Casio PVOS SDK ships with the OS in a single file, called BIOS. Caleid SDK comes chunked into multiple segments, each under 64KB (totally normal thing for an x86 embedded device, I suppose).
CPU.00/01 have the initial BIOS/bootloader; I haven't diff'ed it with the code from NC3022, but I suppose it is going to be somewhat different. There's very little code in it, though.
Then there's LIBINT; probably library for internalisation. Could it be a file that is different between Japanese and Western models? It has huge tasty bitmaps of numbers and days of week.
(cont)
CALEID.00 is the main entry point for the Caleid OS. Despite being merely 14 KB in size, it stores a ginormous bitmap with the icon placeholders (taking 7 kB out of those 14).
If SIM3020 is a DOS program, it should run under DosBox-X in PC-98 mode, right?
I switched my DosBox-X to PC-98 mode, thought hard and long about the program's complaints about EMS and XMS, and eventually came up with a DosBox configuration file that allowed the simulator to start. That's very neat.
(Protip: >16MB of RAM, both EMS and XMS, required; EMB is another name for XMS)
Time to look what's inside...
(cont)
Casio PVOS SDK ships with the OS in a single file, called BIOS. Caleid SDK comes chunked into multiple segments, each under 64KB (totally normal thing for an x86 embedded device, I suppose).
CPU.00/01 have the initial BIOS/bootloader; I haven't diff'ed it with the code from NC3022, but I suppose it is going to be somewhat different. There's very little code in it, though.
Then there's LIBINT; probably library for internalisation. Could it be a file that is different between Japanese and Western models? It has huge tasty bitmaps of numbers and days of week.
(cont)
Installer finished its job, and it became clear that the Casio Caleid SDK is likely one of the missing pieces I need to reverse-engineer my BN-20 organiser.
The Caleid SDK comes with SIM3020, the simulator for the exact CPU model used in the BN-20. This is significant, because NC3020 and NC3022 have 4KB of a built-in firmware that must be different between the chips and probably contributes to incompatibilities.
SIM3020 is also significantly simpler. It doesn't have an MDI interface, or a complex ROM/RAM/Flash configurator. It isn't even a Windows program; it is a DOS program for a PC-98 series computer (that might work on DOS/V under Windows 95, according to the docs, but I couldn't make it).
Fun: despite being shipped as a device simulator for touchscreen-based XM-700, it also simulates a hardware keyboard.
(cont)
If SIM3020 is a DOS program, it should run under DosBox-X in PC-98 mode, right?
I switched my DosBox-X to PC-98 mode, thought hard and long about the program's complaints about EMS and XMS, and eventually came up with a DosBox configuration file that allowed the simulator to start. That's very neat.
(Protip: >16MB of RAM, both EMS and XMS, required; EMB is another name for XMS)
Time to look what's inside...
(cont)
Following the link trail, I arrived at two interesting destinations. One is a website about making Add-Ins for Caleid, and another is Casio's own website, offering a tool for making Add-Ins. The Caleid portal had one and only file preserved by the Internet Archive (bravo!), a 2.2 megabyte LZH archive with a Setup for the Add-In maker.
First, I discovered that the Setup program requires Windows 95 (luckily, I still have my Windows 95 hard disk image). Then I discovered that the Setup program requires a Japanese Windows 95 - otherwise it crashes.
I was hoping to unpack the InstallShield Z archives with "unshield" tools, but the ones I've found did not handle CP-932 correctly and failed to unpack the installer. Can't be helped, time to get my PC-9821 laptop unpacked!
...turns out, it was the right call: the emulator requires PC-98.
(cont)
Installer finished its job, and it became clear that the Casio Caleid SDK is likely one of the missing pieces I need to reverse-engineer my BN-20 organiser.
The Caleid SDK comes with SIM3020, the simulator for the exact CPU model used in the BN-20. This is significant, because NC3020 and NC3022 have 4KB of a built-in firmware that must be different between the chips and probably contributes to incompatibilities.
SIM3020 is also significantly simpler. It doesn't have an MDI interface, or a complex ROM/RAM/Flash configurator. It isn't even a Windows program; it is a DOS program for a PC-98 series computer (that might work on DOS/V under Windows 95, according to the docs, but I couldn't make it).
Fun: despite being shipped as a device simulator for touchscreen-based XM-700, it also simulates a hardware keyboard.
(cont)
As some of you might guess, back in the 90s Casio had completely different PIM series for its internal (Japanese) and external markets. It made sense to focus on hand-written text recognition for the Japanese input, and it didn't make all that much sense for English/French/German/Italian/Portuguese/Spanish, where QWERTY/AZERTY/QWERTZ was clearly superior. So, you won't find Business Navigator on the Casio's Japanese website. But you can find something called "Casio Caleid Multimedia Navigator". Look closely, don't you think some of the icons are the same as on our BN-20?
