Kaypro
Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based in Solana Beach, California, in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro produced a line of rugged, luggable CP/M-based computers sold with an extensive software bundle which supplanted its competitors and quickly became one of the top-selling personal computer lines of the early 1980s.
Kaypro was exceptionally loyal to its original customer base but slow to adapt to the changing computer market and the advent of IBM PC compatible technology. It faded from the mainstream before the end of the decade and was eventually forced into bankruptcy in 1992.
History
Kaypro began as Non-Linear Systems, a maker of electronic test equipment, founded in 1952 by Andrew Kay, the inventor of the digital voltmeter.In the 1970s, NLS was an early adopter of microprocessor technology, which enhanced the flexibility of products such as production-line test sets. In 1981, Non-Linear Systems began designing a personal computer, called KayComp, that would compete with the popular Osborne 1 luggable microcomputer. In 1982, Non-Linear Systems organized Kaypro Corporation as a daughter company. The company stated at the April 1982 West Coast Computer Faire that it had 20 dealers, would not use its existing test-equipment distributors, received $50,000 in orders every day, and expected to start shipping the computer on 20 May.
The first Kaypro model to be released commercially was branded as the Kaypro II; at the time, one of the most popular microcomputers was the Apple II. The Kaypro II was designed to be portable like the Osborne, contained in a single enclosure with a handle for carrying. Set in an aluminum case, with a keyboard that snapped onto the front, covering the 9" CRT display and drives, it weighed and was equipped with a Zilog Z80 microprocessor, 64 kilobytes of RAM, and two 5¼-inch double-density single-sided floppy disk drives. It ran Digital Research, Inc.'s CP/M operating system, the industry standard for 8-bit computers with 8080 or Z80 CPUs, and sold for about.
The company advertised the Kaypro II as "the computer that sells for ". Although some of the press mocked its design—one magazine described Kaypro as "producing computers packaged in tin cans"—others raved about its value, noting that the included software bundle had a retail value over by itself, and by mid-1983 the company was selling more than 10,000 units a month, briefly making it the fifth-largest computer maker in the world.
The Kaypro II was part of a new generation of consumer-friendly personal computers that were designed to appeal to novice users who wanted to perform basic productivity on a machine that was relatively easy to set up and use. It managed to correct most of the Osborne 1's deficiencies: the screen was larger and showed more characters at once, the floppy drives stored over twice as much data, and it was better-built and more reliable.
Computers such as the Kaypro II were widely referred to as "appliance" or "turnkey" machines; they offered little in the way of expandability or features that would interest hackers or electronics hobbyists and were mainly characterized by their affordable price and a collection of bundled software. While it was easy to obtain and use new software with the Kaypro II—there were thousands of application programs available for CP/M, and every Kaypro 8-bit computer had a full 64 KB of RAM, enough to run virtually any CP/M program—the hardware expandability of this computer was nearly nonexistent. The Kaypro II had no expansion slots or system bus connector, no spare ROM socket, no peripheral bus, only two I/O ports, and an ASCII text-only green-on-black video display, of 80 x 24 characters, that could only be shown on the internal 9" CRT monitor.
In contrast, one feature that was favorable to electronics hobbyists was that all the chips on the Kaypro II mainboard were installed in sockets, not soldered to the board, making it easy to repair the machines or even to splice custom circuits into the stock logic. Also, while Kaypro machines were generally not upgradeable without factory-unauthorized custom modification, some Kaypro computers that came with single-sided floppy disk drives could be upgraded to double-sided drives, and some that came with only one floppy drive could have a second drive added..
Despite their limitations, the boxy units were so popular that they spawned a network of hobbyist user groups across the United States that provided local support for Kaypro products; the company worked with the user groups and would have a salesman drop by if in the area.
Kaypro's success contributed to the eventual failure of the Osborne Computer Corporation and Morrow Designs. A more rugged seeming, "industrialized" design than competitors such as the Osborne made the Kaypro popular for commercial/industrial applications. Its RS-232 port was widely used by service technicians for on-site equipment configuration, control and diagnostics. The relatively high quality of mechanical fabrication seen in the aluminum-cased Kaypro 8-bit computers was a natural outgrowth of NLS's prior business building professional and industrial electronic test instruments.
