Micro Life (6) : Zenith minisPORT

My first proper computer (as opposed to my Dad's) the Amstrad PPC512 had been a disappointment but i soon sold it and got a proper laptop, or so i thought at the time. I headed down to Morgan Computer again and bought a Zenith minisPORT, a nice little XT notebook. Unlike the PPC512 this did actually seem portable.

It had a backlit CGA display, MS-DOS loaded from a ROM, a RAM disk and a built in floppy disk drive. What more could i want? Actually there was a problem, the disk drive used the unusual 2" floppy disk format though it came with an external 3.5" drive. Unfortunately getting a hold of 2" disks was difficult, and when you could find them they were very expensive. I had to resort to using the external drive which of course meant the laptop was not quite as portable as i'd like. It's power pack was also rather large which you needed as the battery life wasn't that great. So i did not take it to class to show off.

There wasn't a great deal i did with it apart from some word processing and soon i needed a more powerful PC but the Zenith was a nice little machine which i still possess. I have no idea if it still works though, maybe i should try it one of these days.