Dynalogic Hyperion The Dynalogic Hyperion was the first portable IBM PC compatible computer, released a full 3 months before the Compaq Portable PC. It was first shown in June 1982 at Spring COMDEX in Atlantic City and began shipping in January 1983. It used a 4.77mhz 8088 cpu and had 256k of RAM, a 7 inch amber display, and dual full-height floppy drives. The unit included an internal 300bps modem and didn't provide for any additional internal expansion due to it's small size. Being manufactured in Canada, the Hyperion was not widely seen in the U.S. though I have seen reports that it may have been manufactured here for a time. Dynalogic became a division of Bytec in January 1983.

The system shipped with a customized version of MS-DOS 1.25 which first displays the Hyperion logo and then the various copyright messages. Though the Hyperion runs on MS-DOS, it is not an exact clone of the IBM PC and there are certain incompatibilities that pop up when running some programs. Notably, the Hyperion was unable to run MS-DOS 2.0 when it was released.

According to John Collins, an ex-Commodore Electronics employee in the UK, Commodore purchased a Hyperion from the UK distributor for Bytec around Christmas 1982 for evaluation purposes. After it's evaluation, it was recomended that Commodore design it's own PC-clone, vice licensing the Hyperion due to perceived problems with servicing the machine due to it's internal layout. This Commodore eventually did, the machine being done in its German subsidiary in Braunshweig. The problem is, this new machine wouldn't be finished in time for exhibition at CeBIT in Hannover in March 1983, so Commodore stuck its logo on several Hyperions, and exhibited these in its booth at Hanover. Apparently, Commodore never sold any rebadged Hyperions nor manufactured any itself.

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