Compaq Portable PC The Compaq Portable was one of the first clones of the IBM PC to ship, first shipping in March 1983. The IBM PC was released in August 1981 and Compaq founded by senior members of Texas Instruments in February 1982 with the Compaq Portable being announced for the first time in November 1982. Unlike other 'close' compatibles of the period, the Compaq is a near exact clone of the PC in it's fucntionality, including the ability to run IBM PC-DOS vice needing a special version of MS-DOS written for it. Contrary to what is shown on some websites saying that the Compaq Portable was THE first clone to ship, the Dynalogic Hyperion portable shipped a full three months before Compaq began shipping this machine.

The Compaq Portable shipped with a 4.77mhz 8088, 128k of RAM, a single full-height 320k 5-1/4" floppy disk and a built-in 9 inch monochrome monitor. Inside it's case are also 5 8-bit ISA slots, all of them usable unlike the ISA slots in the IBM 5155, though the first two generally have the video card and an I/O board installed. This particular machine is fitted with dual 360k full-height floppy drives and has 640k of RAM.

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