Portable XE?! PROTO?

[Preppie]

Forget portables, get an 800xl handheld.

 

 

[A2600]

Wow, talk about a long time ago I created this thread in 2003. But glad to see that the idea of a portable 8-Bit has come a long way since!

[+Stephen]

5 hours ago, A2600 said:

Wow, talk about a long time ago I created this thread in 2003. But glad to see that the idea of a portable 8-Bit has come a long way since!

Isn't it great when a long dead thread comes back with new info?

[oky2000]

Stumbled on this thread via google search for 65XEP. You have to remember these things were only designed for travelling salesmen not to play Manic Miner on your desk as a teen!As long as they can use electronic mail via a modem cartridge etc 5.5" size screen is fine for stuff like that, it's not meant for seeing enemy bullets to avoid in a shmup or to make pixel perfect jumps in Manic Miner, the 40 column text is clear enough for looking at stats and figures and it also boots into a hideous VIC-20 style palette colours probably for that reason. Even if you use these machines in the office/home on a desk you would still be expected to use it with an external monitor, this is true of even the first Compaq luggable. Still the SX64 was wound down because Commodore needed their production capacity for C64 sales in the millions from 1984, 1984 is also when Irving Gould forced out Tramiel and then the Commodore LCD never went into production due to some idiot manager being told by a Tandy exec "there's no money in portables" which somehow turned into the Commodore 128 project (!)  But in 1983 only a motorcycle battery could power something like the SX64 prototype lol

 

All luggables are cool, the SX-64 however adds Colour S-Video monitor (even expensive Sony 14 portable TVs only allowed composhite at best or RGB analogue via SCART (Teletext only models as the RGB is needed for that) but never S-video input even in the mid 1980s for 250 quid!! If you had better than 20/20 vision back then like me it would be fascinating to play games on, not convenient but still just fascinating. SX64  also added a very high quality keyboard, it is expensive electric typewriter quality, it's my favourite machine to do coding on. Today of course it was connected to said 14" Sony portable TV via composhite but I would have written short programs on the 5.5 inch S-video monitor as it sat on my desk.....like when I wrote a version of Black Jack after seeing KITT play Michael on the way to Vegas, the Goliath Season 2 Knight Rider premier? If I put on my strong reading glasses it's no problem even today. Part of my job in the 90s was testing and coding for the Husky Hunter portable DOS compatible machines parking attendants used, even in mid 90s those DOS Text only compatible things were fascinating, same dark green and aged yellow LCD like original gameboy lol but no Tetris tunes and it did run on regular recharge batteries. 

 

I used an SX-64 for about a year, used it properly like I would as a kid/teen discovering 'video games' if I had 100 disks full of games lol and it is a very cool experience, although it was hooked up to my 14" Sony Trinitron TV as my eyes today are in no mood for small screens, including the most expensive iPhone screens. Ultimately for me playing C64 games is all about the use of tapes so it's no good, and the 128D/128 are stupidly large (larger than A1000/520ST footprint, obese like the utterly hideous 'pensioner hearing aid beige' A500).

 

Ultimately the cool factor is 99% down to the styling and oscilloscope style built in monitor + guff formfactor, in use DOS based luggables are boring, anything else is cool to use as well though. Same thing with those old Casio/Tandy 'pocket' computers, like the one hanging from Egon's neck in Ghostbusters, their form factor instantly makes them cool but inconvenient for prolonged use (and much more expensive bang for buck). 

 

An Atari 400 keyboard styled luggable with "Tron Desk" style touch sensitive keyboard fold down illuminated under glass panel affair would have been super cool around that time. Something useful to do with useless tablets clogging up the world today with some FPGA interface to do keyboard input, that would be a cool project today. Case could have been a widened hexagonal grey beige Atari 810 style case with all black front and back. A big 2001 style 'industrial looking' handle on the top and you have a very cool luggable. People type on smartphone glass keyboards all day now so don't tell me it's a dumb idea lol I know it is to use keyboards like that all day but it's working for smartphones/tablets in the billions today for some weird reason.

 

Anyway, Luggables made perfect sense for their intended market and they are all cool. If I had a spare 6 inch black and white CRT TV and a workshop I would probably make a ZX81 luggable lol then again I only like one ZX81 game (Manic Miner!).

[oky2000]

Had to make it worth the resurrection of the thread

[mimo]

55 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

Had to make it worth the resurrection of the thread

I'll have two please 

[+selgus]

The one I've been working on, that started based on the XEGS schematics and uses the original chipset..

 

[oky2000]

Was just a bit of photo editing in my case, just wondered what it would look like.