Talk:Kaypro

Steel or aluminum?
I see in the history on the Kaypro page that it has said both that the Kaypro's case was aluminum or steel. Most definitely it was painted aluminum. The metal was about 1/16-inch thick, and if it had been steel, it would have been much heavier than the approximate 20 pounds.

I'm not so sure about that. I seem to recall magnets sticking to them. My dad had one when I was growing up. --Lendorien 23:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I have right now both a Kaypro II and the requisite magnet, and just performed the experiment. It does not stick.  Aluminum is confirmed.  --Blainster 01:55, 19 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I might add that many floppy disk drives of the day did contain steel (a rather surprising amount as I discovered in 2020!) Magnets may have worked on models with floppy replacements or upgrades, or perhaps the original floppy drivers were steel and Blainster's were replacements? Hardly worth fighting about. 76.120.37.128 (talk) 20:08, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Why is there a link to Alan Kay here?

 * I can't seem to find any relation between the two? Why not put links to Mary Kay and Danny Kaye, while we're at it? - Unsigned User
 * I've looked for a connection and can't find it either, except that he is a computer pioneer. There seems to be no direct relation except for being a computer pioneer and being named Kay. --Lendorien 20:50, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
 * There are two "Alan Kay"s. The less popular one was one of the sons of Kaypro founder Andy Kay.  David Kay was the other son. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.136.42.138 (talk) 05:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Request for photographs
I've revised the entry, adding a few more details here and there and making it a little easier to plow through. Probably could use another going over. Either way, does anyone have any photographs they'd like to add to the entry? A nice one of a Kaypro 2 or 4 would be nice. --Lendorien 19:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The best photo I could get was by taking a picture of a poster of the Kaypro that I still had. The resolution isn't great but you can get the idea of what it looked like. --DJPushPlay 3/9/2005


 * Actually pretty good, I'd say. It helps illustrate the Kaypro fairly well. Placing's good too. --Lendorien 22:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Profiles magazine
Does anyone know much about Profile's Magazine? I believe it was published by Kaypro and ran from about 1983 to 88 or 89. --Lendorien 19:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
 * It was published by Kaypro. my company advertised in it Scott Adler 08:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Profiles Magazine was published by Kaypro From 1983 - 198? I have 50 to 60 copies. The content was coding help and some hardware suggestions for the CP/M operating system. It was one of the few sources of information for computer use in the early '80's. Opwill2 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:41, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I published 4 articles in Profiles in 86 or 87 - Profiles also included info on the KayPro IBM clones and associated software. I wrote a tech article on CPM screen control, an article on basic concepts of IBM clone features, and article on graphing in Lotus 123 (DOS software) and an article on the Reflex db program (DOS software). Kaypro paid decently for the time - I made about $300/article I believe, which was well worth it to me at the time. If you search someone has scans of a bunch of the issues. - Dan Schuster — Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.132.65.159 (talk) 20:28, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

History
I was one of the engineers who worked for Kaypro from 1981 to 1989 (Rick Bartlett Gordon), and I made some history corrections. The Kaypro computer first started out in 1981 called, "Kaycomp", which many was sold, but at the start of 1982 I'm pretty sure that David Kay (Andy's son) came up with the name of Kaypro and convince Andy into renaming the computer to the new name.


 * I don't believe that any "Kaycomp" computers reached the market at all. I was loaned one for a day: It had single-sided, single-density floppies, which provided no advantage over the Osborne I. The KayPro II was the first commercial model and I don't know if any Kaycomps survive. I have a grey Kaypro IV someplace.


 * Answer from an owner: I own a Kaycomp model that I had to practically pry it out of the hands of the people at Non Linear Systems because they were short of demo units. My unit has the normal case colors, two vertically mounted double density drives to the right of the green-text screen, and an all-black keyboard rather than black with blue numeric pad. I've never seen another example of this configuration. It served me well for several years.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.121.124.55 (talk) 20:15, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

As for the cases they were made from aluminum not steel. We chose aluminum for many things one of which was FCC class rating. Using steel we would never had been able to receive a FCC class rating. Also it would have been way to heavy. I do remember that we made our own main boards on site but I don't remember if we also pressed out the cases.... I'm pretty sure we outsource those.

The correct name for the Kaypro magazine was "Pro-Files" but I don't remember when we stop producing it.

