Something like an OmniBook 300, but smaller?

[Dave Britten]

I think I remember seeing the Viliv. Similar in concept was the UMID M1. But you're right about the batteries; those weren't very big packs in the first place, and I'm sure they don't hold much charge at this point.

I've got a Libretto 50CT, and that can run for maybe an hour or so on its original battery. Not too shabby considering the age. I'm tempted to track down some fresh cells to rebuild it, but that would just be for kicks. The suspend/resume time is pretty long and would make it a poor choice for a quick-pull-out machine (and it takes twice as long to read/write the RAM to disk since I upgraded it to 32 MB). It does do a sort of hybrid sleep, though, which is cool: when you enter suspend mode, it writes the RAM to disk, and then goes to sleep. After a certain time (no idea how long, but I think it's at least an hour or so), it shuts off completely to maximize standby time, so when you power it back up, it reloads the contents of RAM rather than simply resuming where it left off.

But the nice thing about all this old DOS software (and to an extent, Windows 3.11) is the ubiquity of DOSBox. I think you can get that to run on just about anything these days. I wish the PocketCHIP came with a higher-res screen, but 480x272 would be a bit too small for useful DOSBox, so I haven't bothered trying on there. I'm sure it would work fine on a CHIP connected to a display via HDMI or VGA, though.