NorthStar Horizon incoming

From: Bob Stek <bobstek_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sun Jan 10 07:49:51 1999

NorthStar (founded by 2 Berkeley professors) made one of the earliest S-100
5.25" disk sub-systems. IIRC, it sold for $699 which was cheaper than than
the 8" systems available, and made it a popular add-on for IMSAI and other
early S-100 machines. It always included NorthStar DOS and BASIC, but CP/M
was eventually adapted for it (by Lifeboat Associates I think). The Horizon
was a farily well-designed 4 MHz Z-80 S-100 box supplied with N*'s own 16K
(and later 32K, 48K, and 64K) dynamic RAM cards. The floppy controller was
designed to use 10 hole hard sectored diskettes (which are still available
from California Digital for $10 a box!) in formats ranging from SSSD (90K)
to DSQD (800K). They also made one of the earliest floating point processor
boards (which I believe only their own BASIC supported, in precisions from 8
to 14 digits). They eventually added a range of HDs and continued with
their own operating system development including a multi-user environment,
though they also officially offered CP/M. I was one of the founding members
(along with John Dvorak, who at one time published a Software Review and
sold N* software out of his home!) of INSUA, the International NorthStar
User's Association which published a very good newsletter for many years.
NorthStar made the transistion past the introduction of the PC by offering
an all-in-one SBC system with graphics (the Advantage) and even had a
dual-processor (Z-80 / 8088) model. Despite attempting to expand their
marketing by linking up with General Bindery Corporation (spiral-bound and
other binding equipment) to sell NorthStars through business equipment
suppliers, they eventually went the way of all S-100 manufacturers - R.I.P.

Bob Stek
bobstek_at_ix.netcom.com
Saver of Lost SOLs
Received on Sun Jan 10 1999 - 07:49:51 GMT