Bondwell Industrial Co. Inc. was a US and Hong Kong manufacturer of

personal computers A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

during the 1980s (1981-1993).

History

In the early 1980s, Bondwell sold a line of

Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

-80 based

Osborne Osborne may refer to: * Osborne (name) Places Australia * Osborne, South Australia (disambiguation), places associated with the suburb in the Adelaide metropolitan area * Osborne, New South Wales, a rural community in the Riverina region Can ...

-like

luggable A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another and included a display and keyboard together, with a single plug, much like later desktop computers called '' all-in-ones'' (AIO), that integrate the s ...

s such as the models Bondwell-12, Bondwell-14 and Bondwell-16. An exceptional feature in these was a built-in

speech synthesizer Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or Computer hardware, hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system conve ...

. Their prices were exceptionally affordable for the time, although significant trade-offs were made in regard to durability, for instance the chassis was rather flimsy plastic, falling far short of the ruggedness usually expected of luggables. The fanless

power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a r ...

unit, located under the

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

, often caused trouble. The choice of

peripheral A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by the ...

I/O devices made the use of

interrupt In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to ''interrupt'' currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted, ...

s virtually impossible. The Bondwell-12, introduced in 1984, was a "luggable" portable computer with a built-in 9 inch (23 cm)

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...

CRT display, equipped with 64 KB of internal memory, CP/M 2.2 and two single-sided, double density, 5.25 inch

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

drives (180 KB). The Bondwell-14, introduced in 1984, had 128 KB of memory, CP/M 3.0 and two double-sided drives (360 KB). The Bondwell-16, introduced in 1985, had CP/M 3.0, one double-sided drive and a

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

with a capacity of a bit less than 10 MB. The Bondwell-2, introduced in 1985, was a

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide a ...

computer with 64 KB of memory, CP/M 2.2 and one single-sided, double density 3.5 inch floppy disk (360 KB). 256 and 512 KB memory extensions were available. It was one of the earliest portables, as well as one of the few battery-powered CP/M computers. The more advanced Bondwell-18 model featured

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

and the

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

architecture. Bondwell Model 8, introduced in 1986, was a 5.5 kg, 284 x 78 x 310 mm, lap-top portable computer. It featured an Intel 80C88 processor running at 4.77 MHz, a back-lit LCD display with 80 x 25 characters or 640 x 200 graphic a built in battery and a 3.5" 720 KB floppy drive.It had a 76 keys keyboard and the US version had a built-in 300 baud modem. Bondwell also produced a range of 286-based

computers such as the B310 Plus. Later models were 386 based machines. Circa 1988, Bondwell also got involved in creating one of the first universal remote controllers BW-5010. The BW-5010 could control up to 5 devices and featured a backlight. Bondwell was later transformed into Remotec Technology Ltd in 1993.

References

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External links

Bondwell 12 & 14
Albert's Virtual Computer Museum American companies established in 1981 American companies disestablished in 1993 Computer companies established in 1981 Computer companies disestablished in 1993 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Electronics companies established in 1981 Electronics companies disestablished in 1993