As clunky as that is, it’s a far cry from this:
(I actually had one of these, it was my first computer)
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But those are jacks for AC line cords, so it’s just convenience. Having two power cords (and separate switching supplies) in each half means they didn’t have to run the DC power line between the halves, a place of failure since the wires may see stress.
As for connectors, the bottom row is clear, especially after the other comment that this is a repackaged MAC.
From right to left. The two small round connectors are for the two serial ports, I’m not sure which is which. Then an SCSI connector. A smaller connector for the external floppy drive, the connector for the mouse (this was pre-ADB), and a headphone jack.
But that was standard, it’s the back of the Mac board used here.
The upper row is less clear, since they aren’t standard. There’s a DB connector on the left, maybe for an external monitor. The round connector with four pins, maybe that’s for battery power? It looks like a power connector, unneeded with the internal supplies unless someone wanted to run it off a battery. Then it looks like three different holes, with no connectors, so maybe “future expansion”.
There was an article about this in Radio Electronics, so one could build your own if you had the Mac. Something around the power light at the left end of the connectors looks homemade, so maybe the owner did it themselves. But I vaguely recall that Colby would do it for you or sell a kit. The Mac put out some odd video signal, which didn’t sync with a standard NTSC monitor, so Colby sold some sort of converter board, not revealing details in the article. That makes me think this includes an external video jack. But I can’t remember then suggested monitor, LCD monitors must have been expensive a quarter century ago. It’s not like now when you can find them on the sidewalk.
Around that time talk was of eyeglasses that could be used as a monitor, readable but obviously so much smaller than a traditional monitor. I can’t remember if it was talk or an actual product, but the faded memory says that Mr. Colby wrote about them in Radio Electronics, so maybe that was offered.
I have a Mac Plus board lying around, so I guess I could build one now, but why?
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I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t the only portable terminal. A famous one was the TI Silentype, using that awful paper used in cash registers. I once bought one t a rummage sale, it had a built in modem but I can’t remember if it was acoustic coupled. It was lighter than 60 pounds.
I’m guessing a macbook air with wood-panelling.[quote=“ficuswhisperer, post:21, topic:77334”]
it was my first computer
[/quote]
I’m slightly more jealous than awestruck.
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You had to have a strong lap back then.
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We called those old portables “luggables”. Laptops hadn’t been invented yet.
There was another 3rd party Mac portable - kangaroo or something. Had an interesting pointing device - was like a cylinder that you rolled and slid side to side.
Outbound! that was it. Kangaroo was their logo! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbound_laptop
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I want one of those trackbars for my bluetooth keyboard
Yes, and that Kangaroo was more famous. It’s in the history books, that brief period when Apple authorized clones.
The only reason I know about Colby is because I remember the article in Radio Electronics about how to do this (an I’m thinking the article was a more general way to repackage the Mac, maybe the original source of the word Hackintosh).
But reading as a result if this story, Colby seems to have had some approval from Apple, though maybe les ä commercial product than “if you need a portable Mac” this is the option". They were selling the repackage, they didn’t clone the Mac board.
Seriously one of the main problems I had with all the Federation spaceships from Next Generation onward. Though I guess they might have some futuristic form of tactile feedback.
Still better than membrane keyboards. Timex-Sinclair made a machine that had one. (And the Casio PB-80, which I still have, now that I think about it.)
Yeesh. I remember. I’ll take lighter, more capable gear any day.
I toted one of these once, a long time ago:
I’m not sure I really miss those days, though. Cool, but really only over very short distances.
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I used to drool over the ads for those things.
Please tell me using one was totally the most amazing thing ever.
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My first college IT class had a few of those and their descendants. It was… inconvenient.
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I bought one for my father to run his business, which it did without a hitch for nearly ten years; we only changed it because clients had started asking for doc files.
Using one was totally the most amazing thing ever.
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It was, something! I mean for my first computer it was the most amazing thing ever compared to the alternative (nothing). My follow up computer, a Mac Plus was a million times better, though.
The thing I remember most about the Osborne was that the display was only 40 characters wide and there was a keyboard command that would shift the screen but the thing I vividly remember was the “shift” was hardware based using some kind of sorcery.
I found a really cool teardown here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/08/osborne_1_teardown/
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If I were CEO of Apple for a day, I’d commit us to bringing back every single one of those ports. Serial, SCSI, the whole works. And not just on laptops. Phones too.
But still on the thinnest laptops and smartphones that money can buy! Anyone who isn’t up to the task, there’s the door.
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And ribbon cables. Don’t forget ribbon cables. We need colorful Lightning port ribbon cables.
The Osborne 1 established a certain standard at the time that had nothing to do with the form factor: the machine should run CP/M on a Z80 processor, have 64K memory, and come with a complete suite of office programs, including a word processor (usually WordStar), spreadsheet, and database. Adam Osborne’s vision was for the thing to be a functional appliance, and I suspect the resemblance to a sewing machine was intentional.
When I went shopping for a computer the four ‘obvious’ choices were the Osborne 1 and three machines it inspired: a Kaypro (another luggable with a slightly bigger screen), a Morrow Micro Decision (nonportable, now-familiar box form factor with a separate stand-alone terminal), and a Cromemco C-10. All had similar specs, all came with similar software, all retailed within $50 of each other. The Osborne was certainly the most carefully designed and constructed, but the others had advantages over it: the Kaypro was equally luggable but had much larger screen area, the Morrow had twice the density on its floppy drives and the terminal - a customize LS ADM-3a - was magnificent, Cromemco was the most established company of the 4, having been building S100 machines for years. I bought the Morrow, and it still sits on a shelf in my office; I used to boot it up every year, but haven’t done so for 10 years or so.
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