Jocko-Taco's Osbourne 1 Computer

Some background, first. I never used an Osbourne before, and though I know CP/M, I have virtually no experience with this particular machine. I searched on ebay, and saw an auction about to end. With less than 10 minutes to go, and no bids, I bid $50 and won. Nobody else noticed it. Then I noticed that it said local pickup only! DUH! So I contacted the seller, and asked if he was able to ship it. I would pay all the shipping for it. He said no problem. He wazsn't a computer person, and this wasn't really a computer that he used himself. It was part of a barge of stuff in his house that he was trying to get rid of. He then explained that he had cancer, and he would be dead in a few months. Oh, man! Real bummer of a story, but he seemed cool about it. His name was jack, but his nickname is Jock, and his handle on ebay is Jocko-Taco.

I talked to him on the phone, after he called me to let me know it's on it's way. His voice reminded me of Tommy Chong, the classic stoner character. He sounded cheerful, laid back, and he totally accepted his upcoming death. "What am I gonna do," he said, "The doctors say there's nothing that can be done, so I just have to accept it, and live as best I can until it happens." He said he was selling off all the junk he had in his home so that he could travel and do things before he died. I honestly hope he wasn't selling it all on ebay, cause that's a lot of work!

Anyway, when the computer arrived, it was not in as good shape as I thought. The pictures were truthful -- no deception. All of the problems with it were not noticeable until you got it up close. He would have had to post really hires images to make the reality of it show.

What's wrong with it is:

• Case plastic is yellow
• screws are rusty
• foam skids on the bottom are dried out and crumbly
• the leather handle was dried out and crumbling
• dirty, dusty all over
• Interior had lots of dust and what looked like wood chips
• When turned on, the screen flickers

So this is going to be a lot of work to get going again. I started by ordering a new Power supply, since they're only about $30. Less work! The pictures here are from me replacing the power supply.

So I stood it up and started removing the screws and knobs from the face plate.

You only have to remove one wire, after all the screws are out.

Next, you got to remove the screws around the handle.

Then the screws around the power switch.

Before you slide the insides out, you have only to remove these last 2 screws, located under the the left and right corners, under the floppy drives.

So here is the guts of the Osbourne, on the bench. The more I see of the Osbourne, the more I think the Kaypro was a much better-conceived machine. The case, and the way it's put together, combined with the ribbon-cable keyboard connector, and all the ports up front was just really bad design -- not very convenient for the user.

So here is the power supply. I decided to just replace it outright with a newly refurbished one, because I figured that I'd spend a lot more time and money refurbishing it myself. Plus, I wanted to make sure things were working before I started cleaning it and replacing the handle.

Here is the power supply being removed. It only has a ground wire, a connector to the power-switch, and 3 3-pin connectors for drives and main board; very quick and simple to replace.

After screwing the new PSU back in, I powered it up. It works, but it still has a flickering screen. After removing the keyboard cable, I discovered that the problem is not the PSU, but the keyboard. There must be a stuck key, or it's a membrane-type with foil discs falling off the foam pads.
So I'll have to update this after I've had time to explore the keyboard.

Kaypro 10 with 10MB Hard Drive!

I went to the Vintage Computer Festival in May of 2018. I went hoping to find some great bargains at the dealer's room, but mostly to see if anyone had any big old minicomputers on display. No luck on minicomputers, but plenty of micros were to be seen, including many rarities that I had never seen before. In the dealer's room on the first day of the show, I found this Kaypro 10 for sale for only $125. It had a note on it that said "10MB HDD. It works! Lots of software!". I stuck to it like glue until the dealer's room was ready for business!

What struck me, apart from the promise of the note on it, was that it was clean, no scratches, and looked like it was fresh out of it's box from 1984. When we got it back to the motel room, I had to fire it up! I did test it in the dealers room, too, but just long enough to see it boot. I wanted to actually use it.

The first thing I noticed about it when I started setting it up, was that unlike the Kaypro II I had, this one boasted a fan with an air filter -- something that most old computer manufacturers didn't think was necessary, but as we all know, air flow really is important in any electronics that generate heat. The big difference with the Kaypro 10 was that the Z-80A CPU ran at 4 Mhz, while the older Kaypro II was a Z80 running at 2.5 Mhz. It generated more heat, but seriously, it wasn't a noticeably hotter speed. But the fan was a great addition, which most likely helped preserve it by allowing it to run a little cooler.
In addition to the standard Centronics Printer port and 25-pin Serial port, was a second 25-pin serial port for a modem. Otherwise the computer had the exact same case, same power supply, and same monitor as it's older brothers. The case was definitely Kaypro's strongest point. It was a great, simple, effective design.

