The portability of computers has been a long-term goal within the industry, resulting in the creation of laptops, and “luggable” more powerful PCs that maintain portability.
This has its roots in earlier eras, such as the 90s and 00s LAN party era, and even further back to the early days of luggables such as the Commodore SX-64.
TheSX-64 was used by [saveitforparts] to access the internet via satellite, using a Glocom Inmarsat modem and antenna, requiring the use of a Teensy microcontroller to emulate a modem to translate the Ethernet connection to a format the Commodore can understand.
While a significant amount of setup and troubleshooting was required, the end result was an operational system.
The limited data usage made possible by the Commodore’s text-only mode could be beneficial for certain applications, such as where data usage is charged by the byte, such as with some satellite connections, thereby keeping costs down.
