[jazzy piano tune] Greetings! And today on LGR weāve got one of the smallest, most unique, and most amusingly compromised yet capable PCs of the 1990s. This is the IBM Palm Top PC110, released in
1995 exclusively in Japan through a cooperation between International Business Machines
and Ricoh Company Limited. And it was more than just a tiny DOS and Windows
PC, it also strove to be a personal organizer, a digital notepad, a desktop clock, a portable
fax machine, a digital camera, and even a straight-up telephone handset all in one little device. Seriously. And it sold for between Ā„169,000 and Ā„289,000
depending on the memory configuration and operating system, with PC DOS 7.0, Windows 3.1, and OS/2 Warp 3 all available from the factory. And although itās smaller than a VHS tape,
the PC110 runs Doom natively with full-color VGA graphics and Sound Blaster sound admirably well. [tiny Doom gameplay commences] The miniaturized hardware inside meant it
was a generation slower than the newest full-sized laptops back then, but cāmon, just look
at it! Its size made it irresistible to the right
customer in the mid-90s, measuring 158x113x33mm and weighing only 630 grams with the battery installed. The body is all metal as well, none of that
rubber-coated plastic used on so many ThinkPads of the time. A material which helps give it a solid ābrick
of technologyā feel in the hands, and a satisfying āclinkā whenever you close
the lid. [clink!] And no surprise, itās become highly sought-after by collectors today, with auction prices soaring for years now. So a huge thanks to LGR viewer Kevin for loaning
me this one for the video, complete in box with all its lovely packaging, accessories,
and Japanese documentation. This whole bundle is delightful and itās
something Iāve wanted to cover for years so Iām psyched. The PC110 is just so miniscule for its time
that itās still kind of unbelievable, truly putting the āsubā in the term āsubnotebook.ā And a subnotebook is really what this is, despite IBM putting āPalm Topā in the name. Even though itās close on form factor, calling
the PC110 a palmtop gives the wrong impression. Most palmtops were underpowered PCs running older versions of DOS with wide monochrome screens, and had limited graphics and little
to no sound. And those are a lotta fun in their own right,
but the PC110 goes a step beyond by including a 33 megahertz 486, 8 megs of RAM, 8-bit PCM
sound, and 256-color VGA graphics paired with a 4.7-inch backlit LCD. Again, thoroughly impressive among its subnotebook
peers in ā95. And subnotebooks were all over the place back
then, with machines like the NEC Ultralite, Compaq Contura Aero, HP OmniBook, Gateway
Handbook, and the legendary Toshiba Libretto all offering something different to the tiny
notebook table. But IBM Japan sliced out a niche all for themselves
with the PC110, being half the size of its competitors, and a quarter of the size of
your typical IBM ThinkPad like the 380XD seen here. It was also half the size of its indirect
predecessor, the IBM ThinkPad 220, another Japan-exclusive, and one equipped with a 386
and an LCD that was larger but monochrome. It ended up outperforming IBMās projected
sales numbers, so the idea was to build a faster follow-up that was even smaller, hence
the ā110ā in the name, being half of 220. Cute. Similarly amusing was all the promo material
that featured Ultraman as the productās CM character/mascot, earning it the nickname
of āThe Ultraman PCā among Japanese user groups. And in order to actually build the machine,
IBM made use of their ongoing partnership with electronics company Ricoh, who you may
know for their imaging and camera products. Back then they were just getting into digital
cameras themselves, with the Ricoh RDC-1 launching earlier in ā95, an impressive device in
its own right being the first digital camera shooting both pictures and video with sound. And itās not hard to imagine that the PC110
shares a bit of that digicam DNA. Heck, the PC110 even uses a 1200 milliamphour
lithium ion battery with a design that wouldnāt look out of place inside a camera. And thatās because thatās exactly what
it is. The IBM branding is simply for show, and thereās
no issue swapping it out with standard camera batteries used by Sony, JVC, and Panasonic. Which means getting a new battery for the
110 is far easier than it is with most old laptops, with new generic replacements still
being made. There is no camera built into the computer
