Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing!And this thing... I'm not entirely sure what it is and that's why I want to do a
video about it. This is the Comet Notebook. You might have seen it in a
video not too long ago where I did an unboxing of things that were sent to me
and this was one of the donations.
And it came all the way from Turkey which that
was a first, I believe. And yes thank you very much
once again folks for sending this my way. As well as a fantastic cross stitch and
a whole box of goodies, I appreciate it once again! But this let's
just talk about this today because as soon as I saw it I'm like "what the what
the heck is it?" Obviously it's a laptop-type thing but it didn't quite
look like any laptop I'd ever seen. I mean it's got some pretty standard ports
here in the back, it looks like serial and then parallel, and then I don't know
what that is exactly.
It almost looks like CGA out or something, and then we
have an AC adapter right here and then maybe audio or I don't know what. But
this, there's like no markings on the bottom. And then I just see here that
there are AAs for the battery. This is a laptop of sorts that uses
double-a batteries to function.
Like what could this possibly be? And it just gets
more and more curious the more I look at it. Like it folds completely flat like
that for some reason and it's got, y'know, some controls here for some kind of sound and I assume brightness/contrast. You got power and it looks like there's a
hard disk. But if there actually is a hard disk in here I would be surprised.
I'm not even sure what that is.
And look at these keys man, they're all like tall
and really narrow and strange. And well you know, they've got some other
characters on there that we wouldn't have on U.S. QWERTY English keyboards because this is from Turkey. As far as I.
Know it's really the only place it was
sold. I can find a few records online of it showing up on various Turkish, like,
kind of Craigslist alternatives or eBay alternatives, just various Comet
Notebooks for sale. And the model number that usually pops
up is CRC-9606. But it doesn't actually have that on mine
anywhere, it's just such a sparse thing.
Like there's nothing on the sides,
no drives, not really seemingly much of any expansion at all. Just a spot to plug
in the double-a batteries and then whatever this is. In fact I'm gonna go
ahead and get that open because I don't know what's actually in there. Oh.
There's
no connections inside there, so... I don't know what that is at all, it's just
an empty plastic bay. Something's got to go in there but whatever it is who knows.
Maybe it carries like... I don't know what it could possibly be.
Anyway let's
go ahead and check this thing out, and as far as I know -- there's a reset button
there, that's cool. All we need is double-a batteries and yeah. This is just
a bizarre thing to me: double-a batteries in a laptop. I mean I expect it in more like,
personal organizers those little kind of portable Casio things from back in the
day, and the Franklin ones.
So maybe it's more along the lines of that and it's
not a full computer with DOS and all that, who knows. Let's see here though. And yes, this has got some scuffs on it, but I can't seem to get off of there. So it's
as clean as it'll get I guess.
Okay we'll make sure this is in focus... Let's boot it up,
if it boots. Whoa it does! CNC-9606. Okay so that's where that model
number comes from.
I guess it doesn't actually say on the computer elsewhere.
Okay. So we've got that right there. I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on this so you can see it a little better. Okay hopefully that's a little bit better, and
yeah.
So it looks very much like a little pocket organizer type of thing. Looks
like we have ten applications: word editor, spreadsheet, data bank, clock
/schedule, communication, calculator, typing, games -- looks like Tetris. Someone really bad at it. And translator, mm.
And something
called learning? I don't know, let's do the clock first because I saw something
online about like, the clock defaulted to 1997 which -- yes it does.
London is apparently the timezone that it thinks we're in. We can then, I'm
assuming, change that over here. That's gonna take a long time let's see if it
does -- yes it does it does do letters. So that's good straight to New York which
is my approximate for the eastern time zone.
Yeah it does look like it's
cut off here on the left hand side of the screen, that's unfortunate. Let's get
out of here. We also have a calendar which, I'm assuming --
yep that's a calendar. Not sure why it says 2007, I did not put that in.
And I don't
know what that's saying either, hmm. So, yeah. Well I'm curious, let's start diving
into these things just one by one. Although I don't want to start here I'm
really curious about what this learning is.
