28 Jun
2007
28 Jun
'07
8:45 a.m.
Message: 13
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:18:09 -0400
From: "Jason McBrien" <jbmcb1 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Semi-OT: Interesting or unusual PC Compatibles?
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
On 6/26/07, Dave McGuire <mcguire at
neurotica.com> wrote:
> In the "odd PCs" department, I have to
mention the Seequa
> Chameleon. It has an 8088 and a Z80, so it can run DOS, CP/M-80, or
> CP/M-86.
The DEC Rainbow 100 was a similar machine, it had a
8086 and a Z/80, and
could triple (or quad) boot into CPM/80, CPM/86, MS-DOS, or act as a VT-220
via hardware emulation. It didn't get far as it used wacky 400Kb single
sided quad density floppies that hardly anyone else used. According to
Wikipedia, DEC even ported Windows 1.0 to it.
Add the Otrona Attache 8:16 to that list. It used an 8086 daughter card to run MS-DOS
2.11. It had trouble with WordPerfect, though, as the keyboard did not have the PC
function keys. It also did PC graphics in software, so a program like Borland's Reflex
database redrew the screen _very_ slowly when you scrolled.
A couple more oddities-
The Tandy 2000 was one of the few 80186 based clones, and ran well behaved
MS-DOS apps, though it had somewhat oddball video hardware, keyboard and
serial port setup. It required a custom version of DOS, and MS even ported
Xenix to it.
The HP 100LX/200LX palmtops used a custom 80186 and ran most DOS applications, running
MS-DOS 5.0 from ROM. There could be problems with the LX's graphics, which was 640x200
CGA with some quirks.
The Atari Portfolio was probably the first palmtop
device that ran DOS apps,
though it was such a wacky architecture it's software support was limited.
The Poqet came out shortly after the Portfolio, IIRC. Ran quite a few DOS apps under
MS-DOS 3.3 -- the Poqet PC website (http://www.bmason.com/PoqetPC/faq/poqetpc.html) calls
it "about 99.9% compatible with the original IBM/PC-XT desktop computer."
The HP 100 series were some of the first laptop
computers that could run
DOS. It had DOS, Basic, Lotus and a few other productivity apps in ROM, and
used the somewhat odd HP-IL bus to interface with peripherals, among them a
battery powered disk drive.