ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman) (09/07/89)
Ian Feldman <ianf@nada.kth.se> MINEC 1000 review
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original release April 25th, 1989
updated August 3rd, 1989
Usenet-release September 7th, 1989
Picture of reviewed item
available separately
(see text for details).
Shape of things to come
Impressions of an ultra-portable dedicated e-mail terminal
A Swedish electronics company, Minec Teminal AB, recently unveiled
a highly-portable data-communications terminal for electronic mail and
other 3270-protocol tasks. What's unusual about this particular product
is the fact that in spite of having an ordinary-size 'QWERTY' keyboard,
a 24 line, backlit, supertwisted liquid crystal display, and an integral,
synchronous, 4800bps (V.27ter) modem, it weighs less than 3 lb (1300
grams) and allows up to five hours of battery-powered operation.
Having had an opportunity to try it myself I decided to share my
impressions about its potential, of which more later. Suffice to say,
I consider it a major development in portable-telecommunications tech-
nology and the beginning of a new standard, one to which all subsequent
portable/compact devices will have to look up to. We may all long for
a portable Mac, or a pocketable VAX, but in the meantime here are the
means of recording these mobile, random, thoughts for later transfer
into our no-go desk computers. What may be a small terminal for a user
is, in fact, a great leap forward for The Virtual Community. No less.
The terminal in question, named MINEC 1000, has been designed as a
dedicated portable front-end to MEMO electronic-mail and teleconferen-
cing system. The terminal's resident firmware makes accessing this
particular service practically a hands-free process. Apart from MEMO
the MINEC may also be used for dial-up process monitoring and other
3270- and VT100-protocol terminal enquiries.
Those of you unfamiliar with this particular system may care to know
that MEMO, having been developed approximately 10 years ago by the Swedish
car manufacturer VOLVO to provide concern-wide means of electronic
conferencing and inhouse-mail exchange, has been adopted by over 500
large multinational companies, including VOLVO's direct competitors
such as Mercedes Benz. Providing an integrated solution for the average
white-collar worker's memo-writing, editing, transmiting and filing
needs, its biggest marketing advantage is the fact that it is designed
to run in existing IBM-mainframe environments that are so prevalent in
computing-heavy industries.
Apart from MINEC's straight 3274-controller functions needed to
access the MEMO system's features, the terminal also provides an
emulation of the ANSI VT100 terminal standard making it fully possible
to communicate with asynchronous hosts. And that includes, of course,
all the Vaxen, the H-P, Apple and Un*x environments.
To that end, the MINEC 1000 has been equipped with two bidirectional
serial ports, one of which can be connected to a separate V.22bis
(2400bps) modem. The other may simultaneously drive a printer or send
the screen-character-stream data to a separate monitor, or (in theory
at last) dump it onto a logging device. Of notable interest is that
the present model's built-in 4800 bps, half-duplex, synchronous modem may
later be replaced internally by a full duplex, asynchronous V.22bis, Hayes-
compatible one. Imagine the possibilities...
The product's physical dimensions are among its greatests assets.
A fullsize keyboard/ fullsize screen (albeit small) terminal with a
footprint of only 12.5 by 4.6 inches (320 by 118 mm), and less than an
inch and a half thick (38 mm) when folded is hard to beat.
Indeed, the overall design principle of the terminal seems to have
been to select the largest, non-negotiable, physical element of it (the
QWERTY keyboard) and assemble the rest within its rectangle. Thus, the
terminal is just slightly larger than its keyboard - roughly the size of
a folded glossy magazine (or that of a standard ADB Macintosh keyboard
without the numeric pad) - making up in thickness for what it gave up in
the other two dimensions. With the glossy black outer case made of sturdy
aluminum alloy, it still manages to stay below the magic 3 lb weight
threshold.
If that is not enough, the resident monitoring software (MINEC's
own 'operating system') provides both a calendar and an electronic alarm
function as well as the ability to configure dial-up batch files for auto-
matic connection. Presently the model has a total of 160KB of RAM memory.
The terminal's software includes a fairly comprehensive editor which may
be used for offline text composition; to file in memory and recall messages
for upload or printing.
The monitor program also makes it possible to configure the display
either as 16 lines of proportionally spaced letters or as the standard
24 by 80 mono-spaced character lines. The backlit, blue color screen
has a resolution of 640*200 pixels and a contrast level of the latest
generation of supertwisted liquid crystal displays. When back-lighting
is turned off, a lamp is recommended for offscreen reading.
So far, so good. The specifications alone are mind boggling. Never
before has a 'QWERTY' fullscreen, dial-up terminal been put in so compact
an enclosure.
Well, what about its shortcomings?
The present lack of a built in V22bis asynchronous modem is, of
course, its weakest point. This makes any non-3270 communication a
two-piece-plus process instead of just a single one. This may be a
bigger disadvantage than it sounds. After all, what good is an ultra-
portable terminal if you have to carry a modem and connecting cables as
well?
