Welcome back to part 7 of my SepTandy Spectacular 3. In the last post we ended our look at Coco clones by taking a look at the miscellaneous Coco clones sold throughout the world. In this post we're moving from Coco clones to Pocket Computer clones starting with the Híradástechnika Szövetkezet PTA-4000.
The Híradástechnika Szövetkezet PTA-4000 (1984)
Released in 1984, The PTA-4000 was a computer that was a clone of the Sharp 1500 (AKA The Tandy Pocket Computer 2) and had managed to make a reasonable niche in the professional computer market.
Ive previously talked about Híradástechnika Szövetkezet during our look at the Video Genie, but their origin stretches back earlier than that. They were founded in 1951 and got their start making television test equipment.
The Híradástechnika Szövetkezet test equipment catalog (1951-1956)
In the 1970s, they got into the calculator buisness, by importing calculators from Canadian company Bowmar. Most of them were manufactured under license, but sometimes the device was just relabeled, or a few things were substituted for cheaper domestic components.
Some of Híradástechnika Szövetkezet's calculators
Wanting to tackle the programmable calculator market Híradástechnika Szövetkezet reached an agreement with Sharp to distribute the Sharp 1500 on an OEM basis through Hungary.
On the front of the machine is the 26 character LCD display, the on off buttons, the tiny keyboard, and a calculator style numpad.
The front of the Híradástechnika Szövetkezet PTA-4000
On the right side, there is the power connector and nothing much else.
The right side of the Híradástechnika Szövetkezet PTA-4000
On the left side, There is the expansion port for hooking up for different docking stations that would give you access to things like a cassette interface for you to load and save programs and printers for printing programs and calculations.
The left side of the Híradástechnika Szövetkezet PTA-4000
And finally on the bottom is the model information sticker, the battery compartment and an expansion slot on the back for either additional software ROMs or additional RAM.
The bottom of the Híradástechnika Szövetkezet PTA-4000
Storage wise, You have the KA 160 printer and tape recorder interface, allowing you to hook up a standard tape recorder and access to a small 4 color plotter.
The KA 160 printer and tape recorder interface
You also have the RAM/ROM expansion slot, where you can add ether an extra 4 tom 32K of RAM, or ROM cartridge software for things like graphics, mathematics, and engineering applications.
For hardware It uses a Z80 CPU clocked at 1.3 MHz, 2K of RAM, and 16K of ROM, a 26 character LCD display (capable of displaying graphics at a resolution of 156 x 7 pixels), a small beeper speaker for sound, and could on either 4 AA Batteries (with a 50 hour battery life), or a 6V DC external AC adaptor.
The Híradástechnika Szövetkezet PTA-4000 Motherboard
Being that its an OEM'd Sharp 1500, any software that was designed for the 1500 (And by extention the PC-2) will be compatible.
The PTA-4000 ended up being quite popular and ended up being produced and used until 1992! quite impressive for a little hand held computer like this. By that point the company had been disbanded and divisions had been sold off into companies like Híradástechnika Trade Kft.
To how do I rate the The PTA-4000 on compatibility? It quite obviously ranks as Fully Compatible as its just a rebranded Sharp 1500, which was the same as the PC-2 anyway.
This concludes Part 7 of my third Septandy Spectacular, join me next time as we take a look at the Laser Portable Computers.
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