HP200LX CF cards

[fy789]

Hi all,

I recently acquired a used HP-200LX 2MB to enhance my
pocket/handheld computers collection, but I found it
quite difficult to move files into the 200LX due to
legacy OS format incompatibility with Win 11.

First thing I try to achieve is to create a CF storage,
but I found out that DOS5.0 cannot "see" anything
bigger than 512MB (?) and the machine is very picky
on the CF cards. Some HP200LX related sites suggest
using a program "acecard3.com" to overcome the
first problem.

So first thing, I am trying to download "acecard3.com"
to my Win11 PC, and write it to a small 64MB SanDisk
CF card.

The problem now is that I can format this 32MB CF card
in my Win11 PC, and put "acecard3.com" on it, but my
200LX cannot see it.

I try to work from the other end, and format the 32MB
CF card on the 200LX with fdisk100, but my Win11 PC
cannot recognize it.

So nothing will work, as DOS is not compatible with Win11.

Is there any solution to solve it?
This should be a very common novice user problem.
Please feel free to explain and share how do you work
around this.


Thanks,
fy789.

[BruceH]

(03-27-2024 05:12 AM)fy789 Wrote:  Hi all,

I recently acquired a used HP-200LX 2MB to enhance my
pocket/handheld computers collection, but I found it
quite difficult to move files into the 200LX due to
legacy OS format incompatibility with Win 11.

First thing I try to achieve is to create a CF storage,
but I found out that DOS5.0 cannot "see" anything
bigger than 512MB (?) and the machine is very picky
on the CF cards. Some HP200LX related sites suggest
using a program "acecard3.com" to overcome the
first problem.

So first thing, I am trying to download "acecard3.com"
to my Win11 PC, and write it to a small 64MB SanDisk
CF card.

The problem now is that I can format this 32MB CF card
in my Win11 PC, and put "acecard3.com" on it, but my
200LX cannot see it.

It's acecard3.sys not .com.

And you need to have it pre-loaded before you insert the card so simply including it on the card is not enough. You need it stored in the 200LX's C: drive and edit config.sys to load it on boot up. A nice chicken and egg problem. :-)

Quote:I try to work from the other end, and format the 32MB
CF card on the 200LX with fdisk100, but my Win11 PC
cannot recognize it.

So nothing will work, as DOS is not compatible with Win11.

Is there any solution to solve it?
This should be a very common novice user problem.
Please feel free to explain and share how do you work
around this.

Win 11 is still quite new so people may simply not have come across the problem yet.

You might try a cheap Linux box like a RaspberryPI with an external SD Card reader as that can be used as a "staging post" i.e. transfer file from Win11 to RPi then from RPi to card.

Or, if you'd rather not bother with a separate box, then maybe try an older Windows running in a Hyper-V virtual machine under Win11? XP would be of the same vintage as the 200LX or maybe WSL2 and Ubuntu?

[striegel]

My main home system runs Windows 11 Pro and with a good working USB adapter, it can work fine with several of my HP 200LX Compact Flash cards. In fact, the main one I use daily is a 256 MB CF card and I do not need the Acecard driver.

The label on the face of the CF card probably matters less than the actual make and model of the card. On the outside edge of mine, it is labeled (faintly, in tiny text):

THNCF 256MBA (T00CK) 998018 TAIWAN 0410

If you can find one close enough to this, it ought to work well.

The most important aspect is that the card first needs to be initialized and formatted in the 200LX before it's ever presented to the Windows 11 system.

Plugging in on the Windows 11 desktop, it may put up a notice of this type:

Quote:USB Drive (F: )
There's a problem with this drive. Scan the drive now and fix it.

If so, ignore this warning.

[striegel]

Also, I highly recommend the page Daniel Hertrich put up some years back:

https://hermocom.com/hplx/view-all-hp-pa...oragecards

Good luck.

Alan

[fy789]

Thanks for your inputs, BruceH!

