Pocket Viewer
The Pocket Viewer ( PV ) are a PDA series from the manufacturer Casio .
The Pocket Viewer is a low-budget PDA from Casio, which initially competed with the small Palm models. The PVs use an operating system developed by Casio (PVOS), which supports the standard applications typical for PDAs (address book ("contacts"), organizer, notes ("memo"), handwritten notes ("short memo"), expense manager, World clock, calculator). The models of the PV-Sx50, PV-Sx60 and PV-S1600 series also contain an extensive spreadsheet .
Basic properties
- Display: Monochrome touchscreen display
- EL backlight (except PV-100)
- Action scroll wheel (on PV-Sx00Plus and PV-S1600 in the form of buttons) for easy navigation through menus
- Power supply: 2 AAA - round cells
- Battery life of around 160 hours (PV-S1600: 120) according to Casio
- Interface: RS-232 (PV-S1600: USB )
- Operating system: PVOS
history
With the PVs, Casio offered a budget PDA from 1999 to supplement the high-priced Cassiopeia series and the Business Navigator .
After the start of the second PV generation, Casio published an operating system update and an SDK , so that it was possible to write your own programs for PVs from the second generation onwards. There is now a lively community that develops programs and games for PV. There is now a sophisticated text editor, many database programs, scientific calculators, function plotters , games of all kinds, operating system patches and also a compiler / interpreter for a BASIC dialect called OWBasic .
With OWBasic it is possible to write and test programs on the PV yourself, which means that there is both a beginner- friendly and powerful alternative to programming the PV with the SDK and the C programming language . OWBasic made the programming accessible to a wide range of users and made a significant contribution to the popularity of PV.
In 2006, Casio officially removed the PV from its product range. However, there is still a PV community that continues to develop committed projects.
Model overview
| generation | Models | year | Data storage space | interface | processor | Display | Expandable | market | Additional features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | PV-100
PV-200 |
1999 | 1 MB
2 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 128x128 | - | Worldwide | |
| 1. | PV-170
PV-270 |
1999 | 1 MB
2 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x240 | - | China | |
| 2. | PV-250X
PV-450X |
2000 | 2 MB
4 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x160 | (after OS update) | Europe | |
| 2. | PV-200A
PV-400A |
2000 | 2 MB
4 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x160 | - | United States | |
| 2. | PV-750 / PV-750Plus | 2000 | 2 MB | RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x160 | Yes | Europe | IrDA interface |
| 3. | PV-S250
PV-S450 |
2001 | 2 MB
4 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x160 | Yes | Europe | |
| 3. | PV-200e
PV-400Plus |
2001 | 2 MB
4 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x160 | - | United States | |
| 4th | PV-S460
PV-S660 |
2002 | 2 MB
4 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x160 | Yes | Europe | |
| 4th | PV-S400Plus
PV-S600Plus |
2002 | 2 MB
4 MB |
RS-232 | NEC V30MZ | 160x160 | Yes | United States | |
| 5. | PV-S1600 | 2003 | 12 MB | USB | Hitachi SH-3 | 160x160 | Yes | Worldwide |
With the PV-750 it is possible to use the IrDA interface to send and receive e-mails via a GSM- enabled mobile phone . The PV-750Plus can also be used to send SMS , and the address directory of the mobile phone can be synchronized with that of the PV. An operating system update for the PV-750 is available at Casio, which gives it the functionality of the PV-750Plus.
PV-200
PV-750Plus
PV-750Plus
PV-S450
PV-S450
PV-S400Plus
PV-S660
PV-S1600
Technical details
The PVs the 1st to 4th generation have a NEC V30MZ 80186 compatible processor at 20 MHz, 128 KB RAM, 1, 2 or 4 MB Flash - RAM for data and 1 MB Flash - ROM for the operating system and 1 MB Flash -ROM for add-ins (not for PV-100 / -200, PV-200A / -400A, PV-200e / -400Plus).
The PV-S1600 uses a Hitachi 32-bit SH-3 processor and 8 MB RAM, 12 MB Flash RAM and 4 MB Flash ROM for the operating system. The processor is more powerful than the 16-bit processors of the other PVs, but the programs are not interchangeable because the processor architectures are not compatible with one another. OWBasic programs are an exception here , as OWBasic is an interpreted language and there is also an OWBasic version for the PV-S1600. In addition, the APIs of both series are the same except for a few small things, so that native programs can also be ported with a manageable effort.
Since the 1st to 4th generation PV models use a 16-bit processor, the memory is segmented . This is particularly noticeable in the restriction to a maximum of 16 add-ins, which are not available on the PV-S1600 (but which can be handled with special programs such as PVAddIn-Manager).
The PVOS file system is divided into modes and sub-modes. Each data record is part of a file that is specified by mode and submode. Depending on the mode, records are either binary or in text format (zero-terminated). Binary data records are limited to 3 KB or 32 KB (data records larger than 3 KB can only be loaded into the far segment ; PV-S1600: no restriction), text data records to 2 KB (PV-S1600: 32 KB) .
