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Wow,
So this was once "State of the Art"?!?
So this was once "State of the Art"?!?
Indeed it was. Being able to take an entire computer with you where ever you went was revolutionary in 1981 when the Osbourne I was introduced. Until then, you had separate large heavy CRTs, bulky external disk drives, boxy CPU/Keyboard combos that just didnt lend themselves to computing on the go.
Osbourne sold upwards of 10,000 of these units a month at one point which was a wild success for a computer in those days. Osbourne was also making $1m a month off of them.
Osbourne sold upwards of 10,000 of these units a month at one point which was a wild success for a computer in those days. Osbourne was also making $1m a month off of them.
I was a Computerland Technician in 1982 and worked on lots of these. We had several lawyers who swore by these for getting all their work done. They were fairly modular so I could get someone back on the road pretty quick. Drive alignment was a big issue since they got banged around alot.
I had a later OZZY, a 2nd generation blue case, it came with double density disks standard and I added a "Screen Pak" that allowed you to connect an external 80 column display, the standard 9" displayed a 52 column window on the screen and as you typed past 52 it would shift sideways.
I also used a tweaked version of CPM called ZCPR-3.
With this you could compile your own kernel adding or deleting functions. Mine occupied 5 kb of memory leaving 59 kb free for your programs...that is efficient!!!!
For printing the system board had an IEEE 1488 instrumentation port that could double as a standard parallel port with the right cable
I also used a tweaked version of CPM called ZCPR-3.
With this you could compile your own kernel adding or deleting functions. Mine occupied 5 kb of memory leaving 59 kb free for your programs...that is efficient!!!!
For printing the system board had an IEEE 1488 instrumentation port that could double as a standard parallel port with the right cable
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