Atari Portfolio: No Ordinary Electronic Organizer
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2019
- Electronic pocket organizers hit the market in the 1980s to help people manage their daily lives. They were fairly simple devices with limited functionality...but Atari's was different.
Sources:
Atari ad gallery: aresluna.org/attached/compute...
Portfolio accessories image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
British Journal of Anesthesia, 1992, volume 69
Casio SF-8000 image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Sharp PC-E500S image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Acorn PocketBook image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
DIP Pocket PC image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Atari PC images:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
www.flickr.com/photos/blakesp...
www.flickr.com/photos/mwichar...
Psion Organizer image: blackheartreboot.co.uk/produc...
Psion Siena image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Computer Chronicles video: • 1990 Handheld Computer...
Sharp PC-3000 images:
www.ebay.com/itm/SHARP-PC-300...
DIP acquired by Phoenix Technologies: www.cbronline.com/news/phoeni...
Atari Explorer magazine scan: www.atarimania.com/mags/pdf/At...
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Music: "Wishful Thinking" and "Heartache" by Dan Mason (danmason.bandcamp.com).
Additional music by Epidemic Sound (www.epidemicsound.com).
Intro music by BoxCat Games (www.box-cat.com). - Наука та технологія
I was waiting for the T2 mention ;D
Your now one step closer to perfecting your T2 John Conner cosplay
Oh yeah, I was thinking was this the device used in T2 movie, that John Connor used to rob ATM?😂
@@ching-chenhuang8119
Yep, and he also used it to crack the code and get the chip and arm from Cyderdyne.
Cyberdyne needs to beef up their security.
So do the banks.
I had one of these!!
I spent days and days writing BASIC programs, downloading apps for it, getting angry about its unreliable internal clock, taking it with me everywhere I went. Had the 128K RAM card, and the printer port add-on.
Ennar sweet!
Were you able to produce any programmes?
Interesting design of the keyboard with the letters not centred on the key and the raised ridge at the back of each key.
I had this and the Sharp back in the day. They were more high tech toys than consumer devices, but they were still awesome to have, especially to show off in high school.
Man, I used to have one of these with all the goodies. It was an awesome setup, I was sad when I had to let it go. So glad to see someone giving it some attention!
I have one for sale. If anyone is interested let me know. I am from Morocco.
Awesome find! These little DOS portables have always intrigued me. :D
I have one for sale. If anyone is interested let me know. I am from Morocco.
Cool, Always love it in terminator 2 ;)
I had an HP 200LX back in the mid 90's, which was a full fledged PC/XT with real MS-DOS, 2MB ram, PCMCIA slot and CGA b/w graphics ;)
It could even run Windows 3.0 (albeit slowly)
I love coming across rare and obscure computers and electronics like this Atari.
I have one for sale. If anyone is interested let me know. I am from Morocco.
I used to carry one of these to school and take notes in class back in the early 90s. I worked weekends for a company who upgraded them to 512k for quite a hefty penny :)
Was it a mod, like soldering more chips inside on the board?
One of these would be good for a small portable amateur radio packet station.
Great video! I wasn't looking to learn about this, but it was a very interesting random pop up in my day!
Did not know about the Sharp successor. Thanks for this video!
I really wanted one of these when I saw them at the only remaining Atari stockist in my city. But the promise of an all-in-one handheld computing device was still a few years away yet
I have one for sale. If anyone is interested let me know. I am from Morocco.
Even though not all of the video topics you touch on interest me, I really like your style of filmmaking and narration Colin. Keep up the good work!
Very cool history on the portfolio. I got lucky enough to pick one of these up in the wild last year from a craiglist ad, brand new!
Nice to see its os comes from my home town.
Very cool video! I didn't know much about this, but I did always wonder what John Connor used to hack atms!!
These are great little units. They work quite well.
i really like you videos they are very relaxing thank you for doing them
Man, I had one of those. I took it to Grenada and St. Vincent in the Eastern Caribbean to help me take data for my PhD surveys.
Well done. Very interesting video.
2:42 Colin you got SERVED! OHHH SNAP!
In fact, there is no backup battery. The only thing holding the RAM contents is a capacitor. So if your batteries run dry, all data is lost.
Also it can be modded with a lot of upgrades. The most useful nowadays beeing a CF-Card socket as replacement for the proprietary card slot. But also increasing the memory to 512kB and overclocking the CPU from 4.7 to 6.5 MHz is possible.
Hey Colin, it's going alright thanks.
Still got my HP 200lx and works great. Nice little novelty machine that's still somewhat useful.
I really wanted one of these, or a Tandy portable when I was a kid, but ended up with a SEGA Game Gear instead, Awesome find, thanks for sharing.
We used to use one at my work using a dos program written in the language "C", it worked perfectly for the task
You and 8-bit-guy are my favorite channels to see new uploads from
Interesting that it has an association with Psion. Apart from the memory card expansion, it has broad similarities with the Psion 5mx that I bought in 2000. If it wasn't for touchscreens, I reckon we'd commonly be using things like these today.
