Prickly City by Scott Stantis for April 03, 2022

The things you learn.

I have heard that VCRs were invented in the 1950’s, while they were used in TV studios the first VCRs were very expensive and roughly about the size of pianos.

There are days when I still like MS-DOS better than Windows!

I remember those first “portables” being called “luggables”.

I bought a Kaypro 2 back about then. It was in a steel case and was about the size of a portable sewing machine. It came with an impact printer and Wordstar word processing. I’ve never used whiteout since.

The Osborne 1 was my first computer with 64K RAM and 2 single sided, single density floppy drives that held 90K each. One was for the CP/M operating system, the other for the application and data. My friend bought a box of 10 floppies and I told him, “That’s 900K of storage! Almost 1 megabyte. You’re never going to fill that up.” Boy was I wrong. ¯\(ツ)/¯

I had a CP/M computer with a 20 megabyte hard drive, and it made the shelf it was on sag.

I had an old television set made by Philco Ford. It was a “portable” as well. Even had a convenient handle on top. But it weighed about 90 pounds.

I was one of the first to buy, and flaunt, the Commodore SX-64, also known as the Executive 64, a portable, briefcase/suitcase-size “luggable” version of the popular Commodore 64 home computer and the first full-color portable computer in 1983. Geek, yes, but an awesome geek.

I had a Franklin and the only reason they called it “Portable” was it had a handle to carry it. It had two 8" drives and a 10" screen bult in. My present tower computer weighs less.

I had a Sony portable with a colour monitor. It certainly beat the Commodore Pet and 5 mb hard drive I started out with. I had worked on mainframes before that, but this was my own machine and I had so much storage space for data. My current desktops are 1TB RAID1 and I’m thinking of upgrading to a bigger drive. A project is a rack mounted data server. I now have a carton of dead laptops. The drives go into cases and become backup and external storage. And one older Toughbook for emergency work.

Either the Osborne was considerably smaller than I remembered or Carmen is considerably bigger than I’d been thinking.

Back to the story, or at least, the strip:

1981 was 31 years ago. (Thanks, Captain Obvious)

Her comment about inflation is irrelevant.

More to the point is just how much – and how fast – things have changed just these last three decades.

It wasn‘t that long ago that „Handys“ did not even exist.

Now, no one leaves home without one!

“Okay, okay. But why?”

Osborne was also responsible for the “Osborne effect” where a company promotes its next product before it has enough money to mass produce it.

The most popular Osborne in 1981 was Ozzie.

Yes Winslow, people who called them portable, grew up when computers took up entire floors of buildings, AND were practically sterile.

AND —>https://www.ThisDayTrivia.com/trivia/april-3?f=Cell-Phone#Cell-PhoneFirst Portable Cell Phone Call

April 3, 1973

The first portable cell phone call is made. General manager of Motorola’s Communications Systems Division calls his rival at AT&T’s Bell Labs from the streets of New York City.

I still have an original PC that, last time I turned it on, still worked.

I started my computer career on my University’s IBM 1620. (University of Missouri at Kansas City) We were allowed to use it after hours by checking out a key to the administration building from the police department. I recall many times going over there at 2 AM to get a couple hours of computer time. Then, they got a 360 and we were no longer allowed to use the machine. We had to submit a card deck and then come back later for the result. They eventually got a RAX system, a remote terminal that connected to the University mainframe system at Columbia. I forget what it was called. The last big machine we had was a VAX-11/780 before they went to networked PC.

I have had, over the years, a TRS-80, A Tandy Color Computer, a PC I got at Montgomery Ward with floppies and a hard drive, A Heathkit PDP-11 equivalent, the H-11, a couple of Heathkit H-8 machines, and a real DEC PDP-11/23, all of which I still have. I had a Commodore 64 for a short while but sold it to a friend. I have even built a few machines of my own design for special purposes.

Ah, the good old days! Showing my age, aren’t I?

I was an Osborne dealer for a while until Osborne started underselling dealers and still expecting them to do warranty work. I do wish I still had my Osborne III, there weren’t many of them made. Got stolen from my office while I was teaching a programming class.

She’s all wet. The Apple ][, Commodore PET 2001, and TRS-80 were all out there in 1977.

The heavy pc’s and printers were how boomers stayed buff.

It wasn’t “portable.” It was “transportable.” It didn’t run on a battery; it was AC-powered. It had a 5" monochrome screen, ran the CP/M operating system, had two one-sided floppies (which held about 160Kb each). The best thing was it came with a suite of software, including Wordstar. The worst: it weighed more than 30 lbs.

Osborne killed his company, though. It was running on pretty thin margins, relying on current sales to keep in business. Osborne announced the Osborne II, with many significant upgrades over the original model. But it wouldn’t be ready for several months. Because of that announcement, sales of the Osborne I dried up, killing the company. Norman Osborne, despite that mistake, was a true visionary in early personal computing.

MY first computer really WAS portable. Even I could lift and carry it — with one hand! It was the Kaypro, with a tiny screen, and it needed two floppy disks to work. The printer was a modified Selectric typewriter (which I can’t imagine anyone carrying with the computer), the one with a daisy wheel. The Kaypro was the one preferred by many a writer, and could even be modified to operate an entire newspaper! Mostly weeklies, as I recall. Kaypro ran magazine ads showing one man on his way to a meeting and carrying his briefcase; next to him, on his way to that same meeting, was a man carrying his Kaypro! Michael F.S.W. Morrison