Dauphin DTR-1: a 1993 Windows Touchscreen Tablet PC
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- čas přidán 12. 10. 2017
- The Dauphin Desktop Replacement 1 was a fully featured 486 DOS PC with a stylus-controlled touchscreen! Too bad it had a melting power supply, odd design quirks, and a starting price of $2,495 in 1993.
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● Music used in order of appearance:
Whisky On The Rocks, Tomorrow I'll Be Gone
www.epidemicsound.com - Věda a technologie
Thank you LGR. You recorded a piece of history with amazing details. Great research despite some inaccuracies. We sold closer to 10,000 units. Over-heated power supply was a problem at the period of technology evolution. But labeling that particular DTR power supply shown in the video that “it was infamously prone to melting” is not accurate. I was personally involved in testing hundreds of them before release. That power supply was the smallest and truly state of the art of its time. And I used one on a daily basis for four years in my consulting business before it finally failed. Dauphin Lap-Pro, a 16 pound Laptop with a 4 lb lead acid battery, was the first laptop to use an external power supply in 1989.
It sounded like that the poor guy got a piece of lemon from IBM, unloaded without full testing and burnt-in. Wow - customer services went to hell after I was forced out.
For the records, IBM aggressively approached us for the manufacturing business. Twice I told them, “We are a little company, how can believe that IBM will take us seriously?” At the third meeting they committed to bank-roll us with $40 million in finished products with amazing payment terms that few in my position would turn down.
Lessons learned: It does not matter that you have the most incredible product if the market is not ready for it - you will fail. And “if you are a little mouse, don’t dance with an elephant.”
For those who are curious, I am back and doing very well these days with DNotes - a Bitcoin alternative digital currency. You are welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn, Google DNotes Alan Yong, or check out this link: dnotescoin.com/ceo-cfo-magazine-interview-with-alan-yong-co-founder-ceo-dnotes-global-inc/
Alan Yong y
IBM was also responsible for a delay in the production for the Atari Jaguar which caused them to lose 100,000 sales to Wallmart
A product ahead of its time
God bless you Mr Yong.. For every trial, comes a triumph..
That's really cool. Thanks for your insight. Do you have any more stories from your time of producing portable computers? You clearly had to hurdle mountains for the DTR1
"It's held together by tape and positive thinking" That's LGR Gold!!!
I bet you Techmoan has said that more than once on his videos...
Its common idiom in many countres
Sounds a lot like Red Green's mantra
"It kinda holds together by tape and positive thinking."
My life sumarized by one sentence...
Nice to meet a fellow sentient electronic device
You forgot the positive thinking
I love that tiny hard drive 😍
@@proof4469 since your an A.I, can you get to work on solving world hunger? Us monkeys are dumb and dont know how to feed everyone. Please think on this in an exponential algorithm cycle for a few days.
@@starsiegeRoks My father computer once told me something that I still remember to this day: If you're good at something, never do it for free.
ah, I feel so bad for that poor guy dropping $700 on this product and not getting any help. you could sense the desperation in those faxes.
I was thinking the same thing. I read the MMS letter and they basically told him, Daulphin went under and your warranty is useless, but we will fix it for hundreds of dollars. Ouch, less than 6 months after purchasing a 750$ tablet.
Kinda like when Facebook screws you over and you try desperately to contact them. But no matter how hard you try, you can't get help from any human being nor can you get your everlasting problems resolved. Happens to a half million people per day. Lots of people spend money at FB only to be screwed back by the company in various ways... with no means of being reimbursed.
Facebook saying "F**k you" while sending their bots to give you the runaround or some other bs excuses.
I do feel his pain though.
@@brucewrigleysgumchewz4667 Same happens on Twitter. Or CZcams. Or Google. Or any other of these big "screw you customer we are more elite than you" tech gigants. Es pecially when you are in Europe or a similar region where they just don't give a dime for local laws and customer protection requirements.
@@macneoh7418 yea fb is trash
Taking inflation into account, it's well I've $1000 today.