Does anybody remember that Kaypro Corp went from nothing to a million bucks in a year; and from a million to a hundred million in another year; and then back to nearly nothing because it rained unexpectedly in Solana Beach, and Kaypros were assembled in a big tent that wasn't exactly watertight? Richard8081 (talk) 08:28, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

((From Wendy)..Kaypro started as "Nonlinear Systems". My father, Richard Hofheimer moved us from Boston to Del Mar in 1959 to work for the company founded and owned by Andrew Kay.))  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.72.212.137 (talk) 19:11, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Let me know if anyone has questions. I can be reached at rgordon99@yahoo.com. Just a note. My years at Kaypro were the very best years. I had SOOOO much fun, Andy Kay and his son David were the best. They encourage free thinking out of the box and for folks to have a "just get it done attitude". I've since worked for Novell, Oracle and now my own company called, Atlantis Software (atlantissoftware.com). And I've have to tell you all, that I still miss it, it was so rewarding. Kaypro, may it rest in peace...

Microcornucopia
Seems to be something of an edit war concerning the perodical, Microcornucopia, as it has been deleted and readded several times. I remember this newsletter. It was not a professionally printed matter, being done on a mimeograph, but I know it had a large subscriber base at its peak. I'm not actually involved in the edit war and my memories of its content are dubious. Either way, maybe we could come up with a concensus about whether or not a reference to it belongs here to forstall an edit war over it. Comments, reasoning for including or discluding? I side with including. --Lendorien 17:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
 * MicroC magazine was very popular among Kaypro users and for that reason alone deserves a mention in the article. It was professionally offset printed in black and white, folded, and staple bound, not glossy or color, but it was not mimeographed. One reason it was so popular was the inclusion of schematics and instructions for upgrading Kaypros.  --Blainster 23:20, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I have an excuse. I'm going on memories from 17 years ago. I was 12. Either way, my Dad was a huge Kaypro user, and I KNOW he got that newsletter nigh unto close to the end of it. He wrote a few articles for it in the mid 80's too, if I recall. I didn't think it was offset printed though now that you mention it, you're likely correct. --Lendorien 19:49, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * My name is Marshall Moseley and I'm the former technical editor for PROFILES Magazine. I'm the one who keeps deleting the Microcornucopia reference. I don't think it's relevant as there were quite a few CP/M and Kaypro newsletters produced and if you name one, why not all? Also, I'm excluding the publisher's name because most other names have been excluded from this article, except those of the Kays.  If we mention the guy who published a newsletter, why not Gwynn Price, who was the publisher of PROFILES? Or all the people who designed the computers, wrote user guides, etc.? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Marshall.Moseley (talk • contribs) 12:46, August 9, 2006  (UTC)

I agree that the publisher's name is not particularly important here, and have no objection to removing it. But the MicroC was an important part of the Kaypro story, and the editor of a rival magazine is arguably not the most impartial judge. I subscribed to both, had no other connections to either, and think that both should be here. The bias is exposed by calling MicroC merely a newsletter rather than a magazine (It was not in color like Profiles, but it carried advertising and had 2nd class US Postal registration as a magazine). --Blainster 20:45, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 'Bias is exposed'? I'm not trying to promote PROFILES; MicroC and its publisher simply are not relevant to Kaypro's history. Look at it this way: for the last three years of its life, Kaypro was exclusively MS-DOS. Should the history of Kaypro mention PC Magazine and Bill Machrone? That would be analogous.  --Marshall.Moseley

MicroCornucopia was published in Bend, Oregon. In the 1980s they even hosted a few annual conferences for enthusiasts in Bend, with whitewater rafting on the Deschutes River and hikes in the Cascades as sideline attractions. When the IBM PC and clones became dominant, MicroC tried to adapt with articles on homebrew projects for that platform, but ultimately this didn't work out and publication ended.

MicroCornucopia actually covered a family of CP/M computers also including the Xerox 820/820-II and a hobbyist motherboard called the "Big Board" that could be purchased and built out into a complete system with peripherals of the user's choice. The hobbyist "Big Board" was probably the ancestor of the more commercial KayPros and Xerox 820s.

