Wed Jan 27, 1988 J.DAGGAN OK, here's my review: I live in Staten Island, New York, and spend at least two and a half hours a day commuting to and from Manhattan. Although I use most of the time to catch up on my reading, sometimes I wish I had a chance to write letters or journal entries as well. So I looked around for an affordable laptop computer, and found one advertised in Byte Magazine. California Digital is now offering a Xerox 1815 laptop computer (also called a "Sunrise"). If you're like me, you never heard of it. I'm not even sure it was ever marketed by Xerox. However, the price ($189) was so low I had to give it a try. On unpacking the Sunrise, I found several accessories, some of little or no use. There was a microcassette tape (which can be used for saving data or recording voice), an external monitor cable, a cable for attaching the unit to a television, and a power converter. The manual appears to be a first draft. It's not typeset, and repeats useless information many times while leaving out fairly important instructions like how to transfer files directly to other computers. Another disconcerting feature of the Xerox 1815 is the disclaimer sticker on it's bottom. According to this, Xerox Corporation sells this computer "As Is," with no warranty of any kind whatsoever, nor any guarantee or suggestion that service is available from any source. However, California Digital will repair broken units for a fee. The back of the Sunrise has two phone jacks -- one for the internal modem and one for the telephone. You can also use this computer as a speaker phone, supposedly. There are two RS232 ports, one for a parallel printer connection and the other for a serial device, a "data link" for connecting the optional disk drive unit, and jacks for use with an external monitor or a TV set. On the right side of the unit are ports for connecting a speaker and microphone, and a special port for Rompacks, which are small cartridges that have programs for other applications. The Sunrise comes with one Rompack that has a tutorial on how to use the computer, but since it stopped working about half way through the presentation, I'm not sure how reliable the Rompacks are. There are two Rompacks available from California Digital which contain some business programs written in Basic. The battery is a Ni-Cad rechargeable battery. It can be recharged by plugging the unit into a wall socket through the AC power adaptor. According to the manual, it takes 14 hours to recharge the battery completely. The charge lasts for maybe a little over an hour. There is a status line on the main menu which keeps track of battery usage. After every five minutes of use, the battery counter is incremented by one, so if you've been using the Sunrise under battery power for ten minutes, the counter will read "0002." The manual says that the Sunrise should be recharged after the battery counter reads "0012." I've gone up to "0014" without recharging, and haven't had a problem with it, but as the counter gets to around 8 or so, the LCD display slows down somewhat, and the tape slows down considerably. One other note about the power source: while operating the Sunrise off of the AC power adaptor, the unit gets very warm at the right rear section. I don't know how this might affect long-term operation of the computer at a desk, but I would think some sort of external fan would be in order. While operating on battery power, this problem does not exist. The keyboard is big enough to type on comfortably. The keys themselves have a nice feel to them. There's a big return key, a control key that's right below the z key, an alpha lock, and four cursor control keys to the right of the space bar. Ten function keys above the number keys control the various applications. Data storage is via micro-cassette, which is rather slow to save and load files, but works fine for my purposes. When the computer is turned on, the cassette automatically fast-forwards an inch or so in order not to write over older files. If you've rewound the tape for some reason, don't forget to fast-forward it past the last file saved. I learned about this one the hard way. During one of the long waits for the Sunrise to find and load a file from tape, I began to realize why disk drives were invented. The LCD screen is only 3 lines long, and since one of those is taken up by a function key command line (which changes depending on the application you're using), you really only have two lines to work with. The width of the screen is 80 columns, though and for simple word processing, which is what I use the computer for, this is fine. However, trying to write a program while in BASIC would be nearly impossible. If you try to list even one line of code, it quickly disappears, to be replaced by the OK prompt. When connected to an external monitor, the Sunrise display length extends to 24 lines or so, but the width shrinks to 40 characters. The LCD display is also difficult to read in low lighting situations, like the back of this taxi I'm in right now. It's mounted directly into the body of the computer, so you can't tilt the display, but the setup program allows you to adjust the viewing angle using the up and down arrow keys. Despite the silence of the manual on the subject, I searched through my old FOGHORNs and found some articles about transferring files from a Tandy Model 100 to an Osborne I, and one of the methods described worked for the Sunrise. Using a null modem cable, connect the RS232C serial ports of each computer. In the Xerox's Setup function, direct the Output to the serial port. Do this by first pressing the Setup function key, then choosing the Output