an electronic watch from the 80s LOL! 1997 machine that sounds like ..uh.. 1982?

[@mysterymayhem7020]

my brother had one of those word processors when he was in college in the mid 90's.

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

Even new, I remember the Colour one gave a washed out looking screen. So you are not missing much, unless you really like the watered down pastel look. ;)

[@ran2wild370]

Goooshh! Who knows if GEOS was available on commercial Unices? It looks like they slowpoked their niche. Already based on Motif (Thanks VWestlife for pointing that) and what we see here it is superb desktop environment looking better than CDE!!! Caldera then tried their luck with Looking glass and failed, as well as SUN's 3D desktop called Looking glass again lol...

[@zwallop]

I haven't finished watching the video yet, but wanted to compliment you on your Dr. Who/Pulp Fiction t-shirt.

[@8BitRetroJournal]

The screen seemed to have some subtle halo/tunnel effect, or was that just dirt?

[@RetroTechChris]

It's pretty typical with passive matrix screens to have that effect.

[@greenaum]

You have 4MB... VGA... 386... storage... and what does that spell? D O O M ! ! ! ! You HAVE to run Doom on it! It's only got a 16-bit RAM bus but so did my 386SX-40, the powerfullest 386 ever made, and that limped through Doom with just an inch or so border, in lo-res mode. It's not a computer if it doesn't run Doom! Even the ZX Spectrum runs Doom (sort of)! DOOOOM! If the keyboard doesn't work, set up the joystick, that's got enough buttons.

[@PedroBastozz]

Whiteboard guy is my favorite lol.

[@MagnumForce51]

I'm curious if the top to the older brother would work on the geobook. Looks like it has all the same connectors. Though I think I see a connector present near those 2 ribbon connectors that isn't present on the geobook but is on the brother so I guess you couldn't if that unpopulated connector was used for the screen on the brother.

[@supermasterPIK]

Good machines, great to work because of no distractions.

[@johncate9541]

If you can find a driver for that keyboard or just figure out a way to map it properly, it should work like a normal 386 laptop.

[@supermasterPIK]

11:48 yes. 386 SX, the cheaper version (DX had mathematic coprocessor, not required here). The peak of 386 machines was around 1991-1992, when 486 was the top version.