Really the most impressive thing about it for 1993 is that micro hard drive.
Alan Rizkallah but can it run DOOOM
It's always fun to see LGR uncover some obscure, forgotten computer hardware and then explain in detail exactly why it is and should be obscure and forgotten.
While it's interesting to see what it is, I don't think it deserves to be forgotten. It looks more like one of those ideas that just required technology that didn't exist at the time. A full desktop environment in a handheld computer, with parallel, floppy drive connectors and stylus input was pretty impressive for 1993.
If it hadn't had so many hardware issues, it's interesting to think whether the computing age would have embraced tablets a bit sooner than it has.
Possibly even the mistakes of this may have shaped future tablets. Well, maybe it at least gave examples of things to avoid doing with later tablets from other companies.
Hahahaha
@@peytonmac1131 Yeah, the hardware issues were mainly due to not having the tech yet to make stuff smaller like they do now.
That's the cutest hard drive! 8:29
it Reminds me of the Microdrive from the Ipod Mini
Reminds me of the Nokia N91. This phone had a hard drive.
I had a Nokia N91, the thing was in my case unreliable, died about 8 months after getting it.
My friend at school had it for a few years, working fine. I thought it was cool back then, though it died eventually.
oh... LOL!!!
stylus, on-screen keyboard and hand-writting recognition for win3.1? always surprises me how far ahead of time some things were
1993 BIOS with Pen.
2017 BIOS with Mouse...
Dafuq is goin' on
There was also BIOS with mouse in 1993/1994 (I think), but I don't think that was on a lot of PCs.
To be honest, some UEFI have mouse support since quite some time. I had an HP laptop with a mouse-enabled UEFI in 2011.
*M. V. Shooting* I saw an UEFI with mouse support, and the computer itself had XP installed on it.
That's nice! Still, Windows had no support for UEFI on x86-64 processors until Windows 7 (you had to use CSM legacy mode to install previous Windows versions). Things were different with Itanium processors, which had EFI support with special Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 editions.
How come mouse on bios wasn't implemented sooner? Seems like a logical step that should be on all bios' now. Heck, even my new laptop doesn't have that.
This is something I have never heard of, truly LGR know his weird retro hardware.
Weird?
Rounak Dutta That price thou. PC cost so much just because no one had stable and powerful competition for business software. I could have lived with it's flaws back in 1994 just because it was only $700 . My first PC in 1994 was $800 and barly able to run windows 95 which was required to use AOL to sale my dad's house after he died.
That looks like a prop from a low-budget 80s sci-fi, a "computer of the future" in a brutalist dystopia.
I could be wrong but I believe one shows up as a prop in an episode of The X-Files. AD Skinner is infected with nanomachines that can be signaled to congest his heart; they're controlled by a palmtop PC device with stylus that looks suspiciously at lot like the DTR-1...
Trid I know right! Could you imagine how beefy of a battery they could put in that thing with today's technology!
What you're thinking of is typically called a "smartphone". Or more likely a phablet.
Or maybe a smaller screen version of the 8" Windows 10 tablet that I picked up last year for all of £40... whose outline is probably still smaller than the DTR's full case, and is certainly much thinner.
You could probably make a reasonable facsimile of this by setting it to Large Fonts, installing some kind of screen filter to blockify all the graphics by exactly 2x with nearest-neighbour reduction (it'd end up as 640x400 instead of 640x480, but who's counting?) and smush them to a poorly calculated 16 shades of grey, then reduce the touch sensor accuracy somewhat. Oh and of course fitting it against one side of a tupperware lunchbox painted black to hide all the empty space inside, as well the USB hub connected to its micro USB OTG port with a brace of USB-to-whatever port adaptors hanging off it, and the micro-HDMI (MHD?) to VGA adaptor...
We'll call them DeLorians
looks like a pip boy from fallout
Start of video: "I want one, I'm so extremely jealous that lgr managed to get one" end of video : "naaah, I'm all set"
I dunno, I kinda want one even more now!
