The Atari Portfolio (Atari PC Folio) is an IBM PC-compatible

palmtop PC A Palmtop PC is an obsolete, approximately pocket calculator-sized, battery-powered computer in a horizontal clamshell design with integrated keyboard and display. It could be used like a modern subnotebook, but was light enough to be comfortabl ...

, released by

Atari Corporation Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of Home computer, home computers and Video game console, video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than ...

in June 1989. It was the first palmtop computer compatible with the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

ever released.

History

DIP Research Ltd. based in

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, England, around south-west of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The nam ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

, UK released a product in the UK called the ''DIP Pocket PC'' in 1989. Soon after its release, DIP licensed this product to Atari for sale as the ''Portfolio'' in the UK and US.Image of Original DIP Pocket PC
/ref> In Italy, Spain and Germany, it was originally marketed as ''PC Folio'' instead. DIP officially stood for "Distributed Information Processing", although secretly it actually stood for "David, Ian and Peter", the three founding members of the company who were former employees of Psion. The original founder of the company (first called "Crushproof Software") was Ian H. S. Cullimore, and the other two David Frodsham and Peter Baldwin. Cullimore was involved in designing the early Organiser products at Psion before the DIP Pocket PC project. The technologic successor of the Portfolio was the also DIP-developed Sharp PC-3000/ 3100. DIP Research was later acquired by

Phoenix Technologies Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is an American company that designs, develops and supports core system software for personal computers and other computing devices. The company's products commonly referred to as BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or fir ...

in 1994.

Technology

The Portfolio uses an Intel

80C88 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers ...

CPU running at 4.9152 MHz and runs "DIP Operating System 2.11" (DIP DOS), an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

mostly compatible to MS-DOS 2.11, but with some DOS 2.xx functionality lacking and some internal data

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

s more compatible with DOS 3.xx. It has 128 KB of RAM and 256 KB of ROM which contains the OS and built-in applications. The on-board RAM is divided between system memory and local storage (the C: drive). The LCD is monochrome without

backlight A backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) that provides light from the back or side of a display panel. LCDs do not produce light on their own, so they require illumination—either from available light, ambie ...

and has pixels or 40 characters × 8 lines. The sound is handled by a small Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency speaker capable of outputting tones between 622 and 2,489Hz, the same range as touch-tone telephones, so users could not only use the address book app to store phone numbers, but actually speed-dial them too by holding the device up to a telephone handset. Power is supplied by three AA size removable alkaline batteries. The computer's memory is preserved during battery changes. There is also an optional AC adapter (120V: HPC-401, 230V: HPC-402)."About Atari Portfolio"
, ''atari-portfolio.co.uk'' There is an expansion port on the right side of the computer for parallel (HPC-101), serial (HPC-102), modem or

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

expansion modules. It uses a Bee Card expansion port for removable memory (aka Credit Card Memory or CCM), which is not compatible with

PC card PC Card is a technical standard specifying an expansion card interface for laptops and personal digital assistants, PDAs. The PCMCIA originally introduced the 16-bit Industry Standard Architecture, ISA-based PCMCIA Card in 1990, but renamed it to ...

as it predated that standard. Expansion cards were available in sizes of 32 KB (HPC-201), 64 KB (HPC-202), and 128 KB (HPC-203) initially, and later were available in capacities up to 4 MB. The expansion cards were backed up by a replaceable battery, which last approximately two years. Built-in applications include a

text editor A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. An example of such program is "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to c ...

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

(

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles ...

compatible), phone book and time manager. Expansion cards contain programs such as a chess game (HPC-750), a

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage computer files, files and folder (computing), folders. The most common Computer file#Operations, operations performed on files or groups of files incl ...

(HPC-704), and a finance manager (HPC-702). Most text-based DOS applications can run on the Portfolio as long as they did not directly access the hardware and could fit into the small memory. Other expansion modules include a

floppy drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a 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 with a ...

, and a memory expansion unit (HPC-104). The memory expansion unit gives the Portfolio an additional 256 KB of RAM, which can be partitioned into several drives. It also features a pass-through expansion connector, allowing the use of more than one expansion unit. In theory, multiple memory expanders can be attached, increasing the available storage to over 640 KB. A card reader (HPC-301) connects to a desktop PC to read and write to the expansion cards. The kit contains an ISA card, a special cable, the card reader, and software distributed on floppy disk. A modem expansion module converts the portfolio into a miniature

computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. Most early computers only had a front panel to input or display ...

