The Tandy Zoomer -- The x86 PDA before the Palm Pilot

Date:
Thu, 08 Dec 2022 20:26:53 GMT

Description:
A 1992 handheld, with multitasking, that could access AOL. Wild.

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The 1996 release of the first Palm Pilot was, in the minds of many, the first truly successful launch of a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). But the seeds of the Palm Pilot were planted several years earlier.

In fact the company behind the Palm Pilot, Palm Computing Inc., was founded back in 1992 for the sole purpose of creating software for another just released PDA the Tandy Zoomer. The Tandy Zoomer

Also known as the Tandy Z-PDA, Casio Z-7000, and AST GRiDpad (all essentially the same hardware sold by different brands) was a truly groundbreaking and fascinating device.

Fun fact: The name Zoomer was used as a shortened, slang-y version of consumer. Get it? Conzoomer? Seriously. Thats the reason behind the name. The Zoomer (aka Z-PDA) with the address book. Note that fields can be ASCII text or doodles.

The Zoomer weighed in at a whopping 15.2 ounces (yes, just shy of one pound) and was 4.2 wide, 6.8 tall, and 1 thick. By todays standards a bit chunky. But, if you ever get the chance to hold one, youll find that they feel rather good in your hand. Tandy Zoomer box, Zoomer, and manual. Note the totally radical, early 1990s fonts and colors.

The monochrome touch-screen had a 320 x 256 resolution which you could interact with via a stylus. Pretty darn cool for 1992. The back of the Tandy Zoomer (Z-PDA) box

The guts of the Tandy Zoomer were equally fun. The system was powered by an 8088 compatible CPU (meaning it was an x86 computer), with 1 MB of RAM (640KB usable for memory the rest was application storage) and a 4MB ROM where the system and built in software was stored. Note the D-Pad arrow button and the
A / B buttons. Handy for making games, right?

In addition it had an RS-232 port (10 pin variety), and a PCMCIA slot (which could be used to add RAM, flash storage, dialup modems from 2400 up to 14.4k baud, and even an early wireless modem).

And the whole gosh darned thing was powered by three AA batteries.

Seriously. GEOS The Operating System on the Zoomer

As awesome as the hardware of the Zoomer was the software was almost cooler.

The whole thing was running GEOS. A multi-threaded, multi-tasking operating system with a full, touch-screen GUI. The GRiDpad variant of the Tandy
Zoomer.

The system had all the basics with a system that is, arguably, as powerful
as modern mobile systems. Screenshot of the Zoomer calendar view. Note that you could scribble on top of it.

File manager, full networking stack, printer drivers, on-screen keyboard (several options), handwriting recognition, system-wide security, office suite, address book, calendar, and notes. Note taking on the Zoomer was
pretty cool. You could enter ASCII text via on-screen keyboard or
handwriting recognition then you could draw pictures and jot hand-written notes. All together.

26 language dictionary with translation tools, a number of games, quicken (seriously) and I kid you not AOL.

Yeah. America On-Line. In your pocket. In 1992. AOL on the Zoomer. Image courtesy this Reddit post . The birth of the Palm Pilot

Much of the PDA-like software written for the Zoomer was developed by Palm Computing Inc., which was founded by Jeff Hawkins.

Jeff also happens to be the man who led the original development of the
Zoomer itself originally at a company named GRiD Systems, which later was acquired by Tandy (parent company of Radio Shack) prior to launch.

After the Zoomer market died down, Jeff focused on creating his own hardware platforms using much of what he learned from the Zoomer (and earlier projects). Thus, the Palm Pilot was born.

But the Zoomer came first, by several years (even before the Apple Newton), and had a number of features that early Palm Pilots could only dream of.

It was a machine that was truly ahead of its time. Share Subscribe now





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Link to news story: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-tandy-zoomer-the-x86-pda-before


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