I also have a Intel NUC mini PC installed with Ubuntu 18.04LTS.
Will this help ?

My major issue is that I don't know if the SanDisk 64MB (SDCFJ) CF
card works. It is very flaky.....as described previously.
I purchased it from Amazon, but I heard that a lot of these legacy
CF cards are bogus.
In addition, I cannot do "format a:" succesfully after I did a "fdisk100"
to activate the card. 200LX cannot see the card after "fdisk100".
Using the Filer App in 200LX does not help neither.

Lastly, I just order a HP CF card with HP CF-to-PCMCIA adapter
from ebay yesterday.
Let's see if this works when it arrives next week.

(03-27-2024 10:26 AM)BruceH Wrote:  

(03-27-2024 05:12 AM)fy789 Wrote:  Hi all,

I recently acquired a used HP-200LX 2MB to enhance my
pocket/handheld computers collection, but I found it
quite difficult to move files into the 200LX due to
legacy OS format incompatibility with Win 11.

First thing I try to achieve is to create a CF storage,
but I found out that DOS5.0 cannot "see" anything
bigger than 512MB (?) and the machine is very picky
on the CF cards. Some HP200LX related sites suggest
using a program "acecard3.com" to overcome the
first problem.

So first thing, I am trying to download "acecard3.com"
to my Win11 PC, and write it to a small 64MB SanDisk
CF card.

The problem now is that I can format this 32MB CF card
in my Win11 PC, and put "acecard3.com" on it, but my
200LX cannot see it.

It's acecard3.sys not .com.

And you need to have it pre-loaded before you insert the card so simply including it on the card is not enough. You need it stored in the 200LX's C: drive and edit config.sys to load it on boot up. A nice chicken and egg problem. :-)

Quote:I try to work from the other end, and format the 32MB
CF card on the 200LX with fdisk100, but my Win11 PC
cannot recognize it.

So nothing will work, as DOS is not compatible with Win11.

Is there any solution to solve it?
This should be a very common novice user problem.
Please feel free to explain and share how do you work
around this.

Win 11 is still quite new so people may simply not have come across the problem yet.

You might try a cheap Linux box like a RaspberryPI with an external SD Card reader as that can be used as a "staging post" i.e. transfer file from Win11 to RPi then from RPi to card.

Or, if you'd rather not bother with a separate box, then maybe try an older Windows running in a Hyper-V virtual machine under Win11? XP would be of the same vintage as the 200LX or maybe WSL2 and Ubuntu?

[MeindertKuipers]

Absolutely amazing that a goose hunt leads to this conclusion and that after a long time we find this 'feature' of the NUT processor. And that todays technology offers the tools to discover and confirm this quickly.

[BruceH]

(03-28-2024 10:43 AM)fy789 Wrote:  Thanks for your inputs, BruceH!

I also have a Intel NUC mini PC installed with Ubuntu 18.04LTS.
Will this help ?

My major issue is that I don't know if the SanDisk 64MB (SDCFJ) CF
card works. It is very flaky.....as described previously.
I purchased it from Amazon, but I heard that a lot of these legacy
CF cards are bogus.
In addition, I cannot do "format a:" succesfully after I did a "fdisk100"
to activate the card. 200LX cannot see the card after "fdisk100".
Using the Filer App in 200LX does not help neither.

Lastly, I just order a HP CF card with HP CF-to-PCMCIA adapter
from ebay yesterday.
Let's see if this works when it arrives next week.

Now I'm confused: if you've only just ordered the CF<->PCMCIA adapter how were you using the CF card in the 200LX? Or do you mean you've ordered another?

Regardless, if the CF card is flaky then you need to be sure that is working reliably first otherwise you're just making life hard for yourself.

You can format the card using your Ubuntu box with a command something like:
$ sudo mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/sdy1
where the /dev/sdy1 bit needs to be changed to the appropriate value for your system as it depends on what you have connected.

mkfs.fat has a -c option that checks for bad blocks first before formatting that you might try. Also there is -F 12 to format as FAT12 which might make the 200LX happier? TBH I never really had any problems with my 200LX - the PCMCIA adaptor and card 'just worked' so I've not had to look any deeper. It is, of course, an old card bought at the time and therefore small capacity.