One of my unfullfilled dreams of 90s
I have one for sale. If anyone is interested let me know. I am from Morocco.
'Easy Money.'
Great video! It reminds me of those tandy word processors from the 90's. Keep up the great work!
If you are thinking of the Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 it was not from the 90's, but actually released in 83, and I remember one of my friends had one in 6th grade in 94 that he had gotten after his Grandfather died, and they cleaned out his home office, I was honestly super jealous, as myself or any of my other friends had any kind of portable computer at the time.
@@CommodoreFan64 Its super basic, it doesn't have dos and only runs the custom word proccesing os tandy made
@@joehdah5395 Tell me something I don't know lol! You're talking to a guy who owns, and from time to time still uses a Zenith Data System 286e SuperSport laptop that has DOS with letter perfect, because of the Alps switches on the keyboard, and for when I don't want to be distracted with a modern computer, and to get my work to any of my other machines all Manjaro Linux based I use a USB floppy drive lol.
I still have it in great conditions. It was called PCfolio here in Italy/Europe and it is the only "PC" I bought. The worst drawback I remember is that it hadn't a backup battery on board. Talking about pocket computers or PDAs I still have and loved… Apple Newton MessegePad 2100, Psion 3c, Handspring Visor Edge and Palm Tungsten T.
I remember this device but didn’t know about it being a tebadge! Would love to find more details about DIP and its links to Psion.
lovely keyboard
I bought it New. Used the address book with the phone dialer and would hold it up to a phone receiver to dial a clients phone number. I did Computer service all around Manhattan and I saw many portfolio card docks connected to PCs in many large companies so it made some small inroads
I still have one of these.
good luck with that!
2:55 then I played your video a little longer and seen exactly what I was thinking at the start of the video, terminator 2 judgement day, after I typed my comment.
Ohhh, that’s a cool one...
And those chips and cracks and scratches? That’s character!
I picked one of these up at a computer-fair mid nineties. They were being sold from a pallet at give-away prices. It never worked very well though, i now realize that it had an internal battery that must have died. They couldn't give them away at the time, the only reason i got one was because i knew the price had been much higher and it was the one used in T2, so the geek inside urged me to get one. On the bright side:, there may well be some new old stock of these around.
wow so Atari is just a "sticker" on the other product :D
Love the conclusion.
awesome catch, and good on you. Give it 20 years and it will be a small mint for curio factor alone!
I have one for sale. If anyone is interested let me know. I am from Morocco.
I want to see more on the weird 486 PC... Will you do something cool with it? Maybe a gaming rig for old dos games??? just an idea.
So cool. This us how to find electronic treasure in streets.
Remember PDA's that looked vaguely like smart phones would soon look?
Fantastic video as always! What cleaner did you use to get the dirt and grime off of the Portfolio?
I just used some of those antibacterial kitchen wipes. If the grime was more hardcore I’d use something like 409 or Goo Gone.
I have one for sale. If anyone is interested let me know. I am from Morocco.
Reminds me of the Poqet PC. I need to fix the screen on mine. Has a similar battery backed RAM storage setup.
PSION also made some games for the zx spectrum in the early 80's.
Wow Surrey Research Park. I used to live nearby.
Me too! Also near to Lionhead HQ, although i didn't know it at the time
My first thought... Terminator 2
I miss the old podcast like setup every Friday
Always wanted one because of Terminator. In an Atari bulk buy I found the LPT adaptor with a buch of Jaguar games though - so that was interesting./
I wanted one of these sooo bad 16 years ago. The face that it runs DOS and I could write apps for it.
Very cool
If you're doing videos on palmtops I'm in Minneapolis and I've got a cute Compaq Windows CE I'm happy to share
Compaq C120 with a 9-pin serial cable. B/W backlit resistive touchscreen. You're welcome to have it.
1:56 now those blood oxygen meters can be had for as low as $9 to consumers
Yep they are dirt cheap. I work for a non profit dealing with senior clients, and we are required to have one as part of our medical kit, along with a Blood pressure monitor, and blood sugar meter in case something happens to a client, and we can check on them while 911 gets to us. I say everyone should have that as part of a medical kit.
Good 👍🏻
Damn. $120 for a memory card that's not even a Megabyte AND it needed a battery
Could you get it to run an Infocom adventure?
I have a HP 95LX that I got for $1 because it was in a box of calculators at an estate sale.
Omg!! How did you find something like this?!?!? I want to learn your ways man. /hasnocluewheretolookinthecities
I recognized this from T2, glad you acknowledged the cameo
Hi. I hope the new now French owned Atari (3 divisions I believe, Atari, Atari VCS and another Atari), will rise again. The Atari logo is the best gaming logo of them all (that 3 white lines that become a kind of mountain) and without Atari's first efforts, there is no gaming industry (no Nintendo, SEGA, CD Projekt Red, Witches, Shenmue 3, Capcom, EA, Blizzard, Rockstar, etc.).
