Other Far East Computers


Epson HX-20 - 1982

This one was release in 1982 and came from a company who had concentrated on printers for many years. It is in my collection because it can probably claim to the the first laptop computer. It measured 29cm by 21.5 cm and weighed around 1.7kg. It had a proper computer keyboard though the screen was just 4 lines of 20 characters though, in word processing mode, this was really a moveable window over a document far wider and the screen used to move around as you worked. It was very well equipped with an inbuilt cassette for saving programs and data and even a small dot matrix printer (with paper just a few inches wide) capable of around 47 lines of 24 characters per minute which was very fast. It came with Microsoft BASIC (like many other Japanese computers of the time) and 16KB of memory upgradable internally to 32MB. Nor was this just a basic computer, to it could be added floppy disks, a proper display controller to connect to a computer monitor and even an acoustic coupler (as seen in films such as War Games). The only basic thing about it was the sound which was a simple buzzer.