The Zorba was a

portable computer 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 sy ...

running the

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 ...

operating system manufactured in 1983 and 1984. It was originally manufactured by Telcon Industries, Inc., of

Fort Lauderdale, Florida Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...

,1984 Telcon Zorba Gemini - Early Vintage Portable Computer - Luggable Laptop CPM PC
- ''youtube.com'' a company specialized in telecommunication equipment manufacturing. The Zorba was one of the last CP/M computers on the market. By the time it was introduced, the

Kaypro Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based out of San Diego in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems (NLS) to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro produced a ...

and

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 ...

machines already dominated that market. The introduction of the

Compaq Portable The Compaq Portable was an early portable computer which was one of the first IBM PC compatible systems. It was Compaq Computer Corporation's first product, to be followed by others in the Compaq Portable series and later Compaq Deskpro series. ...

, compatible with the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

and running

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 ...

, sealed the fate of the CP/M machines.

History

The Zorba was one of the last

8-bit In computer architecture, 8-bit Integer (computer science), integers or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet (computing), octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) arc ...

portable computers running the CP/M operating system. It had features very similar to the

Kaypro II Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based out of San Diego in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems (NLS) to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro produced a l ...

. The original sale price was $1,595. The rights for the Zorba were sold by Telcon for $5 million to MODCOMP (Modular Computer Systems, Inc), a company which specialized in mini-computer manufacturing. Modular Micro Group was created specifically to market the Zorba. The Zorba 7 was sold as the Modular Micros GC-200. Modular Micro Group sold two different models. The Zorba 7 sold for $1,595. It had a 7" green CRT screen and two 410K

floppies 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 wi ...

. The Zorba 2000 sold for $2,000. It had a 9" green or yellow screen, two 820K floppies, and an available 10 MB

hard 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 ...

. Sales were very poor. Within a year, the Zorba computer stock was sold to Gemini Electronics, a company which specialized in selling surplus stocks. The remaining inventory was sold at a price of about $799 per unit. In all, only about 6,000 Zorba computers were manufactured and sold.

Available software

The Zorba computer came with several video emulations, including Heathkit 19/89,

Zenith The zenith (, ) is an imaginary point directly "above" a particular location, on the celestial sphere. "Above" means in the vertical direction (plumb line) opposite to the gravity direction at that location (nadir). The zenith is the "highest" ...

19/89, and DEC

VT52 The VT50 was a CRT-based computer terminal introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in July 1974. It provided a display with 12 rows and 80 columns of upper-case text, and used an expanded set of control characters and forward-only scro ...

. This allowed them to run virtually any existing CP/M software. A "Perfect Software Package" was available for $190. This included the

Perfect Writer Perfect Writer is a word processor computer program published by Perfect Software for CP/M, subsequently rewritten and released as Perfect II by Thorn EMI Computer Software for IBM PC compatible computers. It was written in C and famous for its st ...

word processor, the "Perfect Speller" spell checker, the "Perfect Filer" database manager, and the "Perfect Calc" program for spreadsheets. It could also run the

MicroPro WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the sol ...

Software Package (

WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the sol ...

, Mailmerge, SpellStar, CalcStar, and DataStar).

Features

The Zorba had a detachable 95-key keyboard with 19 function keys and numeric keypad. It had a

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 ...

A CPU, running at 4Mhz. It came with 64 KB of RAM and 4 KB of ROM (expandable to 16 KB).{{Cite web , title=Zorba Portable Computer : Features , url=http://www.zorba.z80.de/features.htm , access-date=2023-03-27 , website=www.zorba.z80.de The text-only screen had 80 characters × 25 lines. It came with two

serial ports In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. T ...

, a

parallel port In computing, a parallel port is a type of interface found on early computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once ( parallel ...

, and an

IEEE-488 IEEE 488 is a short-range digital communications 8-bit parallel multi-master interface bus specification developed by Hewlett-Packard as HP-IB (Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus). It subsequently became the subject of several standards, and is ...

port.

References

External links

1984 Telcon Zorba Gemini - Early Vintage Portable Computer - Luggable Laptop CPM PC

Zorba Equipment Preservation Society

Review of the Zorba, InfoWorld magazine, June 6, 1983
Portable computers Z80-based computers

History

Available software

Features

See also

References

External links