website/content/museum/compaq-portable.md

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

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Compaq Portable	Computers	Transportable	U.S.A.	1983	Intel 8088	name company company_name specs tabs photos adverts links docs comments related oc_id source Portable /companies/compaq Compaq label value NAME Portable label value MANUFACTURER Compaq label value TYPE Transportable label value ORIGIN U.S.A. label value YEAR January 1983 (April 1984 European Release) label value KEYBOARD Full-stroke detachable keyboard with function keys and numeric keypad label value CPU Intel 8088 label value SPEED 4.77 Mhz label value CO-PROCESSOR Optional 8087 math coprocessor label value RAM 128 kb, up to 256 kb (and even 640k via IBM PC bus cards) label value TEXT MODES 80x25, 40x25 - 9'' Mono CRT Display Built-in label value GRAPHIC MODES CGA, MDA label value COLORS green phosphor monitor label value SIZE / WEIGHT 34 lbs label value I/O PORTS Parallel Port, RS-232 Serial Port, CGA and composite video output, 5 x 8-bit ISA expansion slots label value BUILT IN MEDIA 2 x 5.25'' floppies at 160 KB, 320 KB, and 360 KB. label value OS MS-DOS 1.1 label value POWER SUPPLY Built-in PSU, 130 Watt power supply (the smallest and most powerful per cubic inch made to that date) label value PRICE US$2995 photos adverts links docs title subtitle text image COMPAQ FOUNDERS Compaq Computer Corporation was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three senior managers who left Texas Instruments and invested $1,000 each to form their own company. Sketched on a paper place mat in a Houston pie shop, their first product was the portable personal computer able to run all of the software being developed then for the IBM PC. null title subtitle text image PORTABLE + This model has only one 5.25'' Floppy Disk Drive but a 10Mb Hard Disk mounted in the second bay. null title subtitle text image INSIDE PORTABLE **Robust but Heavy !** Compaq Plus was build without compromise: robust metal frame, shielding of all the radio waves sensitive parts, thick plastic body. Of course, quality weights a lot and Compaq Plus was intended for strong businessmen! The business women will have to wait for the next portable computers generation... **(1)** Serial interface card with its connector, for printers and modems.\ **(2)** Video card connector for a composite monochrome monitor.\ **(3)** RGB Connector for a colour monitor.\ **(4)** The metal frame has three functions:\ • To rigidify the case,\ • To absorb the heat emitted by the components and to act as a cooler,\ • To reduce the internal and external radio interference (Faraday screen room).\ **(5)** Interface slots and extension cards are protected by a plastic mask.\ **(6)** Compaq Plus was delivered in single / double floppy disk / 10 Mb. hard-disk versions.\ **(7)** The keyboard is a pure copy of the original PC one, with 10 function keys and numeric keypad, but without arrows block.\ **(8)** Ventilated power supply housing. The machine can't be used with batteries.\ **(9)** The motherboard includes 256 Kb. of Ram. Chip sockets are planned for a mathematical coprocessor 8087 and Rom BIOS extensions.\ **(10)** Video Card with C.G.A. standard display and connectors for monochrome or colour monitor.\ **(11)** Parallel interface card for any printer using the Centronics standard. null title subtitle text image U.S. ADVERT April 1983 Advert said Simple Isn't it?. The COMPAQ portable computer can do what the IBM Personal Computer does. To go. It runs all the popular programs written for the IBM. It works for the same printers ans other peripherals. It even accepts the same optional expansion electronics that give it additional capabilities and fonctionality. There's really only one big difference. The COMPAQ computer is designed to travel.\ Carry the COMPAQ computer from office to office. Carry it home on the weekend. Or take it on business trips... null title subtitle text image FRENCH AD Advert said : ''The computer which carried away America" ''With its portable computers, Compaq became world number two on the market of the 16 bits computers. With a turnover of 240 million dollars in one year and a half, this young company established in Houston obtained the growth rate record of the American economic history." null title url text Web Wiz CAPTCHA http://www.webwizcaptcha.com PDF document from the official Compaq FTP site title url cover text MAINTENANCE & SERVICE GUIDE FOR PORTABLE / PLUS / 286 null /media/museum/docs/couvs/vide.gif **MAINTENANCE & SERVICE GUIDE FOR PORTABLE / PLUS / 286**\ written by Compaq  type of document : PDF\  source : www.old-computers.com author date text myrko Saturday 19th February 2022 I believe the comment about CGA/MDA is incorrect. The portable does indeed have MDA (9x14 text mode). The difference is obvious when you are in MDA mode, there are more than 8 pixels per character. The IBM-5155 however did not have MDA mode. author date text Christopher (United States) Saturday 27th March 2021 The keyboard had KeyTronic contact “foam and foilâ€� mylar pads: Apple Lisa 1 and 2, AVL Eagle K69, Compaq Portable, Compaq Deskpro 286 AT keyboard, Compaq Enhanced Keyboard, Curvus Concept, Datapoint, DEC, Franklin Ace 1000/1100/1200, GenRad, IBM PCjr (some), Kaypro II, Key Tronic Model F clone series, Macintosh XL, Miniterm 1203, Northstar Advantage, Sirius 1, Sol-20, Sol-220, SUN Type 4, Tandberg Data TDV 2115C, Tandy TRS-80, Tektronix 4107, Unisys F420800, Victor 9000, Visual Technology 1050, and more. Also found in old BTC keyboards. People tend to either hate this style of keyboard or love them, but the foam does disintegrate. It''s not as nice and not nearly as rugged as the contemporary IBM Model M''s or F''s. "Foam and foil" both respond to light keystrokes, and give cushion and a tiny bit more travel for hard keystrokes. Which is a big part of the appeal. Sorry this is so late, John Hunter! Texelec is the only place I know with replacement pads. author date text Jason (Australia) Tuesday 18th September 2018 Hi does anyone have a schematic for the compaq portable III power supply author date text John Hunter (Virginia, USA) Saturday 11th August 2018 My first computer was a Compaq "luggable." What I miss most about it is the keyboard, more specifically, the nature of the stroke. It is the only keyboard on which I could type at high speed, without fatigue and with minimal stroke errors. Now that I