[Helix]

(03-28-2024 10:43 AM)fy789 Wrote:  Thanks for your inputs, BruceH!
My major issue is that I don't know if the SanDisk 64MB (SDCFJ) CF
card works. It is very flaky.....as described previously.
I purchased it from Amazon, but I heard that a lot of these legacy
CF cards are bogus.

Several years ago, I purchased three used Sandisk 64MB CF cards from Ebay. I have no problem with them, they don’t need acecard3 and work well with Windows 11.
As advised in Daniel Hertrich’s site, they are of the SDCFB type.
SDCFB Sandisk cards are easy to find on Ebay.

Since the SDCFJ type is not mentioned on this site, I suppose it doesn’t work with the 200 LX.

[fy789]

The Ebay seller only sells the CF card as a CF+CF-->PCMCIA set.
Stand alone workable HP CF cards are not available.

The exisiting issue is the SanDisk CF card is not compatible.
A lot of the Amazon vendors like to send out random items,
while the item they advertized is NOT available.
I specifically ordered a 64MB SanDisk SDCFB CF card, but they
ship me a SDCFJ card. I guess there are subtle electrical
differences that fail my exisitng 64MB CF card.
It is not "flaky", but just "Incompatible".

Let me see if the HP CF card will work.

BTW, do you have a step-by-step cheatsheet on how to add and
configure the 200LX to access larger CF cards using acecard3.sys?
I really appreciate if you can post this here. Thx!

(03-29-2024 12:31 PM)BruceH Wrote:  Now I'm confused: if you've only just ordered the CF<->PCMCIA adapter how were you using the CF card in the 200LX? Or do you mean you've ordered another?

Regardless, if the CF card is flaky then you need to be sure that is working reliably first otherwise you're just making life hard for yourself.

You can format the card using your Ubuntu box with a command something like:
$ sudo mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/sdy1
where the /dev/sdy1 bit needs to be changed to the appropriate value for your system as it depends on what you have connected.

mkfs.fat has a -c option that checks for bad blocks first before formatting that you might try. Also there is -F 12 to format as FAT12 which might make the 200LX happier? TBH I never really had any problems with my 200LX - the PCMCIA adaptor and card 'just worked' so I've not had to look any deeper. It is, of course, an old card bought at the time and therefore small capacity.

[fy789]

HI,

Thanks for your pointers!

Please see my reply to BruceH which also answers some
of your points.

fy789.

(03-29-2024 10:35 PM)Helix Wrote:  

(03-28-2024 10:43 AM)fy789 Wrote:  Thanks for your inputs, BruceH!
My major issue is that I don't know if the SanDisk 64MB (SDCFJ) CF
card works. It is very flaky.....as described previously.
I purchased it from Amazon, but I heard that a lot of these legacy
CF cards are bogus.

Several years ago, I purchased three used Sandisk 64MB CF cards from Ebay. I have no problem with them, they don’t need acecard3 and work well with Windows 11.
As advised in Daniel Hertrich’s site, they are of the SDCFB type.
SDCFB Sandisk cards are easy to find on Ebay.

Since the SDCFJ type is not mentioned on this site, I suppose it doesn’t work with the 200 LX.

[fy789]

I received the CF card that I purchased from Ebay today.

It works right the way, and I can "dir a:" and it will list
the files and directories in the CF drives.
The CF card is visible/writeable in both the 200LX and
my Win11 laptop.

I discovered another issue, and this may be due to
my MS-DOS-ignorance:

I try to run DERIVE.exe and MCAD.exe from their
directories in the CF drive, but I got the
"Cannot execute A:\MATHCAD\MCAD.EXE"
and similar message for DERIVE.exe.
Do I have to copy the files to somewhere
to run it, or do I have to configure a bigger
RAM disk to run these programs? Thx!

