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Portal (computer)
Portal R2E CCMC was a portable microcomputer designed and marketed by the Réalisation et Études électroniques department of the French firm R2E Micral,[1] and officially appeared in September 1980 at the Sicob show in Paris.[2][3] Osborne 1, the first commercially successful portable computer, was only released eight months later, on 3 April 1981.[4][5] The machine was designed with a focus on payroll and accounting. Several hundred Portal computers were sold between 1980 and 1983. Extremely rare, no museum has a Portal, and only two are in private collections.[6][7] The company R2E Micral is also known to have designed "the earliest commercial, non-kit computer based on a microprocessor", the Micral N.[8] One of these machines was sold for 62,000 euros to Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft (with Bill Gates), by the auctioneer Rouillac on June 11, 2017, for Allen's Seattle museum, Living Computers: Museum + Labs.[9][10][7] SpecificationsThe Portal was based on an Intel 8085 processor, 8-bit, clocked at 2 MHz.[1][11] It was equipped with 64 kB of main RAM, a keyboard with 58 alphanumeric keys and 11 numeric keys (in separate blocks), a LED 32-character one-line screen, a floppy disk (capacity - 140000 characters), a thermal printer (speed - 28 characters/second), an asynchronous channel, a synchronous channel, and a 220-volt power supply.[1][11] It came with two operating systems: Prologue and Basic Assembly Language (BAL).[1] Designed for an operating temperature of 15 °C to 35 °C, it weighed 12 kg and its dimensions were 45 × 45 × 15 cm.[1][11] See alsoReferences
BibliographyFrançois Gernelle, Portal designer SourcesThis article is derived partly from the page of old-computers.com and feb-patrimoine.com. Information related to Portal (computer) |
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