Welcome, visitor!
Let me introduce myself and my museum! I am a guy from Sweden who loves technology. Perhaps not all technology, but in particular technology that brings some value into ordinary people’s lives — such as what a handheld computer did back in the 1990s.
The first time I saw a handheld computer was in the early 1990s, during a course, when the teacher took a Psion 3 out of his pocket and used it as a timer for his presentation. My reaction was, “Wow! Let me have a close look at that thing!” And after discovering what it could do, I was hooked. From then on, I knew that I always wanted to have a handheld computer in my pocket too.
So I first bought a Psion 3a. Then, when I worked at Ericsson, I got an MC12, an MC16, and an MC218. I also briefly had a PalmPilot.
Many years later, companies such as Ericsson and its main rival, Nokia, started to combine mobile telephony with PDA functionality, and I understood that this would be the future. Eventually, the PDA as a stand-alone, pocketable computer would disappear as a product. This was when I realised that now was a good time to start a collection.
The collection
So how do you start a collection? And why? Well, the first items I already had, because I had used them for my PIM — Personal Information Management. But on the market there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of models to choose from. And having them all would be very impractical.
So I chose only models that mark some kind of milestone in the technological development of this category of devices, or that somehow changed the way people used the PDA. At present, there are about 50 PDAs in the collection, and I think that perhaps an additional 25 or so would be appropriate.
Why a museum?
As this type of handheld computer was available only during a specific time period (ca. 1984–2007), it makes collecting and presenting them a feasible task.
Currently, you can find out whatever you need to know about a particular model of PDA by using Google or an AI such as ChatGPT. However, what you will find is often fragmented, and important bits and pieces of information are scattered over many pages, some of which can only be found in the Internet Archive.
My goal is to document each PDA in my collection in a systematic way so that all important information is easy to find. You should also get a better understanding of how they fit together on a timeline, or from a technology perspective.
It is also my ambition to make browsing through the collection a fun experience. You should find something that you didn’t know before, or couldn’t find elsewhere. If you are into this niche yourself, you may also appreciate links to documentation and additional software, when such things are available on the internet.
I hope that this site will be a long-term commitment and will be here for visitors long after I am not.
How I work with this museum
The process of documenting a specific PDA usually follows this pattern:
- Research the internet to find different sources of information. Note down the important bits.
- Power on the device and get to know it. Use the synchronization software, if provided, to sync sample data from a PC to the PDA. This often involves using a PC that runs either Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 98 SE, or Windows XP.
- Take photographs of the PDA using a “photo cube” to get good, even lighting.
- Edit the photos, currently using Lightroom. Import them into WordPress. Tag them with the name of the PDA.
- Create a draft of the information page. Enter all the technical data about the PDA in the information fields. The Photo Gallery and Quick Facts sections are generated automatically from the technical data and tagged photos.
- Submit the draft to ChatGPT for review of the English language. ChatGPT does not alter the content, only provides better flow in the English.
- Publish the page.
Sometimes, during this process, an interesting technological aspect pops up that warrants a deeper explanation. As an example, you might wonder why it is possible to power a computer using only two coin cells. In that case, I write an article about it and publish it under the heading “Under the Hood.”
Would you like to contribute?
Do you find this endeavour interesting and would like to contribute? I welcome anything from corrections (“This is obviously wrong…”), to adding facts (“I suggest that you include this bit of information too”), to sending me items such as PDAs, manuals, or accessories. Just use the form to contact me!