Pardon the blurry side view. The keyboard is essentially the same as the previous models. Same case, same layout. The only difference is that they are black, instead of blue. Same old Telephone handset cord to connect it up!
The new thing on this Kaypro that makes it even better is the folding stand underneath it. Most people used to lay the computer on top of the keyboard, which was easy, and worked, but the rubber feet would wear the paint. So they made this simple stand to prop it up to save the beauty of your keyboard's shiny finish. It's the little things that really make it seem like it's much more advanced, even though it's mostly the same as the older versions.

So here we go, all set up and ready for a spin! Literally -- since the hard drive inside of it is an old Winchester MFM hard drive, just like the 10MB hard drive you would get for your IBM PC or TRS-80 Model 3.

READY!
POWER ON!

Hard Drive activity!

CP/M 2.2 loading!
Never saw Master menu before! This was indeed a new thing to me. It's an old menu program that you could program yourself by editing a text file to point to your programs. I wasn't interested at all in trying to remember my CP/M skills. This menu made everything easier to get to!

Instinctively I locate the games -- those are the most important things to test your computer with!

Oh, boy! Space Invaders Clone! That really dates things!

I explored the hard drive, and found a lot of stuff. I believe that it may contain most of the Kaypro software that was produced during the 80's. Once i get a Floppy Emulator hooked up, I can begin rescuing it all to preserve it for others to download and run. It has several versions of BASIC on it, and a lot of basic programs. The important thing is that it works perfectly now, and that I can start backing things up as soon as I find the settings for the floppy emulator.

Compaq Portable

I found a pair of Compaq Portables on Ebay for $150. One was working, but had missing plastic parts. One was not working, and had all the plastic parts. So I jumped at it and was not disappointed. The working compaq portable had disks in the floppy drives, and one contained a working MS-DOS boot disk! That meant that I could at least test it once I turned it on. I quickly removed the plastic covers from the broken Portable, and installed them on the working one. I spend a couple of hours cleaning it, and it almost looks like new now. I will try to assess what it wrong with the broken one, and see if I can get it working. I may be able to find the plastic parts for it later, or come up with a funky solution.

After cleaning, I had a nice beige machine with hardly a scratch on it. The only casualty seems to have been the rubber feet on the bottom of the keyboard. They were old and had so much black stuff all over them that I opted to just replace them with new stick-on feet. I actually had matching ones in my spare parts. I believe I used them on Raspberry Pi boxes and other projects that needed feet.

The sliding panels on the side for the power cord and expansion slots worked fine.

And it even came with a power cord, not that I have a substantial collection of them by now.

So let's power this up and see what it does!

The floppy drive lit up! This is promising!

It booted! The disk in the drive was MS-DOS 3.12, but it was not a Compaq boot disk. It was IBM. I tried to run BASIC, but it came back ad said that I did not have the BASIC ROMs on the computer. This reminded me of the early DOS years, when IBM compatibles had this weakness -- you had to get a copy of Microsoft's GWBASIC, which was not dependent on there being BASIC in the ROM of the Motherboard. I also remember that some vendors sold bootleg IBM ROMSs to put into your clone motherboards. So in the future, I'll have to look for a copy of the Compaq boot disks that were shipped with this model, so I can test out some old BASIC programs.

The disk that was in the B: Drive of this did not seem to have anything readable on it. When I removed it, it had lots of dirt and crud all over it, but I don't know if that came from the drive, or because someone dropepd the disk, stepped on it a few times, lost it under a desk, and then just stuffed it back in the drive. Once I have more time, I can clean the inside of the computer and make sure the B: Drive is good.

Here is the Config.sys and the Autoexec.bat file. Oh, the memories...

So here is the directory of the boot disk. BASIC, BASICA, FORMAT, DISKCOPY, DISKCOMP, RESTORE, BACKUP, GRAFTABL, and GRAPHICS are all old familiar names. All I need to do now if install a USB-Floppy Emulator, and start loading software. The Compaq Portable was one of the first true IBM PC Compatibles, and with it's glorious Monochrome graphics, I should be able to find a variety of software that I used to run on my own old IBM Clone. Otherwise, I realize that this is yet another cop-out, in the sense that I've not really worked on anything other than cleaning it up. I haven't restored anything or fixed anything that was broken -- but really, if it ain't broken, why fix it?