Northstar Horizon

Define late entry. The N* Product Catalog I have in front of me is dated January, 1978 and it says: "North Star Computers ... was incorporated in June, 1976. ...North Star now offers a complete S-100 bus computer." I'd have to dig out more definitive references, but it seems likely that the Horizon was first offered in 1977. The price at the time was $1599 (kit) or $1899 (assembled) for the Horizon 12-slot motherboard with built in serial port (additional serial or parallel port was $39), RTC, chassis and cover, 15A @ 8v, 6A @+/- 16v power supply, with 4 MHz Z-80, 16k RAM, disk controller, and one Shugart minifloppy. (A second Shugart was $400!) The CPU board listed for $199, and the 16K RAM for $399 - parity option was $39 (I remember reading warnings about using dynamic RAM w/o parity 'cause stray cosmic rays were likely to corrupt your memory at admittedly infrequent times!) Bob Stek bobstek(a)ix.netcom.com Saver of Lost SOLs -----Original Message----- From: CLASSICCMP-owner(a)u.washington.edu [mailto:CLASSICCMP-owner@u.washington.edu]On Behalf Of Richard Erlacher Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 1:29 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: Re: Northstar Horizon The N* Horizon was a late entry in the S-100 market, and, though it was priced competitively with CROMEMCO and VECTOR GRAPHICS systems, it didn't come in at a lower price than component systems using boards purchased individually based on comparison-shopping for the best price/function tradeoff.