1989 Portable Technology, The Casio Digital Diary.

19th April 2023

 

A couple of days ago I was sorting through a filing box of old receipts and user guides to go for recycling and came across this user guide for a device I’d forgotten that I’d ever owned.

 

 

 

My first “PDA” long before the days of smartphones or, for most people, the internet I’d bought this little clamshell device which could store a telephone numbers, appointments, memos, etc. and was a pocket calculator as well. I was even more surprised to find in the bottom of the filing box:

 

 

 

A Casio SF-4000 Digital Diary. It looks well used because it was. I carried this daily and used it at work and you can see the outline of a label that had my name on it just in case I left it somewhere. This little device acted as a "gateway drug” and eventually I moved on to Palm Pilot devices and other things which came after them. I’ve not bought a paper diary in three decades.The “toys” got more expensive though, the receipt for the SF-4000 is still tucked in between the pages of the booklet and shows that on 1st April 1989 I paid W H Smith £3.99 (about £10.00 in 2023 money) and got a whole year’s guarantee - but not covering the supplied batteries. The SF-4000 had only been introduced 12 months previously so was still relatively new technology at the time.

 

 

 

How much technology did £3.99 get me? Well the web site Old Organizers Collection gives these specs:

 

Released in 1988 Made in Japan Memory 31902 bytes
Display Graphic LCD, 95 x 47 dots, 6 lines x 16 chars Keyboard 81 flat keys + 5 function keys
Batteries 3 x CR-2025 PC-Sync No
Size/weight 12.6 (W) x 7.4 (D) x 1.4 (H) cm / 125 g
Functions Phone book, Memo, Schedule, Calendar, Letter memory (to store words and phrases), Data item marker
Comment Casio made the same model for Tandy, the EC-319.

 

As you can see above that keyboard was QWERTY but in a way all its own, particularly the placement of the space button at top right. You really needed the operating manual too, inputting data into the device required some not-altogether-obvious key sequences and navigating is an art. There are dedicated buttons below the screen for the main what we would now call apps - Telephone Directory, Memo, Schedule, Calendar, and a word Memory plus Up and Down navigation keys. Left and right are on row 2 of the keyboard. On the left side of the lower case is the sliding power switch and on the right side of the upper case is a contrast adjustment wheel for the display. Ports and interfaces: Nope, 1989 remember? Although a photo on the above Old Organizers Collection website does show a serial data port on the main circuit board inside.

 

So the big question is after over thirty years stored in a box...

 

Will It Start?

 

It would be rude not to put three fresh CR2025 cells into it and find out, wouldn’t it? 

 

 

 

 It’s very much not obvious without reading the manual how to get at the batteries. First you need to remove the bottom cover secured by 4 tiny crosshead screws. This reveals 3 metal covers secured with slightly different tiny crosshead screws and the instructions for changing the batteries. All the screws have threaded brass inserts to screw into - none of your cheap shite self-tappers into the plastic case here as would be found nowadays. Since as well as powering the device the three cells also protect the massive 32 kilobytes of memory it is important to replace the cells one at a time to avoid losing or corrupting the data on the device. Don’t let the batteries go flat either. A bit late by a couple of decades here, the batteries that were left in it were flatter than a witches tit but at least no damage had occurred internally, gotta love Lithium button cells that don’t leak everywhere.

 

 

 

 On the lower left is a recessed button to clear the memory. Remember that for later.

 

Fresh batteries installed, reassembled, and moment of truth time:

 

 

 

It lives!

As you can just about see in the above photo much to my surprise it turned on. All the buttons seem to work too and there are no dead pixels on the screen. However when I switched it on I got this message:

 

 

 

*** CAUTION ***  

Memory contents

   were broken  ! ! 

 

So maybe leaving the batteries to slowly go flat over three decades was a bad idea. Attempting to add an item to the schedule worked right up until I tried to save (or Set in Casio terms) the entry at which point it complained “not enough memory”. I delved into the book to find out how to check the memory capacity and it reported about 64K of the 32K total was used. Something not right there. Back into the book to find out how to clear the memory and out came the screwdriver again.

 

Powering it up and pressing the hidden reset button resolved the errors. I could now with much RTFM make entries in the telephone directory. I could go to the calendar select a date and then put an appointment in the Schedule. The calendar works for any date from 1st January 1901 to 31st December 2099. 20th century years can be entered as two or four digits, 21st century years have to be entered as 4 digits. It would have given no Y2K problems even if it hadn’t been in the bottom of a box when all that was a thing.

 

So it works. I have no real use for it but it works. It’s interesting to see how far we’ve come with such devices since 1989. How many of today’s devices will work after 30+ years? Not many, certainly all the PDAs and most of the phones I’ve had since I had this Casio SF-4000 are long gone. 

 

It was and is a cool little tool and obviously very well made but thirty-four years on I think I’ll stick with my smartphone :-)

465 - Transport for London's most un-London Bus Route.

