I still see these once in a while. I work for
a company that recycles computer equipment. right now I have an amstrad ppc640 portable computer which actually has 3.5 inch disks and a supertwist lcd screen. it can run on a wad of D cells. I can’t find the mfg date though.

If you can believe it, I owned an Osborne I together with an interface that allowed it to print out through an Epson (or was it a Brother?) electric typewriter. And, as I recall, I ran an early version of Wordstar on it (where’d those .dot commands go?) … fledgling word processing. I was in the Marine Corps at the time and even took it aboard a ship when we “cruised” to the Med in late ‘82. I remember being concerned about whether shipboard electrical power would somehow damage my prized Osborne/Brother combo (spikes, surges, etc.), and a Navy Chief proudly telling me that shipboard power was the cleanest around. When we went ashore, the Osborne went in the trailer we pulled behind my section’s M151 – the old jeep. Great memories, thanks!

If you can believe it, I owned an Osborne I together with an interface that allowed it to print out through an Epson (or was it a Brother?) electric typewriter. And, as I recall, I ran an early version of Wordstar on it (where’d those .dot commands go?) … fledgling word processing. I was in the Marine Corps at the time and even took it aboard a ship when we “cruised” to the Med in late ‘82. I remember being concerned about whether shipboard electrical power would somehow damage my prized Osborne/Brother combo (spikes, surges, etc.), and a Navy Chief proudly telling me that shipboard power was the cleanest around. When we went ashore, the Osborne went in the trailer we pulled behind my section’s M151 – the old jeep. Great memories, thanks!

I had a Panasonic Senor Partner. It weighed 33 pounds, green screen etc….Only 1 floppy though. Ran WordStar remeber that one?? Actually it was very good. 256K RAM.

You would put Wordstar in on its 5.24 floppie. Write your doc. Then tell it to save and it would tell you to put in another floppie, which you would do. Save the doc, then put the Wordstar floppie back in. Although most (all???) of Wordstar resided in RAM, so you only had to get it going then you could take the program disc out.

Fun!! But they were tough. One day at a meeting we knocked on off a table while it was up and running. It crashed to the floor and never shut down. We just picked it up and put it back on the table.

Those were the days../

Remeber Data General?? They made the first smallish portables that I can remember.

Now how can you hate me? I can’t help when I was born. I seemed to miss the computer age of the 80’s and the dot coms of the 90’s. I can’t wait to graduate college.

Stephen,
We bought a VP in early 1984, Manufacturing date is 1/1984 it served as our typesetting system using a program called RimWriter. We output to an original HP Laserjet, supposedely the third one shipped out of Minneapolis – we had our choice of taking a serial port unit or waiting for one of the “new” parallel ones! We took the serial unit.
The VP still should work. I dug it out this morning, found the Perfect manuals in their slips but I think I may have thrown the disks. Just over a year ago if I did. The VP had a memory expansion unit which I removed to try use a multifunction card for even more ram! If I remember correctly the two clashed. Should still have that memory expansion card around though.
Thanks,
Lyle Van Camp

Stephen, what bundled software are you referring to? I don’t remember any s/w with the VP- it was just too long ago.

Thank you, Steve, for a box that served me very well indeed.

I was the senior operations manager at Columbia Data Products from 1982 to 1984. My production team built and shipped about 2,000 VP’s a month during that time. I still have one buried in my closet. Wish I could find the “perfect” bundled software that came with it. I’d pay big to find that software somewhere on the net. Anyway, those days were indeed heady times. BIG BONUSES, all expense trips for the senior staff in Vegas, and bahamas, the champange flowed like water. We were making money hand over fist, then one day, all of the sudden, I was told to layoff 400 production line workers. I ONE DAY! I quit 2 weeks later and never looked back. But I’ll never forget those times. We took Kaypros apart, as well as commodores, compaqs, and anybody elses where we could see a better idea, cheaper method, any item to drive a higher margin. I remember sitting at a conference room table with the guts of all our competitors machines hanging out, and saying to the rest of the senior staff, “guys, there is no more profit in this box, we’ve trimmed everything we can”. I remember the press coming to the company. An expedition team was taking one of our VP’s to the top of mount everest to plot wind, conditions, etc. and the entire company was wearing tee shirts that read “Columbia Data Products, computers that can climb mountains”. Geeez, those were heady times, we had the world by the balls.
Steve

Well, geez, if you’re going to bring calculators into the picture, then don’t we have to go back to Commodore, which I believe also produced them before jumping into “proper” desktop units?

Actually, I think the first handheld computer was the old TI-59 calculator that had a magnetic strip card reader for saving and loading programs and could be outfitted with an optional strip printer.

“1977 TI Programmable 59*. This advanced programmable calculator offered users 960 program steps or up to 100 memories, and it was the first TI calculator to offer both magnetic card storage and interchangeable, plug-in Solid State Software[tm] modules with up to 5,000 program steps. More than 175 functions and operations. Master library with 25 programs included; optional software libaries, thermal printer/plotter and Professional Program Exchange available. SRP $299.95. “

Picture here:

http://jkontherun.blogs.com/ti_59.gif

Sweet Mike. Your resourcefulness always amazes me.

It took asking a former co-worker from back in the wee 80s, but I managed to find what is probably the FIRST handheld computer!

http://www.skybuilders.com/Users/Bob/Bios/BioPics.html

– scroll down to:

1980-84, VP, Chief Scientist, iXO, invented Telecomputer, a handheld computer terminal with built-in phone-line-powered modem (cover of Byte magazine, 1982).

>>>…hit print, and go take a shower.

Me too! Hahaha! I had mine in a room reserved for work, so I could at least shut the door.

Amazing when I see laser printers for >$200 now. The first Apple Laserwiter cost FIVE GRAND!!

OK, I goofed on the VisiCalc date, but of course, I was only about 10 years old at the time. Let’s see if I can redeem myself on Steve’s printer comment: was your printer made by Okidata? I had one of the first color printers for a home PC: the Okidata Okimate 10. It had a 4 color ribbon cartridge about the size of a VCR tape, so it had to go over every print area 4 times!

;>)

KCT

My daisy wheel printer was a Brother, and I glued together an acoustic muffler of foam rubber because of the noise. It took about 45 minutes to print out 10 pages. 12 characters per second always felt like 12 characters per minute. Finish a project, hit print, and go take a shower.