VTG Panasonic HHC Handheld Computer Model No RL-H1400 Untested Electronic. in French) and their hand held computer project, Matsushita manufactured the computer and sold it under Panasonic (RL-Hxx series) and Quasar (HK-2600TE) brand names. About 70.000 Panasonic systems were sold.
The system was mainly conceived to run custom software developed by third companies. For this reason, it didn\'t included powerful built-in software or languages but featured an universal
expansion port able to manage several peripherals simultaneously, and three ROM chip compartments. Examples of available software are: Portawriter, Telecomputing 1-2-3, File Exchange, Portacalc, Portaflex (store management), Portabudget, Portabroker, Porta offer, Portastock, Portalog, Portasales, Portaservice, Portaaudit, etc.
The system featured SNAP, an interpreted programming language, close to Forth and not really easy to learn. Hopefully, a light version of the Microsoft BASIC interpreter ROM could be added.
The HHC (for \"Hand Held Computer\") had great success in USA, mainly in insurance companies thanks to a built-in custom insurance calculation application dedicated to claim adjusters and traveling salesmen who could make any insurance quotation and print it, anywhere, anytime. Few systems were sold in other countries.
The picture shows a system with a Printer/Cassette interface attached. User had to buy it to save programs files on tape! The printer used a small 75 mm wide roll of thermal paper. It printed 16 char per line at a speed of 24 char /second.
Graphic possibilities were available as an option, as well as a TV video interface, which enabled the HHC to be connected to a TV through a scart connector. The HHC could then display 32 x 16 characters in text mode (character matrix 5x 7), or 128 x 64 with 8 colors in semi-graphic mode or 128 x 128 with 4 colors in graphic mode.
