REX 6000
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The REX 6000 is an ultra-thin Personal Digital Assistant
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
(PDA) produced by Xircom
Xircom
Xircom, Inc. was based in Thousand Oaks, California, with manufacturing facilities located in Penang & Malaysia and international offices throughout Europe and Asia Pacific. They were one of the first companies to develop network computing products for notebook computers. Products included...
, and later Intel, from about 2000 to 2001. Its primary claim to fame is as "The world's smallest full-function PDA", due to its unusual physical configuration as a PC card
PC card
In computing, PC Card is the form factor of a peripheral interface designed for laptop computers. The PC Card standard was defined and developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association which itself was created by a number of computer industry companies in the United States...
Type-II card (8.57 × 5.40 × .5 cm; 40 g
Gram
The gram is a metric system unit of mass....
). The REX may be synchronized by inserting it in a host PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
's PCMCIA/PC-card slot. Docking stations were manufactured for connection to hosts without PC card Type-II slots, which allows the REX to be connected via a USB
Universal Serial Bus
USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
or serial
Serial port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time...
connection.
The REX 6000 is the successor to the Franklin
Franklin Electronic Publishers
Franklin Electronic Publishers, Incorporated is an American consumer electronics manufacturer based in Burlington, New Jersey, founded in 1981. Since the mid-1980s it has primarily created and sold hand-held electronic references, such as spelling correctors, dictionaries, translation devices,...
REX 5000
REX 5000
The Franklin REX 5, was one of the Rex line of Personal Digital Assistants, each a PCMCIA PC card and thus the size of a credit card, built around a Toshiba microprocessor emulating a Zilog Z80...
, with a notable difference being the addition of a touch screen. In addition, it is possible to remove and install executable code (including both custom applications and the operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
itself). As with the earlier models, the REX 6000 hardware was developed by the Citizen Watch Company of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, marketed as the "DataSlim-2". The firmware for previous REX models was written by Starfish Software
Starfish Software
Starfish was founded in 1994 by Philippe Kahn. The founding vision of Starfish was global synchronization and integration of wireless and wireline devices, which translated with the TrueSync platform to: "Enter or edit information anywhere, synchronization is automatic everywhere." Starfish...
, but the REX 6000, though modeled on previous versions, included a complete re-write of the firmware.
The REX 6000 does not support handwriting recognition
Handwriting recognition
Handwriting recognition is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning or...
and to enter data, a virtual keyboard
Virtual keyboard
A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows a user to enter characters. A virtual keyboard can usually be operated with multiple input devices, which may include a touchscreen, an actual keyboard and a computer mouse.- Types :...
is used. The standard REX 6000 has an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
keyboard layout, although third-party software allows for other keyboard layouts. The pre-installed software for the Rex consists of the following:
- CalendarCalendarA calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
- Address bookAddress bookAn address book or a name and address book is a book or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields...
- To-do list
- NotebookNotebookA notebook is a book or binder composed of pages of notes, often ruled, made out of paper, used for purposes including recording notes or memoranda, writing, drawing, and scrapbooking....
- World clockWorld clockA world clock, often called a "Worldtime Clock", is a clock which displays the time for many places around the world.The display can take various forms:...
- CalculatorCalculatorAn electronic calculator is a small, portable, usually inexpensive electronic device used to perform the basic operations of arithmetic. Modern calculators are more portable than most computers, though most PDAs are comparable in size to handheld calculators.The first solid-state electronic...
Third-party software ("add-ins") include games, painting programs, spreadsheet
Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
s and replacements or improvements of the pre-installed software. Most third-party software has been developed in spare time by interested users using customized versions of the Z88DK
Z88DK
Z88DK is a Small-C-derived cross compiler for a long list of Z80 based computers. The name derives from the fact that it was originally developed to target the Cambridge Z88...
compiler
Compiler
A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...
or the Small Device C Compiler
Small Device C Compiler
The Small Device C Compiler is an open source, partially retargetable C compiler for microcontrollers. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License. The package also contains a linker, assembler, simulator and debugger...
(SDCC).
The earliest release of the REX 6000 had 1 MB
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
of flash memory
Flash memory
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...
, while later releases doubled this to 2 MB. (Earlier REXes stored user data in RAM
Ram
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
with the operating system in ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
.) The REX has 32 KB
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
of RAM, but only 12 KB is available for application developers. It uses a 4.3 MHz Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
compatible to the Zilog Z80
Zilog Z80
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
, has a 240 × 120 pixel
Pixel
In digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
monochrome
Monochrome
Monochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
LCD
Liquid crystal display
A liquid crystal display is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals . LCs do not emit light directly....
, and is capable of providing beep sounds to deliver alarms and reminders. The REX 6000 is powered by two button-type CR2016 lithium
Lithium
Lithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. It is represented by the symbol Li, and it has the atomic number 3. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly...
cells.
Around 2002 Intel acquired Xircom and subsequently discontinued this product line. As of 2006, the Rex 6000 retains a devoted group of users and independent developers.