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One of the rarest CP/M systems there is?

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ChrisCwmbran

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Oct 11, 2011
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Cwmbran, Wales, United Kingdom
If you have been following my website you may have read that recently I have been trying out an HxC SD/SDHC floppy drive emulator. Having tried it out on an Acorn BBC model B+ I decided to fire up one of my Camputers Lynxes with it:

https://www.micromuseum.co.uk/display_article.php?id=160

Running CP/M on the Lynx was a dream since I was a youngster so I was delighted by this.

This must be one of the rarest CP/M machines there is I'd think.

Thanks for looking!
 
The rarest? Probably not. There are many very unusual and rare machines that could run CP/M from the 1970s. I wonder how many "People's Computer" wood cases are out there (produced by some sort of Berkeley, California co-op)? Even my Durango F-85 is becoming very rare. How many Rair "Black Boxes" are still out there? The list of rare CP/M boxes is very long.
 
I see what you mean :) I was more thinking of "mass market" machines rather than custom build jobs etc. It's been a long term aim of mine so I'm very pleased to have achieved it.

Now to get WordStar running on it too!
 
All of the machines I mentioned were not custom jobs. The Durango unit sold in excess of 6000 units. Rair was quite popular in the UK--I don't know much about the sales of the Berkeley box. The first two were definitely aimed at the commercial market, not the residential. Then there were the industrial units, such as the Allen-Bradley boxes and many of the CNC controllers.

Small business readily adopted these because of accounting tasks, such as GL, AP, AR, inventory and payroll.

"Home computers" are a very different kettle of fish.
 
Well the Camputers Lynx supposedly sold 30,000 units globally, but the vast majority of those were 48kB and 96kB machines which even with the disk interface couldn't run CP/M. I've never seen figures for how many 128kB machines were made but it's my understanding that Camputers went bust before it was really released.
I'd love to know how many 128kB's made it out into the wild, and how many of them still exist.
 
Nice work Chris,

I still regret giving my Lynx away... but unsurprisingly it was the 48k model. As JonB says, lovely keyboard.


Cheers,

Andy.
 
Speaking of rare CP/M machines... I'm trying to figure out what this CP/M machine was called, I've only ever seen one of them. Basically a smallish CP/M portable machine, with a built-in amber CRT monitor in a light beige all-plastic case. I seem to recall it had a keyboard that was mostly beige but might have also had some orange colored plastic on it? I *think* the display was on-par with the size display found in the Osborne One, but the machine was considerably smaller.

I know that's vague, but remember this is my memory from the mid-90's. ;)
 
I *think* it might have been an Otrona Attache'.... but as I recall it had an amber screen and the pics I've found online show a green screen.
 
After seeing a few pics I'm SURE that's what I remember! Saw some mention of amber displays so that must be it.
 
I have a cbm b256 with 8088 coprocessor that runs cpm 86. Pretty rare for cp/m. Retrotechnology.com has a nice cp/m history with machines from first cp/m revs. Any Altair running cp/m 1.x is "rare"
 
geoffm3 said:
I *think* it might have been an Otrona Attache'.... but as I recall it had an amber screen and the pics I've found online show a green screen.
Click to expand...

If it was the 90s, could have also been a Zorba. Amber was definitely an option.

Could have also been a Preis, although that's doubtful. 2 Sony 3.5" drives (the half-height ones (OA-D32) with a 70MB Evotek hard drive option, all in a 1980's luggable. I've still got the BIOS listing for one, but I haven't seen one in decades.

How's that for "rare"?
 
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