The 1982 NEC PC-8201A was one of the first laptop computers sold in the USABefore the smartphone, portable computers and personal desk assists “PDAs” were very popular devices to carry around. As with today’s smartphone, these devices were used to manage one’s appointment calendar, make notes and simple documents. Although many of these pre-date practical use of the WWW Internet or 3/4G cell service, many of these could connect to the phone system via modem, infrared signal, or phone/data cable.Selection of Tandy Radio Shack’s Portable ComputersCan you identify any of these?More PDAs and hand-held computers from our exhibit case – Sharp, HP, Apple Newton, Nixdorf and Psion were all popular PDAs. The watch is also a PDA.Photo from the Portable Computing ExhibitThe Zenith MinisPORT had 2 inch diskettes and ran an OEM version of MS DOS 3.3And even more portables.
