16 Jul
2008
16 Jul
'08
5:33 p.m.
On 16 Jul 2008 at 16:41, Bob Armstrong wrote:
I've found machine that I think is a prototype
for the Osborne Vixen.
Is that "ugly brown" the color of the foam on a root-beer float? If
so, that's the color of the high-density foam used to make cases.
Maybe not a prototype, but at least unpainted. Could be a Vixen
cobbled together for internal use (by the technical staff) or by some
enterprising technician who got his hands on a pile of parts.
The prototype O1 that I saw didn't have a case. It was simply a
bunch of stuff wired up and strewn across a tabletop at Sorcim.
Back then, a lot of model shops would machine up prototype cases from
acrylic sheet and have then painted. It was usual for the molding
shops to produce a few unpainted "proof" cases of the structural foam
for the customer's approval--that's likely what you've got.
Cheers,
Chuck
From the outside the case looks exactly like a
Vixen case except that mine
is a ugly brown color rather than the grey/white color
scheme you usually
see and when you open it up it's slightly different from a "production"
Vixen - the floppy drives in mine are horizontal rather than vertical and
the back panel is re-arranged a little. There are no labels of any kind on
the machine except for the giant "OSBORNE" that's molded into the plastic,
and the PCB inside says "Osborne Computer Corp, Rev 2". When you turn it
on, though, it identifies itself as an "OCC 4" and asks for a boot diskette,
so I'm thinking that must be what it is.