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The 30th Anniversary of Osborne Computer
harrymcc writes "This Sunday is the thirtieth anniversary of the announcement of the Osborne 1 — the first mass-produced mobile computer. For years, Osborne has been most famous for its failure, traditionally blamed on the company having preannounced new products before they were available. But that's not the whole story — and Adam Osborne, its founder, was a fascinating figure who deserves to be remembered."
What's really scary is that I remember it!
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I might have one in my third bedroom / junk room.
Back in 1981, I was programming for a company with a 64K CPM computer with a Hazeltine monitor. Life was great.
And this book writer Adam Osborne, whose motto was "Just good enough", started selling his barely luggable CPM computer with two 5.25 floppy drives and a five inch monitor for something less than two thousand dollars.
I actually though about buying one of these. Shudder!
A dingo ate my sig...
It was a deader, and I finally solved a power supply problem just to find out it was more than that. I never got it running.
But it was a lot of fun to leave around for people to ask about. Then I snagged a Kaypro that actually worked. That was nice.
Alas, I've pretty much gotten rid of the collection.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
My uncle had an Osborne that he plugged a TTL monitor into so as to use WordStar in a functional manner. He loved it...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I made the mistake of trying to rtfa. But the very first thing:
No. Just no. Most people in the western nations who have laptops, smartphones, or tablets also have desktops.
Where did the tech press come up with this idea? Are they repeating this mantra because they wish it were so?
I still have mine sitting in an extra bedroom. Turn it on once every 5 years or so just to make sure that it's still running.
Ran WordStar and SuperCalc, and managed to get DBase II for it. Program disk in the left, data disk in the right. When it hit 10 years old it started munching diskette directories on writes infrequently, rendering them unusable. Have the 300 baud modem, too, which I used to connect to the university mainframe during undergrad. Uploading programs sometimes took a half-hour or more (and couldn't do anything else on it in the meantime). Was envious of my Kaypro-lugging buddies with their bigger screens until I got the 80-column mod which would output to a separate monochrome monitor.
Was totally adequate at the time, but started pining for that newfangled Apple Macintosh thingy when that came out.
Why I keep it, I have no idea.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
Well, to be precise, I own the 2nd model - the "Osborne Executive" with the slightly larger, amber monitor.
The old girl still fires up, I found the system software years before I came across the computer itself. Totally impractical and useless but I still enjoy firing up Zork on it to impress my fellow geeks.
Look it's great to be nostalgic.
Adam Osborne named the company and the computer after himself.
It barely ran, weighed lots, and had no capacity to do anything useful. A TRS-80 Model II was more powerful. Kaypro (mentioned by a previous poster) also was good. Sadly it was a big heavy suitcase that barely fit "under the seat in front of you". Oh, and it sucked.
I'm sorry Adam Osborne had a great idea that was not technologically feasible for another 10 years. In today's era he'd have patented the concept and a NPE would be holding the rights to it and suing the likes of Dell, Acer, and every other dog with a portable. "Method by which the computer can be operated without mains(sic) power." lol. But he didn't. He did nothing fascinating. He is not a fascinating guy. He's a guy who had an idea (that lots of us have) and the tech wasn't there to perform as he expected.
Revisionism is cute... but deifying someone who accomplished nothing extraordinary and somehow making it like there's some "fascination" with the guy... that's going a bit far.
I find shiny object and helicopters fascinating. I don't expect a tell-all book anytime soon.
Mods, mod something else.
E
The hardware wasn't anything special. It was okay, and just barely managed to pull off a 'first', and was quickly superseded by better computers in that fast-moving time.
What was really interesting about the first Ossy was you got nearly all the big CP/M apps bundled with the computer -- for what was really a fair price for the computer OR those apps. It was a 2 for 1 deal, and I think that was probably the swiftest maneuver Adam Osborne did.
Disclaimer: I've got an Ossy in the closet, with an equal weight of manuals and floppies. It's also the only computer I've ever bought that came with complete wiring diagrams. Fun kit.
Apropos of that, see http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Tell_Adam_Hes_An_Asshole.txt&showcomments=1#comments
Jobs was a bit of a dick but, he was mostly right...
First thing that came to my mind was cow skin box's for computers.
Not sure why but.
I bought an Apple ][+
Now that woz a good computer
Back in 1981, I was programming for a company with a 64K CPM computer with a Hazeltine monitor. Life was great.
64K in 1981? Holy crap, that was the hotness!
Well I guess you did not have an especially fun time with your Osborne, if you had one. I did, but I mostly used it for WordStar and Calc. I also had a suite of programs for plane and spherical geometry calculations that came in very handy. My Osborne I was reliable and more than powerful enough what I used it for. That included some simple arcade games, and It beat me at chess about 1/2 of the time IIRC.
