portuesi@tweezers.esd.sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) (09/26/89)
After reading the press blurbs about the Portfolio, I've decided that it might be what I'm looking for. Nevertheless, I would be grateful for answers to the following questions, from somebody who knows more about the Portfolio than I do: 1. Does the Portfolio have a serial port? What is the highest baud rate supported over the serial port? 2. What kind of memory technology does the 640K expansion use? How much will it cost to upgrade a Portfolio to 640K? 3. Is there an optional external floppy drive? 4. What is the storage capacity of the external memory cards? How much does a memory card cost? What is the I/O speed of these cards? 5. Does the Portfolio offer any sort of graphics capability? Can the display handle inverse video and the IBM graphics character set? 6. Is the bundled software included in a built-in ROM, or does it come on memory cards? 7. What version of MS-DOS does the Portfolio use? Is MS-DOS built into ROM? Are external MS-DOS commands also built into ROM? 8. The Portfolio supports a 40x8 virtual view onto an 80x24 screen. Is it possible to make applications which simply use the 40x8 physical screen only? I would prefer to see only a little bit of a document rather than a scrolling view of one-sixth of a standard display. 9. Do MS-DOS programs that assume a monochrome display adapter and simply blast bytes into display memory work on the Portfolio? 10. How long does the Portfolio run on three AA alkaline batteries? Email responses would be preferred, as I don't normally read this group. I would be more than happy to send summaries to interested parties, and if I receive enough requests I will post a summary to the net. --M -- __ \/ Michael Portuesi Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc. portuesi@SGI.COM "The best length for television programs is either 30 seconds or 8 hours." David Byrne
ignac@electro.UUCP (Ignac Kolenko) (09/29/89)
In article <PORTUESI.89Sep26111645@tweezers.esd.sgi.com> portuesi@sgi.com (Michael Portuesi) writes: >4. What is the storage capacity of the external memory cards? How >much does a memory card cost? What is the I/O speed of these cards? on this note, just wondering: what brand of memory cards does the portfolio use?? it wouldn't happen to be the mitsubishi 128K melcard now would it????? if so, they have mel cards up to 512K, i believe. that means the portfolio should be able to handle that much memory easily?? any answers out there??? while on this topic, i wonder if a little pocket ST would sell?? like, it would be neat: micro-minuature track ball for mouse, 100x100 physical screen which maps into the normal 640x400 screen, and 32 memory expansion ports for these little 128K memory cards so the machine could emulate the mega 4 st. well, maybe not. :-) long live the jays. magic number is 3. if they keep saying "i think i can, i think i can" ... -- =====Ignac A. Kolenko (The Ig) watmath!watcgl!electro!ignac===== co-author of QuickST, and the entire line of Quick Shareware!!!! "I don't care if I don't win, 'cause I don't care if I fail" from 'Youth Of Today' by SUBURBAN DISTORTION