The Compaq Portable was the first IBM PC clone, developed in the early 1980's. Aside from the ''portability'' (that word is being generous... the machine weighed 40 pounds), the only factor that distinguished it from the IBM PC was a video board that had CGA graphics, but the higher resolution text characters of the IBM Monochrome text adapter.

This machine spawned a whole series of portables from Compaq: Portable Plus (10MB hard disk), Portable/286 (80286 CPU), Portable II (80286 in a lighter case), Portable III (faster 80286 in an even lighter case with a plasma display), and the Portable 386 (an 80386 in a Portable III style case).

The companion machine to the CompaqPortable, the Deskpro, had an 8MHz 8086, making it notably faster than either the CompaqPortable or the IBM PC, and likely one of the first ''turbo'' clones.
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CategoryHardware CategoryHistory