AMC’s hit series Halt and Catch Fire revolves around a company called Cardiff Electric,
who in the early 1980s decides to clone an IBM PC and build a portable version.
This, of course, leads to a room full of lawyers and a variety of dramatic events.
And while this show is entirely fictional, it is loosely based on Compaq Computer corporation.
It’s difficult to pin down the first ever IBM clone because there were a lot of computers
in the early 80s that claimed to be MS-DOS compatible.
But, a lot of those computers were really limited in what software they could actually
run and they weren’t really compatible the IBM hardware.
But, what I have in front of me here are two of the earliest examples of IBM compatible
computers that were more or less 100% compatible.
Compaq was founded by these 3 guys, Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto.
All three were former Texas Instruments employees who left to form their own computer company.
Rod Canion wanted to build a portable computer, similar to the Osborne, which had come out
the year before.
The problem wasn’t just building the computer, but making sure there was enough software
that customers would find the computer useful.
By this point, there were a hundred different incompatible computer architectures in the
market already.
And, adding one more wasn’t likely to give them a very big slice of the computer market.
But, then Rod wonder if maybe there was a way they could design their new computer to
be compatible with existing software.
Computers made by companies like Commodore and Atari had a lot of proprietary chips,
such as video chips and audio chips.
These chips were not easy to duplicate, and doing so would surely invite a big lawsuit.
But, the IBM PC was different.
IBM had designed the computer using all off-the-shelf parts.
So, it would be totally legal to make another computer exactly like it.
There was only one problem.
The BIOS.
This chip contained the ROM code that made the computer start up and handle all input
and output.
So everything from reading the keyboard, to putting characters on the screen.
This ROM code was copyrighted.
But, there was nothing to stop someone from writing their own compatible ROM from ground
up.
And that’s exactly what Compaq and Hyperion did.
The Hyperion was first to market in January 1983, Followed by the Compaq two months later
in March.
Lets’s start by taking a look at the Compaq Portable.
At 28 pounds, it certainly doesn’t seem very portable by today’s standards, but
compared to lugging around an IBM PC and monitor, it actually was quite portable.
There is a sliding door on this side, revealing the power supply, and the other side reveals
5 card slots.
So, unlike other portables this one was very expandable, in fact I’ve installed a compact
flash reader as a hard drive substitute.
It has two little legs on the bottom which help to elevate the screen when you lay it
down.
So, let me sit this thing down and show you how it works.
To remove the keyboard, you just slide these two release latches.
And, typically you would also want to pull out these little legs on the bottom of the
keyboard.
There you go.
And here’s where the power cord goes.
This is the only wire the computer actually needs.
While were looking at this, one interesting thing I want to show you is that you can coil
up the power cord and shove it up into this little space here.
It was actually designed that way so you could carry the power cord inside the computer.
The keyboard layout is a little strange by today’s standards.
You have 10 function keys over here on the left, the backslash is in a weird place here,
there are no dedicated cursor keys, rather you have to use the cursor keys that are part
of the number pad.
Believe it or not this is all exactly how the IBM keyboard of the time was, except for
the location of the backslash.
Over here, you get a brightness knob for the screen, And this particular unit comes with
a single full-height floppy and a hard drive over here.
This particular model has the really early style floppy drives just like the IBM used,
but later models had the lever-style drives and some configurations of the computer like
this one, had dual floppy drives.
The keyboard cable is not terribly long, but it does give a little freedom to move it around
some.
Now, it has these 5 card slots on the side, but how do you actually get to those?
Well, you’ll have to disassemble the computer to some degree.
Myself, I have to use a screwdriver to do this, actually usually two screwdrivers.
But I’ve heard stories that compaq technicians did this often enough that they could remove
the cover with their bare hands, using no tools at all.
There are several different self-contained compartments here.
You can take this off and have access to the drives, This will give you access to the high
voltage system like the CRT and the power supply.
And this section here will give you access to the cards.
You’ll need a screwdriver to loosen some of these screws, and there you go.
Now you can upgrade or install whatever you want.
You could even put an Ad-Lib or Soundblaster card in here if you wanted.
The video card is sort of special because it has a little internal header for the internal
monitor to connect.
However the video card has another trick up its sleeve.
Both the Hyperion and the Compaq also added a unique system for video display.
You see, in the early days when you went to buy an IBM PC you actually needed to choose
which type of monitor you would be using, CGA or MDA.
But it wasn’t just a monitor type you would pick, but also a video card to go with it.
