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Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) AMDLifer Profile Don't know if this is good or bad but http://www.computersurplusoutlet.com/index.asp?p=tb is having a liquidation and there are two little 486 "laptops" going for $50. Ones the rugged Itronix touchscreen with 8" monochrome and is a 486SX50 (talk about ancient). The other is the Fujitsu Stylistic with monochrome, PCMCIA (comes with a 260-340MB PCMCIA type III HDD, 1.8inch PCMCIA-ATA hard disk drive) and is a 486DX50. I know the second one has been talked about but I don't know the potential for the thing. 09-23-2002 07:00:05

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) inx3us Profile The Itronix is described as having a "VGA LCD" touchscreen. Does that mean there is an easy adaptability of the screen for use with VGA connections on a regular PC? 09-24-2002 06:06:22

VGA LCD (modified 0 times) NormConquest Profile | Email It means that the display characteristics (color depth, refresh rate and resolution) meet the VGA standard, NOT that there's a VGA-in pinout that you could patch directly to a PC's VGA-out jack. You'd still have to interpose an LCD-specific controller card (over a hundred bux!) to drive the screen. The equivalent controller circuitry exists in the laptop, but real entangled with the motherboard and running low voltages, so a gargantuan feat to repurpose it for desktop PC use. (I'd love you to prove me wrong.) The cost of the controller makes this an expensive project. http://earthlcd.com would be the place to start, if you really want to try. 09-27-2002 08:23:04

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) smurfman Profile I just received my two Fujitsu Stylstic 500's from CSO today. I ordered them the day after this thread was started last week. I must convey that these (CSO) guys are great. It took I think about 4 days for them to process the order, but they didn't charge my credit card until the order went out. Also, I got a freakin good deal. I ordered two units at $50 each and got free shipping w/ a special since my order was $100. They have since raised the price to $69 each! And I don't see the free shipping anymore, so I am glad I jumped on this. Every once in a while I would check these on Ebay, but they were also almost completely stripped down and sold AS-IS. So here is what comes with each unit: * A very large targus laptop carrying case * A smaller case for the Stylistic 500 itself that has a clear window that the pen works fine through * A pen * Extra pen tips * Extra pen batteries (normal watch/calc/hearing aid batteries) * Two batteries (it uses two at a time) * An extra new battery * An AC Adapter * Wall charger (charges two batteries at once) * PS/2 Keyboard...very nice one at that * 4 megs built in * 8 meg JEIDA RAM card * PCMCIA HD There was some variation between the two units: * One had a 340 meg PCMCIA HD, the other a 260 meg. Both were wiped. * One of the units came with a coat-rack-hanger-looking thing that is actually a desk stand for the Stylistic. * One of the keyboards looked virtually unused, the other was rather dirty. * One of the LCD's was in absolute perfect condition, the other is looking like its wearing out or getting some interference or something...but is still acceptable. (Referring to the picture itself, not scratches or anything) Even at $69, its still a great deal. I've own / owned several touchscreen computers (QBE, Casio Fiva 501, Itronix, homebuilt, etc.) and I really like the style and design of these. I highly recommend them! Now...to figure out how to get them set up.... 10-01-2002 13:28:58

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) jsmmd Profile FYI... Direct link http://www.computersurplusoutlet.com/viewproduct.asp?productid=COM-FST500 10-01-2002 13:40:37

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) smurfman Profile I guess doing DOS/PCMCIA/Bootable PCMCIA stuff is not something I really have a good handle on. I'm trying to get my two new Stylistic's working with their wiped out HD. I formatted my existing 340meg PCMCIA (which happens to be the same model as in the Fujitsu) in Windows 95 and sys-ed it to, presumeably, make it bootable. Putting this in the Stylistic the Stylistic just hangs. When I put in either of the Stylistic 260 or 340 meg PCMCIA drives in my Win95 laptop, the laptop recognizes a card is inserted but can't read either drive. Since they wiped the Stylistic drives when I boot with them on the Stylistic's one gives me a Missing Operating System error, the other a Boot Sector error. Trying to boot with the same drives on my laptop which supports PCMCIA booting I get the same error. Even my own known-working 340 meg PCMCIA drive that I format and "make bootable" (heh) in Windows 95 won't work on the laptop. My conclusion is that I have no idea what it takes to make a PCMCIA drive bootable and that doing it in Windows ain't gonna work. I obtained the Stylistic DOS utilities that I think have a special formatter and FDISK that sets up the suspend partition, but these require DOS Card Services which I don't have. Now, they came with what I think is an OEM Version of Phoenix Card Services that should presumeably work with the PCMCIA controller on the Stylistic, but trying to use these on my other laptop (an Itronix) is not working because it wants a different file for the Phoenix Card Services because it has a different PCMCIA chipset. Bah. So does anyone know where I can get a full version of CardSoft, or Phoenix Card Services, or whatever? I think thats what I need. Short of that, I am getting in a floppy drive for the Stylistic next week, and that should allow me to proceed, but I feel rather lame if I can't use another laptop to get this laptop's HD working. Also, putting Linux on a laptop and using it to configure the Stylistic hard drive to make it bootable is an option, if that is not terribly too difficult. 10-02-2002 10:15:06

