Ancient portable

[carlsson]

If it was me who came across an item asked about three years ago, I would also add a PM note so the original poster had a chance to return to the forum and read about my new discoveries.

(I still think the forum software should have a quick button next to the user name to send someone a PM)

[Erik]

(I still think the forum software should have a quick button next to the user name to send someone a PM)

Clicking on the person's user name drops a menu with one of the options being to send a private message.

[WaveMan]

If people are interested in viewing what may be the first ever portable computer or data terminal on a tv show, check out the episode of Hawaii Five O called the "Computer Killer." As an electrical engineer, I was amazed when I first saw this episode in 2004 on KDOC tv here in SoCal. Waited a while and and just ran home for a late lunch to catch it yesterday on KDOC.

I don't want to go through the premise of the show, but a "computer consultant" apparently uses what I learned is an ADDS Envoy and an early mobile car phone to gain access to various Hawaii State agencies, like the DMV. He uses the acoustic coupler with the phone and seems the data rate is slow (I assume fast in early 70's!), as you can see the info crawl across the Envoy's screen at annoyingly slow rate. I checked out this episode on IMDB, and it was shot in 1974 and aired in early '75. He also has some vintage dumb terminal in his office that he uses to hack into the mainframes of state and gov't agencies.

I was intrigued very much by this episode, as I was fourteen when the movie Wargames came out, and this predates it by almost a decade and touches on
computer hacking and privacy. Seems even the travel agency/airlines aren't secure as he apparently hacks their computers. Thematically, computers are presented in many scenes.

Can the gentlemen who was a co-founder of ADDS elaborate a bit on the ADDS Envoy and when it was released? About ADDS? Hard to find anything on the web ont his unit...

[mloewen]

If people are interested in viewing what may be the first ever portable computer or data terminal on a tv show, check out the episode of Hawaii Five O called the "Computer Killer." As an electrical engineer, I was amazed when I first saw this episode in 2004 on KDOC tv here in SoCal. Waited a while and and just ran home for a late lunch to catch it yesterday on KDOC.

One of the Haraii Five-O episodes is rumored to have some SAGE hardware in it. Did you see anything that looks like this?

http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Q7/

[WaveMan]

I don't remember this being in any Hawaii5O episodes, but recognize it from many movies from 60's-70's. Ona related computer note, I see the movie Futureworld on your site and that movie was th first to use CGI, which aparently was generated by an Evans-Sutherland computer that I believe was used for military applications, like simulations.

WaveMan

[mccworkshop]

Hi.

This is just for historical reference now seeing as how old this thread is, but the Teleram P-1800 was a portable text editing terminal w/modem capability and data strage on a proprietary data cassette. It was made by Teleram Communications, and they even had a patent on the way the machine edited text in RAM memory. Introduced in 1975. The New Yorker did a review and description of them shortly after they were released in thier Talk of the Town. The article is not on the web, but here is an abstract of it:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/197...ARDS_000312050

We used to use them, way back when, in the news business. I just happened to stumble on this thread while browsing for info on them. I own three of them (one in pieces), and have documented them on my website (The MCC Workshop) at: http://mccworkshop.com.

The link for the Teleram article is:

http://mccworkshop.com/computers/comphistory10.htm

Hope this helps. I have the service manual somewhere, but I am still looking for it.

Mike