The version of CP/M included with the Kaypro could also read the Xerox 810's single-sided, single-density 86k floppy format. The Kaypro 8-bit computers used the popular Western Digital FD1793 floppy disk controller; the Kaypro II, 4, 10, and similar models were capable of reading and/or writing any disk format that the FD1793 could read and/or write. Theoretically, any soft-sector MFM or FM floppy format that is within the limits of the FD1793 could be read or written if the user wrote their own utility program.
Kaypro published and subsidized ProFiles: The Magazine for Kaypro Users, a monthly, 72-page, four-color magazine that went beyond coverage of Kaypro's products to include substantive information on CP/M and MS-DOS; frequent contributors included Ted Chiang, David Gerrold, Robert J. Sawyer, and Ted Silveira. Keeping its namesake, the publication profiled Kaypro founder Andrew Kay and software engineer Stephen Buccaci.
Another popular magazine that covered Kaypro computers was Micro Cornucopia, published in Bend, Oregon.
Arthur C. Clarke used a Kaypro II to write and collaboratively edit his 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two and the later film adaptation. A book, The Odyssey File - The Making of 2010, was later released about the collaboration.
Following the success of the Kaypro II, Kaypro moved on to produce a long line of similar computers into the mid-1980s. Exceedingly loyal to its original core group of customers, Kaypro continued using the CP/M operating system long after it had been abandoned by its competitors.
In late 1984, Kaypro introduced its first IBM PC compatible, the Kaypro 16 transportable. While admitting that "it's what our dealers asked for", the company stated that it would continue to produce its older computers. This was followed by other PC compatibles: the Kaypro PC, Kaypro 286i, the Kaypro 386, and the Kaypro 2000. The slow start into the IBM clone market would have serious ramifications for the company.
After several turbulent years, with sales dwindling, Kaypro filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 1990. Despite restructuring, the company was unable to recover and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in June 1992. In 1995, its remaining assets were sold for.
The Kaypro name briefly re-emerged as an online vendor of Microsoft Windows PCs in 1999, but was discontinued in 2001 by its parent company Premio Inc. because of sluggish sales.
Kaypro computers
Hardware
The Kaypro II has a 2.5 MHz Zilog Z80 microprocessor; 64 KB of RAM; two single-sided 191 KB 5¼-inch floppy disk drives ; and an 80-column, green monochrome, 9" CRT that was praised for its size and clarity.Early in the Kaypro's life, there was a legal dispute with the owner of the Big Board computer, who charged that the Kaypro II main circuit board was an unlicensed copy or clone.
The outer case is constructed of painted aluminum. The computer features a large detachable keyboard unit that covers the screen and disk drives when stowed. The computer could fit into an airline overhead rack. This and other Kaypro computers run off regular AC mains power and are not equipped with a battery.
The Kaypro IV and later the Kaypro 4 have two double-sided disks. The Kaypro 4 was released in 1984, and was usually referred to as Kaypro 4 '84, as opposed to the Kaypro IV, released one year earlier and referred to as Kaypro IV '83. The Kaypro IV uses different screen addresses than the Kaypro II, meaning software has to be specific to the model.
The Kaypro 10 followed the Kaypro II, and is much like the Kaypro II and Kaypro 4, with the addition of a 10 megabyte hard drive and replacing one of the two floppy drives. The Kaypro 10 also eliminated the complicated procedures to turn the computer on and off often associated with hard disk technology.
Kaypro later replaced their CP/M machines with the MS-DOS-based Kaypro 16, Kaypro PC and others, as the IBM PC and its clones gained popularity. Kaypro was late to the market, however, and never gained the kind of prominence in the MS-DOS arena that it had enjoyed with CP/M. Instead, Kaypro watched as a new company—Compaq—grabbed its market with the Compaq Portable, an all-in-one portable computer that was similar to Kaypro's own CP/M portables with the exception of running MS-DOS with near 100% IBM PC compatibility. The Compaq was larger and less durable—whereas the Kaypro had a heavy-gauge aluminium case, the Compaq case was plastic, with a thin-gauge aluminum inner shield to reduce radio frequency interference—but rapidly took over the portable PC market segment.
The 1985 introductions of the Kaypro 286i, the first IBM PC AT clone, and the Kaypro 2000, one of the first laptop computers, did little to change Kaypro's fortunes. Kaypro's failure in the MS-DOS market and other corporate issues helped lead to the company's eventual downfall.