The Durango F-85 was an early
personal computer
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 tec ...
introduced in September 1978 by
Durango Systems Corporation, a company started in 1977 by George E. Comstock, John M. Scandalios and Charles L. Waggoner, all formerly of
Diablo Systems
Diablo Data Systems was a division of Xerox created by the acquisition of Diablo Systems Inc.
for US$29 million in 1972, .
The F-85 could run its own multitasking operating system called DX-85M, which included an integral Indexed Sequential (
ISAM) file system and per-task file locking, or alternatively
CP/M-80.
DX-85M utilized a text configuration file named
CONFIG.SYS
CONFIG.SYS is the primary configuration file for the DOS and OS/2 operating systems. It is a special ASCII text file that contains user-accessible setup or configuration directives evaluated by the operating system's DOS BIOS (typically residing ...
five years before this filename was used for a similar purpose under
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 ...
/
PC DOS 2.0 in 1983.
The F-85 used single-sided 5ΒΌ-inch
100 tpi diskette drives providing 480 KB utilizing a high-density
4/5 group coded encoding. The machine was using a
Western Digital
Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...
FD1781 floppy-disk controller
A floppy-disk controller (FDC) has evolved from a discrete set of components on one or more circuit boards to a special-purpose integrated circuit (IC or "chip") or a component thereof. An FDC directs and controls reading from and writing to ...
with 77-track
Micropolis drives.
In later models this was expanded to a double-sided option for 960 KB (946/947 KB formatted
) per diskette.
Durango later dropped the "F-85" model name and adopted a user model system, with 700 being the entry model and 950 being the full-featured model.
Still later, they designed a
80186
The Intel 80186, also known as the iAPX 186, or just 186, is a microprocessor and microcontroller introduced in 1982. It was based on the Intel 8086 and, like it, had a 16-bit external data bus multiplexed with a 20-bit address bus. The 801 ...
-/
80286-based 16-bit system, the Durango "Poppy";
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 ...
was selected as the entry operating system.
See also
*
Group coded recording
Notes
References
Further reading
* https://books.google.com/books?id=XPDvkYPCkWgC&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86
* https://books.google.com/books?id=Alpvxl7sBqIC&pg=RA1-PA63&lpg=RA1-PA63
* https://books.google.com/books?id=qZiwCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185
External links
*
Personal computers
{{microcompu-stub