itself though, it was a bit too early for that, despite the Ricoh imaging collaboration
and the use of camera batteries. Though it didnāt take long for a camera
to show up, with Canon releasing the CE300 camera for it that plugged into the PCMCIA
slots, kinda like the Nikon CoolPix 100 but even smaller. Look at her taking mid-90s laptop selfies,
wild stuff! [advertisement plays in Japanese] And since weāve already begun pokinā around
them, letās peruse the ports, which are understandably lacking yet also surprisingly
generous. On the left hand side weāve got the power
on and off switch, along with two PCMCIA Type II expansion slots, which doubles as a single
Type III slot. On the right hand side next to the battery
bay is a switch for turning on and off the telephone ringing sound, more on that in a
sec. And below that is another card interface,
sometimes called Smart Pico-Flash. Turns out this is a CompactFlash slot, continuing
the 110's camera-like qualities, and it uses any compatible CF card as a swappable IDE
drive. Super useful stuff considering how common it is to install CF to IDE adapters in old laptops anyway. And around back from right to left weāve
got a wireless infrared port and a jack for the 13.7 watt AC adapter. Which is this little thing right here by the
way, no need here for a big ThinkPad power brick. And to the right of that is a headset connector,
combining both microphone in and speaker output into a 4-pole 2.5mm audio jack. And the USB-looking port beside that is another
combo port meant for a PS/2 keyboard or mouse. IBM included this dongle with the PC110 to
make use of that, which can be paired with a PS/2 Y-adapter to connect both a keyboard
and a mouse simultaneously. Heh, I love how a normal sized mouse looks
downright huge connected to this thing. Another thing accessed around back is the
clock battery, which takes care of maintaining BIOS settings as well as the other clock around
front. Yep, thereās a slimline liquid crystal display
on the front bezel that displays the time, battery charge status, keyboard options and
so on. Thereās also a third battery inside, known
as a bridge battery, that keeps the machine running while you swap the main battery for
a fresh one. A handy feature, but itās been removed here
since itās one of the nastier Nickelāmetal hydride things that have the potential to
leak. And lastly, thereās the built-in 2400 bps
modem, which pops out to accept the standard RJ-11 phone cable included in the box. This allowed you to send and receive faxes,
hop online, check your email, and use the PC110 as a telephone handset. Yeah thatās right, flip it on its side and
the whole computer becomes a phone! N-Gage Taco Phone, eat your heart out, IBM
was doing awkward sideways phone calls all the way back in 1995. -Really ergonomic. The way this works is the phone switch on
the front corner also functions as the computerās speaker, and by extension, a telephone earpiece. And the microphone to the left of that functions
as the phoneās mouthpiece. Heh, ya gotta wonder how many people actually
used it as a phone back then. I can only assume users were more inclined
to use the second headset port on the front instead, which only works with the phone and
doesnāt output the computerās sound. I also wonder how many folks actually used
its 90-key keyboard for very long before going external, because man, this is rough. Unlike IBMās other innovative mini-laptop
in ā95, the ThinkPad 701C, thereās no clever Butterfly mechanism that allows the
use of full-sized keys. Instead, like the rest of the machine itās
a compromise designed by the itty bitty PC committee, with keys measuring only nine millimeters
across. And thereās hardly any vertical travel, with each keycap squishing down onto rubber domes. [pressing keys squishily, soft beeping] Though it admittedly does work better used
handheld instead of on a desk or a lap, like some kind of double-sized Blackberry. The mouse section is designed to be used handheld
as well, with buttons on both the left and right hand corners above the keyboard. Blue left clicks, green right clicks, and
the red thing over here is the pointing head. Itās similar to IBMās Trackpoint nub but
a bit larger, and it works about as well as that does. Now, you might be wondering about that thing
in the middle, and nope, itās not a trackpad. This is the Memopad, a pressure-sensitive
digitizer thatās largely used for things like writing signatures and taking short notes. And even though it looks like one, it is not
