In November 1982 Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable, a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer. It was released in March 1983 for $2995, considerably more affordable than competitors at the time. The Compaq Portable was one of the originators of today's laptop. It was the second IBM PC compatible, being capable of running all software that would run on an IBM PC.

It was a commercial success, selling 53,000 units in its first year. The Compaq Portable was the first in the range of the Compaq Portable series. Compaq was able to market a legal IBM clone because IBM mostly used "off the shelf" parts for their PC. Furthermore, Microsoft had kept the right to license the operating system to other computer manufacturers. The only part which had to be duplicated was the BIOS, which Compaq did legally by using clean room reverse engineering for $1 million.

Weight: 28 pounds.
CPU: Intel 8088, 4.77MHz, RAM: 128K, 640K max
Display: 9" monochrome monitor built-in  80 X 25 text
Color graphic card
Storage: Two 320K 5-1/4" disk drives, Ports: 1 parallel (expansion card)
OS: MS-DOS
 
Our model No: 101709

Very kindly donated by Martyn Leader

Manufacturer: Compaq
Date: March 1993

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH1322. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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