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Portfolio/Atari Newbie here!


KD-0082

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Hi there! I'm a retrocomputer & old systems/videogame enthusiast from Spain. I have a small collection of retro consoles and planning in the future to get an original VCS 2600 "6 switch" console with some games :) (specially Haunted House, Space Invaders and so on).

 

Recently I'm hunting down a Portfolio. I've located some of them and it's about time (weeks) to get one of them.

 

I'm planning two things with it:

 

1 - Use one in good condition (the first) as a personal agenda/small computer and play around with retro stuff and even dedicated Portfolio DOS games (I've check out all of the topics by @rcamp48, all of them looking interesting). In this case, I'm asking for practicity purposes: What you would buy first? parallel or serial adapter? My first accesory BTW would be at least 2 memory cards (64 and 128kb respectively). And maybe in the future, the Memory Expansion unit, but with cards dunno if it's that necessary.

 

2 - In the near future, and if I see if that it's even possible, I would look down for a battered one/non working unit for making something I would like: a custom phone case with physical keyboard (not sure if I could make it working...maybe with arduino/BT connections? this is just long term project and speculation for now ;) I don't even know how to program Arduino yet...). My actual phone is a Google Nexus 5x now, but will use this phone soon as a sandbox/playing ground with different systems and things like that (I love tinkering with things...).

 

Cheers! :waving:

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Serial and Parallel adapters are the first thing you want to get I have a few memory cards that are for sale wiith programs already on them, like Folidash, etc. I do have a limited supply (2) of the Slave/master cards without the master disks and some parallel ports, one good Atari Portfolio, (the second I am keeping for myself).... I do have a wif unit for the Atari Portfolio that I might sell, it depends on what I can get for it and a serail interface but I am not too keen on that, if yu look at the videos for the Pofoduino, it has usb and sd card, its really nice but I have not heard from Pierro Seguin in a long time, I sent him an email so I might get the parts and build oone myslef. Just need the program for it... Russ

 

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Thanks for the ideas and offering! First I would like to have a good one for their intended use (and part of my savings will go to a Nintendo Switch that I need to buy months ago also...). The one I'm after is in my home city and it has even the Ñ key and spanish language, something quite rare and nice (in Spain this thing was quite rare to see, it was far more successful the Casio organizers, specially the "Casio Club Magic Diary" Model C-300 in young population, lol. I even have one!).

 

About the accesories: for now I would look for memory cards, just for playing and saving things, and after that I suppose that the Parallel adapter, it's the most common I've seen. I don't know if I would even try to use a virtual DOS machine to copy things and put USB to parallel. Need to look for documentation for that, first...

 

About my idea of converting it to a "keyboard phone case", it came because I wanted so badly a modern iteration of the Portfolio with modern electronics but same aesthetics. But to put new guts inside this little thing would be an engineering challenge, so it's easier to make some kind of mod to the keyboard and convert it into a bluetooth accessory and fit a medium sized cellphone inside the screen and making it easily removable and accessible to buttons and ports (Android preferently, because they are usually lighter than iPhones and you can even install new OS's). Unfortunately, I don't have remote idea how to do that yet, I've started searching for documentation a bit. But if anyone knows how to do it and like the idea, you can use it :)

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