The IBM PalmTop PC110

Keyboard tips

Key size and type

The keys differ significantly from normal in their size and construction. Most keys are 9mm x 7mm, with a 1mm gap on all sides. The centre of each key is raised, and keys pivot backwards and down about 1mm when pressed. There is a slight clunk feel as the key is pressed, but it's nowhere near as positive as a normal keyboard key press. It feels more like a decent calculator keyboard. Most people turn on the key click using the PS2 CLICK command.

Click on the picture for a larger image.

Keyboard layout

The keyboard has nearly the same layout as my ThinkPad 750. As you can see, it is basically standard QWERTY, with some differences in the surrounding keys. All the keys are labelled in recognisable characters symbols, and punctuation marks, plus one or two Japanese symbols. To the left and right of the spacebar, and below the <F1> key, are what appear to be 'alphabet shift' keys - when you have Japanese keyboard drivers loaded, you can switch between character sets with these.

Click on the picture for a large image.

I have one problem with this keyboard layout - there is no key between the left <Shift> key and <Z>, which is where you find the <\> key on a UK keyboard. I always use the US layout, as this has the advantage of positioning the backslash key next to <Enter>, which explains my lack of experimentation with alternate keyboard drivers and mappings. As I am often heard to comment, I use UK touch-typing on a Japanese-printed keyboard mapped for a US layout. It caused some problems to start with, but now I can find most symbols first time... ;-)

On a keyboard of this size, you're not really going to touch type unless you have tiny fingers. It all comes down to personal preferences, but could absolutely spoil the machine for you. That said, after a few weeks of practice, I developed a style of typing using three fingers of each hand, looking at the keyboard, which allows for about 95% accuracy and reasonable speed.

Japanese keyboard drivers

The PC110 keyboard is a standard Japanese layout, so if you can get hold of Japanese keyboard drivers for your operating system, you can set it up so that the symbols that are printed on the keys are the symbols you type. See the individual operating system sections for more details on this.

Keyboard shortcuts for hardware configuration

(Some of these shortcuts were first documented in Marko Schuster's PC110 FAQ.)

If you look closely at the top row of keys, you will see that some of them have blue/grey markings on them. When used in conjunction with the <Fn> key, they control some of the hardware settings of the PC110, as follows:

Key combination

Effect

Enter standby (

to resume).

Switch between LCD and external video.

Switch processor speed between 8MHz, 16MHz, and 33MHz.

Enter standby - only works in Personaware; system resumes if alarms or appointments set.

Raise/lower the contrast - has about 128 settings between minimum and maximum, so press and hold.

Raise/lower brightness - has three settings when on AC power, two when on battery.

Raise/lower volume - eight settings between maximum and minimum.

Enable/disable vertical expansion of the display.

Select LCD data display mode. A number is displayed when you press these keys, press again to toggle through the four display options:

0	Charge if on, alternate between charge & time if off.
1	Time
2	Charge
3	Alternate between charge and time

Mute/unmute speaker.

External Keyboard/mouse port

The rectangular socket on the back of the PC110 is for attaching the PC110 keyboard/mouse adapter cable. This will give you a single, combination, mouse & keyboard socket, into which you should plug a standard ThinkPad Y-cable - that will then give you the two seperate keyboard and mouse ports.

This cable is no longer available, and the rectangular socket on the back of the PC110 appears to be unique. Mark Willis is trying to fabricate a suitable cable and connector - mail him if you're interested in getting one of these cables. At the time of writing, they're not yet ready, but I'm sure he'd appreciate the encouragement!

Keyboard/mouse port on docking station

There is a pair of standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports on the docking station, into which you can plug whatever device you like. Be careful, though, when attaching devices whilst the PC110 is running - several people have blown their docking station keyboard ports by attaching devices. Usually, the devices most likely to cause a risk are those that have a pass-through cable to take a power feed from the mouse or keyboard port. To be safe, only add or remove such a device when the system is properly powered off.

I have successfully plugged and unplugged an external mouse many times whilst the PC110 has been powered on. For the machine to automatically recognise that the external mouse has appeared or disappeared, simply place the machine into standby (<Fn>+<F4>), plug or unplug the mouse, then resume normal operation (<Fn>). Perhaps suspending the machine powers down the keyboard.mouse ports, so that it is less susceptible to damage?

I have also used my Xircom parallel port network adapters, powered off the keyboard/mouse ports, but I took great care to only connect or disconnect the power feed cable when the machine was totally powered off.

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