Eeyore wrote:


"Elmo P. Shagnasty" wrote:


In article ,
Meat Plow wrote:


Mike lives in Clapham, South London, he first began his postings
to usenet, BBS, and online forums back in 1996, which is long before
most of you, especially google gropers, learned of he internet let
alone knew how to use it.

****, I had broadband in 1996.

Exactly.

I had a Rat Shack M100 back in, what--1983. Complete with dialup.


I had a LAPTOP in 1983. Epson HX-20.
http://oldcomputers.net/hx-20.html


Follow-ups changed to sci.electronics.repair only

I _made_ a laptop in 1983-84: ZX-81 cpu board + internal expansion bus +
microcassette drive (on the bus) + bar code wand (on the bus) + thermal
printer (on the bus) + 64kB ram + micro CRT display on gooseneck at rear
of case, all built into a converted TI-994/A housing with it's keyboard.
The cassette was embedded into the case at the left rear. To view the
display, you pressed your eye into the 'viewfinder' rubber hood and had
a 320x200 graphics or 80x24 char alpha display (b&w). O/S and apps were
loaded from the cassette, ROM contained a debug monitor. One could also
use the audio interface to load and store from magtape recorders and the
bus was brought external to permit expansion for RS232, etc. I needed
to add lots of bus logic and power control circuitry; the battery was a
drop-in nicad pack at the right rear of the case (similar in concept to
modern powertool packs). With the CRT off, I could get 12 hours of
continuous runtime. I also gave the cassette and bar code wand poweroff
controls which extended runtime.

Regards,

Michael