Initial year: 1983
Initial Price: $249.95, $650 in 2020
The Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 or CC-40 is a battery-operated portable computer that was manufactured and released by Texas Instruments in March 1983. Priced at US$249, it weighs 600 grams (22 ounces) and can be powered by four AA batteries or an AC adapter. It was intended as a portable business computer, and uses TI’s TMS70C20 CPU, an 8-bit microprocessor that ran at 2.5 MHz.
I got the computer from a friend of mine from Bucharest and it always booted up with this “I/O ERROR 254 0”. I had taken it apart and cleaned it nicely. After that the tiny computer had no errors. I am glad that it now works fine.
The CC-40 has 6 kilobytes of on board Random Access Memory (expandable to 18 KB), 34 KB of Read Only Memory, and a 31-character LCD display. It is capable of operating for 200 hours off one set of batteries, and memory is not erased by powering the unit off, so an un-powered unit can retain data for several months.