So, what was the difference between the two?
MDA was a monochrome, text-only display.
It had no graphics modes at all.
However, it ran at a higher frequency than CGA, which gave it a higher resolution, and
therefor very sharp text.
CGA, on the other hand had 16 color text, but less resolution, and at a higher price.
Despite MDA’s inferior capabilities, many businesses still preferred it for the sharper
text, which they said was easier on the eyes.
Also, it was typically displayed on an amber screen, which they also said was easier on
the eyes.
If you take a look at this comparison, you can see the two different fonts that were
used for MDA and CGA.
As you can see, there is a noticeable difference, and I suppose if you were working with text
all day long maybe MDA would have been a decent trade-off.
Because the two video systems used totally different frequencies, you could not interchange
monitors between the two different cards.
So, it was generally not possible to have a computer that had sharp text and color graphics
on the same system.
But since the Compaq and Hyperion machines had internal monitors, they decided to create
custom video cards that could display both MDA and CGA.
And the CRT controller could change frequencies to adapt to each mode.
Let me demonstrate this on the Compaq.
So here we are looking at a standard text screen.
By default, the Compaq starts up in MDA mode.
However, if I want to force CGA mode, I can hold down control, alt, and then press less-than
or greater-than to alternate between the two modes.
You’ll hear a click of a relay, and there you go.
You can probably see that the text is a bit chunkier looking now.
Let’s try again.
MDA mode.
And CGA mode.
Of course, the card is smart enough to know that if you select a graphics mode, such as
when playing a game, it will automatically switch to CGA mode.
Also, the card does have RGBI and composite outputs.
But in order to use them, you’ll have to make sure the card is in CGA mode.
But, as a result that means you can get full color using CGA composite mode on games that
support it, and just to toot my own horn a bit, Planet X3 works great on this computer
in composite mode using a full 16 color palette.
And it also works well on the internal green screen in 4 color mode.
And let’s try an RGBI monitor.
This will give you a full 16 colors of text.
Even though the internal screen is monochrome, CGA graphics actually look pretty good on
it.
I mean, CGA typically only had 4 colors anyway, and they were not the best choices for colors,
either.
So, in many ways, a grayscale or in this case, greenscale display with 4 shades of green
actually looks better on a lot of games.
For example, when you look at the 4 shades of green here, there is a nice even gradient,
but the same thing displayed on the RGB monitor uses a terrible palette.
I wouldn’t necessarily say the Compaq Portable is a great MS-DOS gaming computer.
But not so much because it uses CGA.
But mostly because it runs at 4.77 Mhz so a lot of DOS games either won’t run or just
run too slow to be really playable.
And remember, this computer came out a year before EGA graphics was even introduced, and
many years before software for such cards became widespread.
So the graphics that it has is very much appropriate for the time period.
I’ve heard rumors that later you could get an EGA card that had the internal header so
you could play your games in 16 shades of green or in full color on an external monitor,
but I’ve never seen one.
Now let’s have a look at the Hyperion.
It is considered portable as well, but it came in this carry bag.
Admittedly, because of this, it took a little longer to pack and unpack than the Compaq.
However, it was 10 pounds lighter than the Compaq, which is certainly worth something.
In fact, you can see it’s a good bit smaller than the compaq, however it’s almost exactly
the same height, despite having a much smaller screen.
The keyboard pulls out from a little tray like this, but also has some little legs on
the bottom that you’ll need to extend.
And there you go.
It’s actually a nice looking system.
It definitely has a more integrated look than the Compaq, which was mostly built from off-the-shelf
components.
For example, the disk drives are very unique.
I’ve never seen any that work like this.
You just press the front and they pop open.
On the keyboard, they did put the function keys at the top like more modern systems,
but still only has 10 of them, which was pretty standard for XT class machines.
Also, like the IBM and the Compaq, it has no dedicated cursor keys, again, requiring
the use of the number pad for that.
I do like the fact it has a carry handle on the top, similar to the early Macintosh machines.
And of course, on the rear of the computer, you’ve got your regular power port, composite
video, looks like it has a built in modem.
Floppy drive, parallel port, and I don’t know.
Probably some kind of bus port where you could, I don’t know.. that remains to be seen.
Well, let’s plug it in and have a look.
I love the light up power button.
This thing is also a lot quieter than the Compaq.
Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a problem.
I think one of the capacitors for the CRT deflection have gone bad, right as I was getting
ready to film this episode.