Another limitation is its lack of any viable option for local
off-terminal secondary storage. Anything that goes into memory stays
there until replaced or erased. One could, of course, transfer the data
to a local file-server using the VT100 protocol, but that's hardly
a viable solution as it might be quicker to upload it to MEMO instead.
Though the incoming data-stream could (in principle) be forwarded to
a portable logger via the serial port I'd hesitate to call that "storage"
as there presently are no means, nor provisions, for reloading it again.
The only local-mode post-processing available right now is printing.
In fact, a portable ink-jet printer (Diconix 150?) was demonstrated at the
product's unveiling. The printer, already small by printer standards,
seemed totally out of place on a table top besides its several times smaller
controlling terminal!
Usually powered directly off the supplied AC-adapter/ charger, the
terminal will also work on internal batteries. It should be noted,
however, that when fully charged, they leave only enough power for
approximately one hour of continuous telecommunication with a backlit
screen. In offline mode, with backlighting turned off, much less
power is required making a 4 to 5 hour standby/ editing session fully
possible. The backlighting may be switched off by software whenever
battery charge reaches a predefined level, or it may be explicitly
enabled to conserve power.
And then there's the price: presently SEK 17,000 (Swedish kronor, approx.
US$ 2700) in one-off quantities. Bear in mind that as the MINEC 1000 is
designed mainly for 3270-mainframe terminal service, the price has been
set accordingly; the compact size and high level integration doesn't
come cheap. On the other hand, the company has voiced plans to release
a VT100-only, integral-2400-bps-only modem version. Such a product
would have to be priced on a more end-user/ private-owner acceptable
level. Now, add 640KB of internal CMOS RAM, an error-correcting, high-
speed protocol like ZModem and we're set for life... or at least until
someone else comes out with an even better mousetrap.
(A short postscript: now that at least one portable-micro manufacturer
has introduced a laptop with a 2-inch floppy disk drive with a standardized
controller cirquitry (the Zenith MinisPort/ BYTE/ August 1989) we may,
hope that other manufacturers will follow; maybe even Minec. That's right,
the wishful-thinking departement... ;-))
You may want to judge for yourself; originally this locally-released
review was accompanied by a 92KB BinHexed image of a Macintosh 300dpi
scanned PICT (stuffed in Scrapbook format). The same picture is also
available in an 80dpi "XBitMap" format for display on any Xwindows
terminal. I decided to withhold it from this mailing in order to keep
the traffic to a minimum. I will, however, send it to any and all that
request it by return-mail to me (please use the reply feature of the rn,
not the 'follow-up') and do not forget to indicate which version you
prefer.
The note that all the technofanatics have been waiting for.. yes,
there is a microprocessor in charge of it all. Three of them in fact.
A 8088 in charge of the 3270-protocol, the main programmable Hitachi
6303 CPU and a dedicated keyboard-decoding one. The 4800-bps modem
engine is the Rockwell R48PCJ (a faxmodem-on-a-chip). All RAM is of
the static CMOS variety for which there are five 28-pin DIP sockets
onboard. There are no software memory-addressing limits; anytime
anybody comes out with 1 Megabit SRAM chips they could be used to
replace the present 256Kbit ones at once - making 640KB of RAM
a viable option.
Of the two serial Mini-8 ports, one is meant for simple printer
usage: only 3 pins are active. The other one provides all the signals
of an RS-232-C interface. The terminal has been designed and construc-
ted by Hans Jakobsen, while Torsten Lantz came up with the 8088-based
3270-protocoll code and Juha Sarlin wrote all the editing, monitoring
and VT100-emulating software - in Forth, no less.
Finally - a disclaimer and a plea. I do not represent the company
nor have I ever been employed by them in any capacity whatsoever. I'm
just an average ASCII-hacker. I decided to make my impressions public
after having placed an order for the still undecided VT100/V.22bis-only
version of the MINEC. There is no better way than having a stack of
orders to help the company make up its mind whether to release it. To
that end I urge those of you who share my vision for an ultimate, hassle-
free, truly portable telecomms terminal to send them an informal 'order'
stating your interest and what you'd be willing to pay for such a device....
say, US$ 2000-3000 within a year for a 640KB/ VT100/ Kermit | ZModem
device or else... ;-)
You may also spread this message, as well as the digitised picture,
freely so we might achieve the maximum impact. Those of you with net
access including the AppleLink, MCI Mail and CompuServe (via appropriate
gateways) are welcome to e-mail any follow up questions, comments and/
or the MINEC1000 'orders' to me and I'll forward them to the company (after
all, they are just a local phone call away.) Or you can try it directly:
Minec Terminal AB
Box 121
182 12 DANDERYD
Sweden
Now, if only I could convince them to develop it further towards
a _faxmodem_ terminal.... just add some software and an odd bit or two...
Enuf dreamin'... start the snowball rolling... now
!f/ Ian Feldman/ <ianf@nada.kth.se>
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