BTW, tetris runs successfully from the CF card though.

[mareksaw]

(04-02-2024 10:16 AM)fy789 Wrote:  I try to run DERIVE.exe and MCAD.exe from their
directories in the CF drive, but I got the
"Cannot execute A:\MATHCAD\MCAD.EXE"
and similar message for DERIVE.exe.
Do I have to copy the files to somewhere
to run it, or do I have to configure a bigger
RAM disk to run these programs? Thx!

Are both exe files compatible with DOS and 8086+ processor or these are just Windows exe files?

M

[mareksaw]

Mathcad 2.5 from here and Derive 3 from here are probably last versions that work on 200LX. I checked both and they run fine (see below). Just download .7z files and use a tool like 7-zip to extract files (from .img floppy images). Then put extracted files in a new directory on your CF card and run the exe.





M

[fy789]

Thanks!

I found out that I can run both programs if I quit the GUI and terminate all
running programs first, and then run the programs from the DOS prompt.
It is confusing that running both programs from the DOS prompt in the
GUI will not work.

Now, I am trying to run some DOS arcade games such as Ckong, Galaxian,
and PacMan, but DOS will complain " XXX will require 324K memory to run".
Is there a way to run these games in extended memory or other workarounds ?

[striegel]

(04-07-2024 03:23 AM)fy789 Wrote:  ...running both programs from the DOS prompt in the
GUI will not work.

This is because the GUI and any other programs take up memory. Launching a DOS prompt from within the GUI can only access a portion of the total system RAM.

Several packages were created to let you free up more memory (which you can check with the MEM command). If you want to allocate more to a program you list in the GUI, edit the command for the .EXE or .COM by following it with a pipe (|) then the RAM amount.

There is help for this within the &...

Do you have the User Guide?

I also highly recommend a couple of packages:

• The Buddy System
• MaxDOS
• CloseFLR
• Software Carousel (SC)
  

[mareksaw]

(04-07-2024 11:43 PM)striegel Wrote:  I also highly recommend a couple of packages:

...
• MaxDOS
  ...
  

I was trying to download MaxDOS from http://mizj.com/maxd03b.zip but it says "Not Found". Where can I get this package from?

M

[striegel]

(04-09-2024 08:51 AM)mareksaw Wrote:  I was trying to download MaxDOS from http://mizj.com/maxd03b.zip but it says "Not Found". Where can I get this package from?

Pick it up from here: https://striegels.com/alan/HPLX/maxdos.zip

It's licensed freeware, so it used to be available through SUPER, but most of the online copies or lists have bad links.

[Helix]

(04-09-2024 07:51 PM)striegel Wrote:  

(04-09-2024 08:51 AM)mareksaw Wrote:  I was trying to download MaxDOS from http://mizj.com/maxd03b.zip but it says "Not Found". Where can I get this package from?

Pick it up from here: https://striegels.com/alan/HPLX/maxdos.zip

It's licensed freeware, so it used to be available through SUPER, but most of the online copies or lists have bad links.

I know two other copies of the SUPER site that include Maxdos:
https://casio.ledudu.com/HPLX/super.html
https://200lx.olsonnetwork.com
It can be useful to check the links on various sites.

[Helix]

(04-07-2024 11:43 PM)striegel Wrote:  I also highly recommend a couple of packages:

• The Buddy System
• MaxDOS
• CloseFLR
• Software Carousel (SC)
  

I would be interested in Software Carousel, but unfortunately it is not longer available.
I own this software sold by the HP Palmtop Paper: they have just copied to a CF card a bunch of files from a palmtop on which SC was installed. But it’s impossible to run the software without a clean installation and a license code! And The HP Palmtop Paper doesn’t respond to any request

[mareksaw]

(04-09-2024 07:51 PM)striegel Wrote:  Pick it up from here: https://striegels.com/alan/HPLX/maxdos.zip

Great! Thanks!

M