The TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer SuperSite! » Compaq IA-1

Little White Compaq MSN Companion Terminal Thingy

admin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:55:49 +0000

[img:906c872323]http://www.coco3.com/img/cocoia1.jpg[/img:906c872323]

If you’ve come across a funny little computer terminal looking unit in a garage sale, Goodwill, or ebay, and you’ve Googled your way to this web site somehow, well good for you!

The first thing you might want to do is trash the software on that thing. Trust me! Turn the IA-1 back into the PC it was before Bill Gates got ahold of it and you can have some Real fun with it. Otherwise, it’s a doorstop.

That’s why I added this forum so other IA-1 owners could share what they’ve learned or use what they’ve learned here and a lot of the mysteries could be revealed in one area on this site.

However, since this is a Tandy Color Computer support site CoCo emulation on the IA-1 should be the main focus.

read on…
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Compaq IA-1 Original Specs

admin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:51:28 +0000

Here’s a rough summary of the Compaq IA-1 before it was hacked, patched, poked, prodded, or otherwise altered from it’s original state:

Product Name
Compaq iPAQ Home Internet Appliance IA-1

Dimensions
10.75 x 9 x 5 in, 273 x 228.6 x 127 mm

Weight
5.8 lbs, 2.63 kg

Processor
266 MHz AMD K6-2E

Operating System
MS Windows CE 2.12

Memory
32 MB SDRAM, 16 MB Flash

Display
10.1 inch DSTN color, flat panel display, 800 x 600, ClearType Technology

Input/Output
Wireless Keyboard wtih mouse functions
(4) USB ports
(2) RJ-11 phone connectors
Stereo line-out
Built-in mono speaker

Communications
56K v.90 modem

Browser Support
Internet Explorer v4.01, MSN Companion
HTML, JavaScript, JVM, Cookies
Macromedia Flash 4, Windows Media Player 6.2, ActiveX

Email Services
Web-based Email, MSN Hotmail service

MultiMedia
Windows Media Player 6.2

Security
SSL 128 bit

Other Features
Instant-on Internet access
Web-based Email
Flashing red Email indicator
One-touch keys
Built-in help
Automatic upgrades
Digital photo frame when power is off

IA-1 CoCo 3 emulator photos in the gallery, check’em out!

admin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:22:57 +0000

Click on Gallery in the left sidebar and choose the IA-1 album for some neat pictures.

It’s my first self-contained CoCo 3 (emulator) all stashed on a CF card booted by the IA-1.

Next move might be the IPAQ PDA?

IA-1 CoCo

admin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:14:45 +0000

First, let me say that I was one of the lucky ones to pick up an IA-1 at a local group yard sale for only $1. I was fumbling through a huge box of wires, speakers and electric gadgets and I noticed a small wireless keyboard. I dug some more and … what’s this?… I’ve never heard of this thing. So I rushed home and plugged it in, and I was amazed (but not so amazed…) to see Microsoft MSN pop up on the screen. Darn…

Looking all over the web turned up plenty of IA-1 hack sites. There’s a few 16mb versions of Linux that can be written to the internal flash memory so the unit will boot up into Linux. This involves erasing over the MSN Companion software that’s built into the unit.

Currently I have Midori Linux running on my IA-1 if no Compact Flash card is inserted. If a CF is inserted containing MS-DOS or Windows 98, the unit will boot into that operating system and give 2 gigs of storage as a hard drive.

With an MS-DOS bootable CF card, you can put Jeff Vavasour’s and David Keil’s emulators on it with all of the disk images you can come up with and have a virtual CoCo 3.

My current wish is to get it booting into Windows 98SE, have wireless network capability via the USB port (there are 4 on the IA-1), so I can run the CoCo emulators AND put the unit on the web and do things like running the Mocha CoCo emulator which is Java based.

If you have done some work with the IA-1 even if not CoCo related and you can help give some tips and pointers, please take the time to post your findings, what works, what doesn’t, etc.