Osborne

Osborne-1

The first real portable device -
but bad marketing avoided big success

The portable era starts in 1981

Adam Osborne offered April 1981 a big surprise for the community (at that time). His suitcase device was Z80 based, which guaranteed a CP/M compatibility, had a build-in 5" b/w screen and a detachable keyboard, two floppy disk drives and a serial / parallel interface.
There was also an option to get a very heavy accumulator pack also, to run the computer without any AC socket.
The device was the first computer found in airplane baggage.

Osborne 1 Modell 1:
about 12 kg weight

The first model 1 was replaced in 1982 with the model 2, which had a sturdier case, and double density drives (single sided) was standard (but still realized with a piggyback logic board), with 190KB instead of 91KB capacity.

The piggyback double density logic board (red circle):

Osborne 1 Modell 2:
still 12 kg :-)

There was also some additional expansions available, for example a modem plug-in module. But one major disadvantage, the 52 characters/line instead of 80 characters/line, was still there.

In late 1982 Osborne presented the Osborne Executive, which was an inprovement (with a Z80 4 MHz), but the 7" screen was still too small.

Also, they announced the Osborne Vixen a few month later (planned for 1983), and that was the reason people stopped ordering current Osborne Models. But the competitor, the Kaypro II and later IV from Nonlinear Systems, was already available with a 9" screen.
So this new model never reached the market (IBM PCs where introduced at that time also, so it was anyway a difficult time for Osborne).

peter.dassow@NOSPAM.z80.eu (remove NOSPAM. for a proper mail address)

Osborne-1

The first real portable device - but bad marketing avoided big success

The first real portable device -
but bad marketing avoided big success