Durango F-85
Early personal computer by Durango Systems Corporation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Durango F-85 was an early personal computer 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.[1][2][3] 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.[1][4][5] DX-85M utilized a text configuration file named CONFIG.SYS[5] five years before this filename was used for a similar purpose under MS-DOS/PC DOS 2.0 in 1983.
![]() Logo of Durango Systems | |
Manufacturer | Durango Systems Corporation |
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Type | Personal business computer |
Release date | September 1978[1][2] |
Lifespan | 1978-1984 |
Media | two 100 tpi high-capacity 5.25-inch diskette drives storing 480 KB on each single-sided or 960 KB on double-sided diskettes using group-coded recording (GCR) |
Operating system | DX-85M (multi-user/multitasking) |
CPU | 5 MHz Intel 8085A |
Memory | 65 KB (up to 196 KB) |
Storage | 40 MB Shugart SA-4006 14-inch winchester, later 5.25" integrated ST506-interface MFM drive |
Display | 9-inch CRT with 64 characters per row by 16 rows or 80 characters per row by 24, based on the Intel 8275 Video display controller |
Input | keyboard, full stroke, 84 key |
Successor | Durango "Poppy" |
The F-85 used single-sided 5¼-inch 100 tpi diskette drives providing 480 KB utilizing a high-density 4/5 group coded encoding. The machine was using a Western Digital FD1781 floppy-disk controller with 77-track Micropolis drives.[6] In later models this was expanded to a double-sided option for 960 KB (946/947 KB formatted[2][4][nb 1]) per diskette.[2][5][6][7]
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-/80286-based 16-bit system, the Durango "Poppy"; MS-DOS was selected as the entry operating system.
See also
Notes
- The product flyer for the Durango 800 series documents a formatted "on-line capacity" of 1.892 MB for the diskette drives. The system, however, was equipped with two 5¼-inch Micropolis 100 tpi 77-track floppy drives by default, and 1.892 MB is about twice as large as the physical drive capacity documented in various other sources (480 KB per side), therefore, by "on-line capacity" they must have meant the available storage capacity available to users for the combination of two drives.
References
Further reading
External links
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