Atari Portfolio

Atari Portfolio

Atari Portfolio palmtop computer
Specifications
Manufacturer	Atari Corporation; designed by DIP Research Ltd., built by Sugiyama Electronics
Type	Palmtop computer
Released	1989; on sale from September 1989, worldwide from January 1990
Discontinued	1994
Intro price	US$399 (September 1989); DM 798 (July 1990)
CPU	Intel 80C88 at 4.9152 MHz
Memory	128 KB RAM (four 32 KB static RAMs), 512 KB on the HPC-011; 256 KB ROM (two 128 KB devices)
Storage	Internal RAM disk (C:), removable memory cards (A:)
Display	240 × 64 pixel super-twist monochrome LCD, no backlight; 40 characters × 8 lines
Sound	Piezo speaker driven by a DTMF telephone dialler chip
Input	63-key QWERTY switch-matrix keyboard
Connectivity	60-pin expansion port; memory card slot
Power	Three AA cells stepped up to 5 V; optional mains adaptor, 6 V DC 300 mA
Dimensions	205 × 32 × 105 mm
Weight	440 g without cells
OS / Firmware	DIP DOS 2.11 (MS-DOS 2.11 compatible)

The Atari Portfolio is an IBM PC compatible palmtop computer designed by DIP Research of Guildford and sold by Atari Corporation from 1989. It runs a DOS compatible with MS-DOS 2.11 from ROM, with an editor, a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet, an address book, a diary and a calculator built in. Atari's Technical Reference Guide for the machine describes the hardware in detail and is the main source for the hardware sections below.

History

DIP Research Ltd., a subsidiary of Distributed Information Processing Ltd. of the Surrey Research Park in Guildford, launched the DIP Pocket PC in 1989. Atari took an exclusive licence to sell it under its own name in the United States, West Germany, Italy and Spain; the Sunday Times had reported Atari's plans on 21 August 1988. The machine was shown as the PC Folio in Birmingham in February 1989 and as the Portfolio at the Spring COMDEX in April 1989. It went on sale from June 1989 and was available worldwide from January 1990. It was sold as the Atari Portfolio everywhere except Italy, where it was the Atari PC Folio, and the United Kingdom, where DIP sold it as the DIP Pocket PC. Production ended in 1994. DIP developed the Portfolio; it was manufactured by Sugiyama Electronics in Japan, and its case, by Atari's industrial designer Ira Velinsky, won an iF design award in 1990.

In Germany the Portfolio was presented at the Atari show in Düsseldorf in August 1989, with no accessories included, not even the mains adaptor. PofoWiki puts sales in Germany at about 150,000.

Hardware

Processor

The Portfolio uses an 80C88, the CMOS static version of the IBM PC's 8088, which allows the clock to be halted when nothing is being processed. It runs at 4.9152 MHz, against the PC's 4.77 MHz. The processor runs in minimum mode, so bus lock cannot be used.

Memory

• System RAM: 128 KB, as four 32 KB static RAM chips. Static RAM has a very low

 standby current, which is what allows the contents to survive on battery power.

• 4 KB of that RAM is mapped at B000h as the video RAM, the address the PC Monochrome Display Adapter uses.
• System ROM: 256 KB, as two 128 KB devices, containing the BIOS, DOS, command

 processor and the application software.

The RAM is divided between system memory and the local storage partition, drive C:, using the FDISK command. Because a crash loses everything on C:, the common practice is to set C: to about 8 KB and keep files on a memory card, which leaves roughly 100 KB free for applications.

The Memory Expander+ (HPC-104) adds 256 KB on the expansion bus; two can be stacked for 640 KB in total.

Display

A 240 x 64 pixel super-twist LCD, corresponding to 8 lines of 40 characters, with no backlight. It is driven by LCD screen drivers under a graphics LCD controller with its own dedicated screen RAM chip and character generator ROM, arranged to be as close to an IBM Monochrome Display Adapter as possible.

Atari lists the display's characteristics as:

• Full IBM PC extended character set
• A virtual 80 x 25 MDA screen page, with several screen modes
• PC BIOS compatible pixel set/reset for graphics
• Each character an array of 6 x 8 pixels
• Software-controlled contrast, held in a control register
• Block or underline cursor

Screen text attributes (bold, underline, reverse) and the various cursor sizes are not supported.

Keyboard and sound

A 63-key QWERTY switch-matrix keyboard. The custom ASIC generates physical scan codes which the BIOS translates into IBM PC compatible ones.

The speaker is driven by a DTMF telephone dialler chip, which produces the dual tones for tone dialling plus a set of melody tones; the key click uses the same circuit.

Expansion port

A 60-pin connector on the right-hand side, carrying the bus and all of the power and control lines.

Power

The Portfolio is a step-up design: the power supply unit contains a switching regulator that steps the voltage from three AA cells up to 5 V, and the regulator can be switched off. When cells and an external supply are both connected, the Portfolio runs from whichever is at the higher voltage, which Atari calls the "initial source".

Portfolio supply lines

Line	Documented behaviour
5VS	Output of the five-volt regulator. Five volts during STANDBY and RUN, floating low at any other time. Rated to supply up to 40 mA at 5 V +/-5% to a peripheral
VCC (card)	Follows 5VS. It exists so that inserting or removing a memory card does not put spikes on 5VS, and should not be used for anything else
VRAM	Supply to the system RAM. 4.5 V in STANDBY and RUN; initial source minus 0.5 V in OFF; the voltage across a capacitor in NO POWER
VEXT	The external supply voltage, connected directly to the external jack socket
BATD	Battery detection. Normally carries the initial source; pulled to ground when the cells are removed, isolating the system RAM

The four power modes are NO POWER (no source connected, for example during a battery change, when the system RAM is held up by an internal capacitor and the voltage on VRAM decays), OFF (the custom chip and RAM powered directly from the initial source), STANDBY (the whole system on the 5 V regulator with the processor clock halted) and RUN.

