The HP 95LX Palmtop PC (F1000A, F1010A), also known as ''project Jaguar'', was Hewlett Packard's first

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

-based pocket computer, or

personal digital assistant A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in partic ...

, introduced in April 1991 in collaboration with

Lotus Development Corporation Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2- ...

. It can be seen as successor to a series of larger portable PCs like the HP 110 and HP 110 Plus.

Hardware

HP 95LX had an Intel 8088-clone NEC V20 CPU running at 5.37 MHz with an

Intel Corporation Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series ...

System on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

(SoC) device. It cannot be considered completely PC-compatible because of its quarter-CGA (MDA)-resolution LCD screen. The device also included a CR 2032 lithium

coin cell A button cell, watch battery, or coin battery is a small single-cell battery shaped as a squat cylinder typically in diameter and high — resembling a button. Stainless steel usually forms the bottom body and positive terminal of the cell; insu ...

for memory backup when the two AA main batteries ran out. For mass storage, HP 95LX had a single

PCMCIA The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was a group of computer hardware manufacturers, operating under that name from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), i ...

slot which could hold a static RAM card with its own CR 2025 back-up coin cell. An

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such a ...

-compatible serial port was provided, as well as an infrared port for printing on compatible models of Hewlett Packard printers.

Display

In character mode, the display showed 16 lines of 40 characters, and had no backlight. While most IBM-compatible PCs work with a

hardware code page In computing, a hardware code page (HWCP) refers to a code page supported natively by a hardware device such as a display adapter or printer. The glyphs to present the characters are stored in the alphanumeric character generator's resident re ...

437 __NOTOC__ Year 437 ( CDXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aetius and Sigisvultus (or, less frequently, year 119 ...

, HP 95LX's text mode font was hard-wired to code page 850 instead. Lotus 1-2-3 internally used the

Lotus International Character Set The Lotus International Character Set (LICS) is a proprietary single-byte character encoding introduced in 1985 by Lotus Development Corporation. It is based on the 1983 DEC Multinational Character Set (MCS) for VT220 terminals. As such, LICS is ...

(LICS), but characters were translated to code page 850 for display and printing purposes.

Software

The palmtop ran

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

's MS-DOS version 3.22 and had a customized version of

Lotus 1-2-3 Release 2.2 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles i ...

built in. Other software in

read-only memory Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing sof ...

(ROM) included a calculator, an appointment calendar, a telecommunications program, and a simple text editor.

Successors

Successor models to HP 95LX include HP 100LX,

HP Palmtop FX The HP 200LX Palmtop PC (F1060A, F1061A, F1216A), also known as project ''Felix'', is a personal digital assistant introduced by Hewlett-Packard in August 1994. It was often called a Palmtop PC, and it was notable that it was, with some mi ...

, HP 200LX, HP 1000CX, and HP OmniGo 700LX.

References

External links