The North Star Horizon was one of the very first machines to have built in floppy drives, it is an S-100 based machine, and has slots for 12 of those boards, it could also take multiple memory boards, giving it the capacity for a few hundred KiloBytes. The original machines had a wooden case, later ones, such as this example were metal.

The Horizon was followed by the Advantage, North Star's sales suffered from the company's adherence to hard sector floppy drives, which made software difficult to port onto North Star's machines.

It was no longer a significant factor in the industry by the time the less expensive CP/M computers with built in displays (and soft sector drives), such as the Osbourne and the Kaypro were released.

Sales slowed during the growth of the PC market, and the company folded in 1984.

Manufacturer: Northstar
Date: November 1977

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH66210. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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