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Otrona Attache value?

T

TanruNomad

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There's a guy with a pretty much mint condition system with the bag and disks and manuals, but he's asking over $100 and I walked away. Is this something I'll regret or is that the market value for these guys?
 
With everything, something over $100 is probably reasonable. Let me know if you get it -- I'm still looking for bootable disks for mine!
 
arrow_runner said:
eBay says the price was fair, maybe even really good since it comes with extras, if this is the same model

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Otr...557?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4170bf87bd
Click to expand...

Yup, that's it! Serial number was 7XXX. Were there really that few of these made? Like only 10K? If I get it, I can probably just copy the disks right? I'd be happy to send you the boot disks for free+shipping. What disk format do these use? Was it the same as other CP/M portables like the Kaypro?
 
TanruNomad said:
Yup, that's it! Serial number was 7XXX. Were there really that few of these made? Like only 10K? If I get it, I can probably just copy the disks right? I'd be happy to send you the boot disks for free+shipping. What disk format do these use? Was it the same as other CP/M portables like the Kaypro?
Click to expand...

Oh that's not mine and I don't know the first thing about these machines. I just saw the thread and got curious. Slow work day today :p

Edit: Oh, you weren't talking to me...okay...
 
That price may have even been low since that's tvrsales selling it and they're sorta a black sheep right now since a lot of us aren't going to bid on any of their gear (VCF incident).
 
I'd say grab it! There is a lot of support for it in various softwares out there, such as mdm7/imp/mex/bye.

IIRC it was very similar to the Osborne Vixen, even though the screen is smaller.
 
TanruNomad said:
Yup, that's it! Serial number was 7XXX. Were there really that few of these made? Like only 10K? If I get it, I can probably just copy the disks right? I'd be happy to send you the boot disks for free+shipping. What disk format do these use? Was it the same as other CP/M portables like the Kaypro?
Click to expand...

I don't know how many were made, but they pop up from time to time. Mine came from the MIT Flea in nonworking condition. Supposedly they were popular with the NASA JPL folks, though it wouldn't be surprising if surplus machines were physically destroyed.

It's a separate format, but IIRC 22DISK will read/write it. Yes, you can just copy the disks. Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk will read/write the images too.
 
TanruNomad said:
Yup, that's it! Serial number was 7XXX. Were there really that few of these made? Like only 10K? If I get it, I can probably just copy the disks right? I'd be happy to send you the boot disks for free+shipping. What disk format do these use? Was it the same as other CP/M portables like the Kaypro?
Click to expand...

That sounds about right. I worked for Otrona back then and there were not a lot of the original models made before IBM came out with the PC and changed everything. We tried to add an 8086 board and could run MSDOS on it but most software for the PC did not go through the OS for everything (like writing directly to screen memory for instance) so we tried to make it more hardware compatible but it was just not possible. We designed a whole new machine but ran out of money before it got anywhere.

I would really like to get whatever boot disks you have. I still have my Attache with the 8086 card but lost the disks.
 
Yes, i know. It is a few years later now. But i just found this thread.

Just want to let you all know that the Otrona Attache is quite a special CP/M computer.
It has a build in real-time clock and it has two (Yes: 2) separate video memories:
one for text and one for graphics. It was possible to show text and graphics layered/at the same time.
As far as i know this is the only CP/M computer with this feature.
And not even DOS/Windows computers ever had this.
 
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A real-time clock: yes.
But as far as i know not two separate video memories which can be layered to show text and graphics at the same time, on top of each other.
The APC has some memory for custom display fonts.
 
From WikiP on the NEC APC III:

"Either text, graphics, or graphics with text overlay were software selectable. " Two graphics controllers were used.

This was not uncommon in Japanese-origin systems.
 
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