Andrew - maybe we can form a (very limited membership!) Dulmont Magnum users
group!
[To the group as a whole as this early Australian (& world) laptop maybe of
interest]
Perhaps my D~M~ is not quite the same as yours. Mine is black, runs on 7VAC
3A (SN #10630) and to make sure everyone knows it was made in Australia it
has the label "Kookaburra" in black on silver on the outer lid. The SN plate
says "Dulmont Electronic Systems Pty Ltd" and the inbuilt software (see
below) is dated 1984.
It runs DOS 2.11 but is like nothing I have seen in most other ways. This
one has no built-in storage, but has a large connector with two
closely-spaced rows of 30 pins on the back which I guess was for a floppy.
There are also two mini-D 15-pin female plugs that have been hand-labelled
"printer" and "serial".
At the top of the keyboard are two large green keys, one labelled OFF ON and
the other RESET, but there is a trick - to get them to work you have to
press
them with the SHIFT key. Perhaps this is why they are rare; unless you know
this trick you would think the machine was dead by just pressing the green
ON key!
There is no ALT key, and there are separate LF and RETURN keys. There are 12
function keys and a HELP key and these are used with the built-in menu
program (type menu from dos). The only software with this machine are two
little cartridges, one each of which plug into slots on either side of the
hinged lid under a fairly hard to remove section of plastic that forms part
of the case. The cartridges here are MAG CALC and MAG WORD, each
accessible from the menu program. I haven't actually played around with
these yet.
BASIC would be on a cartridge like this, but it did not come with this unit.
I can not find anything on the net other than a German equivalent of the
French list referred to by others.
Phil Guerney
Brisbane, Australia.
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Davie <adavie_at_mad.scientist.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, 23 November 1998 14:48
Subject: Dulmont Magnum
>I've just obtained an unusual laptop circa 1983, a Dulmot Magnum.
>Garbage-bin green body, quite heavy. Runs on 6V, MS-DOS 2.11 Very strange
>flip-up LCD display, about 8 lines x 80 characters. Actually, this thing
is
>pretty well designed for its day.
>Does anybody know about the history of this machine, and where it fits in
>relative to other laptops of the era (ie: what was the first genuine
laptop,
>when, etc) ?
>
>--
>Andrew Davie
>www.comcen.com.au/~adavie/slide/calculator/soviet.html
>adavie_at_mad.scientist.com
>ICQ# 3297382
>
>
Received on Sun Nov 29 1998 - 07:03:19 GMT