Talk:Kaypro

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Steel or aluminum?

message: *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)
thread_title:  Why is there a link to Alan Kay here? 

message: 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)
replies: text: It was published by Kaypro. my company advertised in it Scott Adler 08:31, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Profiles magazine

message: 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)
thread_title: History

message: 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)
thread_title: How to improve the article?

message: 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)
thread_title: Non-Linear Systems should not forward here

message: 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)
thread_title: Morrow?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: 8 inch floppy disks?

message: 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)
thread_title: Citation about MS-DOS compatibility

message: 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)
thread_title: How to improve the article?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Unsourced Claim of Infringment

message: 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)
thread_title: Perfect Filer

message: 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)
thread_title: Licensing dispute about something in Kaypro bundle

message: 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)
thread_title:  Kaypro and Kay Computers are different companies 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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