THE CUTTING EDGE : Alas, Poor Kaypro . . . A Requiem for PCs Past
I’m a sucker for cheap sentimentality. Just tell me the story of a child’s former toys--the petted-smooth teddy bear, the loyal GI Joes and Barbies--waiting patiently in the attic for their old playmate to come back and be interested in them, and I get misty-eyed and indignant. Poor little guys! I’d never treat my old friends that way!
And I don’t. Scattered around me, stuffed under desks and gracefully crammed onto office shelves, are the companions of yesteryear. (“Toys”? Perish the thought.) Of the dozen or so computers I have ever owned, nearly all are still here, still within reach--still ready to serve, if I could be amused again, as in the old days, by their simple tricks and their brave little 8080 and 80286 hearts.
The oldest of all is the Processor Technology SOL-20, from 1978, the equivalent of a simple toy carved from a hunk of wood to amuse a frontier child. The SOL-20 actually is made of wood--at least its side panels are, beautiful dark walnut slabs from a time before thediscovery that computers must be boxy and putty-colored.
The parts of the SOL-20 that aren’t made of wood are a turquoise-colored metal. A hot-pink ribbon cable runs from the SOL to its NorthStar floppy disk drive. I wrote a book with this machine, and as I printed out its last pages (on a battleship-sized printer that was actually a converted IBM Selectric typewriter) I thought: “This is a miracle of technology!”
The miracle is still there, running as well as it ever has, if only I could find a program that would work in its 48K of memory.
Next came the mighty Victor 9000, the equivalent of a model ship or sateen doll just too delicately detailed for its own good. I can’t stand to have the Victor out in plain view; the emotional strain is just too great. But each time I open the closet and see it sitting there I reflect on the unfairness of life.
The Victor came out a few months before the original IBM Personal Computer and was more admirable in every way. It had an extra-sharp screen, so much more carefully-crafted and pleasant to look at than the IBM’s! Its disk drives held so much more data. Its overall shape was so much more elegant. I made fun of my friends then for stampeding to the IBM. No imagination!
But of course they soon made fun of me. The Victor might have become the industry standard, but given IBM’s marketing muscle--in those days, Big Blue’s awesome lats and delts hadn’t yet atrophied--my beloved computer languished, eventually bringing the parent company down. The machine was sold for a while by a company whose main business was fire extinguishers, and then it disappeared, except from my closet. It, too, still runs, and would happily do my bidding--if my wishes were still confined to WordPerfect 4.1.
Once, in 1981, I tried lugging the Victor on a weeklong business trip. All it took was a couple of huge crates, one for the screen and one for the computer, which made me feel as if I were packing for a round-the-world steamer cruise. So when the first “portable” machines came out, I was excited about them too. In 1982, I bought a Kaypro II, which was about the size of the largest boom box ever made, and I was so impressed by its “miniaturization” that I went out of my way to visit Kaypro corporate headquarters on a trip to San Diego.
This company could do no wrong! Orders were coming in so fast that sidewalks outside buildings were used as temporary storage areas. I gave my Kaypro to a relative living in Africa, confident that I could buy another, better, newer model that would soon be released--but the company folded not long afterward. I think of its fate when I visit today’s high-tech companies that can do no wrong. I am sure that somewhere in Africa, my Kaypro hums away still.
I never owned an Osborne, granddaddy of all the early “luggable” machines, but I did get the original Compaq portable, roughly the size of a sewing machine, which I hauled with me across half the countries of East Asia. For four years, I tried to cram the machine into overhead bins on Thai Air Lines or Cathay Pacific. Travel can be dangerous; the Compaq’s main brush with peril came when I was living in Kuala Lumpur, where the climate was so perpetually hot and moist that green mold grew on the motherboard and all of my floppy disks.
My ruggedly built Compaq survived the rigors of subtropical Asia and loyally produced a book of its own, only to be cannibalized when it got back home. It now sits under one of my desks, cover permanently removed, as a warehouse when I need to get a spare part for some other, newer machine.
Every now and then I catch a glimpse on an upper shelf of my first real portable--the Radio Shack Model 100, a machine that is smaller and lighter than a typical edition of this newspaper and was for a while the traveling journalist’s best friend. I used it through the mid-1980s and had a strange sense of communion with it near the end of the decade. While living in Japan, I went to the 1988 Summer Olympics at Seoul, where I saw reporters from around the world hammering away on outdated Model 100s of their own.
Say what you will about the corruption of the Olympic movement; when I hear Olympic spirit , I will always think of Peruvians, Bulgarians and Americans, united by Radio Shack.
The old machines start to run together, producing too many memories at once. The NEC Multispeed--another overweight portable that got jostled out of functionality on a rough trip through the Philippines. In a pinch I could still use any of the old machines except this one; I keep it out of guilt. Generic “clone” machines from mail-order companies that are now out of business. The machines still run; my wife and children happily use them, allowing me to keep trading up. And my “real” computer of the moment, which is fast, efficient, and exciting--at least for today.
I’m saving a place for it on the shelf.
