Northstar Horizon

From: Bob Stek <bobstek_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Tue Nov 2 19:07:11 1999

Define late entry. The N* Product Catalog I have in front of me is dated
January, 1978 and it says:

"North Star Computers ... was incorporated in June, 1976. ...North Star now
offers a complete S-100 bus computer."

I'd have to dig out more definitive references, but it seems likely that the
Horizon was first offered in 1977. The price at the time was $1599 (kit) or
$1899 (assembled) for the Horizon 12-slot motherboard with built in serial
port (additional serial or parallel port was $39), RTC, chassis and cover,
15A _at_ 8v, 6A @+/- 16v power supply, with 4 MHz Z-80, 16k RAM, disk
controller, and one Shugart minifloppy. (A second Shugart was $400!) The
CPU board listed for $199, and the 16K RAM for $399 - parity option was $39
(I remember reading warnings about using dynamic RAM w/o parity 'cause stray
cosmic rays were likely to corrupt your memory at admittedly infrequent
times!)

Bob Stek
bobstek_at_ix.netcom.com
Saver of Lost SOLs

-----Original Message-----
From: CLASSICCMP-owner_at_u.washington.edu
[mailto:CLASSICCMP-owner_at_u.washington.edu]On Behalf Of Richard Erlacher
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 1:29 PM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: Northstar Horizon


The N* Horizon was a late entry in the S-100 market, and, though it was
priced competitively with CROMEMCO and VECTOR GRAPHICS systems, it didn't
come in at a lower price than component systems using boards purchased
individually based on comparison-shopping for the best price/function
tradeoff.
Received on Tue Nov 02 1999 - 19:07:11 GMT