God bless, Proverbs 31
I always wanted to have one of these, but they cost a friggin foooooooooooortune :(
My 4th grade teacher had one.
I will take a 200lx over this
still more features than a modern mac
I like this machine, but I have the *better* HP 95LX (1MB RAM, 40x16 display, MS-DOS 3.22, NEC V20, PCMCIA slot) :)
I dont give a shit what you say..technology should be like this.
'course it is a Divoon Timebox, just like a tablet
My father had this.
Imagine running Windows on that thing!
Theoretically it would be possible ro run windows 1.0x but you would need more ram and maybe a zip drive to run from
I remember the Poqet PC but it was $2,000. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC
A friend of mine had one. I couldn't see the point of them. I was the same about the iPad. 😁
Concreteowl It all depends on your needs and applications. I think these are still very useful for many things. I still see no real desire to use or reason to have an iPad.
@@denshi-oji494 I have one now for art use. But at the time of release it just seemed like a keyboardless laptop.
By ATARI? Just how big of an electronics company Atari was? And what made that company lose their entire business? They were as big as sony and other competitors at the time, but today we don't see anything from them aside from some retro gaming stuff that use their name and are made by different companies.
That organizer mini pc thing is interesting as I owned a generic organizer thing in the past that had its own hardware and software. but this thing to be capable of being an early PC with intel CPU and have a DOS like OS that is partially compatible and can connect to an actual PC in a time when such thing as a mouse did not exist?
I bet that thing could run an old version of WordStar.
Supposedly the native spreadsheet program was compatible with Lotus 1-2-3!
@@ThisDoesNotCompute Indeed it was. I had two of these machines and used spreadsheet a lot. I transferred the files back and forth between Portfolio's built-in spreadsheet and Lotus 1-2-3 on my desktop PC. I still have a copy of these files and they can be imported without problems to any spreadsheet that can import Lotus 1-2-3 files.
How did you get access to ewaste?
I call my local e waste plant and essentially I tell them that I repair vintage computers and ask if I can access there warehouses (at least in my area e-waste is stored in a warehouse to section different types of waste) and they say yes after doing this a few times the guy would call me when he got older apple computers in (that's what I collect) and he would ask me if I was interested and if I said yes he would just set it aside for me
Easy money!
Easy money!!!
Can it run doom?
Will it run Windows 10?
Nah, only crysis
I was somewhat astonished back in the days, when he hacked the ATM in T2, that it was so easy to get some money for free. Now we know - it was just ATARIS fault. ^_^
Just imagine using a mouse with it.
Go baby go baby go baby go baby (this is taking too long) YESSS withdraw three zero zero bucks (terminator 2 judgement day cash machine scene)
Prompt $p$g?
But will it run Doom?
Skip to 2:38 to see Colin run Duke Nukem 3D on it
The first thing I ever bought on eBay was one of these, cost £10. I returned it because I thought it didn't work, turns out I was just using shitty AA batteries :(
And..... now I'm searching eBay. I'm so easily lead. I already have an HP 95LX.
And I've bought one.
@@_zzpza how much if u don't mind, since u got it.
Ninja Master mint condition, with parallel port adapter for £95 (GBP) delivered (but it now price). Could have got one cheaper in worse condition though.
@@_zzpza nice. Any projects you can try with it?
Did you try hacking ATMs with it?
I crashed my car while watching this
Good stuff..
And now we have a pocket computer from GPD that's able to play Modern games now the GPD win Max a beefy thing you would need cargo pants for but hey it's a pocket computer
😃
Sounds like it is more of a PDA predecessor than it is a real pocket laptop like the GPD WIN for example.
Disagree. The fact it can run full MS-DOS x86 is what made it a real computer and not just a personal organizer or a glorified extension of that.
@@oldtwinsna8347 True that but the user's still limited by the display size and internal memory.
Granted, back then resolutions were small and computers didn't have plenty of storage memory to begin with but you are basically limited to those few programs unless someone coded something in QBASIC.
I get what you're saying but the target market didn't buy these to play games or run a desktop stack. it was the ability to use the huge arsenal of msdos application programs, everything from major software packages down to custom programs for whatever the user needed. I mean you could run full programs of the actual programs you used on the bigger desktops. much like today, still can't even do that with Android or iPad , which is why the market continues to be rich for real x86 compatible machines.
MegaManNeo I guess it depends on your perspective. At the time this waa sold, there were still a large number of people that bought computers so they could actually program and create an application to be used on it instead of just buying one to run existing programs. it worked very well for that. It was also a very nice option to buy instead if a large non-portable computer at the time, with somewhat comparable specs. Of course far less capable than current computers, in many ways it still is more versatile than many of the newer PDAs.
If only I could play doom on it...
Easy money.
First