NEC MobilePro 900

Today’s entry in the endless “Zscaler Logo on a Weird, Old or Obsolete Device” series is one I’ve been working on for ages: the NEC MobilePro 900!

Dating back to 2002, this is either a tiny laptop or a gigantic Personal Digital Assistant (“PDA”), depending on how you look at it. It’s powered by a 400 MHz Intel XScale CPU, it has 64 megabytes of RAM, and it runs a stripped-down version of Windows CE. It weighs less than 2lbs, and has a surprising amount of connectivity and expansion options: a PCMCIA card slot, a CompactFlash slot (which I used to copy the logo graphic over), USB ports, 56k dialup modem, Infrared transceiver, and a weird custom serial port which I cannot seem to find an adapter for. The only major feature that it’s missing is WiFi, but WiFi was still in its infancy when this was new, so that’s probably not surprising. Thankfully, it should work with an old “802.11b” WiFi card, once I dig one out of my junk drawer.

I bought this thing for a few dollars on eBay years ago and it’s been a long process to bring it back to life. As best I can tell, a previous owner tried (and failed!) to install an OS update which essentially ‘bricked’ the device. Thankfully I was able to find some guidance online and with some stubborn persistence, eventually found a way to re-flash the original factory operating system. Once that was done, it fired right up and has been working beautifully ever since.

It’s an interesting device to use - the keyboard is *tiny* and takes some getting used to, and the Windows XP-style desktop interface pairs with a stylus and touchscreen like a goldfish pairs with a bicycle… but it does have some charm to it, quirks and all.

Anyway, that’s it for today - have a great weekend, everyone!