#osborne

Osborne Vixen (1984)

The Osborne Vixen was a portable (technically, luggable) computer introduced in late 1984 by Osborne Computer Corporation, the company famous for the groundbreaking Osborne 1 (1981).

It was designed to be a compact business machine running CP/M, but by the time it reached the market, IBM PC compatibility had already become the new standard — effectively making the Vixen obsolete on arrival.

The Vixen has a 4 MHz Zilog Z80 (like the Tandy TRS-80, ZX Spectrum, etc.) with 64 KB RAM and 4 KB EPROM. It has a 7-inch diagonal amber display that can show 24 lines by 80 columns of memory mapped video. It uses two 400 KB disk drives, utilizing double-density double-sided 5.25" diskettes. As a luggable, it weighs about 18 pounds (8.2 kg). Contemporary advertising pointed out that it could fit under the seat in an airplane, with dimensions of 125⁄8 by 161⁄4 by 61⁄4 inches (321 by 413 by 159 mm).

HMY Osborne, Ca 1895,

Osborne luggables! This was where the legendary Lee Felsenstein set up shop for the weekend with cool shirts. I didn't get to talk with him, but you can bet I wanted to.

♫ "People will come and go. Some stories never told. Bury me down below. But I'll never die... because I'm immortal." ♫

-Ozzy Osbourne (1948-2025) 🖤