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The company that became Northstar originated as 'Kentucky Fried Computers' but you can guess why that name had to change. Initially
they produced S100 bus cards for other machines like the popular Altair and IMSAI CP/M machines, but after producing a low-cost floppy controller board for
hard sector disks they branched out into making their own S100 bus machine. The Horizon was one of the first to integrate SSSD floppy disk drives within the
cabinet - others at the time couldn't do this because their front panels were taken up with the switches and lamps needed to boot the machine. The drives
were Shugart SA400 units.
Northstar were also one of the first to offer a hard drive for their machines, an 18" monster.
Originally launched in 1977, the machine featured the usual Z80 running at 4MHz, but also 16K RAM and a boot ROM. One differentiator
to the other manufacturers was that the Horizon had all the circuitry needed to support a display terminal and printer built into the motherboard, meaning
that the buyer had a machine ready to go - past S100 machines needed a dedicated serial card and printer card to get the same functionality. Another
interesting design choice was the case. I know I have a few hobbyist machines that are built into wooden cases by their owners, but the Horizon was the
first machine where you could buy it with a mahogany case from the manufacturer. Health & Safety be damned. It's nice though.
I got this machine from the very excellent Dave Williams two years ago, but it didn't have its wooden cover which is why you haven't
seen it here yet. Recently the splendid owner of the Telstar website and all things Videotext John Newcombe decided to see if he could make a cover for it.
I think we can all agree he very much can. Cheers John!
Boards
4MHZ Z80 CPU
Northstar 16K RAM made of 32x 4027 chips - 2 chips are required to make 1K
The Memory Merchant 16K board utilising 32x 2112 DRAM chips.
Seattle Computer Products 16K PLUS board using 32x TMS4044 DRAM chips.
Northstar MDC-A4 Floppy Controller for hard sectored disks.
Northstar 16K RAM made of 32x 4027 chips - 2 chips are required to make 1K
The Memory Merchant 16K board utilising 32x 2112 DRAM chips.
Seattle Computer Products 16K PLUS board using 32x TMS4044 DRAM chips.
Northstar MDC-A4 Floppy Controller for hard sectored disks.
The PSU for this Horizon is 110V so I can't power it up until I find my stepdown transformer. For now though, enjoy the pics.
Pictures
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