In a 1989 television episode of Computer Chronicles, Stewart Cheifet drove into the camera frame in an MG to start up the episode and said, “A small car and a small computer,” and held up an Atari Portfolio. In this blog post, we’ll explore what was so exciting about a computer that fit in your hand, something we take for granted today.
Handheld computers weren’t exactly unheard of in 1989. But until the Atari Portfolio, handheld computers had been single-purpose devices. You could get one to store your contacts, one to translate English words into another language, a handheld dictionary / thesaurus, and even a handheld Bible.
The Portfolio broke new ground because it put a general purpose DOS PC into that form factor. The Atari Portfolio wasn’t quite powerful enough to replicate all of the functions of all those special purpose handheld devices, at least not all at once. But it hinted at a time in the future when a similar device would be. In the meantime, it gave you a wide choice of software to carry with you. In the meantime, a Portfolio worked well as a personal organizer and could run other DOS programs in a pinch, while only costing $100 more than a Casio personal organizer.
The rise and fall of palmtops had some echos with the rise and fall of netbooks between 2007 and 2013. It didn’t replace your regular PC, but it facilitated taking some of your work with you on the go.
And this wasn’t necessarily as radical of a departure for Atari as it might first seem. Atari had sold PCs before. And Jack Tramiel and his sons had plenty of experience selling handheld calculators in the 1970s.
Misconceptions about the Atari Portfolio
Let’s get a few misconceptions about the Atari Portfolio out of the way. Because there are a few misconceptions about it, even though the machine rightfully deserves a place in history.
Atari didn’t invent it
Frequently, people credit Atari with inventing the product category. This isn’t exactly true. Atari licensed the technology from a British company called Distributed Information Processing (DIP) Research, a company made up of former Psion employees. DIP sold their own version of the same machine with their own name on it in the UK. It was the same machine as the Porftolio, so it’s not completely unfair to say the Atari Porftolio was the first PC compatible palmtop. But it’s not quite right to say Atari invented it.
The Atari Portfolio fell short of 100% IBM PC compatibility
Secondly, the Atari Porftolio wasn’t 100% IBM PC compatible. Even Computer Chronicles got this wrong in its Oct 25, 1990 episode, which was dedicated to palmtops. Guest host Douglas Nichols said it could run any MS-DOS program, which wasn’t completely accurate. It ran a clone of MS-DOS that could run a lot of text based programs compatible with DOS 2.1 and even DOS 3.x, but its OS was a potential source of incompatibility.
The screen was another source of incompatibility. It was only 40 columns across and eight lines up and down. MS-DOS programs that assumed a larger screen would malfunction. So would programs that tried to use custom characters or any of the standard graphics modes. It was only capable of 240×64 resolution graphics.
A third source of incompatibility was the memory. It came with 128k of memory. You had to partition that memory between running programs and storage. By default, it used 32k for storage, which left 96k available to run DOS and your program. That meant software that needed a full 128k or more probably wouldn’t run on the Portfolio.
Why the Atari Portfolio succeeded
I hope I don’t sound like I am down on the Portfolio. It was a useful and groundbreaking device. It’s just that having DOS in the palm of your hand required some compromises in 1989.
I would also argue it was compatible enough to be useful. It came with six programs built into ROM. They included a text editor suitable for note-taking, a spreadsheet that was capable of reading Lotus 1-2-3 files, a calculator, and software for transferring data back to a regular full-sized PC. And since it worked like a regular PC, it meant someone who knew how to use a PC already knew how to use the Portfolio. And it meant people who could program a PC could write programs for the Portfolio. As long as they considered the size of the screen and the amount of available memory when they developed their programs, everything they knew about programming a PC still applied.
Between the familiarity and the price, the Atari Portfolio was able to build up a usable ecosystem. Atari’s motto in the late 1980s was power without the price, and when it came to the Portfolio, they meant it. The Portfolio only cost $399 at introduction, later lowered to $299.
