Here’s an Amstrad PPC640D I picked up a little while ago. This was actually an accidental purchase because I was trying to explain to SuperNick (Nick) how eBay bidding worked. Naturally, I won the auction. Excellent demonstration! At least I’ve ended up with a rather interesting old portable computer to show for it.

The PPC640D is the 640 KB, dual-floppy version of Amstrad’s PPC portable family, and it’s closely related to the PPC512. It’s built around an 8 MHz 8086-2 processor, with a 16-bit path to system memory and an 8-bit bus for peripherals and expansion hardware. There’s also provision for an 8087-2 math coprocessor, should I ever feel the need to make this thing particularly extravagant.

Mine came with its original carrying bag and a power adaptor rated at 13 V and 1.9 A. There are two 720 KB 3.5-inch floppy drives on the side, along with various switches and ports for the display, serial and parallel connections, external monitor and expansion hardware. The keyboard folds out from the front, which is a rather clever way of packing everything into a portable machine.

The screen is another story entirely. When it’s switched off, it reminds me of a giant Game Boy, but once powered on, the viewing angles are truly spectacular. Spectacularly bad! You really have to sit directly in front of it to read anything. I’m sure it was quite a machine in its day, though.

I had a bit of trouble finding a suitable system disk. One of the original disks is damaged, although at least some of the boot information is still readable, so I’ve been trying other disks to get the machine running. The video shows me having a fiddle with that, along with the volume and contrast controls and the various storage compartments.

Underneath there’s a battery bay for ten C-cell batteries. That’s rather a lot of batteries to carry around, and it’s no wonder the machine weighs as much as it does. There are even plastic tubes inside the compartment, apparently intended to help contain any leakage if somebody forgets about the batteries for a few years.

I also have a cigarette-lighter power lead, although I haven’t got a car handy to try that in. The original manual came with the machine too, which is useful because there’s quite a bit to learn about how these old Amstrads were configured.

I’ll probably pass this one along eventually. The 8086 generation is a little before my usual nostalgia window, and after seeing a 1983 Apple Lisa up and running, an 8086 doesn’t seem quite so whiz-bang. Still, it’s an interesting machine and a lovely example of what passed for portable computing back then.

Anyway, enjoy the video. Not much of an overview, admittedly. It was late after a fairly busy week, and I’d put off recording something for long enough. :)

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