menu. At the "Listing?" prompt, press the function key directly under the RS232 choice. Press Exit, then choose the Serial option. Again, following the menus, set up the serial port on the Xerox this way: XonXoff protocol, 1200 baud, 8 data bits, no stop bits, no parity. Now, running IMP on the Osborne, enter "T filename.txt" to get into terminal mode with the copy function. Go into the Text function of the Xerox, load the file to send, and, with the cursor at the beginning of the document, press the Print key. (Incidentally, the Sunrise will not output data while under battery power. It has to be plugged in. Another little bug.) The information will flash on the screen of the Osborne. If it looks garbled, the cable ends may need to be switched. This general method should work with other computers equipped with an RS232 serial port and communications software that can capture data from the screen, although I haven't tried it with anything other than an Osborne so far. The Sunrise has a built-in 300/1200 baud modem, but the 1200 baud modem did not seem to function properly. I called California Digital, and found out that the 1200 baud modem operates at half duplex, bell 202A, which is a strange setting and will probably not work with most RBBS's. So I only use the 300 baud modem, with the following settings: Baud - 300; Mode - Originate; Parity - none; Data Bits - 8; Stop Bits - 1. You can store numbers which the unit will dial automatically. Press the Phone key at the main menu. Now press enter, and you can enter a three-letter code for your phone number. It has to be three letters, by the way. It won't auto-dial the number unless the code has exactly three letters. Follow the prompts to enter the phone number, in this format: XXX-XXX-XXXX. If you have to dial an extra number to get an outside line, put a comma after the number, like so: X,XXX-XXX-XXXX. The comma will cause the modem to pause a moment to allow the connection to be made. Press "Dial," and the modem should now be calling your number. You can hear the call through the little speaker to the right of the keyboard. When the remote computer is connected, the speaker will beep a couple of times. Press the Connect key, then the Echo key. You should see information from the RBBS on your screen now. I tried downloading a file, but couldn't figure out how to do it. The manual, again, is cryptic on this point. But I think you can only download text files 10k or less in size, so this function would not be of much use to many of us anyway. The California Digital ad says the computer has 64k of memory, and I guess this is true, except the programs take up all but 10k of it, which limits the size of the files you can keep in RAM. If you have phone numbers stored in the Phone program, or appointments in the Calendar, you have even less room for text. Pressing control/delete displays the available memory and allows you to clear any section you wish. Be careful to save any text you have before clearing the memory, or you'll lose whatever you've entered. I learned this the hard way too. The word processing function is very simple. You press "Text" at the main menu to run it. You can start to enter text by pressing the "Entry" key. Insert mode is always on; the backspace key deletes one character to the left; control-delete deletes one character to the right; the cursor keys move up, down, left and right. There is a find function that will find a string; pressing "Find" and the up arrow will take the cursor to the beginning of the entry; "Find" and the down arrow will take it to the end. "File" functions allow you to save and load files to and from the microcassette. With a few reservations, I haven't been disappointed with the Sunrise. It performs the function I purchased it for -- text processing on the ferry -- creditably, and so far has shown itself to be a fairly rugged little computer. I've been hauling it to and from work, through the ferry terminal and Grand Central station, through icy winds and jostling crowds, and it's still performing well. All the bumping around on the subways took it's toll on the Xerox, though. One day I turned it on, only to be greeted by a totally black screen and a screeching beep. After switching the computer on and off a few more times, I got the normal display, but all of the settings -- time, date, etc. -- plus the contents of the text buffer were gone. After this happened a couple more times, I decided it was time to open it up and take a peek. Unscrewing two screws on the back of the unit was all it took. I found the problem right away. There was a loose power connector. I put it back where it belonged, with a little tape for extra security, and screwed the unit back together. So far, no more problems. According to the advertisement in Byte, California Digital sells a dual floppy drive module that plugs into the back of the Sunrise ($159) and an 80 column printer ($59). With the disk drive unit (which has an 8-bit microprocessor, according to the manual) attached, the Sunrise can run under the CP/M operating system, although I have not had a chance to test this, since I haven't purchased those attachments. All in all, I think the Sunrise is a good computer for performing a very specific task: writing short letters, memos, etc. away from your desk. I have not had a chance to try some of its other functions, such as a voice recorder or a speaker phone, but I suspect that, while the Sunrise might serve in a pinch, you would do much better to purchase a real tape recorder and speaker phone for your office. But I have found that it serves very adequately as a portable word processor. And the price is right, too.