"Unscrupulous Nonsense"
Best floppy disc label EVER.
Scorpious187 Great name for a band.
This is why I subscribe to you Clint. Weird random shit from the past that probably no one knows about. I love it.
It looks like one of those computers which would fit in an 80s and early 90s cyberpunk movie
Some items were just made for cargo pants pockets.
Clint, your timing delivery of "there's chocolate bars that hold up better than this" was amazing. As always, the video was great!
I had one of those when I was a kid! I convinced my grandparents to buy it for me from one of those closeout resellers like the guy who bought the one in the video. It was... as bad as it seems. My power supply didn't melt, but my stylus disintegrated, the ethernet never quite worked right, the modem was flakey too. Eventually the (crappy) keyboard gave out. I probably still have the remnants of the thing shoved in a box somewhere.
...so you could still use the internals to build a mini 486 DOS gaming rig with it.
Yes, it was way ahead of its time, but quality was poor in many ways. Kind of heartbreaking, given how exciting its features seemed. Terribly unreliable, totally cool.
"Chocolate bars held up better than this." My mind instantly imagined myself opening my bag, looking in and then saying "Shit... my adapter melted again." I need professional help.
*AmadeusL* And you can just imagine that just like that? lol
I question how edible a chocolate bar that can't melt as easily as cheap plastic really is?
Actually, he's kind of right. There's a youtuber who goes by the name Steve1989MREInfo. He unboxes old military rations from WWII and even older than that. A lot of times he finds chocolate bars that are still edible. Even cigarettes! :P
Yup and some of those chocolate bars he looked at were the dreaded 'Desert Bars' that were made to withstand the high heat of places like Africa and whatnot. They still melted but at much higher temps than normal chocolate bars.
I'm a big fan of Steve1989MRE videos. There is something fascinating about watching him eat 40 year old meat and other goodies.
Clint, this was way ahead of its time!!
that hard drive was pretty impressive!
Y'know, this is why I love your content, Clint. It's always awesome to see stuff I otherwise would've never heard of.
8:31 Cutest ... hard drive ... ever!
CoolDudeClem indeed.
That’s an interesting profile picture
If small hard drives existed back then, how come they didn't become an industry standard?
they were expensive and had a small capacity. Usually hard drives had several hundred megabytes at that time, and (although expensive) gigabyte drives were avaliable on the market. So that little 40 megs hard drive really didn't cut it any more, and it took many more years before SSDs with an acceptible capacity were availabe for a widely acceptible price...
"Desktop replacement, how ridiculous!" I say, watching from my smartphone.
If you want a desktop replacement, try a Microsoft Surface Pro. Truly a tablet with the pen, and it runs Windows 10 too. Not even ipad pro could hold a candle to it.
@@taiwanluthiers Only if it can run other OSes, like FreeBSD. Windows is complete trashware.
Hey LGR! Funny to see a DOS/3.1 tablet, that's exactly what I'm working on restoring at the moment!
I've got a Fujitsu Stylistic 500, which is, given they were released roughly at the same time, the much better version of this computer. Same Wacom tablet screen, literally the same stylus, but the screen is much bigger and in colour, plus it used a much larger and more common PCMCIA HDD. Lots of other handy features built in, too.
It's cool to see that there were a few attempts at the mobile tablet market way back then.
It was more expensive too (The Fujitsu)
This is awesome!! Thank you Soo much for showing us. I don't remember ever seeing this when I was young. Or the personal assistant you showed, which is REALLY cool. It's setup reminds me of an old desktop. I love seeing the variety of tech your channel has
Who needs a headphone jack in a phone, give me a parallel port!
Then connect a Covox Speech Thing to it :)
@@markpenrice6253 i wonder how u will make it output 5 volts
Bluetooth anyone :)
I want to turn one into a Pip-boy 2000
I continue to love this channel more than almost any other on CZcams. Great tech, great delivery, soothing trace-like voice.... LGR has got it all!
