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The Apricot Portable was a personal computer manufactured by ACT Ltd., and was released to the public in November 1984. It was ACT's first attempt at manufacturing a portable computer, which were gaining popularity at the time. Compared to other portable computers of its time like the Compaq Portable and the
Commodore SX-64 The Commodore SX-64, also known as the Executive 64, or VIP-64 in Europe, is a portable, briefcase/suitcase-size "luggable" version of the popular Commodore 64 home computer and the first full-color portable computer. The SX-64 features a b ...
, the Apricot Portable was the first system to have an 80-column and 25-line LCD screen and the first with a speech recognition system. The Apricot Portable was designed to be easily carried in its case, but was powered by mains electricity only. It consisted of a central unit containing the motherboard, monochrome display and a
floppy disk drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
. It also came with a wireless keyboard and bundled software.


Design

The Apricot Portable was contained inside a hard charcoal gray carrying case and consisted of two main parts: the central unit (with built-in monitor) and the keyboard. An optional mouse-like track board was also available. It was used by either pointing the track board at the computer and moving the
trackball A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball to position the o ...
around with one's thumb or rolling the trackball on a flat surface. A standard serial mouse could also be used via the
RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such a ...
port on the back of the computer. The mouse and the keyboard were both battery-powered, but the computer itself did not run on batteries and needed to be plugged into a wall outlet. The system was 450 mm long, 172 mm wide and 200 mm high, weighing a total of 13 pounds. The Portable's overall design was unusual in that the computer and keyboard were not connected physically, but rather by
infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...
signal. If an object blocked the space in between the two components, their communication would be disrupted. ACT chose to use an infrared signal communication system because it was cheaper than using a cable connection.


Features

The Apricot Portable contained a variety of features including a built-in disk drive, a speech recognition system, and a software bundle.


Display

The Portable was known for having the first 25-line
liquid-crystal display A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display A flat-panel display (FPD) is an electronic display used to display visual content such as text or images. It is present in consumer, medical, transportation, and industrial equipmen ...
(LCD) screen on a portable computer. The LCD screen was originally made by
Hitachi () is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the Ni ...
, however ACT was not satisfied with the speed of its controller chip, prompting the company to design its own faster controller. This screen could also display graphics at a resolution of 640x200 pixels. The optional colour monitor could display up to 8 colors at a time out of a possible 16 colors, and could run at either 640x200@60Hz or 640x256@50Hz. The Portable could continue to use its LCD display while also driving the colour display, allowing separate information to be shown on each screen.


Disk drive

A single double-sided 720 KB 3.5" floppy disk drive was built into the right-hand side of the enclosure. An external 10 MB
Rodime Rodime was an electronics company specialising in hard disks, based in Glenrothes, Scotland. It was founded in 1979 by several Scottish and American former employees of Burroughs Corporation and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1986, bec ...
3.5"
hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...
was available.


Voice recognition system

The Apricot Portable was the first portable computer to utilize a voice speech recognition system. A microphone was clipped to the front of the unit that was used specifically for this system. It could be used while clipped to the unit or it could be unclipped and used in-hand. The voice recognition system had the ability to store a vocabulary up to 4096 words, of which only 64 could be held in memory at a time. The speech recognition system could operate in a dictation mode where spoken words were transcribed as text, or it could associate a spoken term with a command to be run. The system was then trained by the user repeating the words into a microphone to allow for normal variations in speech. The more times a word was repeated, the better the result.


Software

The Apricot Portable was bundled with both the MS-DOS and
CP/M-86 CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Research als ...
operating systems, software including a word processor called SuperWriter, SuperPlanner, a personal diary called ACT Diary, the
SuperCalc SuperCalc is a CP/M-80 spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980. History VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program but its release for the CP/M operating system ran only on the HP-125, Sharp MZ80, and the Sony SMC-70. SuperCalc w ...
spreadsheet and ACT Sketch. An interactive tutorial disk was provided. Apricot computers used versions of the
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
not constrained to the maximum 640 KB of RAM supported by the
IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...
and true clones, allowing the Portable to make use of 768 KB. The Portable could run most software for MS-DOS. Like other Apricot computers, it could be started up from a CP/M-86 or
Concurrent CP/M MP/M (Multi-Programming Monitor Control Program) is a discontinued multi-user version of the CP/M operating system, created by Digital Research developer Tom Rolander in 1979. It allowed multiple users to connect to a single computer, each u ...
boot disc, and would then run CP/M-86 software in single- or multi-user mode. (228 pages) In addition, a GUI program called "Activity" was provided as a more convenient way to manipulate the file system with the keyboard or the optional mouse. It presented an icon-based interface reminiscent of the
Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
, allowing the user to manage files, format disks, create new icons, keyboard layouts and characters. Help pages and a tutorial mode were also available.


Price

A basic model of the Apricot Portable with 256 KB of RAM (expandable to 768 KB) was sold for £1695 (approximately
US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
2460). The additional colour display with 128 KB RAM and a mouse added £300 ($435) to its price. The price of the original model was lowered in 1985 when a new version was released with 512 KB of RAM.


See also

*
Timeline of portable computers A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another and included a display and keyboard together, with a single plug, much like later desktop computers called '' all-in-ones'' (AIO), that integrate the s ...


References


External links

{{Commons category-inline, Apricot Portable Apricot Computers Portable computers