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Any info on this???? Nbi 4100s computer system

D

Drummer016

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Joined
Apr 16, 2012
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28
Location
Richmond, VA USA
Still going through that storage unit of vintage computers I bought. Found this NBI 4100S. Never heard of them nor seen a computer quite like this.

Any info would be nice. Cant find any on Ebay and couldnt get a match on google.

System seems to turn on fine but having problems getting a display.

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I had an ICL system very very similar to that, with LEDs on the CPU card.
Mine had 7 serial ports and no video card, ran an OEM version from ICL of Concurrent CP/M 86 to run terminals at a local library back in the day. Not sure if it was actually IBM compatible or not, pretty sure it wasn't though because I remember not being able to do anything with it :(

I guess that does not help you, but it bought back a rush of memories seeing that style of design again.
 
NBI was a big name in word processing and office automation during the 70s and 80s. The 4100 is roughly contemporary with an IBM 5160, when NBI decided to bow to the IBM juggernaut. I believe that it can run MS-DOS in addition to NBI's OASsys software.
 
Note how the 3 PC boards closest to the disk drives and power supply are longer and taller than the ISA cards on the other side.

If this system is still set up for OASys, there should be a coax connector on the back panel for it.
 
Ahh yes it does have a coax connector mounted on the plate of one of the boards.

Are these computers very collectable? I am a seller and am trying to determine a fair price.
 
Is it uncommon vintage gear? Yes, indeed--there's not much that escaped the scrap pile. Office automation equipment in general is pretty rare, particularly old word processors (e.g. Artec, Lanier, CPT and others), mostly because companies elected to scrap the stuff rather than try to resell it.

Is it collectable? That's harder to say--and I'd be the last to say, since I'm not a collector--it's definitely an underpopulated category, which may make it harder to collect. For what it's worth, I believe that your system could run MS-DOS just fine, but I don't recall if it took a special version, but that should be easy to determine.

That coax connector on the back was NBI's own OASys proprietary networking system, but I recall that you can get adapters to a standard 10BaseT connection.

I wouldn't junk it--it deserves to be preserved.
 
NBI software features were on a EPROM on the motherboard. Earlier models (3000 Series) had proprietary floppy disks that contained "sidestream" software to work with the EPROM. NBI was probably the first document oriented work processor (law firms loved this feature) and did amazing work with scientific equation typing and printing use a Qume dual headed printer. NBI did come out with a GUI on a model called the 5000, if I remember correctly, The 5000 was designed to compete with the Xerox Star for a fraction of the price of the Star. I had heard that the 5000 software was either sold or licensed to WordPerfect to them into the GUI word processing market. It was a great company led by a delusional guy who actually believed as late as 1990 that word processing and computing would never be done on the same machine. NBI developed the first network interface card for the IBM PC that ran over twisted pair cable at a blistering 2Mpbs. They also put a reduced feature set of their award winning WP software on a card for the IBM PC.
 
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