Learning what? Is this like
edutainment or something or... Man what the heck is this, "overview of computers?" Not
this particular computer just just all computers? [Chuckles] Oh dear, "although the development history of computers has only 40 years, it has experienced four
technological revolution. They are _ _ _" So this is literally an overview of just
all computers. It's like having a little encyclopedia.
I really thought this would
be like, an online manual of sorts for the Comet Notebook, I would have loved
to know more about this particular thing. But it appears to be -- oh this is great
"what is files? The concept of files is common in daily life and working
environment for example employees' information file, nah neh nah." Why is it
telling me all this stuff about DOS and floppy disks and hard disks when this
doesn't have any of that? I am so confused by this but that's fascinating/
Hmm. This just gets -- this gets even more
strange the more I mess with it, I love pieces of hardware like this.
Oh sweet we get to type things! "Type things right here." You know it's actually
not the worst keyboard I've ever used. The keys are really narrow but they
feel all right.
I mean for, you know, a cheap plastic weird thing. And yeah it
looks like this originally came with a mouse. In fact
I've seen a mouse included with some of them, but yeah this does not come with a
mouse. And I may be able to plug in one into the serial port but I haven't tried
that.
Dang that's pretty sweet! More or less fully featured word
processor on a computer that's running on AAs. Of course there's no
telling how long it's gonna run on AAs, but yeah. Look we got a
spreadsheet here. "Stuff" and "things." Awesome.
All right what's data bank, I'm curious.
"Data bank: new record." It's like a rolodex,
so like a contact list or whatever. "LGR." Ooh "S," what did I type? Yeah I don't
want to do this, get me out here. Alright so we can keep
a contact list right there. We have communication, that's pretty neat.
"Connect the cable to PC then select transfer or receive." So I'm assuming you could use
like a null modem serial connection and do some transfer of information of some
kind. Now I did actually see that it was supposed to come with some software for
a PC but yeah. I'm assuming it needs some sort of software to connect to the PC to
transfer and whatnot because there doesn't appear to be any other way to
get software on here. There's definitely no disk drive.
So let's see calculator:
currency/metric conversion, that is handy. We got a calculator here that's a pretty
sweet looking little calculator. I'm impressed by this if you can't tell, this
is neat. Two plus four equals six.
Well the calculator works that's good. Go to currency and metric conversion here, ooh.
So it looks like it's converting Celsius to Fahrenheit, that's that's a thing. So
55 would be 131 degrees Fahrenheit. Typing, just...
Whoa.
[Chiptune of It's A Small World plays] Yeah I was wondering
when that sound would come into play because it does actually have the
speaker on and off right there and it looked like an audio out in the back. What is
this like a typing tutor? [Cracks up] "Contained profanities" is just the first thing it tells
me to... [Types] oh man [more typing] Whoops. Yeah so I'm already pressing like the
wrong buttons because some of these keys are not quite right.
Or at least they're
not normally in the normal spot I would expect them to be. Where is -- dang it
seriously I don't know where the comma is. Oh it's up there by the insert key
that's weird. Ah crap where's the quote, haha! This keyboard is...
Hmm. :I realize that this makes me sound like an apologist for the Bosnian
Serbs? I know that..." What, are these just like random news articles from Turkey or
something? I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. But yeah like seriously,
those keys the layout is bizarre. There's a lot of
secondary and tertiary kind of functions here.
Look at that, some of those they
have four different things per key. Alright cool. So we have an English to Turkish
translator that's pretty handy. Let's see what the translation for "computer" is.
[Typing] It is that. I don't even know how to begin to pronounce that. "BiLGi SAYAR?" Hrm welp, yep. Let's try out the games! Oh hey here we go again, it's that same music.
Looks like we got Sokoban, Dr. Mario, Alley Way, Tetris, and Puzzle
Road. Let's just start with Sokoban. SOUkoban? Hehe, SOUkoban! All right that music is not gonna stop is
it? Okay cool.
Well neat. In case you're not familiar with Sokoban, if you've
ever played something like Chip's Challenge that's pretty much the idea.
You're just like moving around different stuff. I totally screwed it up I'm
supposed to get those pieces onto those. Okay there we go.
