Pocket Viewer

PV-S1600

Pocket Viewer (Casio PV) was a model range of Personal Digital Assistants developed by Casio.

Description

Pocket Viewer (Casio PV) was a model range of Personal digital assistants developed by Casio. Early models use Intel x86 based processors (manufactured by NEC). Later models used Hitachi processors from SH3 family. Both models ran Casio's proprietary OS 'CASIO PVOS'. The functionality of the pocket viewers extended beyond the digital diary segment and targeted consumers who needed more compute power in their personal organizers. The pocket viewers competed directly with the then market leader in the segment the Palm-pilots. They were priced under $200 at first release.

The pocket viewers, weighing under 5 ounces, were light and portable. The face of the device was almost entirely covered by an mono-chrome liquid crystal display. Towards the bottom of the LCD there were a few navigation keys. The lower most part of the LCD had quick short cuts to the standard applications permanently indicated. The short-cuts include off, back-light, Scheduler, Contacts, Quick Memo, Sync Start, Escape, Menubar. The standard applications available on the pocket viewer include Expense, PVsheet, Quickmemo, Contacts, Scheduler, ToDo list, Calendar and Alarm.

Pocket viewers used conventional 2 x AAA batteries and under normal operation a completely charged battery lasted around 2 months. Officially it was advertised to operate 50 hours on alkaline batteries without use of back-light. Except for PV-S1600 which used USB, all the other pocket viewers used a COM (RS-232) port to communication between a personal computer and the pocket viewer.

Casio made the pocket viewer SDK available. In time, a small user base who created and made their applications available on-line for free or for profit emerged. User forums such as pocketviewer.de, pocketviewer.com, pocket-viewer.ru and pocketviewer webrings flourished in their time and have since closed. During 2005-2010, the second hand market was on the vane. OWBasic, a third party add-in, provided the easy to learn and use BASIC interpreted programming language on the hand-helds, expanding their functionality to also being programmable hand-held calculators/computers. The device had the computer power and functionality as the home computers of the 80s

Casio also provided some additional applications. Enterprise Harmony, which enabled Outlook 2003 synchronization of Outlook contacts, calendar On windows. PVsheet, a spread sheet application, which could upload/download comma separated spread-sheets. Travel phrase guide, which could translate preset text between English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese.

The Casio pocket viewer series was sandwiched between digital dairies and the pocket PC series Casio Cassiopeia. Casio discontinued the pocket viewers as the pocket PCs became popular and their price came down.

Models

PV-100 PV-250X, PV-450X, PV-S250, PV-S450, PV-750, PV-S460, PV-S660, PV-S400 Plus, PV-S1600

Generation	Model	Year	Data Storage	Interface	Processor	Display	Expandable	Market	Extra 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	(by OS-Update)	Europe
2.	PV-200A PV-400A	2000	2 MB 4 MB	RS-232	NEC V30MZ	160x160	-	USA
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	-	USA
4.	PV-S460 PV-S660	2002	2 MB 4 MB	RS-232	NEC V30MZ	160x160	yes	Europe
4.	PV-S400Plus PV-S600Plus	2002	2 MB 4 MB	RS-232	NEC V30MZ	160x160	yes	USA
5.	PV-S1600	2003	12 MB	USB 1.0	Hitachi SH-3	160x160	yes	Worldwide

• 
  PV-200
• 
  PV-750Plus
• 
  PV-750Plus
• 
  PV-S450
• 
  PV-S450
• 
  PV-S400Plus
• 
  PV-S660
• 
  PV-S1600

Technical details

• The PV-100 did not have a back light. While the back light was available on PV-200 onwards, Casio by default did not allow the back-light to remain on more than 30 seconds. Casio did not recommend extending the duration. as A third party application back light extender add in was required to keep the back light on beyond the default duration. The back-light was Casio's trade marked EL-back-light, which is an electro-luminescent panel that causes the entire face to glow.
• The PV-S1600 did not use a NEC V30MZ processor, but used a Hitachi SH-3. The processor architectures are not compatible hence programs compiled for the earlier architectures do not work on the PV-S1600 without recompilation. OWBasic programs will work as they run in an interpreter.
• The NEC V30MZ was a 16 bit processor which used a segmented memory space. An indirect consequence is that those models can download a maximum of 16 addins
• The file system is divided into PVOS modes and sub modes. Each record is part of a file that is specified by mode and submode. Depending on the mode data sets are null-terminated in either binary or text format. Binary data sets are to 3 KB or 32 KB (records that are greater than 3 KB, can be loaded only into the far-segment, PV-S1600 has no restriction), text data sets to 2 KB (PV-S1600: limited 32 KB).

Notes

• The HP 200LX a palm top computer, also used a 80186 chip
• Casio did not provide any official linux support. Casio had contracted a 3rd party vendor for PC communication, and hence could not disclose any internal communication protocols. Apart from Casio PC sync and Enterprise Harmony, shareware Xlink/Win also provides communication with windows. An open-source GPL Linux application by the name PVlink is available with limited guarantees.
• Since 'Casio PVOS' was a small proprietary OS, it did not benefit from main-stream platform support that Linux, or other proprietary OS such as Pocket PC or Palm OS.

External Links

• Casio pocket viewer FAQ
• Casio PV downloads
• cnet review PV-200
• cnet review PV-S400Plus