have arthritis in my fingers, I''d like to find a modern keyboard with the same type of "feel." Can anyone suggest something? It would have to be Apple OSx compatible. Thanks. author date text John Evans (United States) Tuesday 7th November 2017 Q: Does anyone have a pointer to service manuals/data for the original Compaq Portable model number 101709 ? Thanks,\ John author date text chud Friday 27th October 2017 http://minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Compaq$20Portable_Plus_286$20-$20Maintenance$20and$20Service$20Guide.pdf author date text swarm (Czech Republic) Tuesday 15th January 2013 I liked the ability of Compaq Portable video hardware to switch in something like an MDA mode for displaying text. It was limited only to text, but the result was crisp like with MDA - same character resolution but if I remember there was no support for things like underlined characters. Anyway it was primarily a CGA card, so you couldn''t use MDA CRTs. RGB (CGA) output was disabled in this mode. author date text Mickie Weiss (IL, USA) Thursday 21st June 2012 In the 90''s I worked as an editorial assistant for a writer/teacher. I hadn''t worked on a computer before, but loved Word Perfect and taught myself to build databases...\ My boss got a new computer so gave me his old one. I had a problem once so called Compaq. The customer service rep kept asking me the model number on the machine. I told him that I had looked absolutely everywhere and that there was NO model number. He finally got fed up and sent me to tech support. The guy in tech support, after hearing a description, very fondly stated with an obvious smile in his voice, "Oh, you have a Luggable!" No, not the prettiest thing, but it did get me through grad school. I would have kept using it, but I am NOT a computer ''geek" and could not get beyond some growing incompatabilities. I do still have the machine though! author date text David (Georgia, USA) Thursday 3rd November 2011 I worked for the State of Georgia Department of Public Safety in the 90s and we used these to issue licenses on until 1996!\ These things were tanks. author date text Joyce Neu (United States) Friday 26th November 2010 I bought the Compaq "luggable" in early 1984 to write my dissertation on. Was probably among the first people at USC to submit a dissertation typed on a computer, but it was very difficult to do as there was no WYSIWYG. Still have it and it still works, although I haven''t used it in about 20+ years and now have only Apple machines. author date text Joe (USA) Monday 16th August 2010 I have a Compaq Plus (gold labels $ green screen) that is taking up space. Is there a market these machines?\ Thank you. author date text Mike Chambers (St. Louis, MO, USA) Wednesday 19th May 2010 Great little piece of computing history here. I have one. In fact, it''s turned on right now! The hard drive magically still works. I installed an old NE1000 ethernet card, and am running an IRC server on it. No there weren''t any IRC server programs available for DOS. I had to write it from scratch. In QuickBASIC 7.1! Compiled to EXE of course. $-0 author date text Mark Powell (England) Sunday 23rd November 2008 Compaq made a ''tool'' to aid with the opening of the top cover. Basically a wedge of plastic. We found that if you lent on the Compaq logo and whacked the opposite side, the lid would spring off quite nicely. We also suffered ''Compaq finger'' as we called it - losing all the skin across our knuckles trying to gain access to the ISA slots or motherboard. The backs of those pcb''s HURT! author date text Bill S. (Florida, USA) Tuesday 17th June 2008 We had one of these actually still in use in 2000/2001 as a data scope for telecommunications! Very robust system; ours had an amber monitor, however, not a green monitor. Didn't use it myself, but I knew what it was. author date text Rob Pannett (Florida ) Thursday 28th June 2007 I used one of these in my first post-college job, starting in 1988. I am surprised now to learn that the machine was already several years old then! I would attach an external monitor to be able to program in color. Don't really remember having trouble with it, but my how time flies.. author date text Dave Gibbons (USA) Monday 13rd November 2006 I owned a Portable as my first computer. I remember paying $2,400 for it with 256MB of RAM and two floppy drives. I I installed a small hard drive in it and eventually gave it to my neice who used it through college before it died. Since then, I found a Portable 286-12MHz that I still own. The keyboad is different with a larger "Enter" key, but otherwise it looks like the original Portable. I used my original Portable for work, but now the Portable 286 is usually only fired up to show friends the first computer game I ever played, "Adventure." My Portable 286 still works fine and is a multi-purpose machine in that it also holds doors open in even the strongest wind gusts. I would welcome donating it to a museum some day. author date text Craig Buffington (New Jersey) Saturday 8th April 2006 Yes, we still have ours. It does not get as much use as it once did since we bought a newer model. Mostly it just collects dust now. author date text D. White (MA) Thursday 29th December 2005 Don't laugh but we still use one here. But that may not last much longer as it is starting to show signs of impending doom. It is used as a data acquisition system for pressure and velocity measurements since the mid 80's in our laboratory. author date text Dennis Littlefield (USA) Wednesday 22nd June 2005 I purchased a Portable in May 1983. It had the standard basic configuration of 128k memory and 2-360k floppies, Price was $4,000. It also had an AMBER monitor, the green screen was an option. Later, it was upgraded to 640K memory with an add-in 384K multi function memory card. Much Later, a CPU emulater card was installed to speed it up to a blazing 12Mhz and I also added a massive 20meg HardCard. This system still works fine running MS-DOS 6.2. Apps still installed are FoxPro, MS-Word, MS-Excel and several antique games. author date text M. Ayers (North Carolina) Thursday 6th November 2003 We have four of these beauties, use to run heart rates on them, now they are just sitting around. /museum/compaq-portable-386 /museum/compaq-portable-ii /museum/compaq-portable-iii 547 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230608223016/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=547 2023-06-08

