On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Marty wrote:
> I recently acquired a Morrow Designs Pivot Model 2522 - Special,
> serial number 31-0001488. Both the model number and serial number are
> hand written on the manufacturer plate on the rear of this pc.
Mine says "Model 2522 VB", "Serial Number 31-0001135". We're practically
related :-)
> dual 5 1/4 " floppy drives and 640k memory. The memory board is
> labelled Morrow Zenith.This is an interesting portable having a rom
> monitor for the built-in modem, what appears to be a built-in
> calculator (haven't been able to get the calculator button to do
> anything). Date can be changed in the monitor by pressing a button
> also. Boots MS-DOS fine.
My calculator button brings up a calculator.
> I read in Stan Veit's book that Zenith licensed this technology from
> Morrow. Does anyone have any further info on this unit or better yet a
> operation manual?
I'd also like to find a manual, but I can give you a couple of historical
blurbs I snarfed from the net after acquiring my machine. The first blurb
is about the Pivot II. I don't yet know how the Pivot II differs from the
Pivot, but a Pivot II is on the way to me. The Pivot and/or Pivot II was
apparently OEM'd by Zenith, Sperry, and even Osborne.
THE MORROW/IRS ANGLE:
1986 March 04 (NB) -- Zenith Electronics Corporation won the Internal
Revenue Service award for $28 million in portables--meaning up to
18,000 of them will be in the agency's field auditors' hands, but more
importantly, a significant boost for the portable industry in general.
Especially delighted is George Morrow, chairman of Morrow Designs,
whose firm licensed the technology with which Zenith made its winning
Z-171. The Z-171 is identical to Morrow' Pivot II with the exception
of the color of the case and the screen. "We designed that machine and
everyone is justly proud," said Morrow to NEWSBYTES. He says Sperry,
which was bidding Pivot IIs under its own label, came in second. "It's
damn nice to come in one and two!"
<<
Subject: Re: Osborne
From: "Arthur N. Borg" <anborg_at_ksts.seed.net.tw>
Date: 1997/05/09
Message-ID: <33735019.168E_at_ksts.seed.net.tw>
Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm
You are correct up to a point. The lunch box was designed by Vadem. I did
not get a full explanation from Morrow but I think that both Osborne and
Morrow backed Vadem to design this machine. The earliest Morrow Pivot
machines had a display of only 12 lines. I don't know if they built any 25
line models before they went under. Their manuals were written with the
expectation that 25 lines would be there almost instantly. Zenith bought
some additional rights from Morrow to build that machine. My boss at that
time wanted to build that product in 'his' factory in Taiwan. It was built
in the Heath factory in Benton Harbor. After Morrow ended, Zenith hired
the fellow who had been president of Morrow to be the head of ZDS. Under
his reign, He had Vadem design the computer part of the EZ-PC which was
the little XT all in one that Zenith made. That computer was probably the
first IBM-PC clone that did not use an Intel microprocessor. It had a NEC
V-20. George Morrow wrote a column in some magazine at the time telling
how clever Vadem was to get the V-20 to emulate the 8088. I still have one
of these and from time to time, it will come up with a message "Illegal
V-20 instruction trapped". This design caused some internal hostility. A
follow on computer was designed using an 8088 and a more conventional
design. That computer never was developed to production. I always felt
that the EZ-PC was handicapped by the MS-DOS software that came with the
machine. This was a thing called MS-DOS Manager. It was an attempt to do
some of the things that Windows does but in a non graphic environment. The
instruction manual was so bad that no one that I met could ever figure out
how to use this program. Even Jerry Pournelle of Byte magazine was turned
off by it.
Best regards,
Art Borg
>>
-- Doug
Received on Fri Apr 10 1998 - 22:39:52 BST