Since I've been pondering retro computers a lot lately, I remember my very first computer. Meaning the first computer that was just mine, as opposed to my mother's that I got to use. It was a Datavue 25. This exact variation of it:

Mine was an 8088 with 1280k of RAM. I got it used in 1988. It came from the factory with 640K, but the guy I bought it from doubled it somehow. When the Datavue 25 booted, you could choose how much of the memory to assign to a RAMDisk. I used to assign 512K to system RAM, and 768K to RAMDisk, and I could copy two 360K floppies to the RAMDisk.

I would generally copy disks 2 and 3 of a multi floppy game to the RAMDisk, and then put Disk1 in the drive and launch the game. Then when it asked me to swap to a second disk, I would point it to the RAMDisk.

I primarily played Sierra games on this, such as Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest. I also ran Wordstar a lot. That was my favorite word processor

I really liked this computer a lot. The IR keyboard was a little slow, but you could also hook it up with a cable. I didn't have a battery for it, but it was still cool to be able to take it places and plug it in. Also, the battery was really heavy, so it was much lighter without it.

Anyhow, did anybody else here have a Datavue portable?

Cheers,

Harley.