. The modem is powered from the portfolio and came with an

acoustic coupler In telecommunications, an acoustic coupler is an interface device for coupling electrical signals by acoustical means—usually into and out of a telephone. The link is achieved through converting electric signals from the phone line to so ...

consisting of two round shells that could be mounted over both ends of a handset with the aid of

velcro Velcro IP Holdings LLC, trading as Velcro Companies and commonly referred to as Velcro (pronounced ), is a British privately held company, founded by Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral in the 1950s. It is the original manufacturer of ho ...

strips. A direct connection to a telephone with a standard telephone lead is also possible. The complete terminal and coupler are portable, weighing only a few hundred grams. Also, using the

parallel port In computing, a parallel port is a type of interface found on early computers ( personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once (paralle ...

expansion module (HPC-101), a standard parallel cable and the software supplied (DOS-based), the Portfolio can be connected to a PC for transferring files to and from the unit. Credits for the development of the product can be found in an

easter egg Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are commonly used during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The ...

if one selects Setup, then Help, and then presses + ("Alt" plus "left square

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

").

Versions

* Atari Portfolio HPC-003: ROM version 1.052 * Atari Portfolio HPC-004: ROM version 1.056 * Atari Portfolio HPC-005: ROM version 1.130 * Atari Portfolio HPC-006: ROM version 1.072 * Atari Portfolio HPC-007: ROM version 1.130 * Atari PC Folio HPC-008: ROM version 1.130 * Atari Portfolio HPC-009: ROM version 1.130? * Atari Portfolio HPC-010: ROM version 1.130? * Atari Portfolio HPC-011: ROM version 1.130?, 512 KB

Accessories

* Atari HPC-101 Smart parallel interface * Atari HPC-102 Serial interface * Atari HPC-103 Memory expansion * Atari HPC-104 Memory expander+ * Atari HPC-201 Memory card 32 KB * Atari HPC-202 Memory card 64 KB * Atari HPC-203 Memory card 128 KB * Atari HPC-204 OTPROM card 512 KBit * Atari HPC-205 OTPROM card 1 MBit * Atari HPC-301 PC Card drive for PC

ISA bus Isa or ISA may refer to: Places * Isa, Amur Oblast, Russia * Isa, Kagoshima, Japan * Isa, Nigeria * Isa District, Kagoshima, former district in Japan * Isa Town, middle class town located in Bahrain * Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia * Mou ...

* Atari HPC-401 Mains adapter 110 V * Atari HPC-402 Mains adapter 220 V * Atari HPC-406 Parallel cable * Atari HPC-407 Serial cable * Atari HPC-408 Parallel printer cable * Atari HPC-409 Null modem cable * Atari HPC-501 OTPROM adapter 512 KBit * Atari HPC-502 OTPROM adapter 1 MBit * Atari HPC-701 ROM card "Utility" * Atari HPC-702 ROM card "Finance" * Atari HPC-703 ROM card "Science" * Atari HPC-704 ROM card "File Manager" * Atari HPC-705 ROM card "Power BASIC" * Atari HPC-709 ROM card "Instant Spell" * Atari HPC-711 ROM card "U.S. Traveller's Guide)" * Atari HPC-713 ROM card "Hyperlist" * Atari HPC-715 ROM card "Language Translator" * Atari HPC-724 ROM card "Bridge Baron" * Atari HPC-725 ROM card "Wine Companion" * Atari HPC-726 ROM card "Diet / Cholesterol Counter" * Atari HPC-728 ROM card "Astrologer" * Atari HPC-729 ROM card "Stock Tracker" * Atari HPC-750 ROM card "Chess" * Atari HPC-803 Portfolio system case

In popular culture

The Atari Portfolio was used by the character

John Connor John Connor is a fictional character and the male protagonist of the Terminator (franchise), ''Terminator'' franchise. Created by screenwriter, writer/film director, director James Cameron, the character is first referred to in the 1984 film ''Th ...

to crack PINs in two scenes in the 1991 film '' Terminator 2: Judgment Day''.

Gallery

Atari Portfolio Photomanipped.jpg Atari Portfolio Rama.jpg ATARI Portfolio.jpg ATARI-Portfolio ad ons.jpg ATARI-Portfolio open.jpg ATARI-Portfolio.jpg

References

External links

Unofficial Atari Portfolio sitePortfolio FAQScanned Atari Portfolio Technical Reference Guide
*
The Atari Portfolio
Resources, The Concealed College

Photos, programmation, peripherals {{Authority control Atari hardware Personal digital assistants Handheld personal computers Products introduced in 1989 IBM PC compatibles