Xerox built a lot of 820s/820-IIs as their non-portable office model. Unfortunately they were blindsided by the IBM PC and ended up with much unsold inventory which they sold cheaply through a poorly-publicized outlet in the Dallas area. Most of these were sold with dual 8" floppy disk drives made by Shugart in a separate enclosure. Capacities per 8" floppy ranged from about 250KB for single sided/single density up to about 1MB for double-sided/double density. This is less capacity than a modern 3.5" high density diskette, but perhaps was more reliable.

Kaypros used the smaller 5-1/4" floppy drives that held almost 200KB if they were single-sided or almost 400KB if double-sided, and these were built into the main aluminum chassis, making the computer "luggable" if not nearly as convenient as contemporary notebook PCs. KayPros needed A/C power to operate.  Battery operation was still somewhere over the horizon.

The generic Big Board concept was to put everything on the motherboard, including memory and interfaces for keyboard, video display (text only), and both parallel and serial i/o. Before that, CP/M computers mostly used the S-100 bus and plugged memory cards and i/o cards into this bus. So the Big Board foreshadowed the IBM PC and PC/AT evolution toward building more and more peripheral functionality into motherboards instead of plugging peripheral support cards (disk controllers, serial and parallel I/O, etc.) into the bus.

The Big Board/KayPro/Xerox 820 used the Z80 family of peripheral chips including timers, parallel and serial. It was fairly straightforward for amateurs to write custom assembly language software for these chips because they were well documented and used standard i/o addressing. The competing Osborne portables saved a few dollars by using memory mapped peripheral support chips, I believe they were from the 6502 family that the Apple II used. These were harder to program and virtually undocumented in the CP/M world. User:DaveM 1 September 2006


 * The Xerox 820's mainboard were licensed versions of the Big Board, but were so badly made that they were laughed off the market. It was an unqualified disaster.Scott Adler 08:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

How to improve the article?
As Kaypros are a big love of mine, I'd like to see how we could possibly improve the article to the level of a featured article (or at least to a point it's starting to look like it could be). Input of other wikipedians would be greatly appreciated. Several issues I see right off the bat that could be adding proper sourcing, (I have some souces available in hard copy I could look through, but help is of course appreciated), the article format and layout could be improved to fit those used for other similair products, and content could be vastly improved. Any ideas on how to achieve this, new heading, areas to research, etc?--Lendorien 01:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Expanded the intro. I have a Kaypro 2X.  I'll try to take a picture of it in the near future for this page. --Lendorien 18:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Non-Linear Systems should not forward here
To my knowledge, Non-Linear Systems remains its own seperate entity that is still in operation today. I don't know the exact relationship they had with Kaypro, but it is something that should be researched for accuracy. Non-Linear maintains a website at http://www.nonlinearsystems.com/. Since Kaypro and non-Linear Systems are not the same company, and so far as I can tell, never were (Kaypro being a subsidiary), it's inappropriate for Non-Linear Systems to be forwarded to this page. Any suggested solutions? --Lendorien 18:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * This issue has been resolved. User:Rsduhamel created a proper entry for Non-Linear Systems. Thanks! --Lendorien 23:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Morrow?
Does anyone have info on the Morrow line of computers? The Micro Decision and MD-1 are 2 models I remember. They had a similar sales strategy to Kaypro - complete system (they may have even come with a printer) and bundled software 'greater than the value of the computer'. They weren't portable though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.125.110.223 (talk) 15:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

8 inch floppy disks?
My brother-in-law had a Kapro (I believe) with two 8" floppies in vertical position. I had a Kaypro 2X with a 21 cps daisy wheel printer for which I paid about $2500.  I used Infostar to design a double entry accounting application.  The reports would take hours to print sometimes.  Wordstar's block cut and paste I have not seen in modern word processing programs.  SmartKey was a program that I still wish there were a Windows version. pechaney (talk) 05:33, 1 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Kaypro did not produce a model with 8 inch floppies, but your brother may well have modified one to use 8 inch drives, as the interface was compatible, and Kaypro did include a software application that could read and write many different floppy formats, including some 8 inch formats. Or he could have been using the similar Xerox 820 or Big Board computers which did use 8 inch drives. --Blainster (talk) 03:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your response on the 8" floppies. He probably did modify.  He was a race car driver and Indy/formula 1 mechanic, and was up to changing anything and making it work.  My b-i-l, Ted Berry, went on to work for Gotti wheels in OC, working with their computer systems, and then became an independent computer consultant in Redding until he passed on a few years ago.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pechaney (talk • contribs) 05:41, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * re Smartkey, the equvalent is built-in to WP Windows. It's under Settings, or Options. What I miss is WP's Shell (WP Office) and macro recorder. deisenbe (talk) 22:00, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Citation about MS-DOS compatibility
I worked for a Kaypro dealer from 1983 to 1987 as an intern while going to college. One comment on the statement:

