NorthStar
North Star were an American computer manufacturer, founded in 1976, and running until 1989, in Berkeley, California.
They were established to sell the Imsai computer via mail order, they soon became a force in the microcomputer market, producing a floppy disk system for S-100 bus machines such as the Altair.
Later they were manufacturing their own S-100 machines, running CP/M or their own NSDOS operating system. and later for their own S-100 bus computers running either the CP/M operating system or North Star's own proprietary operating system, they were to expand their range to dual board machines, so MS DOS could be used, with a server version running DOS or Novell Netware.
The machines were a success, but the companies sales suffered due to the company using hard sector floppy drives, instead of the standard format. This made software difficult to transfer from other machines, leaving their once steady sales to be lost to companies such as Osborne and Kaypro, who were using the much more available soft sector disks. These competitors' machines were cheaper, and sales slowed further during the growth of the home PC market.
Despite the good sales of the North Star Advantage and Horizon, by 1984, the company was in trouble after the release of the North Star Dimension, and moneywas sought from other companies, who they were to collaborate with, one of the last products was a major upgrade to the Dimension in 1987.
The company was fianlly dissolved in 1989.
