Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
Oddball Micros: Amstrad PPC 640
By James Grahame
Remember the old days, when there was no such thing as a sensible laptop? Amstrad unleashed the PPC-640 in 1988 as a low-cost IBM-compatible portable. It weighed 22lbs, so the term "draggable" is probably more apt. It ran on ten C batteries or mains power and offered a terrifyingly bad 320x200 flip-up monochrome screen. The CPU was an Intel 8088, clocked at 4.77 MHz. It came with a "full" 640K of memory and included a 2400 bps modem, in case you had a hankering to surf your local FIDO bulletin board system or CompuServe.
All in all, the PPC-640 was a fairly typical late-1980s clone in a really weird and almost impossible to expand case. After peering at the reflective 9-inch LCD panel for more than about 10 minutes, you start fantasizing about a visit to the local Computer Shack to pick up a real color monitor instead.
PPC-640 information in the Computer Closet
