Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC

The Compaq TC1000 is a tablet PC made by Compaq. The CPU chip is a 1 GHz Transmeta Crusoe 5800 with 512-KB cache, not the more usual Intel, AMD, or VIA processor. It has a 10.4-inch color TFT XGA (1024 × 768) display, 256 MB (133 MHz) SDRAM (expandable to 768 MB), and an nVidia GeForce2 Go graphics controller with 16 MB of video SDRAM, and a 30, 40, or 60 GB disk drive. It runs Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition with Handwriting recognition software, and the pointing device a tablet PC pen instead of a mouse. It is powered by a 40 Watt Hour 6-cell, 4.0 Ah lithium ion battery pack, recharged from an external 65 Watt AC adapter. The case is an unusual design and the display is detachable from the base. There is an optional keyboard with PointStick pointing device. It came equipped with an internal combination Type III mini PCI 56Kbps, v.90/v.92 modem and wireless LAN 802.11b 10/100 network interface card (NIC). It has one Type II PC Card slot with support for both 32-bit CardBus and 16-bit PC Cards and supports one Type III CompactFlash card. The external MultiBay or docking station added support for a 1.44-MB diskette drive, 24X Max CD-ROM drive,  8X Max CD-RW drive, 8X Max DVD-ROM drive, or 8X Max DVD-CDRW combination drive, and a 40 or 30 GB disk drive.

The Transmeta Crusoe processor is an unusual design compared to those from Intel and AMD. Instead of implementing the Pentium processor instruction set in hardware as Intel and AMD have done, the Crusoe runs Code Morphing Software in a Virtual Machine on the native instruction set. The Code Morphing Software translates Pentium instructions into Crusoe instructions as they are executed. Transmeta demonstrated another CMS that performed the same trick with Java bytecodes. Much of the performance boosters that are implemented in hardware on the Pentium are implemented in the CMS. This means that the Crusoe processor is simpler and uses much less power. Transmeta didn't have their own chip fab, so most of their chips were made by IBM.

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