[Incessent beeping] It's interesting... Yeah like moving it's
like -- press one direction. Insert band reference here... And I don't
actually move, and then when you press it in the second time, it does.
So yeah
that's what that is. Interesting.
[BEEP BEEP beep BEEP beep BEEP BEEP] Okay now how do I do this? Let's see here... I really don't know, oh there we go. "Well down!" [Laughs] that's just charming.
Oh I love it, oh this is so cool. Man Soukoban! Alright this music is getting old... Let's try
Dr. Mario.
Eh, sure? Wow. Straight up a ripoff. Okay yeah I'm not
even sure what exactly I'm supposed to be doing here. Okay so yeah it's just
just Dr.
Mario, alright well good. I thought for a second there it wasn't doing
what I thought, but I'm looking at it from an angle over here so I didn't see
there was a gradient between a couple of those colors, so. This is not the greatest screen unless you're looking at it like, straight on. It's kind
of well you know, it's just an old monochrome screen.
It reminds me very much of the screen that is on my Zenith, the portable that I
covered some many years ago.
Which is that's cool I like that computer kind of
a lot. It does seem like there is maybe a little less ghosting going on than on
that one. Yeah like, see, is that a gradient or is
that a solid color? I can't tell from here. I'm gonna say it's solid.
Yeah all
right it's Dr. Mario without the Mario. Alleyway! I'm not entirely sure what this
will be. Oh it's literally like Arkanoid/Breakout and I have to play with the keyboard, that is unfortunate.
Because
that's really blocky and I can't see my paddle at all when it's moving and I can
barely see the ball. I wonder if this actually works with the
mouse, if it did that would be pretty cool. I'll have to plug in a mouse here
in a moment see if that works. Eh, cool, alright, so that's Breakout, that's
fine.
In fact I don't even know what this is running on like as far as the
hardware, so I don't know if it's... I have no idea, this is this total mystery at
this point. But that's why we're making this video, because I want to discover
together. I'm pressing it, like, rapidly because it doesn't actually seem to have
much of a key repeat at all.
So unless how I press it rapidly it doesn't really
speed anything up. Yay. Tetris, all right, cool. It's a good...
Good
Tetris. What is this Type B, I'm curious what this is. "High?" What and what is this, I don't know what the difference is between these two modes. Maybe it'll be
obvious to someone but I can't tell.
Sure do wish I had the manual to this
computer. If you do have the manual please let me know,
I would love to have it. Or you know, just a scan of it, photos, anything. What is
this? Am I supposed to like move? Aha okay,
that's what I thought.
Okay so it's enter to do this one. Just sort of slide the
pieces around and try to get them all to fit into that one shape there.
[INCESSANT BEEPING] This beeping, I'm sorry, it's incessant. I could turn off the sound but that's
literally half the experience, just so little going on otherwise. "Well down!" Ah
that's just wonderful.
Alright well yeah okay, Puzzle Road, it's
one of those games, Klotski kind of things. Actually you know there was
something else I wanted to check because I read that if you press escape -- yeah you
can't really see it but this is a C:\> prompt . So it does have some sort of
DOS-like capabilities in here. What am I.
Trying to type... Let's just try--dude!
Again that's really unfortunate that all these characters are cut off on the left
hand side, but where is the friggin slash? Okay it's over here? Nope that doesn't
work. This is really confusing because this is one of those keys that has four
functions on it and I don't know which one is which. Num lock shift? Nope.
Okay so it's a function? Nope. Nope. Maybe it'll work for that one? Nope. Does clear work?
Yep.
There it is! So you have to do Function+F12 which turns on the numlock
and then you're able to do Shift+0. That's just the worst. Oh god now that's
wrong. All right well I take back what I.
Said about the keyboard being half
decent. Anyway. "Not directory!" That's a response you never see on actual DOS.
Yeah it's definitely not MS-DOS or anything like that, it's just some sort
of DOS -- I'm not even sure if it's actually DOS, it's like a DOS-like
operating system. I'm saying DOS a lot.
