North Star Computers
Computer industry | |
Founded | 1976 |
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Founders |
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Defunct | 1989 |
Headquarters | , |
Products |
North Star Computers Inc. (later styled as NorthStar) was an American computer company based in
While initially successful, North Star's sales suffered from the company's adherence to
History
The company was formed by Mark Greenberg and Charles Grant, who started Kentucky Fried Computer to handle retail and mail order sales of
FPB
North Star's first product was the Floating Point Board, an S-100 bus card that implemented a
Micro-Disk System (1976)
North Star's next product was a hard sectored floppy disk system based on a 5-inch Shugart Associates SA-400 mechanism with 89 kB capacity. This was coupled with an S-100 bus controller and ROM that included bootstrap code and shipped with North Star DOS and North Star BASIC. The MDS system cost US$699 and could be plugged into any S-100 bus machine, and was one of the earliest disk systems affordable for the average hobbyist. With the North Star installed, startup went from a lengthy process of manually entering a "loader" program through front-panel switches, to simply setting the run address to E800 on the address switches and flicking the RUN switch.[6]
North Star later updated the disk drive to support double-density disks with 180 kB, and later still double-sided, double-density disks with 360 kB of storage. However, the double-density product was pre-announced and sales of the original single-density, single-sided model ended overnight. The sudden loss of income almost bankrupted the company, and is used as an example of the Osborne effect in action.[7]
North Star Horizon (1977)
The Horizon was an 8-bit 4 MHz Zilog
Announced in November 1977, the Horizon was one of the earliest systems to include built-in drives. The cabinet held up to 12 additional S-100 cards, with at least some of these used for memory cards. With one floppy drive the kit cost $1,599, while an assembled system cost $1,899. With two drives the kit cost $1,999, while an assembled system cost $2,349.[4]
Early machines used a wooden cabinet and sported a logo placard with the company name stylized "NorthStar". Later machines used an all-metal case and the name was separated (as in the image on this page).
North Star Advantage (1982)
The Advantage was an
North Star Dimension (1984)
North Star in 1982 reached revenues of $41 million and had after-tax profit of $3.69 million. However, the growing success of the
After 1984
After giving North Star $3.7 million in debt financing, Fortune Systems Corporation, a Unix workstation manufacturer based in Redwood City, California, was in talks to acquire North Star for $14 million in August 1984.[10][11] The deal fell through in October 1984, however, with North Star and Fortune agreeing to collaborate on forthcoming hardware projects nonetheless.[12]
Among North Star's last products was an upgrade to the Dimension—the Dimension 300—in 1987,[13]: 326 and the EL family of multi-user system ISA expansion cards for the PC, based on the Intel 8088, 286 and 386, in 1988.[14] The company dissolved in 1989.[15]
References
- ^ NorthStar catalog from August 1976
- ^ Greenberg, Mark; Charles Grant (February 1977). "Kentucky Fried Computers advertisement". BYTE. 2 (2): 103. Slogan: "A Computer in Every Pot" Address was 2465 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710
- ^ Reiling, Robert (June 1976). "Bulletin Board" (PDF). Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter. 2 (6): 2. Retrieved 2007-07-21.
- ^ a b c "NorthStar Horizon", oldcomputers.net
- ^ "North Star Computers", catalog, August 1979
- ^ "North Star Single Density Disk Controller, Shugart SA-400 Disk Drive and Floating Board Board"
- ^ Andrew Orlowski, "Taking Osborne out of the Osborne Effect", The Register, 20 June 2005
- ^ Shapiro, Ezra (February 1984). "A Business Computer, A Business Program, and More on Voce Recognition". BYTE. p. 147. Retrieved 22 October 2013.
- ^ Morrissey, Jane (September 1, 1987). "LAN operating systems find niche with high-end multiprocessor units". PC Week. 4 (35). Ziff-Davis: C37 – via Gale.
- ^ a b Moad, J. (August 27, 1984). "Fortune Eyes North Star Buy for $14M". Electronic News. 30 (1512). Sage Publications: 23 – via Gale.
- ^ Staff writer (August 21, 1984). "Fortune Considers Buying North Star". The New York Times. The New York Times Company: D6. Archived from the original on May 24, 2015.
- ^ Bergheim, Kim (October 15, 1984). "Companies End Merger Talks". InfoWorld. 6 (42). IDG Publications: 13 – via Google Books.
- ^ Derfler, Frank J.; Roberto Rivera (June 9, 1987). "Making Connections: Clustered CPU Systems". PC Magazine. 6 (11). Ziff-Davis: 317–339 – via Google Books.
- ^ Staff writer (July 11, 1988). "Newswire". PC Week. 5 (28). Ziff-Davis: C4 – via Gale.
- ^ "North Star Computers, Inc". OpenCorporates. Archived from the original on October 31, 2022.