Yes, very interesting.
We seem to have come along way in a short space of time.
Thank you for the link.
My first computer was a Mark I Osborne. It claimed to be "portable," but it was the size of a sewing machine, and weighed a ton! It had a 5" screen and two 5-1/4", single-side, floppy drives that read 90K (we could have opted for Double-Sided, 180K for a hundred dollars more, but thought we would never fill them!). It had 64K of memory, and ran on the CP/M operating system. It also had a great keyboard. Our first word processor was WordStar for CP/M. Any of you ever work in CP/M. Remember the "Pip" command?
I look back now and think about that computer and CP/M and laugh, but one thing it did very well was teach me about computers. Later I "upgraded" to a Kaypro that ran on DOS. It was just as heavy, but it had a 10MB hard drive. Many of the images out of my Canon 5D Mk IV are larger than 10MB today! 😁 Back in the day, who'd a thought?
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I had a Compaq "luggable" computer with 2 full-height floppy drives in the early '80s that was a huge advance over my Apple II. Then, there was the Epson MX80 9-pin printer. I do remember Wordstar and I had some sort of add-on for writing math formulas. Great memories as I sit here composing on my iPad Aire.
I still have this one.
Compaq Portable (1983)
Reverse engineered from an IBM PC, the Compaq Portable holds the distinction of being the first-ever portable IBM clone -- or as PC Magazine called it, "almost a full work-alike." The 28-pound, suitcase-sized machine had an Intel 8088 processor, 128K of RAM and a built-in, 9-inch green screen monitor.
When it was first released in March 1983, a Compaq Portable with a single diskette drive started at $2,995 (~$7,500 today); the dual-diskette drive model seen here cost $595 extra.
It has an 10 mb hard drive and at the time I was using Lotus 123 and thought I would never fill it up.... a spreadsheet was only about 2K. Has the DOS operating system... funny how "old" it seems today.
BBurns
Loc: South Bay, California
I no longer have the portable version, SX-64, but still have a complete and functional Commodore 64 system.
Ah yes, the Tandy with the much loved 8088 processor. Floppies - many hours playing "King's Quest". lol
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