stumbled into possession of a strange beast.

[buddog]

I was given, for free, a Panasonic Business Partner CF 150.... AKA the TANDY 1100FD. At fist looks, you think it's a normal mid 80s business laptop, it has pretty last-gen tech for the mid 80s. With it's NEC V20 CPU (an 8086 clone) , 640K RAM, No cache or co-processor (that I'm aware of) and no HDD. Yes, ALL programs (outside of a small bit of boot up utils) must be run from a single 720k 3.5" floppy drive. 

 

It's a typical mid-80s business pc.... Built in 1989.

 

Let that sink in...

 

But hey I just ordered Planet X3... Will report back in a bit to tell you how I predict that the floppy drive will "completely fail, successfully"  half way through booting.

 

By the way. I was born in 1989, My info of what's "mid 80s" is from google. Please tell me WHY I'm wrong not just that I am. Please also Know the difference between those. Thanks.

Edited August 31, 2019 by buddog

[LoTonah]

I sold a few of the Radio Shack version back in the day.  The reason it seems low-tech was... because it was.  Portables were either still bulky beasts with decent power/storage but the size of a lunchbox, or smaller like this, no hard drives and slower.  This was one of the first I'd seen with a battery, for instance.  It had Deskview in ROM to make life with a floppy easier and to stretch out the battery life.  Also, I believe low-powered portable CPU's were still a few years away.  So all things considered, it really wasn't so bad.

[buddog]

Hmm. Cool perspective on it. Would love to explore other early "laptops" to contain a battery and compare specs to those.

 

I just had an interesting thought... I wonder if with a tweak here or there if this could of been (or heck could be with enough hacking) something like an Altair 8800 laptop or even an Apple ][ laptop.... What I'm getting at is, how much of how I look at this as being last gen is actually just because it was marketed to the boring af business world and not sold to the booming video game market or even just the at the time trying to stay underground, but failing at it hacker and hobbyist markets... would changing what was on the ROM and/or changing the 3.5" floppy to a 5.25" one have made this.... epic? Would/could hacking do this today?

 

edit: derp it's 8800 not 2600

Edited September 1, 2019 by buddog
derp it's 8800 not 2600

[buddog]

welp, booted the pc... typed in time and date... ran a few DOS commands... Everything was great.

 

Pop the floppy in. A:\ [enter] .... okay so far.

 

>DIR[enter]

 

[UNGODLY NOISES]

 

[MAGIC SMOKE]

 

[GLITCHY THEN DEAD SCREEN]

 

power off.

 

eject floppy.

 

unplug power.

 

pickup device.

 

calmly walk outside.

 

lift spawn of satan over my head.

 

spawn of satan is now in many pieces in a dumpster.

[jhd]

That's an unfortunate end for such a vintage (if deservedly unloved) piece of hardware. 

 

I was in University when this launched, and I fondly remember the pictures and description in the catalogue. 

 

It would have been ideal to take to the library for making notes, etc. Alas, the price was well above my budget.

 

Occasionally proto-laptops of this vintage appear at thrift shops, but they are invariably missing the power cables, making them little more than a fancy doorstop.  

 

[buddog]

10 hours ago, jhd said:

That's an unfortunate end for such a vintage (if deservedly unloved) piece of hardware. 

 

I was in University when this launched, and I fondly remember the pictures and description in the catalogue. 

 

It would have been ideal to take to the library for making notes, etc. Alas, the price was well above my budget.

 

Occasionally proto-laptops of this vintage appear at thrift shops, but they are invariably missing the power cables, making them little more than a fancy doorstop.  

 

I kept the power cable though. in case I ever do run into another... pricing online says these were not that rare, but the power cables are.

[Almerian]

I have a CF-150b. The difference with the Tandy versions is that this has a backlight and only MSDOS in ROM, no Desk mate. It has a small lead battery (like in a moped/car). There is a provision for a RAM card inside (can be used as a Ramdisk).
The 720k floppy drive has a belt that needs to be replaced as these have turned to gunk long ago. That's probably why things went horribly wrong when you attempted to use a floppy disc. A nice compact machine for some Turbo Pascal or Basic programming and limited grey scale DOS gaming (no monitor out).
Still need to replace the battery and the belt on mine.