Category Archives: Portfolio

Atari Portfolio

Atari Portfolio PC Card Drive HPC-301

The PC Card Drive HPC-301 is still the only way to read and write Atari Portfolio memory (Bee) cards on a PC. Make that an old PC with an ISA slot for the interface card and DOS. The driver can be found here and here. In the PofoWiki (German), there’s more information about its usage and what needs to be considered when you have Windows 9x. For me, the DOS mode worked fine and I had less trouble accessing the card reader after loading the driver without parameters, e.g. DEVICE=C:\CD.SYS.

There seems to be another way to access the card drive: A software called Portfolio RAM-Card Reader by Digital Data Deicke (now Pentagon GmbH) is mentioned in the Atari-Home.DE forums here and here. It is reported to work even under Windows XP via Direct I/O.

Today, we’re only going to have a look at the hardware. Just look at this massive cable with 37-pin D-sub connectors that connects the card drive with the interface card:

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Serial Terminal on Atari Portfolio

In order to access the Low-Level Test of Philips CD-i players or debug other units with a serial port, you will always need a VT100 compatible terminal. An old laptop with Windows 98 and HyperTerminal works fine, but I was looking for something more portable. The Atari Portfolio with Serial Interface add-on is a good portable choice.
Update: Meanwhile, I’ve found the Psion 5mx Pro to be a better choice.

First of all, we need to transfer the terminal software ACOM to the Portfolio. This is possible via the serial port, but I had to back up some data from the old memory cards too. I hooked up the Atari PC Card Drive HPC-301 to transfer the data and software.

Atari Portfolio and PC Card Drive HPC-301
Atari Portfolio and PC Card Drive HPC-301
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