The Sharp PC-3000 was an

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

-based

palmtop A handheld computer, also called a palmtop computer, is a term that has variously been used to describe a small-sized personal computer (PC) typically built around a clamshell design, clamshell form factor and a laptop-like Computer keyboard, keyb ...

computer introduced in 1991. The "SPC" was designed and developed by Distributed Information Processing Research Ltd. ("DIP") in the UK. DIP had earlier designed the

Atari Portfolio The Atari Portfolio (Atari PC Folio) is an IBM PC-compatible palmtop PC, released by Atari Corporation in June 1989. It was the first palmtop computer compatible with the IBM PC ever released. History DIP Research Ltd. based in Guildford, Su ...

and the two machines shared many design features both in hardware and software.

Features

As with desktop

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

s, this one-pound device's screen displayed 80-column 25 lines.

Peripherals

The machine was one of the first to support the PC card interface, at the time known as PCMCIA. Printers, floppy drives, dial-up modems, Fax modems were among the supported peripheral devices.

System software

Choice were MS-DOS 3.3 and Microsoft Windows 3.0 (running in

real mode Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of all x86-compatible CPUs. The mode gets its name from the fact that addresses in real mode always correspond to real locations in memory. Real mode is characterized by a 20- bit s ...

with a mouse).

Application software

The machine came with a suite of built in application providing a simple word processor, calculator and 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet. With some tweaking, it was also possible to run

WordPerfect WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

and

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a ...

Sharp PC-3100

A 2 MB model was produced: the 3100.

Notes and references

Computer-related introductions in 1991 PC-3000 {{computer-stub