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Atari Portfolio

Micom 2000

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2004
Messages
1,284
Location
Manitoba North of 50 degrees Latitude
I just recently "won" an Ebay offering for 128k, 64k, cards and serial port adapter for my PoFo.

I had a parallell adapter I bought from an Atari dealer years ago (1995)who was going out of business, in anticipation of eventually acquiring a Portfolio. Last year I finally acquired one and have added a Memory Expander as well as a program from a guy in Germany to interface an Omega Zip Drive. I did need however a memory card/disk drive to save data should the batteries die. I only had the EPROMed Disk manager/tutorial card and carrying around the wobbly plug-in Memory Expander or Zip-drive didn't make my PoFo very portable.

As it turned out, the vendor sent me a Portfolio to PC card drive/ with ISA 8-bit board interface and a 128k memory card. I can't complain and I do have a decent memory card drive which allows me to access the card directly rather than using the slower parallell adapter.

I'm a retro-computer kind of guy and the PoFo can serve my everyday needs. A GPS receiver add-on would be good in case I get lost in the woods or on a lake, and perhaps if I get a serial adapter it might be compatible to an older Delorme.

I acquired a Cassiopia a while back figuring I could use it for my simple needs and was vastly dissappointed. One of the downers of most newer handhelds is that they gear themselves to the busy business executives or else include so many extras they're unusable. And with the Casio, it has no keyboard, only an awkward stylus which sometimes worked.

Retro is good. Sure beats hell out of the constant maintenance I do on my somewhat outdated 700 mhz P3.

Lawrence
 
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I just recently "won" an Ebay offering for 128k, 64k, cards and serial port adapter for my PoFo.

I had a parallell adapter I bought from an Atari dealer years ago (1995)who was going out of business, in anticipation of eventually acquiring a Portfolio. Last year I finally acquired one and have added a Memory Expander as well as a program from a guy in Germany to interface an Omega Zip Drive. I did need however a memory card/disk drive to save data should the batteries die. I only had the EPROMed Disk manager/tutorial card and carrying around the wobbly plug-in Memory Expander or Zip-drive didn't make my PoFo very portable.

As it turned out, the vendor sent me a Portfolio to PC card drive/ with ISA 8-bit board interface and a 128k memory card. I can't complain and I do have a decent memory card drive which allows me to access the card directly rather than using the slower parallell adapter.

I'm a retro-computer kind of guy and the PoFo can serve my everyday needs. A GPS receiver add-on would be good in case I get lost in the woods or on a lake, and perhaps if I get a serial adapter it might be compatible to an older Delorme.

I acquired a Cassiopia a while back figuring I could use it for my simple needs and was vastly dissappointed. One of the downers of most newer handhelds is that they gear themselves to the busy business executives or else include so many extras they're unusable. And with the Casio, it has no keyboard, only an awkward stylus which sometimes worked.

Retro is good. Sure beats hell out of the constant maintenance I do on my somewhat outdated 700 mhz P3.

Lawrence

Good score on the Portfolio! The card drive is a definite bonus. Never had one myself, but I use retro every time I can cause if you know how to work them, they'll work. The only 'modern' PDA I ever had that was great was a Compaq PC Companion. I had a few others and yeah, they're pretty useless from all the 'convenience' added :p Now I use a Handspring Visor but I really miss the little Compaq. Had a full keyboard and pcmcia slot.

The portfolio uses DOS, doesn't it?? I can just imagine some of my classmates trying to work one of those :)

Nathan
 
Well it has a litle menu program and an amazing resource of programs available on the web. Even an alternare OS with a bunch of apps. It has graphic abilities and even midi capacity. The address app can generate telephone tones to dial #s from your address darabase. It can also handle Lotus 123 files.

It's OS is basicly an advanced DOS 2.1 sysrem and the "88 processor is just a notch faster than a PC's. But since we function much slower than that, it isn't a great problem. So you can have your addresses, a To-do, daily diary, lotus 123 worksheet, and editor, with a very usable keyboard, and with a memory card, store your data. Other peripherals allow you to transfer and receive files and data via the parallell port, expand memory, and seamlessly access the memory card with a PC as well as accessing Omega Zip drives. There is also an easy PoFo to Atari ST program using the parallell adapter. As an ST freak that was one of the things that attracted me early on.

Lawrence
 
The vendor who sent me the above has now sent me what I originally bid for: a 128k and 64K memory card and serial adaptor, shipping cost free. So now I have almost anything a Portfolio owner could ask for. A parallel and serial adaptor, a PC card reader with ISA board, 2 128k and 1 64k memory cards, with manuals, albeit the serial card manual is in French which I understand having lived in Quebec, an interface to hook up an Iomega Zip-drive if I want to get serious about storing programs or data, and a 128k memory expander with a second card drive. My cup runneth over.

In a way it's a problem too. Many of us geeks fantasize on some of the ultimate upgrades which would allow us to achieve more than our hardware allows us. Then possibly we get it and usually carry on to a new desire if only we could afford the newer gizmo.

So to me it's in my face and what now? There's even an Alt. Portfolio OS language freely available. "Hey hotshot, you thirsted after it so what'cha gonna do now ?" :^((

Lawrence
 
At the VCF last month, I picked up a PCMCIA card containing Portfolio BASIC, with the manual too. Stan Seiler had many other accessories available. I'm not sure if he sold them...
 
The name rings a bell from classiccmp. Is he the guy that has the Atari Ranch ?
A quick Google shows he's the SOL guy and works on HPs for Allegro. Right ?

THANKS,
Lawrence

At the VCF last month, I picked up a PCMCIA card containing Portfolio BASIC, with the manual too. Stan Seiler had many other accessories available. I'm not sure if he sold them...
 
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The name rings a bell from classiccmp. Is he the guy that has the Atari Ranch ?
A quick Google shows he's the SOL guy and works on HPs for Allegro. Right ?

THANKS,
Lawrence

Yeah, something like that. I know him by name and by sight -- mostly as one of the "regulars" I see every year at VCF Calif. -- but I'm not sure exactly what he's into, VC-wise. Erik might know better.
 
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