 Atari Portfolio, General Question |
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 Feb 24 2012, 09:00 AM
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#1
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 Jaguar DKG Stick  Group: JSII Lifetime VIP Posts: 141 Joined: 7-May 07 Member No.: 2,497  |
Anyone have one of these little guys and can comment? As much as I enjoy the 8/16-bit era of computing, I had no idea Atari made a Zeos competitor.
http://www.vintage8bit.com/content/vintage...atari-portfolio |
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Feb 24 2012, 07:07 PM
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#2
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Jaguar Jamma Joystick Group: JSII Preferred Posts: 411 Joined: 9-June 04 From: Akron, Ohio (yuck) Member No.: 89 |
QUOTE (DrMalba @ Feb 24 2012, 12:00 PM)  Anyone have one of these little guys and can comment? As much as I enjoy the 8/16-bit era of computing, I had no idea Atari made a Zeos competitor. http://www.vintage8bit.com/content/vintage...atari-portfolio I have one, haven't done anything with it except make sure it powers on still. |
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Feb 24 2012, 11:27 PM
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#3
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 Jaguar Alpine Board Group: JSII Platinum Posts: 1,770 Joined: 19-May 04 From: Lompoc, CA Member No.: 17 |
It was good enough to make an appearance in Terminator 2 as a ATM machine hacking tool...;-)
It is a pocket machine that is capable of running MSDOS. California Pizza Kitchen had those at one time to run inventory/ordering software that was on PCMCIA type cards. I don't own one myself though. 
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Feb 25 2012, 03:25 PM
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#4
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 Harmless Lion Group: JSII Super Moderator Posts: 2,720 Joined: 17-August 05 From: BUR Member No.: 256 |
I had one and used it daily for a couple of years in the late 90s. I had a large (megabyte?) flash card which worked well though it was prone to losing data every other month. The base system was quite stable. It is 8086 based, sfo it is a true 16 bit xt clone, and runs most dos software. IIRC the main compatibility difference is that the system click ticks at 1hz instead of 18hz, to help save battery life. (i never had much trouble, even my dos c compiler worked)
Was a great little machine. I still have a backup copy of my address book from it. |
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Feb 25 2012, 05:20 PM
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#5
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 But that's the jelly! Group: JSII Platinum Posts: 15,513 Joined: 1-February 08 From: 9/9/99 Member No.: 2,699 |
QUOTE (atarifan49 @ Feb 25 2012, 07:27 AM) It was good enough to make an appearance in Terminator 2 as a ATM machine hacking tool...;-)   ... and in common with Jag's chipset the Portfolio was primarily designed by Brits too! WORD! 
-------------------- Own: Jaguar/Jaguar CD/Lynx/Lynx II/7800/Dreamcast/Saturn/Mega Drive II/Mega-CD II/32X/Nomad/Game Gear/PS3/PlayStation/PSP/Wii/GameCube & GB Player/N64/DS Lite/Virtual Boy/GBm/GBA/GBC/GBP/GB/Xbox/Vectrex/CD-i/3DO/Amiga CD32/PC Engine Duo-R/WonderSwan/Neo Geo Pocket Color/Amstrad GX4000/Gizmondo/ColecoVision/iPhone
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Apr 16 2012, 01:01 PM
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#6
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Jaguar Jamma Joystick Group: JSII Preferred Plus Posts: 596 Joined: 12-October 05 Member No.: 291 |
QUOTE (DrMalba @ Feb 24 2012, 12:00 PM) Anyone have one of these little guys and can comment? I have one. I used it actively between 1999-2001 when I was starting college. I didn't have enough money for a real laptop, and I wanted to be able to better organize and search my notes. The Portfolio was perfect for this, I'd type into notepad files, and I got the card reader for my PC so I could just plug the cards into my PC, pull up my notes and go about editing them. It was / is really a decent little system. I can't imagine actually using one still today, as you can get laptops stupidly cheap (or you could put them on your phone, probably). It didn't have enough interesting going on beyond basically being a great platform for .txt files that I have had any thought of going back to it to play games or anything. I keep it because it is small and cool (also why I convinced myself it was worth the small investment when I got it -- it was) but I don't see any real reason for buying or keeping one today, other than historical. -------------------- |
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Apr 16 2012, 07:36 PM
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#7
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 Jaguar 2 Prototype Group: JSII Elite Posts: 4,243 Joined: 17-November 04 From: Indiana Member No.: 159 |
What are you talking about Dan? I still use this thing every single time I hit up the ATM. Works like a charm
-------------------- Cerca Trova - Seek and you shall find. Follow me on Twitter @mindthreat
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 19th June 2013 - 07:51 AM |