World’s first laptop, 25 years old and still running | Hacker News Reader

World’s first laptop, 25 years old and still running

thenextweb.com

46 pointsttunguz31 comments

No windows button and a properly placed control key where it should be? The caps lock is relegated to arrows territory? I'M FREAKING SOLD! Where do I get one? xD

Someone should sell keycaps for the windows key with "super" written on them.

The keys 'Z' and 'Y' are transposed as well.

What, you mean use don't use QWERTZ? You must be a Dvoraq user then...

That's the default German setup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#QWERTZ

I still have my Epson HX-20 which predates this by 4 years and is wildly considered to be the first "laptop" computer...

Specs: Dual 8bit Hitachi 6301 at 0.6 MHz, 16 kB RAM, 32 kB CMOS ROM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_HX-20

I had the first full-keyboard portable, the TRS-80 Model 100 which Dad was still using into the 90s. I also had the very first ultralight laptop - the NEC Ultralite (4lbs, no hard drive, solid-state!) back in '88.

Good times, but you spend a LOT to stay on the bleeding edge. :)

and just like the Macbook Air of today it didn’t have a regular Hard Drive

Just stretching a simile to breaking point there..

I've still got one of these in a closet somewhere. I suppose it could be called a laptop, depending on the size of your lap: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable

(edit: on second thought, it most likely requires at least two laps.)

Me too. I haven't fired it up in at least a year, but last time I tried it booted up with no problem other than some alarming smoke coming from the air vent. Seeing that customized autoexec.bat float up in ghostly green letters really brought me back.

My dad had a Toshiba T1200, the successor to this one. He still uses it as a serial terminal. On another note, due to its limited built-in storage, he ran command.com through pklite!

I remember doing that to loads of com files. That was with a 20mb hdd. You knew every file on the HDD in those days.

1985? The Model 100 came out in 1983. Mine still works great.

Maybe it doesn't count because it doesn't fold closed? :p

That's the one that runs for a day or something on just AA batteries, isn't it?

I usually get a month of out of 4 AA's. It's very power efficient...

It really amazes me how far we've come in the last 25 years and how much has remained the same. Here's to the next 25 and making fun of today's technology :)

1991: Toshiba adds the first colour screens to laptops. From here on, portable PCs become more than work-obsessed business tools, and begin to pull double duty as entertainment machines.

http://toshibalife.com/featured-articles/25-years-laptop-inn...

" -- and weighed in at a whopping 4.1 Kilograms."

Not bad at all, considering the typical ~3 kg weight of many modern laptops.

The first laptop I used in real life was an Acorn A4 in around 1993. When things moved the screen blurred so much it was hard to use, but it did run RISC OS which I liked back then.

Everybody knows the GRiD Compass was the first laptop! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_Compass

Sadly, no.

And that was a claim that didn't resist 15 seconds of googling.

There were a couple portables that could be called laptops before the Toshibas. The TRS-80 model 100, its NEC cousin. Even if we are talking of MS-DOS, PC-compatible computers, the Data General One predates this one by quite a bit.

And the Osborne 1 predates the DG-1 by 3 years, although it was a CP/M machine (remember THAT?)

Of course I remember them. However, an Osborne one is a laptop if you can use it on your lap.

The Epson HX-20 laptop also ran CP/M (as an option, AFAIK).

Somewhat related. I have a 12 year old laptop with a broken CDROM. Is there a way to load a lightweight linux using floppy disks or some other method?

If it has a USB port you can use either an external CDROM drive or a USB key drive.

If it has a network port then you can make a network boot floppy quite easily. This just contains enough to get the system booting off of an image retrieved from a TFTP server over the network.

So no network port.

I can't figure out a way to tell it to boot from a USB thumb drive. It doesn't list that option in the BIOS.

Would it still let me boot from an external CD ROM even though the BIOS doesn't mention USB? Maybe I could buy one.

Otherwise, any other thoughts?

Maybe, it's probably more likely it can boot from a USB CD-ROM than from a USD key. But I have no idea how much more likely.

Otherwise, you could maybe try a PCMCIA network card, assuming the laptop supports that.

my first PC going to college in 1988, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPC_512 4.7Mhz, 512kb RAM and a floppy drive, it could run a fortran compiler (rather slowly)

Although if you had access to a TV and a power socket at the destination my Sinclair QL was probably a more capable and lighter 'portable'

Still got one. :)

It has an awesome design and it can also be seen in some movies (names don't come to mind though, but I've seen them), e.g. painted in some fancy color. :)

Very nice to see that machine again. I used one of these to write my first application.

The price was $1899. That's $3818 adjusted to inflation.

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