The Dot was a portable computer released by Computer Devices, Inc. in April 1983.
The Dot's primary microprocessor was an Intel 8088, although customers could have optionally purchased a Z80 expansion board that allowed it to run CP/M. It otherwise featured 32 KB of RAM stock (expandable to 704 KB); a 9-inch-wide, 5-inch-tall CRT monitor; and one 3.5-inch floppy disk drive (manufactured by Sony, inventors of that format). The computer was optioned with MS-DOS as a native operating system; a dual serial port card; a second 3.5-inch floppy drive; a thermal printer that attaches to the top of the computer; a 300/1200-baud modem; and an Intel 8087 floating-point co-processor. The video card supports rendering graphics at pixel resolutions of 640 by 200 or 1024 by 248, while the optional thermal printer can output 132-line text, for a perfect facsimile of the computer's text display mode.[1]
The Dot was announced in fall 1982 and released in April 1983, the company establishing a national dealer network the month prior to release.[2] The Dot was intended to be the breakout microcomputer product for Computer Devices, Inc., who was previously a successful manufacturer of computer terminals based out of Burlington, Massachusetts.[3] Despite possessing the same Intel 8088 as the IBM PC as well as being shipped with MS-DOS (functionally equivalent to IBM's PC DOS), the Dot was not fully IBM PC compatible.[4] Demand for the Dot was low,[5] and by December 1983 only between 2,000 and 3,000 units had been sold.[6] Computer Devices announced two massive layoffs in the wake of the computer's failure and other complications in the company, the first in August 1983,[7] the second in October 1983.[8] Computer Devices filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the following month.
The Dot's failure and Computer Device's bankruptcy were highly publicized at the time, as it came amid a slew of other concurrent bankruptcy filings from other high-tech companies[9] —not least of which was that of Osborne Computer Corporation, another portable computer manufacturer whose Osborne 1 was the first commercially successful portable computer ever made. Unlike Osborne, however, Computer Devices was able to survive their bankruptcy and continue into the next decade, albeit making a pivot into software development for specialized applications.[10] The company eventually dissolved in October 1998.[11]