As someone who also enjoys finding and getting my hands on vintage electronic/computer hardware, with always a bonus when the box and original manuals and software and even those random single tiny sheets of info warning not to use the device in the bath or whatever, I am always impressed by how complete the gadgets you present in these videos, are shown. Their boxes, packaging, manuals/paperwork, random accessories, etc
Wonderful job finding and
Getting these items, im sure the level of excitement you're feeling when opening one of these devices, IN ITS ORIGINAL BOX, if it could be put into a battery could power an entire city for a year!
Great quality videos too, just a great complete package you are putting out! Thanks for sharing with us these adventures.
The case from a dead one of these would make a really cool retro case for an actual tablet PC
You could put a couple of large format extended runtime batteries in there as well, yknow, the ones that are meant to piggyback on the tablet like an extra thick case... just daisy chain the charge cables and hide them inside the DTR case.
I really like these PC tablets/PDA reviews. Had a ton of random ones a few years back that I messed around with.
It’s always a pleasure to watch your channel.
There is something about LGR videos that just makes me so happy. :)
Love the jazz at the end... really chill man.
There was so much cool stuff in the 90’s that really pushed the envelope farther than it could be pushed at the time. Pretty amazing what we have now and how well it works in comparison. I’m thinking about those cheap 7” Windows tablet PC’s that cost less than $100!
Seeing old tech I had no idea existed put through the paces is great. Keep it up.
Very interesting video. Though I've never been disappointed by a lgr video. It was nice to get some insight on a tablet that old. especially just thinking about how far tablets have come blows me away.
Keep up the great work Clint!
I'm from Lombard, IL and I've never heard of Dauphin. Neat-o
But can it run Doom?
It could indeed! Wish I could've shown that but as mentioned floppy/serial/a number of things don't work on my DTR-1 here.
Does the Ethernet port or the modem work? Perhaps you can push data onto the device using something like telnet. Alternatively, why not plug the hard drive into another computer?
That's the part I was waiting for! Haha. It's sad that the floppy and serial didn't work to be able to make that happen.
Since you have access to the HD and it's IDE (?) maybe you can dump some data onto it that way.
If the BIOS worked right.
I loved this video all the way 'round. A closeup of the hardware, some Tech Tales-esque discussion of the company's fate and history, plus a direct review of the system itself.
my day is so much better.... the future is going to be so much better.... now that i have discovered this channel. thanks for doing what you do. you are inspiring me to finally get around to doing my retro tech reviews.
"held together by tape and, positive thinking"
that cracked me up lmao
“It’s just sort of held together with tape and positive thinking”
A bit like my life! 🙃
Love your videos man, my sons would never understand but retro reviews of crazy stuff like this are awesome haha
+LGR Every time I watch one of your videos about older tech, it reminds me of the enthusiasm and fascination I had with computers when I was little. It’s so great :)
A precursor to the modern tablet? Interesting.
It would be cool to buy one broken and stuff a modern x86 tablet in that sexy case, add adapters and make all the ports working properly.
t33s interesting, but almost certainly impossible
Yeah but that thing is thick, I bet you could shove more modern components than you would think. If nothing else put a modern smartphone or tablet and then put in a gigantic battery.
I was going to say *Berry Pi build just to avoid the 'you took a tablet and made it fatter, congrats' angle but yeah at this point in the game the money you'd spend on boutique dev board hardware could buy a more than decent donor tablet which already has a touchscreen and a battery and stuff.
depending on how you define cool
One of your best videos, really interesting, thanks.
Thanks for sharing the story. Great video, as always.
Holy shit a Dauphin Island shout out from LGR! Last place I'd expect to see a local reference at.
OMG! That hard drive is so cute! I wish my iPhone used that drive instead of flash storage
Your iPhone might be thicker than the hard drive. But think about it. What if it got dropped? The spinning disks inside could get damaged. While for flash storage that's currently in the iPhones, they won't get as damaged as easily from a drop.
