Long before the tablet PC craze of fall 2002, there was the Toshiba T100X Dynapad. The T100X was a "pen-based computer" (This was before the term "tablet PC" existed) which ran on a 25MHz 386 AMD CPU. It shipped with 4MB RAM and had a 40MB hard disk drive for storage. It did not include an internal floppy disk drive, but a separate external floppy disk drive could be purchased.
Similar to most modern tablet PCs, the T100X did not have a built-in keyboard, and mouse pointing was done with a stylus. However it did contain ports to connect an external keyboard and serial mouse. It also contained two Type II PCMCIA slots, but it has been said configuring PCMCIA devices to work properly was often difficult. A parallel port adaptor was also included.
The display consisted of a backlit 9.5" grayscale touch-sensitive LCD with a standard VGA resolution of 640x480 pixels at a color depth of 16 shades of gray.
The T100X was often shipped with Windows 3.1, along with specialized drivers (Microsoft Pen Services for Windows 3.x) to enable pen and handwriting support in applications, and to allow the stylus to function as the mouse.
The T100X weighed approximately 3.3 pounds, amazingly lightweight for portable PCs of the time (This was back when notebook computers easily weighed at least 8
pounds).
Thanks to Torin Darkflight for info and pictures.
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I actually still have one of these tablets. I have the tablet, keyboard, sylus, parallel cable, and the recovery floppy disks but do not have the external floppy drive. It still boots to the 40MB internal HDD. I wish I could find one of the external floppy drives. I also want to see if I can convert the HDD to a CF card.
Sunday 17th May 2020
JD Duncan (US)
I can''t believe I trashed my working T100 pad in the dumpster about 20 years ago. Battery didn''t hold charge long though. I use to run a GeoCities page dedicated to the T-100X.
Thursday 5th March 2020
Ma Boo (United States)
I owned one of these in the late 90s, and loved it. The screen was not touch, but rather was responsive to the pen via weak RF signals. The pen also needed a battery, which ran down rather easily. (AAAA as I recall). I updated mine to run Win3.11, which included easier PCMCIA services. The writing app was really outstanding as well. It recorded the pen strokes as vectors, not as raster. The allowed it to do post-writing OCR as well as real time (which was slow and could be turned off). Was quite sad when mine finally died a few years ago.
Thursday 9th August 2012
Craig Woodward (New York/ USA)
NAME
T100-X Dynapad
MANUFACTURER
Toshiba
TYPE
Portable
ORIGIN
Japan
YEAR
1993
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
Microsoft Pen Services for Windows
KEYBOARD
None built-in, an onscreen virtual keyboard was available
CPU
AMD AM-386 SXLV
SPEED
25MHz
RAM
4 MB standard, expandable to 20 MB maximum
GRAPHIC MODES
640x480 VGA
COLORS
16-level grayscale
SOUND
Standard PC speaker
SIZE / WEIGHT
Screen 9.5'' diagonal/ 270 x 39 x 210 mm (WxDxH) / Weight: 3.3 pounds
I/O PORTS
Serial, Keyboard, FDD (For external floppydrive), Two PCMCIA Type II slots, Parallel/LPT adaptor