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Atari Portfolio
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| Specifications | Memory Cards | PC Card Reader | Memory Expansion | Programmation | Parallel Interface |
They are plugged on the left, under the keyboard. There were three of them:
Other manufacturers offered high capacity cards, on the right one with 4MB! |
 Rear and back of a 4MB card. |
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| You have to reboot the machine to make the card work. At boot, the driver is loaded and displays some informations. | Then you get three drives: Unit A: with 64KB containing the drivers, don't touch it! Here the result for CHKDSK A: | Then, two other drives D: and E: with 2MB each, here the result for CHKDSK E: |
| To ease the transferts between a Portfolio and a PC, Atari made this "PC Card Drive", to read/write the Memory Cards from DOS on a desktop PC.
It contained an ISA board, a specific cable and a beautiful external card reader. It's hard today to find a PC with ISA connectors, so you won't be able to easely use it! Regarding the low capacities of those cards, a parallel system would have been a good choice. Installation:
The problem with the 4MB card is that only the first 64KB unit is seen... I solved that with the Memory Expansion! |
 The ISA board and the Card Reader |
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This memory expansion brings you 256 KB more and a second card reader as B:. So you get 384 KB or memory. You can chain two of this units to get up to a total of 640KB Ram. In this case, you have to push a little switch in position "1" for the first unit and "2" for the second. To be working, you have to perform cold reset: open the battery cover, push the little metal bar, put back the batteries and switch on. A CHKDSK displays the RAM amount. Thanks to unit B:, I was able to transfert files from the PC to the special 4MB card. |
With the integrated text editor, you can write the source file, let's say HELLO.ASM in the SOURCES folder. Then you compile it with TASM SOURCES\HELLO |
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| The PL1 (Portfolio Language) It's a programming language, close to the FORTH, with a stack and a postfixed notation. It gives access to graphics, text, sound, files. Even if it has a limited number of functions, it covers every domain. On the right, a program example that draws unending lines.  |
proc limit64
dup
if 64 >=
128 swap -
swap -1 * swap
else
if dup 0 <
-1 * swap -1 * swap
endif
endif
endproc
proc limit240
dup
if 240 >=
480 swap -
swap -1 * swap
else
if dup 0 <
-1 * swap -1 * swap
endif
endif
endproc
48 50 tone
rand 1 >> 240 mod x =
rand 1 >> 64 mod y =
rand 8 mod dx =
rand 8 mod dy =
rand 1 >> 240 mod a =
rand 1 >> 64 mod b =
rand 8 mod da =
rand 8 mod db =
59 50 tone
graph
while press 0 ==
cls
for 100 1 i
x % y % move
x % y % plot
a % b % line
dx % dup x % + limit240 do
x = dx =
da % dup a % + limit240 do
a = da =
dy % dup y % + limit64 do
y = dy =
db % dup b % + limit64 do
b = db =
endfor
endwhile
key drop
text
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| It plugs into the expansion port. Either directly on the Portfolio, or chained to a memory expansion unit.
At last, the Portfolio is not so "pocket" as it seemed... Two main uses:
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