I'm not sure what metric you used to determine that the Osborne I "sucked," but compared to the Trash 80 you apparently found superior, it was 1) portable, 2) extensible, and 3) durable. Frankly, I don't believe you ever used one.
A couple of months later (August 12, 1981), IBM launched model 5150, a.k.a. the PC - next birthday to celebrate and to discuss if it advanced or held back evolution.
I have never seen an Osborne, even if I went at great lengths to see each and every computer on display in those days - I guess Osborne's marketing outside of US was nearly non-existent.
You forgot to mention the complete lack of shielding. One guy with an Osborne could prevent a whole Ramada Inn full of people from watching TV. Literally.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Back in 1981, I was programming for a company with a 64K CPM computer with a Hazeltine monitor. Life was great.
64K in 1981? Holy crap, that was the hotness!
Not especially. The basic model IBM PC, launched that year, had 64k expandable to 256. The Apple IIe had launched 2 years earlier with 48k. 64k was probably about average at the time for a proper micro (i.e. not a "home" computer).
Hey it wasn't about Adam Osborne. It was about the geek revolution you bozos. This was the first -FIRST- computer designed by and for geeks. Adam Osborne was the sales guy. Had standardized ports, parts, etc. and as a previous poster mentioned it came with a wiring diagram. You could hook it up to anything else that existed in the day. Couldn't do that w/IBM, Apple, OR KAYPRO. Lots of jokes about Osbornes but I knew several engineers that brought them on site to the field and then lugged them back to the office. Nothing else could interface to the range of existing devices. Heck, I knew two profs who wrote serial port routines themselves to get data into it. Garage industries were born on these things. You think Microsoft or the other boys came up with the idea to 'build your own'? They saw what happened with the Osborne. They saw people hungry to build it and adapt it. So the next time you are yanking around inside a pc case thank Adam Osborne.
the iie was launched on 1983
These were used by Jeanne and Stuart Altmanns' field team in Amboseli National Park in Kenya, precisely because of the small screen and its lower power needs. They were able to run the computers in the field using solar panels. A history of the scientific project (the Amboseli Baboon Project) can be found at http://www.princeton.edu/~baboon/history.html.
>The basic model IBM PC, launched that year, had 64k expandable to 256
Nope. The first version of the IBM PC had a motherboard that came with 16k expandable to 64k. See e,g. http://computermuseum.usask.ca/articles/IBM-5150-Specifications.pdf
A revised motherboard used denser chips that allowed for 64k base, expandable to 256k. You could also get adapter boards that would take you to 512k and even 640k (which at the time was all you'd ever need according to a certain visionary of the era.)
Ah, the good ole days! My first computer was a Compaq portable with a V20 chip, external memory card, 2 floppy drives and a whopping 2 megabyte RLL hard drive, external 2400 baud modem!
My dad had one of these, and when I went off to MSU in 1983, it became mine. With Wordstar, huge electric typewriter with a centronics interface that was the printer, and a 9 inch external monochrome monitor and I was hooked up.
My girlfriend wrote a paper on it, forgot to or didn't know to save to the second floppy and lost it. She might have been the among the first college students in the world to suffer this fate.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
By browsing the Wikipedia page on the Osborne 1 something struck me that, although I was aware of it, I haven't really up until now grasped its implications: Back in the ol' days, computers came with manuals. From the Wiki page: "The 500+ page Osborne 1 user manual contained instructions on the hardware, WordStar, Supercalc, BASIC software and the CP/M operating system and utilities." I also remember my first computer to come with two dossiers: one on Windows 3.0 and one on DOS. What do you get now? A graph(!) that tells you to plug in the machine and press the power button (duh!). My freakin' vacuum cleaner came with more instructions than these. No wonder that most people cannot use a computer. If adding a 500-page manual in the box is not enough to teach people the basics, then the size of the manual itself should be enough to scare most of the buyers away from trying to use one.
I had one. Still have it. Somewhere. And an Exidy Sorcerer, Mac128K, MacPlus, MacSE and even a PDP11 mini. Oh, and an HP-71B and a sliderule that are hanging on my wall right here. Incase of power outages. :)
One of the best things about the Osborne was the User Groups. The enthusiasm was amazing. I haven't seen anything close since.
64K was the shits at the time. A lot of people still did not trust dynamic ram because of refresh issues. The Z-80 was the first CPU to have hardware to deal with it.
The apple II was expandable to 48 k, it did not launch with 48k, more like 4k with a built in integer basic. Very few people had 48K because the 48k worth of ram at the time cost $1000 dollars.
The Osborne 1 sucked, the 5 inch green monitor was useless and the thing weighed a ton.
I had both an Osborne and an Applle II with 48k ram, the rams even had an apple logo on them. I had to add a transistor to the apple to kill the chroma signal when in text mode.
