Osborne Vixen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Osborne Vixen was a "luggable" portable computer released by the Osborne Computer Corporation in 1984, as a follow up to their Osborne 1 system.

The Vixen had a 4 MHz Zilog Z80 microprocessor, with 64 KB dynamic RAM. It had a 7-inch diagonal amber display that could show 24 lines by 80 columns of memory mapped video. It used two 400 KB disk drives, utilizing double-density double-sided 5.25" diskettes. As a luggable, it weighed about 18 pounds. Contemporary advertising pointed out that it could fit under the seat in airplane, with dimensions of 12 5/8 by 16 1/4 by 6 1/4 inches (321 by 413 by 159 mm).

When it was released, the Vixen had a retail price of $1298. Customers also had the option of purchasing a 10 megabyte hard disk for $1498.

The Vixen used version 2.2 of the CP/M operating system. It was also bundled with a number of software packages: WordStar, the popular word processing package; SuperCalc, a spreadsheet; MBASIC, a programming language; Osboard, a graphics and drawing program; TurnKey, a system utility; MediaMaster, a data interchange program that allowed compatibility with over "200 other computers"; and Desolation, a game.

The Vixen was also known as the Osborne 4.