Pocket viewer

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PV-S1600

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) and latest models use Hitachi processors from SH3 family. Both run under CASIO OS.

Casio issued an SDK which amongst other things produced a programmable interpreter/compiler called OWBasic put together by Wolfgang Ortmann. http://www.audacia-software.de/en/pv/owbasic/index.htm http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/OWBasic

This hugely expanded the ability of the unit, which is extremely light and portable with a battery life (2 x AAA) of around 2 months, turning the PV into a programmable handheld calculator/computer with commands such as proc, gosub, conditional if/then statements and includes for use in larger programming projects, including graphing.

OWBasic also allows a user to develop applications for string text, taking the CasioPV beyond the normal limits imposed by a standard programmable calculator.

OWBasic turns the casio PV from a bog standard PDA into a kind of handheld ZX spectrum. The command listing can be found on this link.

http://www.inf-cv.uni-jena.de/offen/noo/owbasic/manual/owb_e_intro.html

What OWBasic does is to compile a block of binary code which is then run on the interpreter, which is faster than interpreting individual text instruction lines at run time.

So the user could now use their PV to write specific program applications for their handheld, with no requirement for a software development kit (SDK) on a desktop computer.

This is not a common trait amongst handheld PDAs, another handheld computer that achieved this feat was the DOS based HP-200LX, which also used an 80186 chip.

Most PV models use the 80186 NEC clone.

different models:

PV-250X

PV-450X

PV-S250

PV-S450

PV-750

PV-S460

PV-S660

PV-S400 Plus

PV-S1600 (note-This model does not use the 80186 clone from NEC)

This is a site with casio PV global links