PC World – December 2015

FEATURES
THIS OLD TECH
wondered, “How does he type so fast?” And most importantly: “How
does anybody know what to type into the little blinky prompt to make
it work?”
Enter the Toshiba T1000 laptop, circa 1989. My older brother
taught me how to insert a floppy disk with Tetris on it, turn it on, type
DIR, then type TETRIS to run the program. As mundane as it sounds
now, it was a transformative experience for an 8- or 9-year-old kid. (I
had previously played around on an Atari ST and a Mac SE, so I had the
mouse down pat. But a command prompt? That was serious business.)
In 1987, Japanese firm Toshiba delivered the T1000, a 6.4-pound
version of the IBM PC that could fit comfortably inside a briefcase and
run on batteries alone for four to five hours a charge. It retailed for
$1,199 in the United States and included a 4.77MHz 80C88 CPU, 512K
of RAM, a 720KB 3.5-inch floppy drive, and a 640x200 EGA-capable
monochrome LCD.
At the time of its release, critics hailed the Toshiba T1000 as a
groundbreaking innovation. It was the lightest PC-compatible laptop
The Toshiba
T1000, with
its lid and top
cover removed.
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