The mains adaptor is rated 6 V DC, 300 mA, with the centre positive (Atari HPC-402). A set of alkaline cells lasts about six weeks at an hour of use a day. Rechargeable cells can be used but their discharge curve is much steeper than an alkaline's, so the low-battery warning may not appear in time. Keep anything important on a memory card when using them.

Always run from the adaptor when the serial or parallel interface is attached. Atari's own guidance is that an external supply should be used wherever practical with any peripheral, and the interfaces draw roughly as much power as the Portfolio itself.

Memory cards

The Portfolio takes credit-card-sized memory cards in the Mitsubishi format, inserted in the left-hand slot and formatted to look like MS-DOS disks. Cards for the HP palmtops, the Poqet and the Sharp PC-3000 are not compatible and should not be used.

There are three types:

• RAM cards: static RAM with a lithium back-up cell in each card, which Atari says

 will maintain the card's data when it is out of a Portfolio "for a year or more". Sizes 32, 64
 and 128 KB. atari-computermuseum.de gives the cell in Atari's cards as a CR2016.

• OTPROM cards: one-time programmable, 64 and 128 KB. The programming voltage line runs at

 12.5 V in program mode and 5 V normally.

• Mask ROM cards: factory programmed, 128 KB, used for commercial software.

The card operating supply is 5 volts, and a small pin internally connected to ground is used to detect the presence of a card.

Outside the United States, DIP Systems in England also sold larger Memory Modules of 256 KB, 512 KB and 1 MB, which work like RAM cards but protrude from the slot in a box about 20 x 50 x 70 mm.

Accessories

Atari's Portfolio accessories carry HPC numbers, as does the machine itself (HPC-004 and its variants; see below).

Atari Portfolio accessories

Part number	Item
HPC-101	Smart Parallel Interface, for printing and file transfer
HPC-102	Serial Interface
HPC-104	Memory Expander+, 256 KB
HPC-201 / 202 / 203	RAM cards, 32 / 64 / 128 KB
HPC-204 / HPC-205	OTPROM cards
HPC-301	PC Card Drive: an ISA card and external box that presents a Portfolio memory card as a drive on a PC
HPC-406	Parallel file-transfer cable (male-to-male DB25, all lines straight through)
HPC-407	Portfolio-to-Macintosh file transfer cable
HPC-409	Serial null-modem cable (female DB9 to female DB25)
HPC-501 / HPC-502	Adaptors for programming OTPROM cards in a standard PROM programmer
HPC-701	DOS Utilities ROM card
HPC-704	File Manager / Tutorial ROM card
HPC-7xx	Other mask ROM software cards

Operating system and built-in software

The Portfolio runs DIP DOS 2.11, compatible with MS-DOS 2.11 at the BIOS level. Most well-behaved text-mode DOS programs run on it provided they do not go below the BIOS to address the hardware directly, because the Portfolio's hardware is not I/O-port compatible with the PC. Later versions of MS-DOS will not run on it.

Built into ROM are a text editor, a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet, an address book with DTMF dialling, a diary with alarms, a calculator, the setup utility and the parallel file-transfer software.

Atari also issued an UPDATE program that applied run-time fixes for ROM bugs; it is normally run from AUTOEXEC.BAT.

ROM versions

The Portfolio's ROM cannot be upgraded in the field. The 1992 Portfolio FAQ lists 1.056 as the first released version, 1.072 as current, and 1.09 as developed but not released. atari-computermuseum.de lists the model numbers with their BIOS versions, and notes that machines do not always match the official combination; read the version from the machine itself.

Portfolio model numbers

Model	BIOS and variant
HPC-003	BIOS 1.052
HPC-004	Officially BIOS 1.056 with a QWERTY keyboard; many have 1.052 or 1.072, or a QWERTZ keyboard
HPC-005	BIOS 1.130, AZERTY keyboard, France
HPC-006	BIOS 1.072, QWERTZ keyboard, Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland
HPC-007	BIOS 1.130, "PC Folio", Italy
HPC-008 to HPC-010	BIOS 1.130
HPC-011	BIOS 1.130, 512 KB RAM

Things that are not faults

• The screen flashes when the machine is off. The Portfolio wakes about every two minutes to

 check the diary alarms. This is normal.

• The machine powers itself down after about two minutes of inactivity. Also normal, and it

 matters during a memory-card battery change; see
 Atari Portfolio General Maintenance.

• A blank screen with audible key clicks is usually contrast, not a hardware fault: contrast

 on this machine is set in software through a control register.

Easter egg

From the text editor, press Fn+F2 for the help menu, press K for Keyboard Help, then press Alt+[ to see the names of the people who developed the machine.

In film

In the 1991 film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, John Connor uses a Portfolio with its parallel interface and a card reader to take money from a cash machine, and later to open a locked security door at Cyberdyne Systems.

Related pages

• Atari Portfolio General Maintenance
• Atari Portfolio Troubleshooting Guide
• Atari Portfolio Capacitor Replacement Guide
• Atari Portfolio Technical Reference Guide