PS/55 page
T.Sunagawa
Every time I read each text I found mistake. I've been bored with checking
my writings. Hope you can understand my poor English explanation about PS/55s.
http://homepage3.nifty.com/sandy55/index.html
Still under progress though.
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Sunagawa
Tim Clarke
You're too modest, that's a fine piece of work and very impressive. I was
amazed at some of the interesting variants upon a theme that IBM Japan
produced and your presentation is very thorough and well designed.
Keep up the good work.
--
Cheers,
Tim
Laust Brock-Nannestad
> Text and some pictures only, no drivers or useful program available.
> Every time I read each text I found mistake. I've been bored with checking
> my writings. Hope you can understand my poor English explanation about PS/55s.
I think it looks great! The layout was familiar somehow ;)
There's only one small thing I didn't like, the size of the background image
on the front page. It's a 700KB download (with huge dimensions) and will
surely put a strain on older machines and/or modem users.
BTW, the 5538 looks like a very cool little machine, ideal for use as a small
X-terminal :)
Regards,
Laust
T.Sunagawa
> There's only one small thing I didn't like, the size of the background image
> on the front page. It's a 700KB download (with huge dimensions) and will
> surely put a strain on older machines and/or modem users.
That's what I worried about.
Initially "PS/55" background was not used. It looked little dreary so
I made the background image yesterday.
When I accessed to Mocha Java page with 56K modem, it took a while to
get whole page on my screen. Now I'm using ADSL and it's very fast
to down load my top page( and Mocha Java, too ).
Anyway I've just deleted the "PS/55" background image. Now it's very
simple with gray background color.
Please tell me if it still takes a time to download.
> BTW, the 5538 looks like a very cool little machine, ideal for use as a small
> X-terminal :)
It does!
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Sunagawa
PS. Also added picture page.
T.Sunagawa
Thanks for your comment.
I feel relieved that you guys can somehow understand my writings.
---
Sunagawa
Laust Brock-Nannestad
> Anyway I've just deleted the "PS/55" background image. Now it's very
> simple with gray background color.
> Please tell me if it still takes a time to download.
Yes, it loads quickly now :)
BTW, since the background image was just a repeating pattern, it might be
possible to cut out a small part of it and use that instead (the browser
will then tile it properly but without using lots of memory). I'll toy a
bit with that idea in Paint Shop Pro...
>> BTW, the 5538 looks like a very cool little machine, ideal for use as a small
>> X-terminal :)
> It does!
Just out of curiousity, how well did it sell in Japan? is it a rare machine?
Regards,
Laust
T.Sunagawa
>>Anyway I've just deleted the "PS/55" background image.
>>Please tell me if it still takes a time to download.
>
> Yes, it loads quickly now :)
How about now? I downsized the background image to 27KB
and applied it again.
If it still takes a time to load, I'll change it plain gray
color again.
RE: 5538
> Just out of curiousity, how well did it sell in Japan? is it a rare machine?
It "was" not so rare in the used PC market.
Many PC freaks including AT lovers were attracted with it.
PS/55E 5538 had been up frequently in the used PC market
since around 1999 till last year.
These days I don't see PS/55s( MCA )in the market. Most possibly
486 PCs were scrapped/crashed before they came to the market.
But PS/55Es can be found in used PC shops occasionally.
It's not MCA but a kind of ThinkPad in a way and traders know
there still be market need for this elegant PC.
It may be said that PS/55E had been introduced to the PC market
too early. Design and concept were great but the price was a
killer for general consumers. PS55Es were mainly delivered
to big companies as like as MCA PC/55s.
Some of enthusiasts got one cheap NIB when IBM cleared out
their surplus stock ( not so sure, but it was around 1996 to
1997. I happened to see a bargain sale when I was in Osaka ).
I really wanted to buy one but it was still expensive for me
though the price was discounted a lot.
---
Sunagawa
Peterwendt
Great to see that you'd started to make a page of your own.
Have had a brief look only at that time - but be assured that I'll have a much
closer look soon.
Re 5538E: The display looks a lot after the TP710T Penpad display - these
arrow-style keys for contrast and brightness show up on both. Hmmm.
>It may be said that PS/55E had been introduced to the PC market
>too early. Design and concept were great but the price was a
>killer for general consumers. PS55Es were mainly delivered
>to big companies as like as MCA PC/55s.
>Some of enthusiasts got one cheap NIB when IBM cleared out
>their surplus stock ( not so sure, but it was around 1996 to
>1997. I happened to see a bargain sale when I was in Osaka ).
>I really wanted to buy one but it was still expensive for me
>though the price was discounted a lot.
History repeating. The same thing happened over here with the PS/2e 9533
"Pizzabox": it was a cash-killer when it was new and regularly sold by IBM.
When the stocks were cleared in about '97 the system showed up (along with a
cheesy 12" SVGA tube display) in supermarkets and computer stores - but was
still too expensive for its performance and for "regular" users. I saw some
back then, planned to buy one but stepped back when I saw the price tag. It
still cost 950 DM at a time when a Pentium-90 system with monitor was down to
750.
Had to get most of mine from Eeh-bay. At much lower rates, much later and
partially incomplete. (kept a complete one - traded off others)
The first one however I got from Charles Lasitter. Still existing, still
running strong, acting as personal MP3-Server in my home network. Funny career
for a system intended to be an office computer and travelling from the US to
Europe in a package ... ;-)
Very friendly greetings from Peter in Germany
http://members.aol.com/mcapage0/mcaindex.htm
T.Sunagawa
Nice to see your posting in the NG. Seems you're very busy these days.
> Great to see that you'd started to make a page of your own.
Thanks a lot.
I had finished most of the text parts a year ago.
Asked Louis how to draw outlines and then tried hard. I DID realize
about copyright issue. Louis kindly accepted my offer to use his great
works and modifiy them for japanese localized parts. Thanks Louis !
I need to say thanks to William Walsh who advised me his easy method
for drawing outlines from scratch.
Thus I could decorate my text pages with outlines of complexes,
adapters and planars.
Everything was ready to upload in the end of July.
But I couldn't do that. Story will be shown in "still crazy" section
in some day. Dan K. may know the reason though :-)
> Re 5538E: The display looks a lot after the TP710T Penpad display - these
> arrow-style keys for contrast and brightness show up on both. Hmmm.
You've observed in details.
There are 3 sets of arrow-style keys like TP710T. 2 on the display
panel and one for speaker volume control on the right end of the
main unit. On/Off SW for a backlight is omitted. A round SW below
arrow-style keys is for display On/Off.
> History repeating. The same thing happened over here with the PS/2e 9533
--- snip ---
Both PS/2E and PS/55E were foredoomed to be so...
And, that's IBM's tipical...may be.
I do not know about PC trend over there, Europe and US. In Japan
There are some of "PS/55E" followers. Hitachi is the one of such
company still marketing and producing such PCs aside from IBM.
( PC710 with Pentium class CPU was OEMed by Hitachi ).
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Sunagawa