The Original Pocket PC?

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n6/european_report.html">http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n6/european_report.html</a><br /><br />Well slap me silly and call me Marty McFly! The year is 1989. Atari is cool, and they decide to step into the Pocket PC arena just a little before the iPAQ... :lol: Talk about retro!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/dunn2002/original-pocketpc.jpg" /><br /><br />"Perhaps the most surprising announcement from Atari U.K. at this writing is the prototype for the Pocket PC, the world's first pocket-sized IBM PC clone, designed in the U.K. by the Guildford-based Distributed Information Processing (DIP). This product is based on a series of custom-built low-power chips and a variation of the "smart card" system-used instead of conventional disk drives. DIP already has a pretty good track record for such designs-their managing director, David Frodsham, and their development director, Peter Baldwin, have both held senior positions as Psion, the company responsible for the popular Organizer and Organizer II systems."

[yvilla]

Great find Jason :!: I loved the article.

[Jason Dunn]

Great find Jason :!: I loved the article.

I wish I could say I found it, but it was submitted anonymously. :-)

[Paragon]

Hmmm 1989 eh! Wasn't that before the guy (can't remeber his name) was trying to sue Microsft for using the name Pocket PC was ever around?

I'm not sure what date he supposedly was selling hisPocket PCs but I don't think it was in the 80's?

Dave

[Ed Hansberry]

The year is 1989. Atari is cool,

I don't think so... ;)

Cool find though. I wonder how how intuitive it's connection manager was? :LOL:

[spg]

Hey Marty McFly :wink: , cool article. Talk about computer history. :)

[Sheynk]

One word: wow.

It looks more like a Mako though

[ThomasC22]

Looks like a Palm with a Keyboard :o

"Palm Innovation - A step above technology from 1989"

I like it, somebody get Mike Mace on the phone!

[Timothy Rapson]

I owned one of these. They were truly the first pocketable DOS compatible computers. I got mine about 6 months after the introduction for about $240. The serial port and printer port expansions cost almost another $250 and I don't think I ever used the serial at all. The device itself worked well, but I just could not fit in in my pocket and gave up on it. It was a total bear to keep supplied with rechargables and file transfers were a real pain.

But, it really was a DOS computer (though it only ran straight text stuff and the DOS was Atari's (of Digital Research's) clone of MS DOS. Within a few month of the Atari's arrival a company named Poquet had a stellar model that cost far more but had an 80 collumn screen. HP also made a model or two that ran DOS before CE. The Atari was about the size of a video cassette tape (we'll soon be wondering what those once were....VCRs, what are they, my grandchildren will say.) The Poquet was thinner and blacker. The HP was about the size of a 720 of today and it eventually took the whole small market for MS DOS clamshell palmtops.

I am still not sure why they did not sell well.

I got a memory card too. I wonder how much I paid for it? I think it held 128k, yes, 1/8 of one meg. It was a lot of space, but not enough for what I wanted to do. Now, that I recall the whole deal, I think the day I gave up on the Portfoli was the day I replaced the watch style battery in the memory card (it was not flash, but a very low power precursor of flash memory) I followed the direction exactly leaving the card in the Portfolio to keep it charged while I replace the coin battery in the card. Well, I found out later that the Atari had to be kept running (it went into sleep mode if you didn't hit a key every minute) while changing the battery in the card. I lost everything on the card. I gave up.


By the way, if you search the Start Site you will find a review of some Bible software by yours truly (not software for the Atari Portfolio Pocket PC, but for the Atari ST- a color Mac clone). Those were heady days in the computer world.

[enemy2k2]

:microwave: I remember wanting one of those really badly as a punk kid. Here in Canada I would see them advertised in London Drugs fliers. :morning: Then came the lust over the Poquet when reading about it in some British PC mag. Here's some links for more info.

http://bmason.best.vwh.net/PoqetPC/
http://www.njqrp.org/poqetpc/

If you want to buy one you can at http://www.cadigital.com/poqetpc.htm

:drinking: :silly: :2gunfire: 0X :pukeface: :scrambleup: :shocked!:

This post was really just an excuse to try out those lil emoticon thingies:)

[Venturello]

Well... I wonder how many here remember the GREAT HP 100LX and 200LX. There are many websites on them, and they are still in use. Great product, it ran full MSDOS and was nearly pocketable (surely, jacket-able). It is later than this unit, so not as interesting from a historical point of view. Still, I owned this units and they worked fine, where very useful for me. No problems with them whatsoever (given their technical limitations).

[Mike Wagstaff]

My first palmtop was the 95LX. That was followed by a 100LX, then a 200LX. They were awesome machines that attracted a very passionate following and some wonderfully innovative software (anyone remember the likes of Vertical Reader, the web browser, HV, etc...?).

[rlobrecht]

My first palmtop was the 95LX. That was followed by a 100LX, then a 200LX. They were awesome machines that attracted a very passionate following and some wonderfully innovative software (anyone remember the likes of Vertical Reader, the web browser, HV, etc...?).

I loved my 95LX. I was an engineering student at the time, and we lived and died by Lotus 123. It had Lotus on it, so I always had my homework.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

I'm just wondering if it had any dust under the screen!! :o

[splintercell]

I loved my Portfolio when I had at whatever age it was that was probably too young to have a toy that expensive. The chess program for kicked butt. I remember messing with the utility program memory card and writing quite a few stupid DOS batch files.
Ahh, the good ol' times... :)

[Perry Reed]

Well... I wonder how many here remember the GREAT HP 100LX and 200LX. There are many websites on them, and they are still in use. Great product, it ran full MSDOS and was nearly pocketable (surely, jacket-able). It is later than this unit, so not as interesting from a historical point of view. Still, I owned this units and they worked fine, where very useful for me. No problems with them whatsoever (given their technical limitations).

I still have my 100LX. Fantastic little device! About the only drawback to it, even in today's world, is that there was no way to sync the data to the PC. Yeah, you could export it, but not sync it.

[lgingell]

Wow, I almost forgot about that device.
I had one too...amongst all the other "not quite there" pda's that I've owned over the years.

I remember getting such a thril running Norton "SI" (system info) on it!

May it rest in peace and never come back to haunt us!

..lance