"Instead, Kaypro watched as a new company Compaq, grabbed its market share with the Compaq Portable, an all-in-one portable computer that was similar to Kaypro's own CP/M portables with the exception that it ran MS-DOS and was nearly 100% IBM compatible. This and other corporate issues helped lead to Kaypro's eventual downfall."

I remember that the Kaypro 16 was championed as being the first IBM compatible that was truly 100% compatible and the first to pass the MS Flight Simulator compatibility test... We use to use that against other IBM 'compatibles' (especially NEC and Sony).

Needless to say the Kaypro I personally owned was a great computer (I liked CP/M better... commands had parameters in the correct order and who needs more than the 'pip' command?). I lived in a dorm of over 800 students my freshman year and I was the sole computer nerd who had a full computer in his room vs. a typewriter. With Wordstar to write papers (no true descenders when printed--profs hated it) and a blindingly fast 300 baud modem to tie in to the college computers running VAX/VMS my aluminum box was envied by many... The true 24x80 green screen and the free software made it hard to beat. Over the course of the next 3 years I began seeing the IBMs and Compaqs filter in and ended up working for the Peter Norton Group working with the the creater of DiskDoctor and SpeedDisk... ;O)

207.12.237.2 (talk) 21:49, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Mark Lawler

How to improve the article?
Financial information, or references, related to the number of stockholders, shares outstanding, share prices etc would be historically helpful. (Thkeegan (talk) 23:01, 11 April 2010 (UTC))

Unsourced Claim of Infringment
This article has the following unsourced paragraph:

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

Does anyone know anything about this or have sources? Did this go to court, a settlement, was it just ignored, or did someone make this up? I wrote to Rick who kindly gave his e-mail above, he said he started two years after the board was done and he never heard of a dispute, and doubted Kay or his designer would have done that. Thanks.108.196.221.57 (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I was a very early user, and we had an active local (Tallahassee, FL) user group and a local dealer (Gibson Business Machines) whose owner I was on pretty good terms with (lent me his truck, this sounds like something out of a movie). I'd be surprised that something that serious would have happened and I'd not have heard. deisenbe (talk) 22:18, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Perfect Filer
I was glad someone said it was a non-relational, flat database, because I wouldn't have known to put it that way, and it's 100% accurate. I used it to maintain a mailing list - I edited and published a magazine with about 300-400 subscribers and printed mailing labels from it. When I retired the Kaypros - I had both a 2 and a IV - that was about when MS-DOS started, I managed to export the database as a comma-separated variable string, and managed to import it into some MS-DOS program, maybe WordPerfect. deisenbe (talk) 00:37, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Licensing dispute about something in Kaypro bundle
The Kaypro representative - someone who went around meeting with user groups - told me the story of something deleted from their software bundle. It wasn't a program I used or wanted to, so it was probably a spreadsheet or maybe a relational database. It had been part of the bundle - not at the time I made either of my purchases, one in 83 and one in 84 (with the Juki daisy-wheel printer - anyone remember those?) - but it had been removed. The representative didn't say this to the group, but in a conversation I happened to have with him and some others semi-privately, he said "They sent us a nastygram" and that they had taken all the disks and manuals out to the parking lot, made a pile of them and burned them.

Anyone know what program this is? It was a bigger deal than Perfect Writer/Filer/Calc deisenbe (talk) 00:37, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

DBASE II >? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:A:4780:1335:804:2379:ACDF:8F6D (talk) 01:52, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Kaypro and Kay Computers are different companies
I've added information to the Andrew Kay article that hopefully will help distinguish between Kaypro and Kay Computers. (Based on archive.org, Kay Computers was in existence from around 1999 to 2009). I've similarly created a redirect for Kay Computers, that goes to the Andrew Kay article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:01, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

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