jst@cca.ucsf.edu (Joe Stong) (04/03/91)
This text contains my opinions only. My experiences with a Panasonic Business Partner CF-150B, the technical review starts about 5 paragraphs down. A friend of mine bought a laptop, I believe it was a Tandy 1100, which is a Panasonic Business Partner 150 without the backlight, in Tandy drag. She paid $300 for it and its 2400 baud modem at a pawnshop. The keyboard felt decent, and it was reasonably light. I looked in computer shopper. Several folks are selling the Business Partner at prices around $600. PC Warehouse in Palo Alto had it listed. I went to PC Warehouse. I heard the salesperson claim that there was no Automobile power adapter. I found it on the sales literature and pointed at it. I called Panasonic's Customer Service number. They said they knew nothing of the adapter, and referred me to "Parts and Accessories". They said the same thing, and referred me to the Customer Service number. After two cycles of calling each phone number and getting the same response, I started asking for other numbers. I got a Technical Support number. They gave me the number of a repair parts depot. The repair parts depot didn't know anything about the adapter. The Panasonic main 800 number cannot give you the names of dealers in your area, you have to call a list of not very local offices (mine is 500 miles away in the same state, a maximal cost long-distance call). The salesperson indicated it would take him at least a day to locate prices for accessories. I have not heard back from them in several weeks. I bought the unit. A second unit was the only other one than the display unit that he had in stock. The second (new) unit could not darken the light pixels on the display with its contrast control. I opted for the first unit, which had been the "display" unit. The salesperson claimed that it had only been on display for a month or so. Do I believe this? Is the disparate behavior of the displays a clue to Panasonic quality control? I got nervous about the unit being used, and that I couldn't even know the price of the accessories I wanted, and I was going on a vacation immediately. I decided to postpone everything 'til I got back. The sales slip specified a 2.20% restocking fee. When I got the unit back to the store, the salesperson claimed that that was supposed to be a 20% restocking fee. I finally talked him down to 5% as a fee for my overnight use of the PC. So, I paid PC Warehouse $30 for the privelege of using the laptop overnight. I believe that there are other stores that can order this PC, and I suspect that they have a better return policy. The hardware: 8MHz V20, 9 pin serial port, internal modem only slot, 25 pin female parallel port, (possibly uses a SIMM for the 1M EMS option). 640x200 dot better- than-CGA screen. 640K RAM, 720K 3.5" floppy (seems fast). Comes with diskettes for MSDOS and GW-BASIC, a battery and an AC power adapter. The screen if physically taller than the Toshiba T1000, and I like the look of the characters better. It has a contrast control, but no brightness/density control for the LCD or the backlight. If you type fast, this, and even various high end LCD's that I've seen take the better part of a second for the currently typed character to fade-in to full darkness, thus I notice a strange ghosty effect in typing. I didn't notice this on an Atari Portfolio, where the trick may have been that the character was formed under the dark block cursor, and then the cursor was moved. I find the screen utterly unreadable during scrolling, which may be a problem with most if not all LCD's. The screen could not be folded back flat, which I would have needed to be able to use the unit comfortably on my lap. I needed to lean backward to be able to read the screen when the unit was sitting on my lap with the screen back as far as it would go. I believe that my friend's unit, with the reflective backing on the screen, was easier to read in low light. I haven't seen anyone selling the Panasonic 150 without the B. I would have expected that more than two dealers in Bay Area would stock the 150B, too. I like the keyboard feel. The keys have enough travel, and the detent at the top of their travel isn't offensive to me. I'm a fast touch typist. I dislike the squishy keyboard on the Toshiba T1000, my fingers feel tired quickly on those sorts of keyboards. I am offended by the PC AT keyboard layout that the CF150B uses, the escape key requires I remove my left hand from the home row to find it (next to the F1 key, not the "1" key), and the control key isn't where I want it, which would be next to the A key. It's in the the space bar row. There's a small blank plug next to the "1" key. Sigh. They could have done "my" layout. I find the keyboard to be noisy, I would be nervous about using it in a classroom situation. Perhaps it could be padded with felt, like the R/S 100 keyboard, to silence it. I wouldn't want to trade this keyfeel for silence, however, but I really want both. There is a single "battery" indicator, that flashes when the battery is low and is on continuously when it is charging. There does not seem to be any software to show the battery level, and certainly there is no