Introduced in 1979, the NorthStar Horizon was an 8-bit computer system based on the ZiLOG Z80A microprocessor. It was produced by North Star Computers. Capable of running CP/M and NSDOS (NorthStar's proprietary Disk Operating System), a standard NorthStar system sported one or two hard-sectored floppy disk drives and a serial interface to which one could connect a terminal to interact with it. NSDOS included NorthStar BASIC, a slightly non-standard dialect of BASIC, where some standard BASIC commands of the day had been changed, probably to avoid potential legal issues. Two examples of this were the "FILL" and "EXAM" commands, which took the place of the more traditional-for-the-day "POKE" and "PEEK" statements. Superseded by the all-in-one NorthStar Advantage in 1983, the NorthStar Horizon found a niche in University environments where its inbuilt S-100 bus could be used to interface it to a variety of control systems.
External links
- NorthStar Horizon at Obsolete Technology
- NorthStar Horizon at Old Computer Museum
- Alan Bowker's North Star computers
- North Star Computers Manuals from Harte Technologies
- NorthStar documentation from Rich's classic computing lab
- Marcus Bennett's NorthStar Documentation Store