For comparisons sake, its closest competitor in 1989, the Poquet PC, cost $2,000. HP palmtops cost $800, but those were still two years away.
Atari Portfolio technical specifications
The Atari Portfolio used an Okidata 80c88 CPU running at 4.92 megahertz. The 80c88 was a fully licensed version of the Intel 8088 CPU, specially manufactured to use less power.
Non volatile memory was still very expensive, so it used regular DRAM like any other PC. It took power from 3 standard AA batteries and could theoretically run for about 3 weeks under light usage. It had an AC adapter plug that you could use to provide backup power while you were changing the batteries or to power the device while you were transferring data back and forth to a PC.
Storage options
Atari also sold memory cards in 32, 64, and 128 KB capacities, priced at $80, $130, and $200, respectively. These had a small coin cell battery like video game cartridges did at the time to provide persistent storage. The Portfolio used the memory cards as drive A. It didn’t have a provision for a floppy drive. But anyone who knew how to use a regular PC at the time would associate the A drive with removable storage, so that wasn’t jarring.
It wasn’t a lot of removable storage, but it was enough to bring whatever you were working on at the time with you.
Expansion options
The Portfolio had an expansion port that took sidecars much like the IBM PCjr and Texas Instruments home computer used earlier in the decade. Atari sold sidecars that provided 256 KB of RAM and a second port for another storage card, a serial port, and a printer port. Each sidecar extended the unit’s length by 2.8 inches. You could plug in two memory sidecars, a serial and a parallel sidecar to outfit your Portfolio with 640k of RAM and ports for a printer and modem. At that point, you could duplicate a desktop PC, except for the size of the screen and keyboard. But the resulting computer wasn’t very portable anymore. You ended up with a comically long train much like the train you got if you plugged every available TI sidecar into your Texas Instruments home computer.
Realistically, most Portfolio owners could get by with just the serial or the parallel sidecar, since either of those would allow you to transfer data back to a full size PC using the built-in software. Or, if you were a power user, you could get a docking station produced by XoteriX that provided rechargeable batteries, serial and parallel ports, 512K of RAM, and a 20 MB hard drive for $899.
You could also get a device for a standard PC that allowed it to read the Atari memory cards. But it was usually cheaper to buy a parallel side car and use the built-in data transfer software to send the data back to your PC. Plus, the parallel port allowed you to print directly from the Portfolio if you ever needed to do that.
The Atari Portfolio’s legacy
DIP developed a follow-on palm top, but Atari didn’t license it. Sharp did, and sold it as the Sharp PC-3000 and PC-3100, introduced in 1991. The PC-3000 had a CGA-compatible 80×25 screen, a 10 MHz 80C88 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, and ran MS-DOS 3.3. The PC-3100 had the same specs but 2 MB of RAM.
If Atari had chosen to license the technology, they could have called it the Mega Portfolio.
There were some changes from the Portfolio design. The PCMCIA standard was formalized at this point, so the Sharp palmtops used PCMCIA memory cards for storage. They also had a built-in serial port to use for transferring data to a full-sized PC. That eliminated the need for train of sidecars.
The PC-3000 cost $999 when it reached the market in 1991. I found advertisements for it as late as 1994, at a price of $875.
Sharp palmtops don’t turn up on eBay nearly as frequently as an HP 95 LX, so that suggests they didn’t sell as well as the HP palmtops.
In 1993, Atari discontinued the Portfolio along with each of its other computer products to concentrate solely on the Jaguar console. In retrospect, staying in the PC business might have been a better idea, but you know what they say about hindsight.
The HP palmtops of the 1990s were more powerful, more compatible, and therefore more useful than the Portfolio. But it is completely fair to say HP benefited from Atari and DIP establishing the market.
Cultural impact
And it’s fair to say the machine had some cultural impact. The Atari Portfolio was the machine 10-year-old John Connor used to hack into a bank ATM in the 1991 movie Terminator 2. And historian Benj Edwards found an image of an Atari Portfolio in a 1990s clipart collection.
So Atari wasn’t just about video games.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.