I consider the Atari Portfolio to be one of the
coolest things around. I've wanted one ever since they
first came out. Marcus is lucky enough to actually have
one:
Now what is this, you may
ask. The magic computing shoe? A sensor setup to
registrate the smell of my socks? Nope. This upgraded
pocket calculator with a trainer of a very popular
american brand shown for comparison in size is the
mother of computers. Don't believe it? Here we go.
When I bought this marvel of technology in 1989 for
about $400 (which was outrageously overpriced, to say
the least), I had already worked with an Apple IIc
and a Zenith PC, both outdated when they shew up on
my roommates desktop in the mid eighties. Wanting
desperately something of my own, I opted for the
"smallest PC of the world" as the Portfolio
was named by the press here in Germany. Spending said
money on the machine was hard, especially if you
count in the $150 I had to let go for an additional
RAM card of 128 K, but spending $2000 you had to put
down on your dealer's table for a grown up system was
outright impossible to me.
I was very proud of my new
achievement. My friends laughed at it, especially the
small keys on the keyboard (which are incredibly
small) gave reason for many a joke. Since I've got
rather large hands, keys might have looked all the
more disproportionate. The Portfolio took for revenge
when my first radioplay got aired, which had been
written in its first version using its very ROM based
word processor, which to call "basic" or
"simple" is a euphemism. No text formatting
whatsoever. But the revenues for the radioplay got me
my first real computer, a 386 machine, to which the
Portfolio connected without complaint.
And know what? My current
Pentium doesn't mind either, thanks to the otherwise
cursed DOS-foundations of Win95. And quite a lot of
my stories now in print have come to light on this
tiny screen. Not the brightest of lights, I have to
add. Usability of this machine is restricted by its
poor performance, but portable it is indeed. CPU is a
80C88-Intel at 4,92 Mhz. It's got 128 K of RAM of
which 62 are reserved for operation of the built in
programs, residing in a 256 K large ROM: a word
processor, a spreadsheet (supposedly 1-2-3
compatible), a calculator, a scheduler, a database
for addresses and the OS of course, which is some
kind of depleted DOS. Writing texts of more than say
5 K on the word processor can become cumbersome,
corrections may take more than 10 seconds to fill in.
I don't know anything about the other programs,
because I never used them.
Slung around the body of the
machine is the "smart parallel interface"
which accounts for connectivity to my bigger machine.
The file transfer program is easy and reliable,
though transfer rates are less than stellar. The
screen shows eight lines of forty characters (240 x
64 pixels). You can use your standard batteries on
the computer, while the additional RAM card actually
slotted in on this picture uses something more
special to contain its info, a very flat unit which
was expected to last for two years and has been on
duty for eight years now. Size (in metric numbers):
the case is 20 centimeters wide, 10 centimeters deep
and 2,5 centimeters high. It weighs around 350 grams.
Back to the Museum!