And while the top of the screen looks ok, it gets squished at the bottom.
Anyway, the Hyperion could run regular MS-DOS, but it actually came with its own Hyperion
DOS which is a bit different.
If you look at the bottom of the screen, there are hot keys assigned to function keys, designed
to make DOS easier to navigate.
I’d love to demonstrate this to you further, but the computer isn’t going to cooperate.
What’s worse is that the return key also died right in the middle of filming this.
All of the other keys still work, just not the return key.
So I guess I won’t be able to demonstrate this one much.
So, how did these computers do in the marketplace?
Well, the Compaq was an immediate success.
Originally priced at $3,590, it was competitive with the IBM PC.
However, IBM wasn’t offering any sort of portable computer at that point.
So, if you wanted a portable IBM PC, you had to buy a Compaq.
Despite great sales, IBM wasn’t particularly concerned.
Unlike the scenes from Halt and Catch Fire, IBM was almost silent on the matter, feeling
that Compaq was only a minor nuisance.
They figured they could bring out their own portable computer and that would essentially
be the end of Compaq.
In fact, Compaq was quite worried about the introduction of the IBM 5155 portable.
As you can see, it is a very similar to design to the Compaq, albeit a slightly longer body,
but also slightly thinner.
Otherwise, the fold-out keyboard design was very similar.
Once IBM announced they were about to bring out their own portable, sales of the Compaq
started to dry up.
Resellers stopped ordering the Compaq figuring they’d be selling the IBM product instead
in a few months.
Compaq feared that they might actually go out of business as a result.
Rod Canion had a decision to make.
The way he saw it, there were two options.
On one hand they could either cut production and watch as IBM slowly chipped away at Compaq’s
customer base, eventually running them out of business, or they could just keep cranking
out Compaq systems at full speed even though nobody was ordering them.
The idea behind that being that, just in case IBM had production problems or a delayed launch.
So, they continued to load up thousands of Compaq systems and parked them in tractor
trailers all around the city of Houston and just waited.
And that turned out to be the winning solution because it turned out IBM did have production
problems and so when the resellers started looking for portable computers again, they
started ordering the Compaq systems again in big way.
And Compaq was ready with stock on hand.
And so, Compaq prevailed and continued to make new products such as the Compaq Portable
II, Portable III, and even desktop systems called the Desk Pro.
But what about the Hyperion?
How did it fare int he market?
The Hyperion, on the other hand, continued to have reliability problems, especially with
the floppy drives.
But, they also had a lot of production problems.
They had bottlenecks at the border, for example, they had issues getting parts from the United
States into Canada and then they had bottle necks getting the completed units out of Canada,
back to the United States where their primary customer base was.
In fact, they even had financial problems and at one point they changed names from Dynalogic
to Bytec.
Now, Compaq was immune to these problems because their manufacturing was based out of Houston,
Texas.
In fact, Hyperion had apparently made a deal to have Commodore manufacture the computer
in the USA and sell the computer under the Commodore brand name.
In fact, if you look at this promotional ad from Commodore you can actually see the Hyperion
here and if you look closely you can see the Commodore brand name printed on the front.
Here’s another grainy photo, but you can actually see the Commodore brand is embossed
into the plastic.
However, for whatever reason, the deal with Commodore fell through.
Although Compaq survived the introduction of IBM’s portable onto the marketplace,
the Hyperion did not.
Another possibly overlooked issue is that the Compaq and the IBM portable were both
expandable in that they had internal card slots.
The Hyperion did not.
And so there was a rumored hard drive that could connect to that big external connection
on the back, and if it did exist it was only available in small numbers.
And so, for the most part, the Hyperion was a floppy only system.
So, here’s an interesting comparison.
Which computer is better as a collectible today?
The Compaq or the Osborne?
After all, at the time of Compaq’s launch, the Osborne was the nearest competitor.
Well, if you are just going to sit them on a shelf as a collectible, either one will
do.
But for me, I’d definitely have to go with the Compaq today.
After all, the Osborne is a text-only system designed to run CP/M, which was mostly business
software.
The Compaq, on the other hand, with it’s IBM compatibility means you can run thousands
of old MS-DOS games, which is considerably more interesting.
And so, that about wraps it up for the Compaq and Hyperion.
Now, I hope to come back to the Hyperion again once I get it fixed up, and I also have a
Compaq Portable 2 and Portable 3 that also need fixing and I hope to bring those to you
eventually.
So, stick around for those and thanks for watching!