Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! And this lovely device is the Samsung PenMaster
386SL/20, a touchscreen tablet computer from 1992. Back then this started at a price of
$3,995, with costs heading upwards of $5,000 for a fully-specced example with additional
storage. But being that this was Samsung’s first tablet computer
on the market and one that packed an impressive 386 MS-DOS PC inside, it’s little wonder
that it cost half as much as a 1992 Geo Storm back then. Shout-out to Lorne by the way,
an LGR viewer who lent this example for me to review. These are not common machines whatsoever,
especially this particular model from Samsung. Ooh and he also included some Chicago popcorn,
what’s this? Caramel and cheese? Mm now that’s some tasty stuff. Uh but anyway yeah,
the PenMaster! It’s pretty large by today’s tablet standards, measuring 11½”x9½”x1.8”
and weighing in at five and a half pounds, or 2.5 kilograms, with the battery installed.
But back when it was one of the brand new pen-based computer systems debuting at the
1991 Fall Comdex show, this was darned impressive. So much so that portable computing pioneer
Grid Systems licensed the design from Samsung and sold their own, slightly better-known
variant called the GridPad SL. Believe it or not Grid and Samsung weren’t the only
companies releasing cutting edge tablets in the early ‘90s either. The PenMaster was
introduced right alongside offerings from Momenta, Telepad, and Dauphin Technology.
If that last one sounds familiar, perhaps you’ve seen my previous video about the
Dauphin DTR-1. That was a pretty similar tablet PC in many respects, even running the same
base operating environment as the PenMaster, yet it didn’t hit the market until a year
later in 1993. On the timescale of early ‘90s computing that may as well be an eternity,
so let’s take a look at what Samsung was doing in these earlier days of touchscreen
tablet PCs. As its name implies the PenMaster comes with a pen suitable for all manner of
mastering, outfitted in a blue plastic body matching the word ‘Pen’ in the logo. It
has a single button on the side for right-clicking and the pen position can even be detected
a centimeter away from the surface of the tablet screen. So yeah the pen is battery-powered
and was pretty advanced for the time, with replacements from Samsung costing 80 bucks
each. Naturally this is intended to work with the resistive touchscreen display here, a
backlit 10-inch monochrome LCD panel that displays VGA in up to 32 shades of gray. Coincidentally
the title of my upcoming romance novel. And along the top of the device there’s an assortment
of stubby sliding switches, including the power, brightness and contrast controls, a
tiny reset button, and LED indicators for power and hard disk activity. A majority of
the I/O functionality is found on the right-hand side with a spot for the 17.5 volt DC power
brick, a PS/2 keyboard port, 9-pin serial port, Samsung floppy drive interface, parallel
port, VGA video output, and a 2400 bps data/fax modem. Around the left side of the unit is
where you get the single PCMCIA slot for expansion cards, on top is where the rechargeable
1.7 amp hour battery is installed, which originally boasted a two-hour battery life. And along
the bottom edge is absolutely nothing. Just a nice rounded butt. And underneath is all
the expected model number and FCC text, as well as four rubber feet, signaling how it’s
built for plopping down on a flat surface. Yeah, at five and a half pounds and a couple
inches thick it’s just not the type of tablet you wanna hold in your hands for very long.
However you choose to set it up though, the main thing to do is make sure it’s charged
up or plugged in so you can get it turned on.