You got some basic commands that
work, control+alt+delete does work. So yeah they definitely are trying to
make it seem like it is a computer that runs PC-like stuff but I doubt that it
is. Probably just its own thing they made up for this to make it look like a DOS
experience but it's not actually. I don't know.
So like, if I type in WEDITOR...
Yeah it opens that up, which, that's neat. Would be curious to be able to hook this up to a printer as well. I wish I had a
parallel printer that worked right now but I don't, so. That's pretty sweet.
Now one more thing I got to try though for sure, and that is the mouse.
We'll see
if a serial mouse actually works. I just got the most basic of serial input
devices right here, it's an old Logitech. Okay so we'll see if it works on the
serial port and I'm really curious what actually works with a mouse. I think the
spreadsheet? [Mouse interaction noises] That does nothing.
[CLICKCLICKCLICKS IN VAIN] Well if the mouse works in serial
that definitely doesn't do it. I'm assuming... I'm not sure what I'm assuming
because this is just a frigging mystery computer. After looking it up there was
one guy that said that this is probably the mouse connector for the mouse that
this would come with.
I thought that maybe it might be like for CGA output or
something. Without having the original mouse to test, I guess about the only thing
to try now is to get this thing taken apart. I just want to see what is inside
of it because I mean, we gotta know. Okay, so from what I can tell there really are
only two screws [chuckles] or maybe three, holding this together.
[Gentle screwing noises] All right got those three screws out of
there and it's not coming apart at all. Maybe there's some under the little rubber
feet, let's see... Yeah they're under the rubber feet. Yeah, was gonna say.
Definitely felt like it was a lot more solid than just three screws. It is surprisingly well put
together for seemingly being -- I don't know like, really cheaply put together?
It's an interesting middle ground. Man that's still holding in place
very well. I have never seen a design like this.
Yeah the keyboard is just
firmly held in place, I'm not sure how that comes off. Okay so there were these
little clips on the side for the keyboard, I'm gonna try to get this apart
without actually fully ripping it apart. I do want it to continue to work. So yeah
check it out.
That's what you get inside. A basic bay right here for the battery. I
was right, this little slot does not actually connect to anything, it's just
plastic, it looks like there is a header here for something. And then here's
pretty much where all the magic happens, it's got these little globs there and
this one chip in the middle.
Reads: SEC. KM29N040T, it looks like.
Don't know if that's useful for anyone but that's what you get. And then a very
basic keyboard, just sort of right there. I don't know that's all
covered up with metal.
Just a bunch of resistors and capacitors and you got a
crystal there. And then just some ports just loosely soldered in there. And
then you got this spot just really really basically soldered together for the
buttons and switches. And then the little speaker and that's it!
This is wildly simplistic, but I wouldn't expect much more really.
We'll see if I
can get this thing back together, it shouldn't be too big a deal as long as I don't pinch or loosen anything that doesn't need to be. Cuz yeah, this is really
admirably straightforward. Yeah, that little speaker wire there's a little iffy, but...
Okay. Yeah.
Wow. It just... It just snaps back together. Yeah still works
just fine.
Well that is really neat. I should know the name of that song, It's A
Small World?" Yeah that's appropriate. You know this is
officially one of the more amusing systems that I own because it really is
like a pocket organizer that has unceremoniously taking the form of a
laptop. And one that mimics some of the PC functionality of MS-DOS without
actually being MS-DOS.
And is, as a result, I assume not entirely PC
compatible. Unlike machines like the Atari Portfolio or the HP Palmtops of
the early 90s, which are actually rather similar in terms of the idea behind it
but do work with DOS software. And whatever that's just me assuming, though
since I don't have the full documentation or the original disk it
came with. So again if you have any leads on that, do please let me know.
Otherwise
I hope that you enjoyed this video of me fumbling around trying to figure this
thing out on the fly. And I would be curious to revisit it if I can get
enough information about it to actually do a proper, like, video diving into what
it was. And I don't know, that may never happen. And if not, well, this is the video
that I will do on the Comet Notebook.
And I hope that you enjoyed it, and if you
did thank you very much! There will be more LGR incoming as
always every Monday and Friday. And always thank you very much for watching!.
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