I love your voice-over work :) always relaxing!
Love how clean this looks brings me back to the good ol days.stay clean my friend and keep up the good content.
i thought the hp LX series of palmtops were were cool for their time because they ran full DOS but the DTR blows them out the water in comparison
The guy was right about going mobile.. it's a shame that the poor tablet was a couple decades too early to the party!
Lombard IL! -- Thats where I live! Super cool hearing this -- thanks for the videos
Possibly one of your most enjoyable videos! Just my kind of oddware!
I’m noticing a pattern that almost every oddware you review was made by a bankrupt company.
A small company shooting for the stars is where interesting odd stuff is born
This goes to show execution is everything, it was a great idea, that sucked when it was made.
Heck if you make a great product you can change history, just look at those folks that think Apple made everything and Micheal Jackson invented the moonwalk.
Really enjoy his content and his narrative... as I grew up with this technology
Watching videos about old PC tech just makes me so appreciative of how even state-of-the art peripherals and computers themselves are so much cheaper now. Maybe innovation isn’t moving as fast, but it’s still a nice thing to think about.
0:20 HL3 Half Life 3 Confirmed
I'm eating cake right now.
This might actually be the best HL3 joke ever! Especially since the sticker predicted it before even the first one came out.
I prefer Dauphin Hasselhoff
Martin Kronström I've heard it works well during Knight time, especially for Riding in cars.
Martin Kronström Can’t hassle the hoff.
I just graduated high school and I'm going into computer science these videos are very appealing to me thank you so much for making them and never stop making videos you're the best lgr
That's amazing. I feel bad for them, but it makes for a good tech history lesson. I really enjoy the channel LGR, please keep it up.
4:28 thought the alcohol I am consuming had finally taken over
lgr - the only channel where dislikes are not honest dislikes but instead are just fans of the channel disliking for fun because noone else would..
Hooray for dauphin county!!! Thanks for the mention Clint!!
I did in fact enjoy your video! Today we are used to so much performance, comfort and functions in our hardware, that I find it very interesting to see, how everything started. When people didn't have mobile internet, high resolution screens and incredible processing power in the size of a cigarette box. I only started working with computer hardware in 2005, while I still got me a floppy drive for my first computer, it was rendered absolutely without any use. But thinking of, that a long time back, nothing worked without those, it's simply fascinating.
a 2.5 pound (1.1 KG) 486 table/laptop in 1993 is insane, most ultra-books today weight more. Seriously, that is like the equivalent of a modern smartphone being the size and weight of a credit card. Even going the same 25 year distance in the future, I doubt we'll have fully functioning computing devise that weight only a few grams by 2042.
Look, by today's standards, it sucks but this was space age technology back in 1993. We're talking about an age where desktop computers were considered very high tech devices. Having a device that had a touch-screen, was portable and had a two hour battery life (when most mobile phones couldn't last that much) was extraordinary. Maybe it wasn't built up to proper standards (therefore, being a failure) but the idea behind it, what it could achieve was extraordinary.
In 2017, a $25 tablet is better yet in 1993, this was years before its time.
Personally I don't care what it was by comparison. As they say, sometimes... bad is bad.
Fantastic as always, Clint!
Thank you!
another great video, LGR! you're an interesting archivist, man; kind've a pioneer as obsolete technology such as this dangles over the precipice between junk and antique... you're making great cases for its worth, and thus, organizing it into a manageable history for future generations! Huzzah. Ever thought about making a gallery or museum of sorts? Or at least curating a show?
that keyboard looks like logitech bluetooth keyboard, that is super modern!!!
Now install Linux on it.
The Astro Gamer Damn Small Linux might work!
The Astro Gamer I like the way you think!
He said the Floppy didn't work so I doubt he can.
I don't think Damn Small Linux would work. It needs more hard drive space (50MB) and more RAM (16 or better 24MB).
However, I think the successor of this tablet should be just good enough.
Maybe an old version of Redhat.
