A mystery: A Malfunctioning Atlas SD319i

Getting some background out of the way. I went thrifiting the other day and saw a mini computer I couldn't resist, the Atlas SD319i. It translates arabic to english, but it has an arabic or and eglish mode. I don't know much about it, it has a few applications, but I bought it because it was $3.50 and real cool. So I realized it had no batteries and I'd have to wait a day to figure out if it worked.

Picked up some AAA's, got it started up, and it gave me this screen. Figured it was some sort of greeting from the previous owner, reset it.



The screen didn't leave me though, it stayed like this no matter how many times I reset it. At this point I was getting a bit frantic, I was pressing all of the right buttons and nothing in the manual prepared me for this. Even stranger was the greeting. Now, I don't speak arabic, but from what I could find, it says "Brother: 5 -8 [ I think and a few other numbers]."

At this point, my impatience gets the best of me, and I just start hitting random keys, which is how I ended up here.



What's happening in the image is the hex values for the keys are being printed to the screen whenever I type them in. I've entered some sort of test mode, or maybe the machine is reverting back to a feral state. I don't know. Now I have  a mystery on my hands, and I intend to solve it. Wish me luck!