Intel "Chat Pad"?

[falter]

Hoping this qualifies as 'vintage'... I think it looks late 90s.

Seller thought it was a prototype Intel 'Chat Pad' but there are no pictures of it anywhere. I thought it looked cool so I jumped on it. I note it has no serial number.

Thinking it's basically an email client or something along those lines.

 

[Plasma]

Reminds me of those electronic/personal organizers of the 90s, but with a better keyboard. Not sure I would want to be seen carrying around a blue translucent dog bone though...

 

[falter]

Reminds me of those electronic/personal organizers of the 90s, but with a better keyboard. Not sure I would want to be seen carrying around a blue translucent dog bone though...

I remember that was kind of intel's design language back then. I had a camera of theirs with a similar motif. I'm assuming it has wireless of some sort.

 

[Plasma]

Ah yes, the Intel Easy PC Camera. I guess it was supposed to look like an eye, but it always reminded me of an egg. I think Apollo 11 had better video than that camera.

I don't see an IR window, so maybe 802.11b.

 

[SuperSVGA]

Likely one of those products that never made it past CES, you can see it in Intel's CES 2001 presentation. Intel announced they would shut down that division of products later that year.

 

[falter]

Likely one of those products that never made it past CES, you can see it in Intel's CES 2001 presentation. Intel announced they would shut down that division of products later that year.

Nice! Many thanks for finding that. Well, now I know what it does. I'm assuming they would have built more than one of these. Or maybe its a dummy that doesn't do anything. Sounds like it depends on a connection to your PC so there is software involved I'll never find.

 

[Zare]

I remember that was kind of intel's design language back then. I had a camera of theirs with a similar motif. I'm assuming it has wireless of some sort.

 

[syzygy]

Nice! Many thanks for finding that. Well, now I know what it does. I'm assuming they would have built more than one of these. Or maybe its a dummy that doesn't do anything. Sounds like it depends on a connection to your PC so there is software involved I'll never find.

Intel Webpad

Looks like it was part of a series aimed at extending the home pc (to around the home). Yours is the email device. It appears that all of the devices required a USB anywhere device. They shutdown the whole effort rather quickly. It doesn't seem like the email device was ever actually released, the webtablet was though.

 

[rittwage]

You did find a prototype ChatPad.

Probably you will never find the PC Host software for it unless it was found at the same time, so it will not be useful.

 

[falter]

You did find a prototype ChatPad.

Probably you will never find the PC Host software for it unless it was found at the same time, so it will not be useful.

I understand now that the Chatpad communicated with a host computer via a base station that was common to several devices- I've seen one base station and game pad set for sale.. I wonder if the software including programming for other devices like the chat pad?

 

[falter]

I got the ChatPad.. and unfortunately there is no motherboard or anything in it. I'm not sure if it ever had one. It was something you couldn't really make out from the photos unfortunately. I noticed something was off when I installed the batteries and didn't feel the 'spring' from the negative side pushing back. Realized there was no spring, no wiring..

There is that one photo of one 'running' but I'm not sure if it actually ran or just had some fake sticker text applied on the screen. I'm assuming if they did the tooling for this they probably made more than one of these, so maybe one with the board it out there?

Anyway not disappointed.. still a cool thing to have! Prototypes aren't always complete.