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Osborne 1 Users Reference Guide 1981

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The Osborne 1 User's Reference Guide is Osborne Computer Corporation's user manual for the Osborne 1, by Thom Hogan and Mike Iannamico, part number 2F00161-01. Chapters 3, 7 and 8 are copyright 1981 Thom Hogan and the rest copyright 1981 Osborne Computer Corporation; the acknowledgements describe this copy as the "newly revised and typeset" edition. The scan has 777 PDF pages and a text layer.

The introduction says the manual "was written by users of the Osborne I, not technicians", that the tutorial was written several months after the computer appeared, and that it teaches how to perform tasks rather than memorise commands.

Contents

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Part 1, tutorial, with printed page numbers:

  • 1 Getting to know your computer, 1; 2 How to use your computer, 23; 3 Learning and using CP/M, 45
  • 4 WordStar and MailMerge, 65
  • 5 SuperCalc, 153
  • 6 CBASIC, 231
  • 7 Microsoft BASIC, 241
  • 8 CP/M revisited, 305, including assembly-language programming 315 and "Inside CP/M" 330
  • 9 System specifications, 339: memory layout 342, direct screen manipulations 347, the ports 351, the keyboard 354, the modem and RS-232 interfaces 355, the disk interface 359, the IEEE-488 interface 361, the Centronics interface 364
  • Appendix 1, modifying WordStar, 367; appendix 2, IEEE-488 implementation, 383, with sample programs 396; appendix 3, SuperCalc installation, 407

Part 2, reference, from page 413: CP/M 417, WordStar 445, SuperCalc 523, CBASIC 571, MBASIC 643, software error messages 717.

Appendix 4, single- and double-density differences, 759.

Hardware figures in chapter 9

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  • Memory is in three banks: 64K of dynamic RAM; 4K of system ROM with the memory-mapped I/O devices; and 4K of video attribute dynamic RAM.
  • The screen is held in memory as 32 lines of 128 characters, of which 24 lines of 52 are shown, with dim, normal and underlined video and 32 block-graphic characters. External video is on an edge connector.
  • Disk capacity: double density 200K per diskette with 185K of CP/M data space (40 tracks of five 1024-byte sectors); single density 100K with 92K of data space (40 tracks of ten 256-byte sectors); three reserved system tracks in both.
  • Serial port: a 6850 with all parameters memory-mapped, 1200 or 300 baud selected in software and 2400 or 600 baud with an internal jumper, on a female DB-25.
  • IEEE-488 port: on a 26-pin edge connector, configurable as a Centronics parallel port.

Part 2's software error messages section, from page 717, covers the bundled programs on this machine. The Osborne Executive Error Message Listing Feb84 is the equivalent document for the Executive.

What this manual does not contain

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Download: Osborne 1 Users Reference Guide 1981.pdf

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