ThinkScribe

IBM ThinkScribe ThinkScribe is a digitiser notepad on TransNote notebooks. The pad's digitizer technology was produced by the company Cross and was produced as a standalone product under the name CrossPad. However, as the TransNote, the CrossPad line of products is discontinued. The pad combines the convinience of a classic paper notepad with that of a digitizer pad that captures your input into digital image data. This required a special pen that includes ink as well as the digitizer technology. Also the pad included some amount of memory to buffer the captured image data. The concept of the TransNote was to couple this innovative input method with a ThinkPad notebook computer, all together in a standard letter size business shelf. Hence the ThinkPad part of it could use the image data transmitted from the pad and transform it to any usable digital data format like most importantly text.

Partnumbers

• Digital Pen Marketing PN: 02K5280
• Digital Pen FRU PN: 02K5633
• TransScribe Paper Pads Marketing PN: 04P3686
• Ink Manager and ThinkScribe User Guide - TransNote

Linux Support

The ThinkScribe digitizer is connected with the TransNote notebook through the second serial port (/dev/ttyS1). It can operate on rates of 38400, 57600 or 115000 baud, with 8 data bits, no parity and 1 stop bit.

More information can be found on Ben "netjunki" Moores TransNote Development Notes.

Since the notepad is based on technology by AT Cross, the protocol specifications for the Crosspad might help in developing a driver. There is also Perl software to convert CrossPad ink data to Postscript.

Models featuring this Technology

• ThinkPad TransNote