NAME  

OSBORNE 1

MANUFACTURER  

Osborne Corp.

TYPE  

Transportable

ORIGIN  

U.S.A.

YEAR  

1981

BUILT IN LANGUAGE 

None

KEYBOARD  

Full-stroke keyboard with separated numeric keypad

CPU  

Zilog Z80 A

SPEED  

4 MHz

RAM  

64 KB

ROM  

4 KB

TEXT MODES 

52 / 80 / 104 char. x 24 lines

GRAPHIC MODES 

Only graphic characters

COLORS  

Monochrome

SOUND  

Beeper

SIZE / WEIGHT 

51(W) x 32,5 (D) x 22,5(H) cm. Weight: 10,2 Kg.

I/O PORTS 

RS232, IEEE 488, Modem port, Composite Video

BUILT IN MEDIA 

2 x 5.25'' FDD

OS  

CP/M

POWER SUPPLY 

Built-in power supply unit

PERIPHERALS  

Supplied with: CBasic, WordStar, SuperCalc, MailMerge, DBase II

PRICE  

3201 ℮

 

Osborne 1

Osborne 1

 The Osborne 1 is one of the first portable computers. Though it was called "portable" it still needed an external power source. Its name comes from Adam Osborne, the man who made this computer a reality (this is not quite true though). It has a very small built-in screen (8.75 x 6.6 cm, which can display 128 columns!!!) and weighs about 24 pounds (almost 11 kg).


The first models could not display more than 52 columns, so to access to the 76 other columns, the user had to scroll among the screen thanks to the cursor keys.

It works under the CP/M operating system and was sold with Digital Research CBASIC (compiled BASIC), SuperCalc (spreadsheet), WordStar (word processor), MailMerge (mailing) and Microsoft's MBasic (MBasic source code was 100% upwards compatible with IBM PC's BASICA, source code only).

This machine would be succeeded in 1983 by the Osborne Executive, which featured a larger screen (YAHOO!) and lower-profile disk drives.

Despite its interesting characteristics, Osborne Computer Corporation suffered the competition of the first IBM PC compatibles and went bankrupt in 1983. One casualty was a planned portable computer called the Osborne PC (which, interestingly, was an MS-DOS clone). It was never released (even though some prototypes exist).