Taiwanese company Macronix Inc has been demonstrating what may prove to be the world’s smallest operational fax system. Both transmission and reception were achieved with the HP 95LX palmtop and a MaxLite portable 9600-bps fax modem, which weighs a little under 7oz. Getting the 95LX to run the software had initially proved a problem, according to John Wong, vice president of engineering at Macronix, as the software originally written for the MS-DOS and Macintosh required more memory than the 95LX’s RAM cards were capable of storing. In order to ensure the smooth running of the demonstration, all of the software frills had to be stripped out, leaving just the essential command line to convert ASCII files to fax format (and vice-versa) and the instructions to send them via the MaxLite modem. The system does have full Group-III fax compatability, however, and the thing costs $400 for the lot – the modem, the software and the cable.