(The photo comes from Yahoo Auctions)
A blog featured by @osnews@mstdn.social in https://www.osnews.com/story/136806/casio-caleid-xm-700-mobile-navigator-1997/ claims that there used to be an SDK for it. Is it still up online somewhere? Is THAT the mythical SIM3020 mentioned in the SIM3022 documentation? Spoiler: yes!~
(cont)
Following the link trail, I arrived at two interesting destinations. One is a website about making Add-Ins for Caleid, and another is Casio's own website, offering a tool for making Add-Ins. The Caleid portal had one and only file preserved by the Internet Archive (bravo!), a 2.2 megabyte LZH archive with a Setup for the Add-In maker.
First, I discovered that the Setup program requires Windows 95 (luckily, I still have my Windows 95 hard disk image). Then I discovered that the Setup program requires a Japanese Windows 95 - otherwise it crashes.
I was hoping to unpack the InstallShield Z archives with "unshield" tools, but the ones I've found did not handle CP-932 correctly and failed to unpack the installer. Can't be helped, time to get my PC-9821 laptop unpacked!
...turns out, it was the right call: the emulator requires PC-98.
(cont)
~Let's make 30-year-old pocket organiser Casio Business Navigator BN-20 run some new software, part 4~
Recap of the previous episodes: our friend gave us a pocket organiser. As it happens, the organiser is based on Intel 8086-compatible core. It is related to Casio Pocket Viewer series, but unlike the PV, it doesn't have a way to "side-load" the applications.
So far we've dumped the ROM and tried to use it with Casio PV SDK. PV is compatible enough to kick-start the boot process, but the simulated OS crashes before it can even draw anything.
One interesting lead I decided to follow was the discrepancy between the CPU models in BN-20 and PV series: BN-20 runs on NC3020, and PV runs on NC3022. The documentation for Casio PV SDK mentions that a publicly-available simulator for NC3020 was a thing, too.
Can we find it? Can we run it? Yes we can!
🧵
As some of you might guess, back in the 90s Casio had completely different PIM series for its internal (Japanese) and external markets. It made sense to focus on hand-written text recognition for the Japanese input, and it didn't make all that much sense for English/French/German/Italian/Portuguese/Spanish, where QWERTY/AZERTY/QWERTZ was clearly superior. So, you won't find Business Navigator on the Casio's Japanese website. But you can find something called "Casio Caleid Multimedia Navigator". Look closely, don't you think some of the icons are the same as on our BN-20?
(The photo comes from Yahoo Auctions)
A blog featured by @osnews@mstdn.social in https://www.osnews.com/story/136806/casio-caleid-xm-700-mobile-navigator-1997/ claims that there used to be an SDK for it. Is it still up online somewhere? Is THAT the mythical SIM3020 mentioned in the SIM3022 documentation? Spoiler: yes!~
(cont)
~Let's make 30-year-old pocket organiser Casio Business Navigator BN-20 run some new software, part 4~
Recap of the previous episodes: our friend gave us a pocket organiser. As it happens, the organiser is based on Intel 8086-compatible core. It is related to Casio Pocket Viewer series, but unlike the PV, it doesn't have a way to "side-load" the applications.
So far we've dumped the ROM and tried to use it with Casio PV SDK. PV is compatible enough to kick-start the boot process, but the simulated OS crashes before it can even draw anything.
One interesting lead I decided to follow was the discrepancy between the CPU models in BN-20 and PV series: BN-20 runs on NC3020, and PV runs on NC3022. The documentation for Casio PV SDK mentions that a publicly-available simulator for NC3020 was a thing, too.
Can we find it? Can we run it? Yes we can!
🧵
We (me+fiancee) got a new toy/hobby project from @kauzerei@social.tchncs.de - a "dumb" organiser that is, in fact, a battery-powered x86 machine with LIM EMS 4.0 (NEC V30MZ). The screen is 320x160x1, and the main chip is mask ROM, but with some hardware magic we should be able to make it boot into DOS. One day, one day~
I bought my first Apricot PC about three years ago, when I realised I wanted an 8086-based computer. At the time, I knew nothing about it and simply bought it because it looked rad and the price was low. I had no idea that it was not IBM PC-compatible, and that there were very few programs available for it.
I have been on a quest to get a modern-ish word processor and spreadsheet program for it ever since. Which eventually made me "port" Windows 2 on it. In this post, I share the story of the port. Many photos inside!
https://www.ninakalinina.com/notes/win2apri/
I took a bunch of photos of Apricot PC running Windows 2, and I want to write a bit about the story behind this project. It's going to be 30+ photos and a few thousand words. The big question: where would you prefer to read it? What would be the easiest way to spread the word about it?
Nina Kalinina