19 Facts About Kaypro II

Kaypro II was founded by Non-Linear Systems to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer.

Kaypro II was exceptionally loyal to its original customer base but slow to adapt to the changing computer market and the advent of IBM PC compatible technology.

Kaypro II began as Non-Linear Systems, a maker of electronic test equipment, founded in 1952 by Andrew Kay, the inventor of the digital voltmeter.

The Kaypro II was designed to be portable like the Osborne, contained in a single enclosure with a handle for carrying.

Kaypro II was part of a new generation of consumer-friendly personal computers that were designed to appeal to novice users who wanted to perform basic productivity on a machine that was relatively easy to set up and use.

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Computers such as the Kaypro II were widely referred to as "appliance" or "turnkey" machines; they offered little in the way of expandability or features that would interest hackers or electronics hobbyists and were mainly characterized by their affordable price and a collection of bundled software.

In contrast, one feature that was favorable to electronics hobbyists was that all the chips on the Kaypro II mainboard were installed in sockets, not soldered to the board, making it easy to repair the machines or even to splice custom circuits into the stock logic.

Also, while Kaypro II machines were generally not upgradeable without factory-unauthorized custom modification, some Kaypro II computers that came with single-sided floppy disk drives could be upgraded to double-sided drives, and some that came with only one floppy drive could have a second drive added.

Kaypro II's success contributed to the eventual failure of the Osborne Computer Corporation and Morrow Designs.

The relatively high quality of mechanical fabrication seen in the aluminum-cased Kaypro II 8-bit computers was a natural outgrowth of NLS's prior business building professional and industrial electronic test instruments.

Arthur C Clarke used a Kaypro II to write and collaboratively edit his 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two and the later film adaptation.

In late 1984, Kaypro II introduced its first IBM PC compatible, the Kaypro II 16 transportable.

Early in the Kaypro's life, there was a legal dispute with the owner of the Big Board computer, who charged that the Kaypro II main circuit board was an unlicensed copy or clone.

Kaypro 10 followed the Kaypro II, and is much like the Kaypro II and Kaypro 4, with the addition of a 10 megabyte hard drive and replacing one of the two floppy drives.

The Kaypro II 10 eliminated the complicated procedures to turn the computer on and off often associated with hard disk technology.

The Compaq was larger and less durable—whereas the Kaypro II had a heavy-gauge alumininum case, the Compaq case was plastic, with a thin-gauge aluminum inner shield to reduce radio frequency interference—but rapidly took over the portable PC market segment.

In 1984, BYTE magazine observed "Kaypro II apparently has tremendous buying and bargaining power, " noting the Kaypro II 10 came with both WordStar and Perfect Writer, plus "two spelling checkers, two spreadsheets, two communications programs and three versions of BASIC".

Kaypro II's nomenclature was odd, with the numerical designations for their machines having more to do with the capacity of the drives than the order they were produced.

Kaypro II released several different models with the same names, perhaps hoping to capitalize on the name recognition of their older machines.