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From: michael@crlt.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Flat Displays and Portable Computers
Message-ID: <655@crlt.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Feb-87 11:06:04 EST
Article-I.D.: crlt.655
Posted: Sun Feb 22 11:06:04 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Feb-87 01:40:44 EST
References: <1191@ucbcad.berkeley.edu> <191@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <38@cerebus.UUCP> <991@ur-tut.UUCP>
Organization: CRLT , Ann Arbor, MI
Lines: 55
Summary: Shrinking it, and disks.

In article <991@ur-tut.UUCP>, aptr@ur-tut.UUCP (The Wumpus) writes:

> >[ The CPU, batteries, ROM_stuff and keyboard could fold up against
> >  screen when being carried.  Keeping the folded package to around an
> >  inch or so thick is the trick. ]
> 
> I think the unit probably end up being about three inches thick.  The NEC
> Multispeed uses this folded setup, but it still takes room to get everything
> in it.
 
Take a look at "surface-mounted devices".  These amount to chips with solder
bumps or tiny leads that you solder directly to a super-small-trace PC board.
Things can get >really< thin with this technology - especially if you mount
them on both sides of the board.  (The normal use is to then put legs on the
little board and mount it like a chip on a normal board, but some equipment
dispenses with this step - and there's really no need for it.)

> Another question is that of data storage.  My apartment-mate owns a Tandy 100
> portable computer with 32k, part of which is used for Ramdisk.  Having seen
> the problems he has with space, I preffer large amounts of Ram (can you say
> gigobyte?) and Harddisks (300+Meg). Realizing that this is on the large side
> for a portable, I think it should have atleast 2 3 1/2" disk drives and the
> possibility for a 20 Meg hard disk.  This would allow running large programs
> that are disk intensive without swapping disks.

Hard disks could be a problem - can you imagine the havoc caused to your
precious 20 megabytes of class notes when the notebook with the spinning
hard disk falls to the asphalt-tile-covered-concrete classroom floor?
(It's tough enough on bonded-wire connected chips.)

Meanwhile, silicon RAM technology is catching up with horizontal recording,
in terms of price per bit and bits per volume.  Won't be long and you can
get your hundred or so megabytes on CMOS chips for less than an equivalent
disk, and power it off a lithium cell for decades at a time.  (Vertical
recording might put disks back in the running at the gigabyte level, if
they ever get the bugs out.)
 
> BTW: In either last weeeks, or the previous weeks Infoworld, there were
> several articles on portables (ie. Laptops).  One of the things that was
> pointed out is that people are starting to want as much in a laptop as in a
> Desktop. (ie. 640k IBM compatible with 730 x 600 resolution, 20M hard disk,
> 2400 baud modem, 2 3 1/2" drives, 2+Meg above board memory, etc...)

STARTING to?  Heck, I wanted something hotter than a mainframe in a laptop
back in the '60s, when I first started thinking "personal computers will be
real soon".

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