It was released in February 1984 and was quickly replaced by the IBM Convertible, only roughly two years after its debut.

The system featured 256 kilobytes of memory (expandable to 640 KB), an added CGA card connected to an internal monochrome amber composite monitor, and one or two half-height 5+1⁄4-inch 360 KB floppy disk drives, manufactured by Qume.

A separate 83-key keyboard and cable was provided, which uses a front panel mounted phone jack styled connector RJ11.

[1] Hard disks were a very common third-party add-on as IBM did not offer them from the factory.

Its selling point as a "portable" was that it combined the monitor into a base unit approximating a medium-sized suitcase that could be simply set on its flat side, the back panel slid away to reveal the power connector, plugged in, the keyboard folded down or detached, and booted up for use, though printers at the time, if needed, still tended to be less "portable".