[power switches on, PenMaster softly whirs to life]
At this point the PenMaster boots up like any PC of the time period, performs
the standard hardware checks, and begins loading the operating system. Go Corporation's PenPoint
and CIC PenDOS were both available as options from Samsung, but this one came with Microsoft
Windows for Pen Computing version 1.0. Based on Windows 3.1 for desktops, it’ll feel
darned familiar to anyone used to that, with the main additions being the Microsoft Pen
Tools applications. Things like the Pen Palette for handwriting recognition, the Trainer program
for helping it understand your sloppy handwriting, and the On-Screen Keyboard for when all other
inputs inevitably fall flat on their face. There’s also the handy Notebook application,
much more involved than good old Notepad. This is meant to take the place of a personal
organizer and rid your life of pesky paper calendars once and for all. In theory. Yeah
all this handwriting recognition stuff with Windows for Pen Computing never really struck
me as something I’d wanna use for anything more than a few minutes. Once the novelty
of it actually recognizing a few simple words wears off, you’re left struggling with the
awkwardness of everything else. Even after training the software, errors are commonplace,
and the fact that the remainder of the Windows interface is basically unchanged from the
desktop PC version doesn’t do it any favors in terms of usability. At the same time though,
this was 1992, and the PenMaster was like a glimpse into the future. It was a portable
touchscreen computer with an integrated 20MHz 386SL CPU and up to 20 megs of RAM, more than
enough to take on most anything you’d care to throw at an early ‘90s tablet. Which
nowadays, I mean, is mostly gonna be Solitaire and Paintbrush, am I right? Sure it cost between
four and five grand when it was new, but c’mon: screwin’ around with classic Windows 3 applications
using a touchscreen and a stylus is just a giggle-worthy spectacle. Especially since
it’s on hardware that was absolutely at the forefront for the time period, rarely
used by the average home computer user. It’s no surprise that a good number of the PenMaster
machines from both Samsung and Grid ended up being sold directly to professionals instead
of through general retail. After all, its price and functionality fit more in line with
the needs of government, medical, business, and education sectors, not the rando at Radio
Shack who just wants to play Wolfenstein 3D. Not to say you couldn’t play Wolfenstein
3D on here, it’s certainly capable of doing so, but there were a thousand cheaper and
more suitable options for that in ‘92. And as much as I’d love to show something like
Wolf3D running on here, unfortunately I ran into some roadblocks preventing that. For
one thing, the 3.5” floppy drive it came with no longer reads diskettes at all, making
this rather concerning noise anytime you try.
[noises of floppy disk concern]
And to make matters worse, the hard drive barely works either at this point
crapping out seemingly at random. [tapping on frozen screen]
This not only froze the system constantly,
but the entire drive eventually refused to show up in the BIOS at all. And yes I’ve
taken everything apart, reseated all the things, and put the machine back together half a dozen
times. But that cranky old 63 megabyte Quantum GoDrive just wants me to get off its lawn
and let it rest in peace. I ended up getting a blank refurbished one that works perfectly,
but even after days of trying I haven’t been able to get the old drive working again
to make a backup, and I don’t have copies of the original software either. Ah well,
at least this gives us an excuse to gaze upon its delightful internals! Which really looks
a lot like a laptop smashed together without the keyboard and with some extra circuitry
for the touchscreen. Speaking of which, the PenMaster relies on a chipset by none other
than Wacom Company Limited, who made several pioneering pen-controlled computing products
and still sells digital drawing devices today. Also making a standout appearance is that
lovely Intel 386SL/20 CPU with an accompanying socket ready to make use of a 387 math coprocessor.
And up above that there’s the small but densely-populated power supply board, right
next to the internal PC speaker and the Tadiran TL-5186 coin cell for the CMOS and real time
clock. Yeah overall I’d say Samsung did a nice job fitting so much into a relatively
small package, considering the early ‘90s tech they were working with. The chunky battery,
2.5” hard drive, and full-sized I/O ports bulk this thing up quite a bit, there was
a long ways to go in optimizing portable computing tech that’s for sure. And that’s about
it for the Samsung PenMaster: a fascinating early entry into the tablet PC marketplace,
though one that didn’t make much of a lasting impression it seems. That was undoubtedly
due in part to its limited distribution and lofty price point, but also because this was
Samsung’s first tablet and one that was simply early to the tablet party in general.
Exciting as they were in 1992, tablets wouldn’t really become a thing until the 2010s. And
even then when Samsung released their first Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab, I recall plenty
of naysayers and derisive opinions questioning who actually needed a tablet computer. Samsung
strikes me as one of those companies that throws every new form factor at the wall to
see what sticks, even if the timing isn’t exactly optimal. And the PenMaster is an enjoyable
example of that from all the way back in 1992. You know, I don’t really have any profound
point to make here, except to say that I’m continually amused by the fast-moving trends
in tech and how quickly consumers forget the numerous milestones along the way to where
we are now. Forgotten devices like the PenMaster paved the way for the future, decades in advance,
and for that I think things like this deserve a second look.
If you enjoyed this look at
the PenMaster, might I suggest my video on the Dauphin DTR-1. Or any number of other
bits of retro tech history, I cover a lot of stuff here on LGR. As always though, thank
you very much for watching!