CPT 8000

From: John Mustain <John.Mustain_at_exactsoftware.com>
Date: Mon Jan 12 12:47:12 2004

Hi Adrian,
 
I read your posting from classcmp.org which read as follows:
 
Hi folks,
 
Anyone have any info on the subject beast here? In fact, does anybody
want
one? I've got said twin 8" floppy drive monster here and it doesn't fit
in
with my museum since it isn't a home computer. It also doesn't have a
keyboard, but it powers up and asks nicely for a program disk.
 
All I can find is that CPT Corp were based in Eden Prairie, Michigan,
were
founded in 1971 by Dick Eichhorn and ceased to exist in the early 1990s.
The
Babbage institute has a CPT 8000 and the picture there is pretty much
what
the 8520 looks like. Only it has a keyboard :)
 
The 8520 is an Intel 8080-powered machine, and I only know that because
I
took it apart. Google searches only turn up people offering a data
transfer
service, so either there aren't many left or it's just not a very
interesting machine!
 
Like I say, free to a good home but it's HEAVY, maybe 50-60lbs heavy. I
could sure use the space it takes up and I don't want to put it back in
the
tip....

I thought that you might be interested to know that I used to work for
CPT (from 1980 - 1987) and was there (and worked in production) while
the 8000 series was being manufactured.

A couple of corrections to your information:

1. CPT was based in Eden Prairie Minnesota, not Michigan.

2. CPT was founded by Dean Scheff, not Dick Eichorn. Dean started the
company in 1971, and the original product was a cassette tape base
memory add-on for IBM Selectric typewriters (The name CPT originally
meant Cassette Power Typing).

As you already know, the CPT 8000 series (8000, 8100, et al) was a
dedicated word processor. The beauty was in it's 14" portrait oriented
screen. This screen was white with black characters and had a very high
scan rate (for the day). The 8000 perfectly mimicked a sheet of paper
being scrolled through an electric typewriter and was therefore very
comfortable for most office workers to use.

CPT had other products like the 6000 (a low powered, half screen version
of the 8000), the Diskpack (sp? I don't remember how we spelled that
shared disk system, the Phoenix (word processing with graphics) and the
9000 series (a low profile replacement for the 8000 series that utilized
the Intel 8086 processor.

If I dig into my archives I could probably find printed articles and
sales brochures, let me know if you would be interested in any scanned
images of this information.

John D Mustain
Exact Software
* <mailto:john.mustain_at_exactsoftware.com>
john.mustain_at_exactsoftware.com
* www.exact-software.com
* 800.468.0834 x271
* 333 East Center St. - Marion, OH 43302

PS, as I was writing this email to you I was enjoying some coffee from
my 1986 vintage CPT 1971-186 15 Years of the Best cup that was given to
all CPT employees at the time. I've used it nearly every working day
since it was given to me.

 

Later!
Received on Mon Jan 12 2004 - 12:47:12 GMT