generally considered illegal. Still, that
hasn’t stopped many.
THE BEST POCKET EMULATORS
I have a soft spot for CHIP-8 emulators,
as it was the first programming
language I learned and it’s still useful
for studying the basics of software
architecture today. Chipfinity (tinyurl.
com/y47l6bkk) allows you to load and
save ROMs (and comes with a truckload
of them to start you off), but lacks the
ability to code in the emulator itself. The
DREAM 6800 and other CHIP-8-
powered variants had a built-in memory
monitor app that allowed you to enter
your programs via the 16-key keypad
- this would’ve just given Chipfinity a
more authentic feel in my book.
The ‘pockecom’ emulators of the early
Sharp and Casio Pocket Computers are
also impressive, with ‘go1401’ (Sharp
PC-1401), ‘pockecomGO’ (Sharp series)
and ‘pockecomGO2’ (Casio PB-100) being
the pick of the bunch and fitting nicely
on a phone.
For more well-known devices, Frodo
C64 (tinyurl.com/7bdl88m) is well
worth a look. It packs in the genuine
Commodore BASIC 3.5 language you can
code with and even supports the C64’s
famous SIDs (sound interface devices).
ANDROID’S FAMILY TREE
Look back over the history of Android
and you’d be forgiven for thinking the
world began in 2008 with the launch of
the HTC Dream. Others might consider
the Pocket PC era of the late-90s/
early-2000s, when Palm and HP ruled
the market, as the epoch of pocket
computing. In fact, you have to go back
to the home computer revolution, when
Sharp launched the PC-1211 Pocket
Computer in 1980. It really was a
revolutionary device in a revolutionary
era, so much so that Tandy Electronics
rebadged and sold not only this one, but
seven subsequent models during the
1980s. One of Sharp’s many models was
the PC-1401. This 1983 pocket computer
was the first with a QWERTY keyboard
capable of programming scientific
functions. It packed in 4KB of battery-
backed R AM and was powered by two
CR2032 coin batteries, good for about
100 hou rs.
The final Tandy model was the TRS-80
PC-8, a rebadge of the underwhelming
Sharp PC-1246 – and for most of us,
that’s where the first-gen Pocket
Computer story ended.
The mid-80s saw the home computer
market crash, price wars crunched
profits and a lack of compatibility
between models, let alone brands, left
many consumers stranded. IBM’s
decision to use off-the-shelf components
for its Personal Computer suddenly
became a masterstroke and by 1986,
IBM and Microsoft were winning
‘Personal Computer’ era.
However, that’s not the end of the
story. While the Pocket Computer may
no longer have held sway in Australia,
Sharp continued designing new models,
mostly for Japan. In 1988, the PC-E200
boosted the LCD size to four rows of 24
characters, added 32KB of storage plus
the ability to code in Assembler
language to increase processing speed.
The PC-E500 appeared the following
year with a 240x32-pixel LCD panel and
by the time of the PC-G800 series in the
mid-1990s, they’d become a staple of
Japanese technical schools.EMULATORS VS THE REAL THING
These days, retro computing comes in
three flavours, depending on your
appetite for cost. The first is the
emulators we’ve looked at here – apps
designed to run on generic hardware,
like Android phones. The second flavour
is the retro reissue – dedicated
hardware featuring modern CPUs to
emulate genuine game ROMs. The third
and final flavour is the genuine article- original home microcomputers of the
era either in original condition or
refurbished using new-old-stock (NOS)
original components.
To be brutally honest, of the three, the
least appealing to me so far are the retro
reissues. Apps designed to run on
generic hardware generally have no
pretentions to being more than they are.
However, some of the reissues have had
well-documented issues, for example,
the USB latency on the C64 Mini. That
said, the ability to update the C64 Mini’s
ROM is such a plus and something you
could never do with most of the
originals. That leaves the original
computers themselves, which really is
the authentic way to experience those
early days. However, that creates two
problems. First, not only are prices for
computers from that era starting to go
crazy, but second, the early systems are
now pushing 40 years old. Still, if
nothing else, the home computers of the
‘70s and ‘80s are an excellent reminder
of just how far we’ve come in the last
40 years. Write programs on a spongy
membrane keyboard and try saving
and reloading them from a cassette tape
a few times and I guarantee you’ll
never complain about your Android
phone again.
KEGS is a nicely-done
Apple II/IIGS emulator.The ‘go1401’ app is a
decent Sharp PC-1401
emulator for Android.Sharp’s PC-1401 pocket
computer – 36 years old
and still going strong.Sharp’s PC-G850V took the
Pocket Computer to its
penultimate conclusion.