The Kaypro 10 was a well known CP/M computer. It is one of the last portable under CP/M. Non Linear Systems had already changed their name to Kaypro when this PC shipped. The company changed its name in 82 and the K10 came out in 83.
There were two versions, including one with a real-time clock (National MM58167 chip) and a built-in modem (300 baud, Belle System 103 compatibility, uses Texas Instruments TMS-99531/TMS-99532).
The Kaypro 10 was supplied with a lot of great programs: CP/M 80, the Perfect software suite (Perfect Writer, Perfect Calc, Perfect Filer), WordStar (word processor), dBase II (database), Superterm (terminal emulator) and two BASICs (Microsoft's BASIC and SBASIC, which was a compiler version written by Gilbert, the head of Kaypro's software engineering.).
The great success of the Kaypro 10 led "Non Linear Systems" to change their name officially to Kaypro in 1982. The Non-Linear part continued making test equipment.
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Igor Pronin reports :
As a proud owner of K10 I have to back Rick Barlett: it was good design and the price was right. I paid about 20000 FIM (roughly 6500 USD then, which was about my 2 months salary as a software programmer) when I bought one (with 10 MegaByte hard disk) back in 1983. It still is in my garage.
Darrell Pittman reports :
It was the first luggable that had a built-in, shock-mounted hard disk. I once read a story about a guy who took one out to an oil-drilling site, left it on the ground and a pickup truck ran over it, and it still ran!
DOS versions by Gene Crick:
Although the Kaypro II was a CPM machine, at least some Kaypro 10s ran DOS. I know as I have two of them. Was there a midstream change from CPM to DOS?
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I bought 1 of these as my 1st micro back in ... oh, mid-''80s. Compared to what I ride now, the Kaypro 10 wasn''t really suited to documentation (although Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2010 on a Kaypro II). Still, it worked well enough. NOTE: I did beat "Catchum".
Saturday 9th September 2023
Brien Lee (Canada)
I recently acquired a Kaypro 10. It''s been equipped with a SWP "Co-Power 88" board which allows it to run some MS-DOS software (and doubles as a RAMdisk in CP/M). The internal HD was a bit cranky at first, but eventually managed to spin up. Very solid machine!
I still have a Kaypro 10 sitting here and fire it up once in a while. Even have an early laptop with a solid state drive in it and it was mainly used to dial into telco systems. Would attach photo if I could.
