This '90s Casio PDA Is a High-Resolution, Surprisingly Powerful Pocket Sleeper Build

Pseudonymous maker and lover of classic personal digital assistants (PDAs) "TundraLegendZ," hereafter simply "Tundra," has turned a Casio from the '90s into a sleeper build with high-resolution color display — while reusing the original keyboard.

"Hardware wise, it's been upgraded completely, sporting its original shell," Tundra explains of the project. "I've heard someone say a cyberdeck isn't about what it can do but rather what it means to you; I've always loved the vintage organizers, they aren't produced anymore and with modern Python code they could be daily drivers. What better way to take an original and absolutely gut it and give it a new life whilst reusing as much of the original as possible?"

Originally released in the mid-1990s, the Casio SF-5580 that forms the basis for Tundra's build was the cheapest model in the SF-5x80 family — with just 128kB of memory for storing names, addresses, and telephone numbers, 20-character notes, to-do lists, schedules, reminders, and expenses. Today, all of that — and so much more — is handled by a smartphone, but that doesn't mean there's no love for the classic form factor of a clamshell PDA with physical keyboard any more.

Speaking of the keyboard: it still works. "All 82 original carbon [keyboard] keys are functioning using a [Raspberry Pi] Pico," Tundra explains, having hand-wired the contacts from the keyboard to the microcontroller board. "The original factory [piezoelectric] buzzer functions and is as loud as the original wiring, the original RTC [Real-Time Clock] slot is still being used for RTC, screen has been upgraded to a near-1080p display, 6,000mAh battery, [and] USB [Type-]C charging. This is the very first organizer that I've seen successfully fully converted whilst preserving its original soul."

More information is available in Tundra's Reddit post.