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) JunkLeo Profile Check these out, that may help you to boot from PCMCIA HD (though the info is for IBM): http://www.basterfield.com/pc110/PCMCIA.htm http://www.basterfield.com/pc110/ATAinit.htm 10-02-2002 22:23:57

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) Tom61 Profile | Email "I formatted my existing 340meg PCMCIA (which happens to be the same model as in the Fujitsu) in Windows 95 and sys-ed it to, presumeably, make it bootable. Putting this in the Stylistic the Stylistic just hangs." Did you 'format /s' it? Sys is pretty much a legacy command and won't make a drive that has only had 'format' (no paramaters) bootable. 10-08-2002 19:02:47

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) smurfman Profile Now that I have a floppy drive for the Stylstic I have been able to get it working and have been doing some testing. My two Stylistic 500's are fully operational now! I don't know the full deal, but evidentally there is something more required with PCMCIA ATA drives to get them to be bootable beyond format /s using another laptop. I will describe what I did and hopefully this will be of some help. I have a Fujitsu 340 meg PCMCIA that came with the Stylistic, as well as an identical physical model generic 340 meg PCMCIA HD. In addition to the Stylistic 500 I also have an Itronix that automatically tries to boot off any PCMCIA HD inserted. On neither machine would doing a format /s on the generic PCMCIA HD cause it to boot. It would just hang. I had tried this months ago with the Itronix, so I knew going into buying the Fujitsu's that I was gonna have some problems. :) On either machine, using the FUjitsu 340 meg PCMCIA HD (that was wiped prior to it being sold) actually worked a little better. Both machines, Fujitsu and Itronix, would complain about missing boot sector or whatever. They wouldn't boot, but this is better than hanging. As one would guess, there is definitely some built-in (BIOS) support for using a PCMCIA HD in the special slot of the Fujitsu Stylistic. So when I did have a floppy drive to hook up and I could boot off a Win95B boot disk I could run FDISK and could see that the partition was not set active on the Fujitsu 340 meg PCMCIA (plugged in to the special HD slot, of course). Once I did this (and did a format /s) it was bootable!!! The generic 340 meg PCMCIA was a bit more challenging. Although its not directly related to your question talking about it is useful. Now that I had the Fujitsu 340 meg PCMCIA working and bootable I was able to install the Phoenix Card Manager (PCM) from Fujitsu's website. This version of PCM only supports a few PCIC socket chipsets, including the one on the Stylstic. With DOS card and socket services drivers installed, thanks to PCM, I could then run the PCMFDISK utility off of the same utililty disk I d/l from Fujitsu's site. With the Generic 340 meg PCMCIA HD in the normal PCMCIA socket, and having booted off the Fujitsu 340 meg PCMCIA in the special socket, I ran PCMFDISK to create the partition on the Geneneric 340 meg PCMCIA was neccessary for me to get it to work. Now the Generic 340 meg PCMCIA HD could be put in the special socket of the Stylistic and booted off of! Also, either drive could now be put into the Itronix and be boot off of as well. So this isn't about a "Fujitsu"-thing, its about a general "PCMCIA-bootable" thing. I had tried when I first got the Fujitsu's in to install the copy of Phoenix Card Manager from the Fujitsu utility disk onto the Itronix laptop, but the Itronix uses a different PCIC chipset that the crappy little OEM version of PCM didn't support!!! The next night is when I ordered the floppy drive, realizing I was pretty stuck. So I am sure a really smart and clever person could edit the boot sector of the Fujitsu PCMCIA HD on their normal Windows laptop, and that would be all it would take to get it working. And if someone wants to do that and points me to a good program for capturing that, I will be happy to capture mine...for either the Fujitsu 340 meg PCMCIA HD, and/or the 260 meg PCMCIA HD, since I have one of each. However the more pedestrian way to get things working using another laptop is to get DOS card and socket service drivers running on it so that one can run PCMFDISK off the Fujitsu utillity disk downloaded from their site. The current owners of PCM (it has changed hands many times) are @ssholes about shutting down sites on the net that have copies of PCM on there, but it looks like it is still available here and there, or you can buy it for $70. Hehe. Or you can just be a totally pussy like me and buy the floppy drive =) I have actually been wanting to get into DOS PCMCIA stuff for a long time. And this has really been my first foray. I'm definitely going to get my ancient ass Xircom PCMCIA Ethernet card working using DOS drivers, as well as my ancient ass Panasonic 2x portable SCSI PCMCIA CDROM working as well. Just for educational purpose. 10-12-2002 05:07:32

