Discussion
Loading...

Post

  • About
  • Code of conduct
  • Privacy
  • Users
  • Instances
  • About Bonfire
Stefano Marinelli
@stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe  ·  activity timestamp 5 months ago

I still remember the first time I saw this at a friend's house. I had the normal C64 and his father had this "portable" version.
And I started dreaming of a computer that could always be with me. Maybe in my pocket.
Late 80ies...

#RetroComputing#Memories#C64#Vintage

Vintage advertisement for the Commodore Executive 64, featuring a smiling man in a short-sleeved shirt and swim trunks using the portable computer poolside, with a glass of orange juice next to him. In the background, a woman lounges by the pool. The headline reads “Who’s keeping up with Commodore?” with a description promoting the Executive 64 as a personal, portable computer with powerful capabilities. A smaller image of the computer is shown below, and a man in a suit gives a thumbs-up next to the Commodore logo and the slogan “Keeping up with you.”
Vintage advertisement for the Commodore Executive 64, featuring a smiling man in a short-sleeved shirt and swim trunks using the portable computer poolside, with a glass of orange juice next to him. In the background, a woman lounges by the pool. The headline reads “Who’s keeping up with Commodore?” with a description promoting the Executive 64 as a personal, portable computer with powerful capabilities. A smaller image of the computer is shown below, and a man in a suit gives a thumbs-up next to the Commodore logo and the slogan “Keeping up with you.”
Vintage advertisement for the Commodore Executive 64, featuring a smiling man in a short-sleeved shirt and swim trunks using the portable computer poolside, with a glass of orange juice next to him. In the background, a woman lounges by the pool. The headline reads “Who’s keeping up with Commodore?” with a description promoting the Executive 64 as a personal, portable computer with powerful capabilities. A smaller image of the computer is shown below, and a man in a suit gives a thumbs-up next to the Commodore logo and the slogan “Keeping up with you.”
  • Copy link
  • Flag this post
  • Block
ティージェーグレェ
@teajaygrey@snac.bsd.cafe replied  ·  activity timestamp 5 months ago

At the Computer History Museum in 2015 when they hosted the 30th Anniversary event for the Commodore Amiga (https://amiga30.com/) I saw a prototype luggable Amiga in basically the same form factor. I'm forgetting the model number designation on the label (and the picture I took is presumably on some hard drive offline in storage) but I guess they made 3 of them? Never something that went to mass market.

It looked like this more or less:

There is more information on other "portable" Amiga efforts (they almost all seem to be bespoke/custom, whereas I got the impression what I saw at the Amiga Anniversary event may have originated officially within Commodore?) here:

http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/portamiga.html

I think my first thought about portable computing in my youth was when I saw a Seiko TV Watch at some store and wondered if I could hook up the output of an Atari 2600 to play video games on it?

OFC, Alan Kay had similar insights, in the late 1960s and that is when he began working on his idea for the "Dynabook" also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook (what we now would call a "tablet" computer like an iPad or whatever).

Advertisement for the Seiko TV Watch (released in the early 1980s) which has a tuner box and cable plugged into it, with a wrist watch on a person's left arm displaying a black and white image presumably intended to represent some television show.
Advertisement for the Seiko TV Watch (released in the early 1980s) which has a tuner box and cable plugged into it, with a wrist watch on a person's left arm displaying a black and white image presumably intended to represent some television show.
Advertisement for the Seiko TV Watch (released in the early 1980s) which has a tuner box and cable plugged into it, with a wrist watch on a person's left arm displaying a black and white image presumably intended to represent some television show.
Sorry, no caption provided by author
Sorry, no caption provided by author
Sorry, no caption provided by author
  • Copy link
  • Flag this comment
  • Block
Log in

bonfire.cafe

A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate

bonfire.cafe: About · Code of conduct · Privacy · Users · Instances
Bonfire social · 1.0.0-rc.3.1 no JS en
Automatic federation enabled
  • Explore
  • About
  • Members
  • Code of Conduct
Home
Login