Announced November 1982, the unit was actually shipped in January of 1983 (300 of them). This was arguably the system that destroyed IBM's monopoly on the PC market and created the situation we see today. It WAS the first compatible system that was LEGALLY made, though Columbia first copied the IBM BIOS and later paid the fatal price.

The system's BIOS was developed from scratch by using a team of 18 persons (only one guy was "dirty" and he was not allowed to do any part of the code and could only answer vaguely to questions). They took IBM's BIOS apart and made notes of the system calls contained within it. That way, Compaq was able to develop a PC compatible without any risk of a lawsuit from IBM, since the code was written from scratch (reverse engineering). It cost them $1 million to do it.

The system itself weighs a hefty 34 pounds and was dubbed a 'luggable' computer rather than a true portable. It contained a 9" green phosphor CRT display and both serial and parallel ports. The system did MDA graphics as well as CGA by switching the scan frequencies of the monitor (a first that is the basis for VGA).

The only difference between the standard and 'Plus' models was that the latter had a single 5.25" floppy drive and a 10Mb hard disk, while the original model had two 5.25" drives. All units supported two 5.25'' floppies at 160 KB, 320 KB and 360 KB. All units could have 10, 20, or 30 MB hard drives but Compaq only shipped 10MB Rhodime ruggedized drives (good for 40 G shock!). Some models also had a 20/40 MB tape drive. Compaq also shipped a brown nylon or brown leather carrying case and ONE blue case (Rod Canions unit).

In its first year of trading, Compaq took more than $111 million on this single product, which was a US business record. During that year (1983), more than 53,000 units were sold.

Museum entry added by David Wyn Davies
Thanks to the Computer Closet Museum for the picture.

Dave (Compaq insider) reports:
The portable was the first unit and had silver logo plates. It had the standard 1 or 2 floppy drives. The Plus was the unit with the Rhodime 10MB fixed disk and had gold labels. Many folks get them confused as the Portable was easily upgradable to a Plus and many thousands were. Just check the label color.

Oh here's a tidbit - to remove the case cover, simply lay the unit flat (fold up the bottom feet) and press your elbow into the middle of the top cover and the rear edge of that cover will pop out enough to grab and lift off. One of the test ladies taught me that and we were all muscling it around - she simply figures out how to use what she has.

The power supply can be a bugger to remove also. It had a special wrench to remove the lower lock screw and the whole thing kinda slides out where you can then remove the connectors.

My unit had 2 1/2 ht 20 Mg drives and 2 1/2 ht floppy drives. I later swapped a floppy for a tape drive. It is presently in the Compaq internal museum (the "hall of fame").

Paul Dixon (another Compaq insider) replies:
The cover actually can be removed with one hand if you know exactly where to slap the heel of your hand onto the cover and then catch the edge as it pops out with your fingers.
Graphic modes are shown here as CGA and MDA. Actualy can MDA be described as a graphics mode? I suppose if you count lines produced in text mode then it could be. However the Compaq portable did NOT support MDA (or Mode 7). It emulated MDA in CGA mode 3 which is the text mode for CGA.