10 Tiny PCs of the 1980s

I had an Atari Portfolio back in the day. It was quite a fine machine with decent battery life. Made for a great PDA with a keyboard I could fluently write on. I'm sure I still have it packed away somewhere along with some Atari 8-bit computers that I got instead of the Sinclair ZX-81 which my parents refused to let me buy saying it was only a toy. Ironically Atari made far more games and was great for learning to write them.

I thought this was going to be about ultracompact PCs which I had a thing for in the 90s. Got myself a Toshiba 320CT with upgraded memory, CardBus network and SCSI PC Cards, and matching dock. The 1024x600 10.4" screen was amazing. Luckily it was a consulting business expense. Later got a Toshiba 3440CT which was like what a MacBook/Air feel like now.

Handheld PC (HPC) was a thing in the 90-ies as well with some great hardware such as the Psion 5. Eventually the acronym was "stolen" to mean High Performance Computing. I absolutely loved my Psion.

My father had the TRS-80 pocket computer w/printer, and 8-10 year old me thought it was the coolest thing ever. I remember (or at least think I remember) writing some very simple BASIC programs.

I still have a Model 100. It replaced the one I had in high school. It has, by far, the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used on a laptop. My typing speed on it approaches the speed I can reach on a Model M mechanical keyboard.

There’s still a very active community around the 100, and there are a few old hardware guys who still make new expansions for it. Recently there’s even a CP/M board for it which means it can run a lot of apps like WordStar, making it very useful day-to-day. It’s a nice, distraction-free environment.

I obtained a RadioShack TRS-80 PC-1 from an estate auction. Got it with a box of other miscellaneous stuff for $5. I talked to the ex-owner and he said he'd turned it on once, then put it back in its case and never used it again.

Came with the case, manual, tape of programs, thermal printer, and tape reader. Cool little machine.

> This story was originally published on Sept. 4, 2011.

Needs (2011) in the title.