Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
C64 Laptop... er... PDA... I Don't Care - I Want One!
By bohus
After seeing this, I almost launched my own Mountain Dew out my nose. You may recall that about a year ago, the Commodore 64 joined the games-in-a-joystick craze with the C64 DTV. It's a great little joystick, and it's also very hacker friendly. Once you get the main circuit board out of the case, there are solder pads (with silk screened labels yet!) that let you easily add a keyboard and an original C64 floppy drive.
There have been many great hacks of the DTV (including placing the entire computer inside the case of the aforementioned floppy drive), but this project takes the cake. This project adds the keyboard plus a built in LCD monitor, joystick port (using a mini replica of an Atari joystick put out by Basic Fun - review to come!), and soon memory cards! It runs off of internal rechargeable batteries, is made from time-honored contact paper & balsa wood, and has made it into my personal history books.
Ben Heckendorn is still my hero, but fortunately my heart is big enough for two hacker geniuses.
