My first computer was a Morrow . . . (104kb IMAGE)

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f1reverb · #1 Post by **f1reverb** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:51 pm

as in George Morrow. George was there at the beginning . . .

http://www.pc-history.org/cpm.htm

1500 bucks for a Morrow MD-3 in 1984 with two 5.25" floppies. I couldn't afford the extra 700 bucks for the 5mb (yep, five megabyte) hard drive. I still have it. One time I had a question about the bios and called Morrow and George answered the phone and the question personally.

#2 Post by **BillMorrow** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:32 am

last i heard george morrow had a massive heart attack..
his wife, rose morrow, is, or was, as of several years ago, still listed at their home on arlington road in beserkeley near kensington..

my second computer was an IMSAI and i swapped the MB (which was basically just a backplane with about 20 S-100 sockets for a Morrow Designs Thinker Toys MB..

should i take a photo of my west coast computer faire MORROW poster.. microcomputers since 1976..?
and embed it here..?

i get to do that..

ThinkPad · #3 Post by **ThinkPad** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 12:49 am

Wow. Talk about old

christopher_wolf · #4 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 1:01 am

BillMorrow wrote:last i heard george morrow had a massive heart attack..
his wife, rose morrow, is, or was, as of several years ago, still listed at their home on arlington road in beserkeley near kensington..

my second computer was an IMSAI and i swapped the MB (which was basically just a backplane with about 20 S-100 sockets for a Morrow Designs Thinker Toys MB..

should i take a photo of my west coast computer faire MORROW poster.. microcomputers since 1976..?
and embed it here..?
i get to do that..

Dude, that is like...Far out there; part of the beginning of the PC as we know it.

f1reverb · #5 Post by **f1reverb** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 2:21 pm

George passed away in May 2005. Here's a link to a web page with this NYT obit . . .

http://www.interesting-people.org/archi ... 00070.html

In the old days there were a lot of different computers and a number of operating systems. I still use Caldera DOS 7.02 on one of mine, which is derived ultimately from Digital Research's CP/M, as was MSDOS/PCDOS, although I don't remember if the lawsuits DR brought against Microsoft were successful (I'm too lazy to google). At least in the old days it wasn't just business.

BigWarpGuy · #6 Post by **BigWarpGuy** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 12:37 pm

http://www.99er.net
My first computer was a Texas Instruments 99/4A. It did not have a hard drive. It had a PEB (periphial expansion box that could outlast a war - it was heavy). The PEB could hold memory, modems, diskette drive (5.25 " ). The 99/4a had cartridges that held programs and save data and programs to a TI data/audio cassette player/recorder. I think it had a 8hz cpu.

#7 Post by **BillMorrow** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 3:44 pm

i did not know he had moved to san mateo..

chris, you are in what was once a hot-bed of microcomputer business's..

/START MEMDUMP/
kentucky fried computers started in that industrial area just east of nimitz fwy between powell and ashby..
they became northstar computer..

morrow designs was off gilman on or near 7th street..

processor technology was someplace but later when they got BIG they were just east of the mountains and west of pleasanton..

IMSAI was in san leandro west of the eastshore fwy..
one of the owners of IMSAI put his $$ in computerland..

the homebrew computer club met at gordon french's house in menlo park for a while (google peoples computer company or club) then the meetings were held at SLAC auditorium..
lee felsenstein was the moderator at most meetings..
lee was a hoot.. with his wooden pointer stick as a gavel..

one time, when serial i/o was under discussion and how to implement the flow of bits into and out of the buffer memory..
FIFO (first in first out) or some other way..
one fellow stood up and suggested FIST.. (first in still there)..
you probably had to be there to appreciate the humor..

jim warren announced the first west coast computer faire to be held at SF civic auditorium, at one of the meetings..
last i heard, jim warren was living off the proceeds of selling the computer faire off to some publisheing company.. he had build a big house off skyline in woodside with a view of the pacific ocean and a BIG solar energy storage pool (filled with river pebbles) in the basement..

this is where jobs and wozniak introduced the apple-II..
some of us laughed..
some signed up to buy one when the prototype they had there to showoff was finally going to be available..
(so you can see that ibm (and now lenovo) announcing a product months before it is even in production is well established in this business

)

the northstar user group meetings were held at the byte shop of palo alto (i was living in PA at that time)..

