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I wrote agricultural software for both the Pocket Computer and the Mod II working my way through college. The PC was actually a very nice piece of kit. We wrote

I wrote agricultural software for both the Pocket Computer and the Mod II working my way through college. The PC was actually a very nice piece of kit. We wrote some of the first software that farmers could use while carrying it in the fields - IPM (integrated pest management). Ah, backing up to cassette.

camiller 10y ago
Yeah, the local Farm Bureau Co-Op sold TRS-80's to the farmers around where I grew up. I had a Apple //e but bought many Elephant Memory Systems 5.25" floppy disks from the Co-Op.
HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
Ah, the Pocket Computer. I had one of those in early 90's when I was a student pilot. I programmed it to do flight calculations and learned valuable lessons in UX. Trying to operate those tiny keys and read the display while trying to fly a hot, noisy, vibrating Cessna 152 was an exercise in frustration.
- fuzzfactor 10y ago
  By 1982 there was the second-generation Pocket Computer, with the optional 4-color printer/plotter and the RS-232 ("COM Port") interface so I could also connect to an acoustic coupler telephone modem, then use any dial or touch-tone telephone to connect to time-sharing services. This all fit into a carrying case not much smaller than a regular laptop these days. The Standard API Petroleum Measurement Tables had been recently reapproved in 1980, for the first time as a computer routine rather than hardcopy handbooks of 83,000 entries each. This was a specific standard computer program, about 2K of Fortran77 32-bit mainframe floating-point code which had been jointly adopted by API & ASTM complete consensus. That much text would not fit into the Pocket Computer anyway. To get the 4-bit Pocket computer functional as a replacement for the handbook, I had to ditch the floating point, not use the exact algorithms the table was based on in any recognizable way, and come up with a bit-saving scheme not unlike the UNUMs of Gustafson[0] which have been discussed here. Each byte of memory was economized. Carrying it while boarding tankers and barges back then, I would guess that pretty much turns out to be the first laptop on the Ship Channel. Now everybody's got a laptop and it's no big deal. [0] http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029 http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029

camiller 10y ago

Yeah, the local Farm Bureau Co-Op sold TRS-80's to the farmers around where I grew up. I had a Apple //e but bought many Elephant Memory Systems 5.25" floppy disks from the Co-Op.

HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago

Ah, the Pocket Computer. I had one of those in early 90's when I was a student pilot. I programmed it to do flight calculations and learned valuable lessons in UX. Trying to operate those tiny keys and read the display while trying to fly a hot, noisy, vibrating Cessna 152 was an exercise in frustration.

fuzzfactor 10y ago
By 1982 there was the second-generation Pocket Computer, with the optional 4-color printer/plotter and the RS-232 ("COM Port") interface so I could also connect to an acoustic coupler telephone modem, then use any dial or touch-tone telephone to connect to time-sharing services. This all fit into a carrying case not much smaller than a regular laptop these days. The Standard API Petroleum Measurement Tables had been recently reapproved in 1980, for the first time as a computer routine rather than hardcopy handbooks of 83,000 entries each. This was a specific standard computer program, about 2K of Fortran77 32-bit mainframe floating-point code which had been jointly adopted by API & ASTM complete consensus. That much text would not fit into the Pocket Computer anyway. To get the 4-bit Pocket computer functional as a replacement for the handbook, I had to ditch the floating point, not use the exact algorithms the table was based on in any recognizable way, and come up with a bit-saving scheme not unlike the UNUMs of Gustafson[0] which have been discussed here. Each byte of memory was economized. Carrying it while boarding tankers and barges back then, I would guess that pretty much turns out to be the first laptop on the Ship Channel. Now everybody's got a laptop and it's no big deal. [0] http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029 http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029