clue as to where the i/o port that indicates the battery state is. There's no automatic shutdown/restart upon closing the display, that I could tell, only a power switch on the side. Running the unit with the AC supply unplugged on battery resulted in a flashing battery light, even though the battery was sufficiently charged, this implies to me that the inactivated AC supply loads the battery. It has a built in clock. GOK where the i/o ports are, I faintly recall that generic (non-panasonic) msdos didn't find the clock. The ROM MSDOS 3.3 does not include any MSDOS utilities to speak of. It includes command.com and format, and a couple of other minor things, including two panasonic specific setup programs. The setup programs let you set things like where it boots upon powerup, and the state of the backlight upon powerup, the screen saver timeout, buffers and files for the built-in msdos config. No clue as to whether the parallel port is bidirectional or not, and I had some hint that it was not. I didn't have a test program on 3.5" when I was trying it out. The salescritter had no info on a technical manual, and I couldn't locate it, either. See the above discussion about calling Panasonic. The machine needs 9.5 volts at 2.1 amps input, and uses a 6 volt lead/acid battery pack, claimed to be good for 4 hours of use with the backlight off, 10% floppy disk use. Using the backlight reduces this to 1 hour. The battery pack seems quite small to me, about 1.5x1.5x4. There is no provision for plugging in two packs at once for changeouts, though they supposedly sell a standalone battery charger. It has no handle. This unit came with a carrying case, though the salesbeing indicated that that was usually an added cost option. Weight is 6.2 pounds without battery, probably less than 7 pounds with battery, which I found to be pleasantly light. I don't want to afford much more than $600 for a machine that I'll only use for a remote typing capture unit. What other machines are available? Will the manufacturers ever get clues about sensible features on basic machines? I heard a dealer say that they wouldn't carry this sort of low end machine because it couldn't run "today's ram and disk hungry software". How about a discussion of the saleability of this sort of machines? I see uses for a small generic machine like this as an alternative to expensive single-use data collectors, at the least. Joe Stong jst@cca.ucsf.edu
schuster@panix.uucp (Michael Schuster) (04/04/91)
I bought the CF150B primarily as a portable terminal to access BBS systems
and pay services. For that purpose I find it quite acceptable. also, havinh
a friend who works for Panasonic who got me the technical manuals and RAM
card helped sweeten the deal. I added a Radio Shaft internal modem for the
1400FD because they're the same computer anyway, and the modem was on sale.
I ended up using the RAM card as a 1 MB battery-backed ram disk. It will
hold its contents for at least a week if left unused. But the RAM and the
modem SEVERELY limit both the shelf life of the charged battery and the
useful life of a fully-charged battery. But if you keep it plugged in all
the time ...
You mentioned the parallel port. I can tell you from the service manual that
only the first and last ground lines are connected; this makes SCSI adaptors,
EPROM programmers and the like unuseable unless you open the thing up and
bridge the other 13 pins. Having done that, I have a friend who uses the
Tandy variant and a parallel-port EPROM programmer to service elevator
microprocessors. So bidirectional use is possible if you doctor the parallel
port pins (either internally or using an external breakout box).
If there are any specifics you need about ports, etc. I can look them up for
you. The manuals you want are:
CF150/150B Technical guide order# CPD9006455T0
CF150/150B Service manual order# CPD9002434C1
regards -- mike
--
Mike Schuster | CIS: 70346,1745
NY Public Access UNIX: ...cmcl2!panix!schuster | MCI Mail, GENIE:
The Portal (R) System: schuster@cup.portal.com | MSCHUSTERbks@shiva.Berkeley.EDU (Brian K. Shiratsuki) (04/06/91)
In article <3398@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> jst@cca.ucsf.edu (Joe Stong) writes: >...I don't want to afford much more than $600 for a machine that I'll only >use for a remote typing capture unit. What other machines are available? >Will the manufacturers ever get clues about sensible features on basic >machines?... >...I see uses for a small generic machine like this as an alternative to >expensive single-use data collectors, at the least. for $600 you could get a cambridge z88 with an extra 128K. the keyboard is pretty funky (but usable for touch typing), and the display has only eight lines. but the batteries are supposed to last for around twenty hours, and the machine is pretty small (just under an inch thick, and about the size of a piece of typing paper). it has a serial port on it, and the manual includes a description of the protocol used for file transfer. i tried one for a day or so, but decided that the stock 32K was not enough. the basic machine would have cost $385, but adding the memory i felt i would need would have added $120 to this. brian