North star Horizon | TechMuseum
Year of manufacture: 1977
Technical Specifications:
- Processor: Zilog Z80, 4 MHz
- RAM: 16 KB
- FDD: Two or one floppy disk 5.25″
- HDD: 18 MB
- Audio: –
- Connectors/Ports: Serial, parallel, bus
- Case: Desktop type
- Monitor: Monochrome
- OS: Northstar DOS
The model features a Zilog Z80 processor at 4 MHz and memory of 16kB. Equipped with up to two floppy disks of 5.25” and an HDD of 18MB it ran with the operating system of the Northstar DOS version.
Northstar Computers produced and marketed the popular 8-bit S-100 bus computer. Like most S-100 standard machines of the time, it was built around this processor and running with the CP/M OS.
North Star Horizon was one of the first computers to have integrated floppy disks and a hard drive disk. While successful initially, the company limited to the hard sector floppy drives too much. The adherence caused sales to plunge, because software was then difficult to port to the Northstar machines.
That was just a snapshot on the presentation of the techmuseum series. Indulge more into the history. Continue reading more about the present model, the North Star Horizon here. Alternatively, you can find more exciting stories here.
Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
