North Star Computers
Encyclopedia
CP/M
CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...
or North Star's proprietary operating system, NDOS.
While initially successful, North Star's sales suffered from the company's short-sighted adherence to hard sector floppy drives which made software difficult to port onto North Star machines. It was no longer a significant factor in the industry by the time less-expensive CP/M computers with built in displays (and soft-sectored drives), such as the Osborne
Osborne
- Places :Australia* Osborne, South Australia, an industrial suburb of Adelaide in South Australia* Osborne, New South Wales, a rural community in the Riverina regionCanada* Osborne Village, a neighbourhood in Winnipeg...
and the Kaypro
Kaypro
Kaypro Corporation, commonly called Kaypro, was an American home/personal computer manufacturer of the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems to develop computers to compete with the then-popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer...
, were released.
The NorthStar Horizon (1979)
The Horizon was an 8-bit ZiLOG Z80A-based computer, typically with 16K to 64K of RAMRam
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
. It had one or two single-sided single or double density hard sectored floppy disk drives (expandable to 3 or 4), and serial interfaces connected it to a computer terminal
Computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
and a printer. It ran CP/M or North Star's own proprietary HDOS.
The NorthStar Advantage (1982)
The Advantage was a 4MHz Z80a-based computer with 64K of user RAMRam
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
and 16K of graphics RAM. It used two single-sided, double density 180K floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
(hard sectored) drives and an optional 5MB Winchester disk. The Advantage was known for its graphics capabilities and was sold with four demonstration programs, one of which plotted and calculated a pattern of lines reminiscent of the Arcade game Qix
Qix
Qix is an arcade game, released by Taito America Corporation in 1981.-Gameplay:The objective of Qix is to fence off, or “claim”, a supermajority of the playfield...
. The Advantage also had an optional 8088
Intel 8088
The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however...
co-processor
Coprocessor
A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor . Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, or encryption. By offloading processor-intensive tasks from the main processor,...
board available that ran MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
1.0.
The NorthStar Dimension (1984)
The Dimension was a server computer. Based on the 80186 chipIntel 80186
The 80188 is a version with an 8-bit external data bus, instead of 16-bit. This makes it less expensive to connect to peripherals. The 80188 is otherwise very similar to the 80186. It has a throughput of 1 million instructions per second....
at the server, the Dimension employed multiple screens each connected to a PC-compatible 8086
Intel 8086
The 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and mid-1978, when it was released. The 8086 gave rise to the x86 architecture of Intel's future processors...
-based slot card that mounted in the server. The screens and keyboards then connected to the workstation cards in the server. The unit shipped with MS-DOS and Novell NetWare
Novell NetWare
NetWare is a network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, with network protocols based on the archetypal Xerox Network Systems stack....
was available as an option. The Dimension was North Star's last product, and did not enjoy the success of North Star's previous models.