Osborne use to slam all the hardware makers in his articles, then made the very same mistakes when he started building stuff.
Actually, I still have a Kaypro II from that era. It lights up, but I've long since lost the boot disk. I also have a SORD M5. This still works like new. I remembered how much I wanted an Osborne 1. I has a Morrow Designs S-100 CP/M system and was just amazed you could make a portable.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
The sign at the entrance clearly states "Do Not Feed The Trolls".
Barely ran? It ran great. The thing was incredibly reliable. WordStar was a great word processor, including the ability to edit documents bigger than RAM. What you saw was what you got, at least as long as you printed it that old workhorse Epson MX-80. Plus, it came with the computer, along with SuperCalc, a perfectly passable spreadsheet. I was able to manage local-scale databases (address lists, that sort of thing). It was "luggable" rather than "portable", but I did take it places and it was a hell of a lot easier than hauling around separate keyboard, tower, and monitor. The floppy drives could hold a basic business or school document.
Its graphics were practically nonexistent, though somebody did one hell of a job cobbling out Space Invaders and Pac Man games with nothing more than the ANSI graphics. The hilariously tiny monitor was a challenge, and I had an external monitor when I used it at home, but it was five and a quarter inches and we LIKED it.
It was early days, and the 3 pound computer I'm running right now could probably simulate 1,000 Osborne Is without breaking a sweat. But it was a hell of a computer at the time. I wouldn't be here without it.
But it was a hell of a computer at the time. I wouldn't be here without it.
Hmm... I suppose it was heavy enough that you could have used it as a weapon to save your life from an attacker.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
It was about the size a weight of a portable sewing machine (luggable) so I could easily take it with me and program during my long slow "on call" shifts in the emergency room. It had a great keyboard, hard drive and came with office and database software.
Also, it was very reliable. It even survived a fall from the back of a moving car (don't ask). I used it as a "portable" computer for several years.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Does it prattle incoherently for a while, then curse you out randomly, and bite the heads off your discs?
Apple IIe was launched in 1983 with 64k (expandable to 128k) after Epic Fail of the Apple III. Apple II+ was launched with 4k (expandable to 64k) in 1979.
According to The Register what doomed Osborne is because of a RETARDED VP decided to throw good money after bad.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
It was a very popular computer for a while. The software that came with it was great and at the time there really where no laptops yet. To put it in perspective it would be as if someone offered a good i5 laptop today with Windows 7 ultimate and Office Professional for $600. When Kaypro came out with there systems they offered the an equally as good software bundle.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
On a term'nal
On a twenty
I sit, waiting for a line
And my tty (not too pretty)
Is a crufty Hazeltine
Oh, my crufty
Oh, my crufty
Oh, my crufty Hazeltine
You have lost my job forever
You're pathetic, Hazeltine
Hacking MIDAS
(Don't deny this!)
When the load hits forty-nine
Nothing happens for an hour
On my crufty Hazeltine
Oh, my crufty
Oh, my crufty
Oh, my crufty Hazeltine
You do not help my endeavor
You're a sad sight, Hazeltine
To get help
When hacking EMACS
Type control-shift-underline
But you must go control-shift-O
If you're on a Hazeltine
Oh, my crufty
Oh, my crufty
Oh, my crufty Hazeltine
You were never very clever
You're outdated, Hazeltine
When we moved last summer, I found from a random box a memory expansion card that you plugged into the ISA bus. Holy latencies, Batman!
The TRS-80 Model III had only 48k when introduced in '81, according to oldcomputers.net. It was an all-in-one, as opposed to the TRS-80 Model I, introduced in 1977, which was a keyboard/processor unit. With an expansion interface, it went all the way to 48k. They only ran TRS-DOS and various TRS-DOS workalikes.
The Lobo Max-80, introduced a year later, went all the way to 128k, which was a lot in those days. Physically it was a lot like the TRS-80 Model 1, but didn't need an expansion interface.It ran either L-DOS, in which case it looked a lot like a TRS-80 Model I, but with a lot more power, and also CP/M 2.x. When CPM 3 came out for The Max 80 it could bank switch 4 32K banks, which made it the best implementation of CPM 3 (also known as CPM Plus) according to Gary Kildall.
I had the use of one. (Company I worked for had one) and thought it was a good rig for what was available at the time.
Considering the IBM ran about 4 grand the Osborn wasn't such a bad deal. I was going to purchase one of the IBMs but the price with a little monitor (12" was big in those days), some expansion memory, and some basic programs was way over $4,000. Closer to $5,000 IIRC. My OSI C2-8P was 4 Grand and I still had to come up with a monitor and keyboard. .. But it did have dual 8" single sided floppies. (160 or 180K I think). Basic ran something like $400 while Fortran and Pascal compilers were $900 each.