Toyland - HP 360LX

The EDUP 5in1 MCR-5A PC Card Adapter worked fine in both my HP 360LX and my Jornada 820. Neither device asked for a driver and both 'saw' and wrote to both a 256MB SanDisk Memory Stick Pro (MagicGate) and a 256MB SanDisk SD card. I made a submission to the HCL. Later I will try it with my Husky FEX21.





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IMG_20200504_121354.jpg (87KB - 0 downloads)

Had some fun this morning converting some pictures and displaying them on my 360LX. I reduced a 870x448 903kb .PNG file I had to 620x319 97kb .jpg and loaded it on my device - worked fairly well.







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Sandy_Before_Lunch.jpg (97KB - 0 downloads)
Sandy_Before_Lunch1.jpg (97KB - 0 downloads)

You could try converting them to a 2-bit per pixel gif on the PC too, for better quality dithering!

I tried using Photoshop for dithering, so this may or may not look better on the HPC







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Untitled-1.gif (25KB - 0 downloads)

@Karpour Thanks for the response. Your photo displays fairly well on the 360LX. In the end, after several tests, I ended up walking the 'colors' up to the limit (256) and used 320x240 for picture boundaries. As long as the pictures were under 100kb they opened fairly quickly and had a lot of clarity. Different picture for example.

identify Sandy.jpg 
Sandy.jpg JPEG 2592x1936 2592x1936+0+0 8-bit sRGB 1.458MB 0.000u 0:00.009 

 

convert Sandy.jpg -resize 320x240 -colorspace gray +dither -colors 256 -auto-level Sandy5.gif 

 

identify Sandy5.gif 

Sandy5.gif GIF 320x239 320x239+0+0 8-bit sRGB 256c 83.9KB 0.000u 0:00.000

Edited by Mjolnir 2020-05-12 7:58 PM






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Sandy5.gif (81KB - 0 downloads)

You can also use
https://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/s/0013.asp

or Photoshop:
https://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/s/0022.asp

Thanks for the info. I'll have to try that out. While I was playing around yesterday I also used 'convert' in a WSL terminal to take some fairly large .bmps from that never finished family history that I'm sure several of us have tucked somewhere into a hard drive and convert them into small .jpgs and gifs that displayed very well on my 360LX.

identify mom-dad.bmp 
mom-dad.bmp BMP3 2085x1354 2085x1354+0+0 8-bit sRGB 8.471MB 0.030u 0:00.030 

 

convert mom-dad.bmp -resize 320x240 -colorspace gray +dither -colors 256 -auto-level mom-dad4.gif 

 

identify mom-dad4.gif 

mom-dad4.gif GIF 320x208 320x208+0+0 8-bit sRGB 256c 54.9KB 0.000u 0:00.000 

 

identify mom-dad.jpg 

mom-dad.jpg JPEG 320x208 320x208+0+0 8-bit sRGB 80.4KB 0.010u 0:00.009

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mom-dad4.gif (53KB - 0 downloads)

I installed BMP2BP ENG on my Win ME sych machine and dropped the 8mb .bmp file into the window. I then saved it in 'monochrome' resulting in a 700kb .2bp file. It looked very well on my 360LX but did take a second or two to open up. I was quite surprised that neither Paint or Inkscape (ported) on Widows 10 or ImageMagick in a WSL terminal would 'touch' it when I tried to resize it.

identify mom-dad1.2bp 
identify-im6.q16: unrecognized bits per pixel `mom-dad1.2bp' @ error/bmp.c/ReadBMPImage/842. 

 

convert MOM-DAD1.2bp -resize 320x240 MOM-DAD2.2bp 

 

convert-im6.q16: unrecognized bits per pixel `MOM-DAD1.2bp' @ error/bmp.c/ReadBMPImage/842. 

convert-im6.q16: no images defined `MOM-DAD2.2bp' @ error/convert.c/ConvertImageCommand/3258.

Edited by Mjolnir 2020-05-13 5:42 PM






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IMG_20200513_111017.jpg (91KB - 0 downloads)

It's weird (see other thread). 2BP really just is a BMP with 2 bits per pixel, while 4 bits per pixel and up would be a regular file. So while I guess officially 2bpp isn't a valid bmp, parsing it is so easy that I don't know why imagemagick wouldn't support it. I guess none of the devs really cared for it

So few people ever encountered the format, in practice by the end of 1997 and colour H/PC's, no one needed it. It is super easy to implement though, in terms of read/write logic.

Actually, hold your horses on the date!

Had to implement a converter for 2bit bitmaps in 2001 for my employer for the cell phone market. Specifically when this phone appeared: https://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=151

Well it's been a 50/50 day here in Toyland. I installed Wodeon and Hum on my 360LX. First the good news, Hum played some short mp3s very well, Wodeon choked up but I was kind of expecting such because I haven't had time to try to tailor a video to my device's meager capabilities.
As a lark I tried feeding it a video with these specifications:

ffprobe EASTER.mpg 
 

Input #0, mpeg, from 'EASTER.mpg': 

  Duration: 00:00:11.03, start: 0.513322, bitrate: 442 kb/s 

    Stream #0:0[0x1e0]: Video: mpeg1video, yuv420p(tv), 160x112 [SAR 1:1 DAR 10:7], 104857 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 29.97 tbr, 90k tbn, 29.97 tbc 

    Stream #0:1[0x1c0]: Audio: mp2, 24000 Hz, mono, s16p, 160 kb/s

Suggestions welcome.

Edited by Mjolnir 2020-05-21 11:51 PM

Have you tried adjusting buffering settings in Wodeon? It's demanding a lot from an ultralow power monochrome display CE 2 device to play MPEG-1 and MP3 files, but letting it buffer a bit more helps in the former case.

PowerDVD/DVD Catalyst used to have a benchmark for this that produced a number that would optimise settings to enable playback on H/PC's. See the screen ratings section
https://www.hpcfactor.com/qlink/?linkID=92

Basically, ensure the resolution is native so it doesn't have to interpolate and pull the frame rate down.

Nice ! :-)

I just got mine. I gotta get a english rom card for it, but I know windows enough where I can use it. Ill post some pics later. Im waiting for my CF card to come in the mail.

-Walt