website/content/museum/texas-instruments-portable-professional-computer-ppc.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Texas Instruments Portable Professional Computer (PPC)	Computers	Transportable	U.S.A.	1983	Intel 8086	name image company company_name specs tabs forum_thread photos oc_id source Portable Professional Computer (PPC) /media/museum/photos/texas-instrument_ti-pc-portable_2.jpg /companies/texas-instruments Texas Instruments label value NAME Portable Professional Computer (PPC) label value MANUFACTURER Texas Instruments label value TYPE Transportable label value ORIGIN U.S.A. label value YEAR November 1983 label value KEYBOARD QWERTY full-stroke keyboard with arrow keys and separated numeric keypad label value CPU Intel 8086 label value SPEED 5 Mhz label value CO-PROCESSOR optional 8087 arithmetic co-processor label value RAM 64k (up to 768k) label value TEXT MODES 80 x 25 label value GRAPHIC MODES 720 x 300 max. label value COLORS yes label value SOUND Beeper label value SIZE / WEIGHT 47 x 42 x 19 cm\ 12 kg with the monochrom monitor\ 14 kg with the color monitor label value I/O PORTS Parallel/Centronics port, 5 expansion slots (non IBM compatible), 4 x serial ports (optional) label value BUILT IN MEDIA 5''1/4 disk-drive (320k) (second disk-drive and hard-disk optional) label value OS MS-DOS 2.1 (CP/M 86, UCSD P-system, Prologue and Concurrent CP/M 86 also available).\ Zenix was planned... label value POWER SUPPLY Built-in PSU label value PERIPHERALS Second 5''1/4 disk-drive, 10Mb or 20Mb hard-drive, RAM expansion cards, Voice recognition card, Ethernet, card (released ?) label value PRICE 64k model : 2965$ (USA, november 1983)\ 64k model : 3765 (France, 1984) photos 466 title subtitle text image PPC Thanks to chrism3667 for the picture /media/museum/photos/ti_ppc_2.jpg title subtitle text image DETAIL Thanks to chrism3667 for the picture /media/museum/photos/ti_ppc_detail.jpg title subtitle text image CLOSED Thanks to chrism3667 for the picture /media/museum/photos/ti_ppc_closed.jpg title subtitle text image REAR Thanks to chrism3667 for the picture /media/museum/photos/ti_ppc_rear.jpg 472 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230608142726/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=472 2023-06-08

Basicaly, the TI PPC was the transportable version of the TI PC, with which it was entirely compatible.

It was one of the few transportable systems to be available with an optional built-in color monitor, back in 1983. The standard version had a classic 9'' monochrome monitor built-in.

Unfortunately the advantages of the PC Portable compared to IBM's offer was not obvious. It was not really compatible (IBM disks could be read, and that was basically all) and IBM expansion cards could not be used.
Despite this lack of real compatibility, some software were adapted to the TI Portable PC like for instance, Lotus 1-2-3 or VisiOn.
A few programming languages were available: Basic, Pascal, C-Basic, Cobol and RM-Cobol.

The graphical possibilities were quite different and significantly better than for the IBM PC, with for example, a maximum resolution is of 720 x 300 pixels. To make a IBM PC graphic program to run on a TI PC you would have to use BIOS or DOS calls.

The TI PPC had only 64k RAM that could be expanded up to 768k using quite expensive memory cards.

Like its desktop brother, the PC Portable could eventually be equiped with a voice recognition feature (for almost the price of the computer itself !) that allowed to control the basic functions of the computer and some softwares, as a diary and a phone book. With the optional hard-disk installed, it was possible to store up to 8 hours of speech.

Another interesting feature was its Ethernet card indoduced in 1983, designed by a young company called 3COM.