a mouse. Well, not without custom drivers at least, apparently thereās a set of those for Windows 95. Which itās fully capable of running by the
way! I havenāt done that here since itās not
my computer and Iām not about to change any configuration stuff, but yeah. With a 33 megahertz 486SX processor and eight
megs of RAM on board, itās crankinā out just enough speed to run a good chunk of Windows
applications. And itāll do so at 640x480 at 256 colors
all day thanks to the Chips & Technologies 65535 chipset with 512K of video RAM. The display itself doesnāt do it any favors
of course, being a 4.7-inch passive matrix STN. So you get plenty of the usual smearing and
ghosting for these displays, plus a regrettably common issue where itās slowly starting
to deteriorate and lose contrast in the middle. It's a problem with the PC110 that's seemingly
inevitable from what I can tell from photos online. But considering its age itās surprisingly
vibrant and legible, with sharp crispy text thatās easy to read and a backlight that
makes it usable in dim environments. One thing you might've noticed by now is that
there's no floppy disk drive, which was still an absolute must-have back then. In fact there's not even a place to plug one
in externally, despite one being included by IBM in this bundle. And welp, that's where the docking station
port replicator comes in. Thankfully it's not much bigger than the 110
itself, mostly just making it a little taller. With that snapped into the expansion interface
underneath youāre provided with the much-desired 3.5-inch disk connection, as well as serial
and parallel ports, 15-pin VGA out, another power connection, and dedicated PS/2 ports
so you can stop living that dongle life. It certainly cuts down on the whole handheld
design idea, but at least it doesnāt take up much more space on a desk. And finally, there's the RAM situation, with
4 megabytes on-board and 8 meg SKUs of the 110 sold by IBM. And a maximum of 20 megs available by installing
16 megabyte upgrade kits from retailers like T-Zone, costing roughly $300 US dollars in
1996. Right! And with that, letās power it on and see
what the Palm Top PC110 can do. [computer quietly starts, beeps] Little surprise this little thing makes little
noise, with no floppy drive or cooling fans inside. And the hard drive? Well, there actually is no hard drive! Yet itās booted into DOS/V and weāve got
a C:Ā„> prompt, so clearly itās loaded from something, right? Turns out the PC110 uses internal flash memory
as a solid state drive with a whopping four megabytes of storage. Barely a few floppy disks worth of space,
but still ten times more than it needs to load a minimal DOS setup with a handful of
megs remaining. And hey, if you opted for the 2431-YDW bundle
then a removable hard drive came with it, packed inside this classy IBM pouch. This is the IntƩgral Viper, a 260 megabyte
PCMCIA hard disk. Being a Type III device it fills up both expansion
slots, but it was a necessary tradeoff back then if you planned to run Windows, OS/2,
or really much of anything beyond DOS. There was also the CompactFlash option, but
in 1995 that format was still brand new so the cards were expensive and maxed out at
15 megabytes. Not an issue today though, so Iāll be using
both the Viper drive and a CF card, with the Viper containing the original Windows 3.1J
install and the card holding all my games and software. And for the most part, this functions the
same as any other mid-90s PC with multiple hard disks, with the Japanese keyboard and
PC DOS/V commands being the main difference compared to western systems. Most of the symbol and punctuation keys have
moved around and the frequently-used backslash is now a yen sign in DOS/V, though once you
learn where things are itās business as usual. A bigger change is the software that loads
on startup: Personaware. I bet you never saw it coming. IBM Personaware is a tidy graphical frontend
for DOS that provides a bunch of personal organizer-type applets. So in addition to the previously-mentioned
Notepad used for jotting down notes by hand, thereās also a scheduling/calendar app,
a todo list for organizing daily tasks, a notebook for typing text instead of writing
it by hand, an address book already populated with IBM stuff, a basic email client, a virtual
fax machine program, the telephone app for taking and receiving phone calls, an infrared
connection helper for wireless data transfers, a world map and clock for referencing different
time zones, a feature-rich scientific calculator, a text editor for manipulating common text
