Commodore LCD

Description

Commodore developed this 3 pounds laptop in 1984 and presented it to the public at the Consumer Eletronics Show in January 1985 (Winter CES). In contradiction to what you might think when you first hear of a Commodore laptop, this machine has nearly nothing to do with the Commodore 64 or the Commodore 128 - alas.

The factory population was 32k of static CMOS RAM, internally upgradable to 64k using standard memory chips. It was externally upgradable with another 64k of RAM.

Its display was one of the best on the market available at that time, made by Commodore's own optoelectronics division, which was sold off shortly after the CLCD was cancelled. The resolution in graphics mode was 480x128, and 80x16 in text mode. Although only 16 lines could be displayed simultaneously, the virtual screen size was 25 lines.

Like the Commodore 264 series (Plus/4, C16, C116), the Commodore LCD had builtin software, but as opposed to the unfaithful 264 series, the software was by far better. The 96k of CMOS ROM contained the following software, some of which was incomplete in the prototype shown on the Winter CES:

• wordprocessor and spreadsheet - both could be worked on using a split-screen display, with the spreadsheet supporting scrolling even in this split-screen format. The spreadsheet engineer stated that it will be faster at moving a thousand cells than Lotus 1-2-3 on an IBM PC.
• address manager and planner
• pocket calculator
• filemanager
• memo pad
• monitor
• terminal program, and finally
• BASIC 3.6

The BASIC 3.6 is - with the exception of a few commands which are useless for the CLCD, like COLOR - almost downward compatible with BASIC 7.0. It also supports high resolution graphic commands, just like the Plus/4.

The terminal program is of use, indeed, since the CLCD has a built in 300bps auto answer/auto-dial modem. Additionally, the CLCD has a separate RS232C port, so there is no need to attach a userport-to-RS232C adapter for a 'real' serial port. Commodore also decided to integrate a standard centronics port; rather unusual (at least for that time) is the HP compatible barcode port.

Lacking a builtin floppy drive, the CLCD came with a serial IEC port, which was compatible with all Commodore serial peripherals. Above that, Commodore showed prototypes of an external 3.5" serial floppy drive, the 1561, which was also battery-powered.

A battery-powered thermal transfer printer with an excellent NLQ image was produced, but didn't make it to the market, either.

Although this laptop didn't have an external video output, Jeff Porter stated that his team was thinking about a cartridge for the CLCD which provided 80 column display for an external video display, using the C128's video chip.

In 1994(?), I saw an offer in the newspaper (SperrMüll), which was roughly like that:

Commodore Laptop, nur 5 Stück gebaut! DM 2400,-

Commodore laptop, only 5 units built! US$ 1,400

Links

• PK's Commodore 64 Page

Site copyright © 1997 by Marc-Jano Knopp