 5th April 2023

London Buses Route 465 has the distinction of reaching the furthest distance from London, well measured from Trafalgar Square at least, of any London Bus. It runs between Kingston which used to be in Surrey until 1965 and Dorking which is still very definitely in Surrey. The route is jointly contracted out by TfL and Surrey County Council. For no particular reason other than Route 465 has the distinction of reaching the furthest distance from London I went for a ride on it, starting at Dorking Deepdene railway station because that was the easiest end for me to get to. For varying values of 'easiest' due to GWR's inability to run a reliable train service.

So an hour later than planned I was waiting at Dorking Station Stop A watching out for a red bus.

An ADL Enviro200 MMC ^fn1 reg. no. SN17 MVP duly appeared on time and I climbed aboard and waved my Oyster Card, found a seat at the back, and settled down for the 1h 13m journey to Kingston. I don’t think this was the most comfortable bus for a longish journey, the seats are small and there is hardly any leg room - I had to sit at an angle. It was busier than I’d expected though on a midweek afternoon, there being half-a-dozen on board when I joined.

 

 The bloke in front of me was already settled into alternately sodcasting Tik-Tok or Instagram videos and having a text based argument via Google Translate, occasionally breaking off to talk to his companion on the other side of the bus. Heading out through Westhumble towards Mickleham the bus was held up by the inevitable Surrey Mamils heading up to the Zig Zag Road for the ascent of Box Hill and in Mickleham itself we halted outside the delightfully villagey Running Horses pub to allow the Dorking-bound 465 to pass by in the narrow street.

 

 So far, so slow but the other side of Mickleham the bus gets a faster run on some open roads, the A24 and A246 before turning north east to Leatherhead on the B2122.

 

 Threading our way through Leatherhead town centre I suddenly recognised the Telephone Exchange which I’d visited long ago in a former existence and next to it the Royal Mail Delivery Office, the windows of which will remind British persons of a certain age of a children’s television programme ^fn2

 

We followed a local bus into Leatherhead Railway Station forecourt which proved to be too small for all of us, the local bus, a rail replacement double-decker, and assorted cars resulting in a short wait while the gridlock was resolved and we could get on our way.

 

 North of Leatherhead we crossed over the M25 so were definitely getting more Londonish and I didn’t realize we were about to do that so completely failed to get a photo. Not long after that we passed The Star pub at Malden Rushett which I recognised from reading Diamond Geezer’s blog that morning. I was unable to get a photo of that either but DG did, being not on a bus at the time, so you can look at it there. We were now officially in that London, albeit a dangly outlying bit of it.

The next notable destination is Chessington World Of Adventures. I think I recall going there many moons ago with ex-no.1, her younger son, and her nephew. I can also remember when it was Chesington Zoo. The bus pulled into the little bus station but there wasn’t anyone on board up for that sort of adventure and no one waiting to get aboard.

 

 From here north it got progressively more suburban, crossing the A3 near Tolworth and through Surbiton where the bus filled up quite a bit, unfortunately preventing me getting a shot of the marvellous 1937 Art Deco railway station building. About five minutes later we turned right out of Surbiton Road and followed the River Thames into Kingston town centre.

 

 Kingston, or Kingston upon Thames (or before 1965 Kingston-upon-Thames) was until 2021 the location of Surrey County Council even though it was no longer in Surrey. The council then upped sticks and moved to Reigate having rejected (some might say wisely) moving to Woking. It’s a major shopping destination now of which I have a vague recollection of being dragged around by a couple of Slovaks ^fn3 one day but apart from that had only wandered around the town centre early one evening when the shopping crowds had dispersed. The 465 wriggles through the busy town centre, dropping most of its passengers off at Eden Street for the shopping centres before terminating at the Bus Station in Cromwell Road where I alighted and was glad to see that unlike so much of England the toilets hadn’t been closed.

 

 I went. And then I went for a walk around Kingston in search of coffee, decided it was still too early to eat, and then returned to the bus station to get the 1721 departure on the 465 back to Dorking. For some reason the TfL Go app completely ignored the existence of this bus insisting that the next departure wasn’t until 1751, even while I was sitting next to it for ten minutes in the bus station. Google Maps knew better. Google 1 TfL 0. Not for the first time.

The return journey was busier than the outward one but much more comfortable. I had intended grabbing one of the “priority” seats so I could have enough legroom to avoid cramp but as it turned out ADL Enviro200 MMC LJ16 EXW ^fn4 had enough space between all the seats so I could ride in comfort guilt-free. Albeit older this bus looked to have been refurbished with different moquette on the seats and onboard displays. Maybe they changed the seating plan. Ask someone who knows about buses, I’ve no idea.

My train home from Dorking ran on time for a change.

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^{fn1. No I’m not, I looked it up online :-P.}

^{fn2 Play School, if you know, you know.}

^{fn3 Not entirely unwillingly I’ll admit.}

^{fn4 I looked that one up as well.}