file formats, and menus for personalizing the applications with your information as
well as managing BIOS options and power settings for the PC110 itself. Thereās even a game, titled āGame,ā that lets you play a game in a rather game-like fashion. Itās one of those tile-matching 'SameGames'
where you try to eliminate all the tiles by clicking two or more matching objects. All good stuff, and a pretty standard selection
of software that you'd find on most palmtops and personal organizers in ā95, just with
the higher resolution color graphics of the PC110. Then thereās Windows 3.1J, an optional option
that optionally came with the hard drive option. [Windows startup chime] Nothingās stopping you from installing other
operating systems in other languages, but this is what it came with so thatās what
Iām using. And I canāt say there are many differences
here, other than the text all being in Japanese of course. With that comes a few visual tweaks to make
things more readable, along with some software for adjusting character settings and shortcuts
to the included DOS/V utilities. Beyond that, itās simply Windows 3 running
on a miniature mid-90s machine. And thatās awesome enough in my book. [Chip's Challenge MIDI plays] By the way,
yāknow I mentioned this has an 8-bit sound chip? It uses an ESS AudioDrive 488 for compatibility
with the original Sound Blaster in mono, which is great for the 110 with its single right
hand corner speaker. In addition to that, thereās also a dedicated
Yamaha FM synth chip on-board, the YM3812-F. Yeah, an OPL2, not the OPL3 so often used
in 1995 and no emulation either. Just an AdLib on port 388h. I donāt have the right audio cable to do
a direct recording, but letās take a listen anyway. [music from Tyrian plays] Ah. Fantastic stuff,
especially in such a small laptop. And thatās really the overall takeaway here. The IBM PC110 is way better than I thought
it would be considering its diminutive form factor and Palm Top branding, and itās a
shame that it was only sold in Japan for a little over a year or so and never saw any
upgraded follow-ups or anything. Though that didnāt stop folks from importing
them almost immediately, with plenty of PC110 fansites and English user guides popping up
before long, and an enthusiast scene that continues to this day. And I get it! The fact that I can play SimCity 2000, Jazz
Jackrabbit, and Descent on a device from 1995 that truly fits in the palm of my hand? That alone is special. But then itās also got Sound Blaster sound,
color VGA graphics, a CompactFlash slot, and uses lithium ion camera batteries? Well that puts in legendary status. I mean cāmon, the thing is actually smaller than the mini ThinkPad 701C model I put together a while back. And itās a fully-functional PC from 1995
not just a kit, ugh! I canāt help having my mind blown a little
whenever I stop to think about it. Granted, having a 33MHz 486SX limits
what you can do, especially in Windows 95, and the passive matrix display that slowly
goes bad is a real downer. But Iāve heard rumblings of a TFT replacement
being worked on, and 40 megahertz CPU overclocks are well-documented, so thatās something. Youāre still left with that petite keyboard
and no FPU though, so if those are deal breakers then hey, Toshiba Librettos are a thing and
they cost less than a PC110. Theyāre just not quite this small or collectible,
so if youāre like me and enjoy tracking down PCs that pushed the boundaries for when
it was made, then the IBM Palm Top PC110 is a good call indeed. -Hehe, "good call." [piano-laden outro jazz plays] And if you liked this video then do check
out my other episodes about shrunken old computers, IBM and otherwise. Or subscribe for a new LGR episode each week. And as always, thank you for watching!
This is one of the neatest gadgets I have ever seen.
The Palm Top case style would be amazing for a Raspberry Pi or SBC build. A DIY case system in that style would sell remarkably well, I would think. I'd buy one, at least.
Someone should make a modern one. I want a Windows 3.1 smart taco-phone that'll run Doom and act as a desktop replacement (or set-top box) when attached to a docking station!
Everytime he does a video on these old laptops I'm so happy how far we've come with LCD technology.
Even throw in Dosbox and dosemu for good measure.
Could you imagine sticking like a Raspberry Pi 4 or some other SBC in this device. This would be the perfect form factor!
Can you install GNU+Linux on it?