Kaypro

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Kaypro II

Kaypro Corporation , usually called Kaypro for short , was an American manufacturer of portable computers from the early 1980s. The company was founded by electronics company Non-Linear-Systems, chaired by Andrew Kay , to compete with models like the Osborne 1 in the emerging portable computer market .

Kaypro manufactured computers with sturdy sheet metal housings in the shape of a parallelepiped, which were sold relatively cheaply including the software package. The company was able to achieve high sales figures in the field of portable computers under the CP / M operating system in a relatively short time with its models Kaypro II and Kaypro 4 . The Kaypro 10 was also a device with a 10 megabyte hard drive. The Kaypro 16 with Intel 8088 CPU and the MS-DOS operating system followed relatively late .

However, Kaypro had reacted too sluggishly to the change in the market towards IBM PC-compatible systems. As a result, it slipped sharply in its market position by the end of the 1980s and finally went bankrupt in 1992.

technology

The Kaypro 4 had a 9 ″ monitor (monochrome, green) with 24 lines and 80 characters each. The keyboard had a typewriter layout keypad and a separate number pad. The weight was around 14  kg .

Technical data: Z80 CPU with 4 MHz (hence the name Kaypro 4) and ROM type 81-292-A, two SS / DD 5.25 ″ floppy disk drives with a capacity of 390 KB each, one serial RS-232 and one parallel IEEE 1284 interface. It could be retrofitted with a +88 additional card that was equipped with an Intel 8088 CPU and 256 KB RAM and so it was also possible to use MS-DOS. The Kaypro could also be equipped with special software / hardware to take on various measurement and control technology tasks.

Manuals

  • User manual Kaypro 4/1984 (German)
  • CP / M operating system manual (English)
  • CP / M and performance features - facilities (German)
  • Wordstar 3.0 manual (German)
  • Wordstar 3.0 training manual (German)
  • The word plus (German)
  • Microsoft Basic User Guide (English)
  • Microsoft Basic Quick Reference (English)
  • S-Basic (English)
  • C-Basic Reference Manual (English)
  • SuperCalc User Manual & Reference Manual 1.2, November 1983 (English)
  • Relational database system dBASE II (German)
  • Super-Data Interchange User Manual & Reference Manual 1.13, Sept. 83 (English)

Web links

Commons : Kaypro  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files