lei-chen wang wrote palo alto tiny basic and roger mellon and harry garland (at that time they were stanford professors) started CROMEMCO in or about 1974 with an S-100 buss card called the "DAZZLER"(sp?) which is probably the earliest forefather of ALL these video cards we use today for gaming and so forth..

hmmm, lets see what else the memory dump will pour forth..

of course the byte shops were all over for a while and computerland was their putative successor..

we'll not mention gary kildahl (of CP/M infamy) who, as i was once told, informed the two suits from IBM who showed up in santa cruz for a meeting, to wait as he was flying around in his airplane..
he continued to fly and they took off to redmond..
you can draw your own conclusions as to what happened..

then there was alphamicro systems (based in irvine) with a wonderful OS and some hardware..
i became a partner in an alphamicro dealership (alpha info systems) in palo alto on san antonio rd. near E. charleston (where CROMEMCO eventually had a building)..

most everything from that time has been consigned to the bit bucket of history..
the same place the teletype KSR machines and all those S-100 buss cards are now..

/END MEMDUMP/

let the googling begin..

#8 Post by **BillMorrow** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 3:48 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:
BillMorrow wrote:.......my second computer was an IMSAI and i swapped the MB (which was basically just a backplane with about 20 S-100 sockets for a Morrow Designs Thinker Toys MB..

should i take a photo of my west coast computer faire MORROW poster.. microcomputers since 1976..?
and embed it here..?
i get to do that..
Dude, that is like...Far out there; part of the beginning of the PC as we know it.

to be honest, i am as old as george morrow and i have socks that are older than most of you'ze guys than hang hereabouts..
(and NO, i will NOT use the term "peeps")

christopher_wolf · #9 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 4:46 pm

That is....impressive. Hmmm, I knew the Bay Area had alot of microcomputer development; but that is more than I expected.

Hey, I remember seeing an old poster like that at school when I was young; now I know what it was about.

#10 Post by **BillMorrow** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:06 pm

there was more going on..
thats all i could recall at the moment..

adam osborne and his first transportable..
the osborne-1
george designed that..
and i think gordon french had a hand in it too..
and maybe a few others..

the osborne-2 was the downfall..
they made a bunch on the expectation of a big order from the IRS..

then i think zenith came out with one..

there was LOTS of things going on, then..
i even have two of the T-Shirts lee came up with for the last meeting of homebrew computer club in a palo alto banks community use room, on el camino real just south of the stanford campus..

if my wife has not tossed those out i'll take a picture of them, too..

more later, gotta authorize some new users..

#11 Post by **bill bolton** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 1:20 am

BillMorrow wrote:Morrow Designs Thinker Toys MB

I used a number of Thinker Toys cards in my S-100 system back in the late-70s/early-80s and meet George several times at various computer fairs on the US West Coast. He was really friendly and knowlegeable guy. Same with Bill Godbout, another of the S-100 era suppliers!

Cheers,

Bill

#12 Post by **BillMorrow** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 1:35 am

if my memory is any good,
bill godbout was in the central valley..
made a paper tape reader..

bill, i did not take you for being that old..

you must have been at the first west coast computer faire, then..? yes..??

f1reverb · #13 Post by **f1reverb** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 2:14 am

working with the late Blair Newman, another of the Bay Area freaks of the '70s, in 1989.

The Automatic Ad-Zapping Machine

linked here to a SacBee story (with comments from George Morrow and plenty of other stories about Blair and his goodies that are now common devices) from 1989 among a collection of things Blair Newman was involved in over the years and a news report about the first IBM portable from 1984.

============

In Solana Beach, Calif., Blair Newman, director of strategic planning for Kaypro, said the IBM portable computer entry sounded like "a me-too product in a market already awash with them."

Kaypro, he said, is the largest maker of portable personal computers, having sold more than 100,000 last year. Mr.Newman said the Kaypro Model 10 is the same size and weight as the IBM computer about to be introduced, but that for about $100 less the Kaypro has greater disk storage capacity and comes with free software.

============

My brother was a hi-tech headhunter in the '80s and worked with Blair to place him as the project manager of Toshiba laptops. Toshiba and Blair didn't quite mix as he was way too creative and innovative for them. I talked with him at length a number of times over the phone, and he really was a visionary. It was very sad when he committed suicide in the early '90s.

My first computer was a Morrow . . . (104kb IMAGE)

My first computer was a Morrow . . . (104kb IMAGE)

Bill, I'd like to see that poster . . .

My first computer was a TI-99/4A

George Morrow designed The Automatic Ad-Zapping Machine

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