14 Jun
1997
14 Jun
'97
7:32 p.m.
Here's a message I recieved last year after the aquisition of my Osborne
Executive that I thought some of you might find interesting:
*** Forwarded message, originally written by Arthur N. Borg on 14-Aug-96 ***
Dear Jeff,
At the time that the Osbourne was being designed, I worked for the company
that made the display. I remember clearly asking one of the Osbourne engineers
what
he thought about the IBM PC that had recently been introduced. He said, that
computer has a color display, It is just a toy or video game. Ours is a
business
computer.
The Osbourne executive ran CP/M 3.0 as the operating system. If you have an
operating system disk and a format and modem disk. You should have access to
everything that you need. Walnut Creek has a CD-ROM with more CP/M material
than
you could imagine.
I (think) that I have a set of manuals but I also (think) that they are in
storage in the United States. One caveat. In the manual there is a drawing
showing
how to connect the parallel port to a Centronics printer. The drawing is
totally
incorrect. I spent a week re-wiring the dongle so that the printer would work.
The
Osbourne Executive has two unusual features. First, the printer port is alsso
a
bi-directional IEE-488 interface and so the machine could control and monitor
lab
equipment and so on. Also, the type face is loaded into ram at start up and
so, you
can devise your own type face or use Greek or whatever.
We also made some of the displays for the Osbourne 1 and having a 63
character display was very limiting. Fitting 80 characters on a 7 inch display
was
not easy. You will note if you have a full screen of characters, as you turn
the
machine around, the earth's magnetic field tends to make the outer characters
slip
out of view. Osbourne was roundly condemned for announcing this machine too
early
and killing sales for the Osbourne 1 and thus killing the company. I think
that
this is a harsh judgement. This was the time that FCC radiation rules were
just
getting started and everyone was having a hard time meeting them. In plain
fact, I
think that they didn't realize how big a task they had to pass this test. I
saw
some figures after the company died. There was no week that they were in
business
that the company had a positive cash flow. You could see from the curves that
somewhere out in the future, they would have a positive cash flow. I think
that the
investors just felt that there was too much going for IBM and pulled the plug
on
Osbourne.
Best regards,
Art Borg
***End of forwarded message
Jeff jeffh(a)unix.aardvarkol.com
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amiga enthusiast and collector of early, classic microcomputers
15 Jun
15 Jun
1:23 a.m.
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 12:32:29 +0500
Reply-to: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
From: Jeff Hellige <jeffh(a)unix.aardvarkol.com>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Osbourne Executive (fwd)
Here's a message I recieved last year after the
aquisition of my Osborne
Executive that I thought some of you might find interesting:
*** Forwarded message, originally written by Arthur N. Borg on 14-Aug-96 ***
Dear Jeff,
At the time that the Osbourne was being designed, I worked for the company
that made the display. I remember clearly asking one of the Osbourne engineers
what
he thought about the IBM PC that had recently been introduced. He said, that
computer has a color display, It is just a toy or video game. Ours is a
business
computer.
The Osbourne executive ran CP/M 3.0 as the operating system. If you have an
operating system disk and a format and modem disk. You should have access to
everything that you need. Walnut Creek has a CD-ROM with more CP/M material
than
you could imagine.
Nip! parallel woes....
The
Osbourne Executive has two unusual features. First, the printer port is alsso
a
Snap! Techanical babble....
character display was very limiting. Fitting 80
characters on a 7 inch display
was
not easy. You will note if you have a full screen of characters, as you turn
the
machine around, the earth's magnetic field tends to make the outer characters
slip
out of view. Osbourne was roundly condemned for announcing this machine too
early
and killing sales for the Osbourne 1 and thus killing the company. I think
that
this is a harsh judgement. This was the time that FCC radiation rules were
just
getting started and everyone was having a hard time meeting them. In plain
fact, I
think that they didn't realize how big a task they had to pass this test.
Following this design of these portables... I did repair work on two
machines of Osborne 1's, I was horrified at type of this design
inside. The power supply is bit weak and nearly tight spot so dead
air there. The display cage frame is oddball type, the motherboard
looked like it was retrofitted there with too much space in there.
Whole thing, the machine did not have any EMI shielding AT ALL.
The display would jump in sync with every clunks from the massive
drive. There was already two generations and that Osborne 1 is last
generation and they're selling like hotcakes but Osborne made mistake
of preannoucing new Osborne Ex. :( First generation type uses flat
ribbon cable for the keyboard and different face plate. The
second generation uses coiled keyboard cable with cleaner look of
the faceplate. That's Osborne 1. There is retrofits of add on
boards that doubles the capacity of each drives from 90k to 180k each
and makes the display to show 80 columns on that dinky 3" display.
UGH!
The physical design of this Osborne is like that: Top
and bottom shell clamps onto "plastic shaped shelf" that I will call
it shelf. The faceplate is kept in place by 6 or 8 screws around the
edges of the both shells. The underside of this shelf have four
stilts with metal lugs that held the bit smaller bare retangular
motherboard and amazing thing, it has no support in middle of that
long motherboard! The monitor sit in middle on raised part of the
upside shelf with both full height drive in both sides. All three
devices are secured from bottom with screws. The power supply is
just loosely nestled into a insulated cavity behind one drive.
Pretty iffy design if you ask me!
Anyway, that company had the fresh start overall
but the Canadian company had the right stuff to make a true great
solid machine called Hyperion which I have in storage. True PC
clone. The internals is very solid, no dead air and it does have a
variable speed fan that runs but speeds up when drive is in use. Too
bad, I wished they did redevelop the Hyperion again with 100 percent
compatible BIOS and better display , the previous one is about 80
percent compatible. I know some users still use this Hyperions
somewhere in that town of mine. :)
Hyperions monitor size is about 7" diagonal and uses amber monochrome
which is more pleasing to look at and very sharp. Both drives is
stacked on. Overall the package is very compact about 10" tall
and 18 inches wide, depth is about foot.
Can fit that machine under the 747 chair easily which ad did showed!
Memory is 256k standard but you can plug in external small memory
board to bring it up to 640k via the expansion port! It has modem as
a option, parallel, serial standard and expansion port. Also there
is a option that allows you to use external hard drive on it.
Best regards,
Art Borg
***End of forwarded message
Jeff jeffh(a)unix.aardvarkol.com
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amiga enthusiast and collector of early, classic microcomputers
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