PalmPilot 1000, c. 1996

Not a dedicated reader for most, but it was my dedicated ebook reader in 1996, and introduced me to the idea of ebooks. The first book I read on it was The Hobbit. I read the crap out of this thing.

I read soooo many books on this back then. And the resolution sucks, so I don't know how I did it. I guess I didn't know any better. lol

I actually still have it, but the screen doesn't react to touch anymore. I may look into seeing if I can fix it though for a fun challenge.

The Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 wee the first generations of PDAs produced by Palm Computing (then a subsidiary of USRobotics). It was introduced in March 1996.

The Pilot uses a Motorola 68328 processor at 16 MHz, and had 128 kB (Pilot 1000) or 512 kB (Pilot 5000) built in Random-access memory.

The PDA has a plastic case (various colors). Its dimensions are 120x80x18 mm and weight is 160 grams.

The Pilot has a 160x160 pixel monochrome LCD tactile panel, with a "Graffiti input zone" presented in the bottom third of the screen. Underneath the screen sits a green on/off button, four applications buttons (Date Book, Address Book, To Do List, and Memo Pad) and two scroll buttons. At left, contrast control. At right top, stylus slot.

On the back of the device there is a Memory Slot door, Reset button, battery compartment (held two AAA batteries) and Serial Port (for use with the PalmPilot Cradle).

Memory is kept in a "memory slot" under a plastic cover at the back top of the PDA. A 512 kB ROM chip stores the Palm OS 1.0 and resident applications. RAM is available in 128 kB, 512 kB or 1 MB; with a PalmPilot Professional memory card, up to 2 MB of RAM. Hardware limit is 12 MB of RAM and 4 MB of ROM.

After a calibration test presented during the initial power up, the Pilot would boot and be ready for use and synchronization. Connecting and synchronizing the PDA was initially done through a utility called Pilot Desktop.

For the PC, Pilot Desktop was distributed either on 3½ inch disk or on CD-ROM (according to an original floppy disk set, v1.0 was for Windows 95 and included a tutorial disk and two win32s disks for Windows 3.1; v2.0 was for Windows 95 and Windows NT).