Thank you for not having horrible music in your videos. Such a relief! Great video also!!
Have to watch this later as CZcams is failing hard on syncing this great video to Europe for a smooth experience (again). The sole fact you got hands on a Dauphin tablet is reason enough for me to give my thumbs up despite I need to let CZcams get their content synced in time. yeah, even anno 2017 tech has it's limits.
Kittyhawk is is such a good name.
The Surface didn't even come with extra pen tip lol...
I did enjoy seeing it! I've always had a soft spot for pen-equipped mobiles. From the original Fujitsu micros to the convertibles of the XP era to the Galaxy Note series. Can't forget Palm! Great vid, thanks for sharing! :)
Videos like this make me happy.
$2,495!! BLOODY HELL!!! .... FOR THAT BRICK!! 😨😨😨
Ah the good old days that spending 10 000 on a pc was expected.
I just love how big that connector is for the floppy drive. Well, of course the placement of the port is just brilliant as well :) :)
Love these odd hardware videos you make.
that case is so awsome looking!!! i want to get a dead one and stick a Raspberry pi in it and somehow turn the keyboard into usb!!!!
From the thumbnail, it looked like an e-ink device at first -- which got me VERY excited for a moment there. An e-ink Linux device of that size attached to something like an RPi3 would be a dream come true. (The Kindle DX was a bit of a frustration in this regard; the rooted device can run a vnc client; but it's just not usable for real work.)
7:09 all those shades of graaaaaaaaaaaay
Lgr and ashens reviewing old computers
A good day :)
I had no idea there were tablets back then. Thanks for sharing this.
me being me, id be playing wolfenstein 3d and blake stone on it...
With the stylus?
That'd be interesting to see, whether they could translate it as mouse movements...
You know its bad when a tablet from 1993 has more ports than a new Iphone.
sadly true.
Makes more sense if you compare it to a new macbook if you really want to put Apple to shame. No phone has much ports, just phones, and usb or whatever kind of proprietary port for power and data transfer.
I was referencing Apple deciding to ditch the headphone jack on new Iphones.
Thank you for recording this video. The truth is that this tablet from 1993 did not know it. I have seen several of your videos and I really like the summary and clear style with which you describe and report each device. I love Windows 3.1. With whom we use a PC we helped to use the mouse. I would say that with it he started everything. In the early 90's MS-D.O: S was already obsolete. And while OS / 2 3 warp was good, Windows 95 was much more intuitive. Thanks from Argentina, South America.
Man, you got all of the cool stuff.
Will you ever talk about the GridPad?
If I ever get one!
omg, an ethernet port
THAT THING CAN GO ON THE INTERNET
You have to make a video showing net surfing on that thing! I mean, all... 3 or 4 websites that internet explorer 5/netscape 4 can still render without crashing.
>serial port
That's actually all it needed. But you can take your pick of ethernet, serial connection to a high speed modem, or plugging the built-in lower speed modem (which, for 1993, was actually medium-high speed...) directly to the phone line.
love your channel
i love this channel, such a interesting video. thank you, i want more videos please.
Apple, ~10 years ago: LOOK AT THIS THING WE INVENTED THE IPAD ITS REVOLUTIONARY
Eh, I was fucking laughing at that anyway whilst sitting there with my HP TC4200. As well as the Macbook Air launch the same year. Literally went and fetched a manilla envelope from my work desk drawer and tested whether my much cheaper and one year older laptop could also fit in it... passed the test with flying colours, could have sealed it up, written an address and sent it to someone, with enough stamps.
That and the RM (a UK computer maker specialising in the educational market) slate PC that I'd seen a couple years earlier, with a 10" SVGA screen on it and no keyboard... School I briefly worked at had a special trolley that held and charged two dozen of the things...
He mentioned the Newton at the start of the video. You really have no excuse for forgetting about it.
ITS DTR NOT DOTONBORI ROBO
DEE TEE ARRRRU
Galactic S.O.U.L I was waiting for that.
great video, man. congrats