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) smurfman Profile Another note: I also just did the same procedure that I used for getting a generic (never-been-FDISKed-in-a-Fujitsu) PCMCIA HD to become bootable on an 8 meg SMARTMEDIA card (plugged into a PCMCIA adapter). The only addendum is that the final step of doing a format /s after running PCMFDISK was not doable. DOS format.com refused to format my little 8 meg smartmedia card. No worries, I just popped the smartmedia w/ pcmcia adapter into my Windows 95 Itronix laptop and formatted there and made it bootable, and then popped it int he special PCMCIA slot of the Fujitsu, and its bootable. I was hoping this would work, and I thought it *probably* would since all the modern solid state flash memory is just an ATA device. Now I think I will take a couple Smartmedia and/or Compact Flash cards to use as my fully solid-state "hard drive" A couple 512 meg CF cards should be just enough space to install some GPS mapping software running a virtual CD image off of one of the CF cards. 10-12-2002 05:14:55

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) stylisticnewbie Profile | Email I did you get your pcmcia to bootup on your stylistic, I have try several times....the drive is recognize under 98, win200 and xp but when I insert into the stylistic it says no operationg system, I even did the format /s and nothing, need help here, thanks 03-13-2003 12:18:59

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) mp3boombox Profile | Email If you guys are intrested? I'v got about 20 or 30 fujitsu stylistic 500's. there a 486-dx2/50 with 4megs onboard ram B/W tuch screen (i have no styles pens which are retarded RF and need batteries. That and I'm not giving up the one that I do have) and I'v got a small hand full of expansion ram cards. also have some batteries but they all have a few to almost zero battery life. max is 20megs 4+4 4+8 and 4+16=X-mem total. Been getting rid of them for $25-30. When i get to it I'll put a picture on my web page of them. FYI, it is possable to take them apart and over clock these systems. basicly just changing the fsb from 25mhz to 33mhz. yeilds a dx2/66. Thats about a 17% preformance increase. the over clock hack would come from changing resisters going to the clock chip. When I get to it I'll put the image of my box of these things in my pictures section. http://members.panax.com/bachh/ My EZnet 200 tower, hacking page. 03-14-2003 18:11:35

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) mp3boombox Profile | Email stylisticnewbie IF YOU WANT to make the hard drive boot, you have but to do 2 things. First is make shure you put the drive in the correct bay. There are 2 bays, one for pcmcia cards and the other is for a pcmcia type 3 hd. You want the pcmcia type 3 hard drive one. ok the next thing is that you HAVE to set the hard drive active. get ranish partition program and set the partition of the pcmcia hard drive active. That is if your loading the drive into a laptop. You may need to boot with the drive IN the laptop your using? but an active partition is what your missing if the stylistic system is not booting off of the hard drive. 03-15-2003 08:32:54

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) stylisticnewbie Profile | Email thanks for the advice, but I have used the program and set the partition to active( veryfied by going to the disk management in XP)and still get nothing but "Non-system disk or disk error"; "replace and press any key when ready"I dont know what else to do, the closest I ever got to boot up was a message saying no operating system, can anyone help this newbie, thanks 03-15-2003 12:06:12

RE:Fujitsu Stylistic and Itronix Touchscreen Laptops for $50 @ CSO (modified 0 times) mp3boombox Profile | Email this will be my last post cause your not supose to put general posts in the breaking news area but with out looking at it my self I do have an other question. Are you sure all the bios settings are correct? are you shure its pluged in correctly. can you boot it in an other laptop? and have you ever run an other OS on the hard drive? IF SO try using the command "fdisk /mbr" On that hard drive It may fix the problem? 03-16-2003 20:51:14

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