This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Durango F85 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

We used one of these for our stock control, invoicing and accounts around 1980 with a horticultural wholesaler. We had the optional second dual disk drive to expand the memory to accommodate the number of stock lines we had. If I remember correctly, the whole package cost around £12.5k, a lot of money for a small company at that time but it revolutionised the way we worked. The floppies were not the most reliable, and had a habit of failure showing at the end of day back-up, usually meaning re-inputting the whole day''s work again!

My first paid job was working on a Durango in Perth, Western Australia, back in 1981. I ended up $ping out of my Engineering studies to work full-time for the company who were a reseller who heavily customised the business suite. That got me my first major job - I walked in and slapped down a listing of Star-BASIC source with my initialled comments and said "I can understand and debug this". Amazing hardware and usability for the time.

Wow!! I didn''t think anyone else remembered the Durango. I ran into Durango and George Comstock at Comdex in 1979 and we very quickly signed up to be one of their early dealers, Sunbelt Data Services out of Houston, Texas. We ended up selling a ton of them, first as dealers and then setting up other dealers throughout the US. We developed their Accounting software (AR, AP, GL. Payroll, OE/Inv and a Client Writeup Package for CPAs. We later sold the software back to Durango. That was a GREAT little machine for its day but the IBM PC release killed it. Thanks for the memory!!!

dear Frank!
I am interested to buy! Do you still have the computer?
Danke :)

I used a Durango in South Africa in 1981,2 and 3. We used it for word processing. The company, Grinaker Projects, had a number of these systems. We wrote a cool construction bar chart scheduler program that would print out bar charts based on fields that contained start and stop dates, task, and sub-contractor. I could printout individual sheets per sub-contractor and I would distribute task lists to each sub on a weekly basis. It was pretty leading edge stuff for the time and it was very efficient.

Hallo Frank,

hatte selbst 2 DurangoF-85 plus ext Doppel-Disk.

Was soll dein F-85 kosten? (etl aus Nostalgie.....)

Gruß aus Hamburg
Peter Breitenfeld
brt@peterbreitenfeld.de

I have a Durango F85 incl. some discs and would like to sell it. Anybody interested?

Best regards
Frank

When we began our activities we had two F-85. Finally, we''d added hard disk to both computers, and we was able to connect them using ASCUTL.

Then we knew that Mollecular launched a model named Popy o something like that. We saw that computer and we knew that the operative system was able to run on Xenix (Unix little version)

Spotted these 2 posts albeit 2011 I worked for the only UK reseller for the Durango to boot from a floppy disc it was ''Code'' followed by ''Load''
Hope this helps

Hi Jim,

I had 2 F85 and an external Dual Floppy drive$ My brother stored them for me nearly 15 years ago. Neither of us is quite sure if they still do exist anymore.

You have to $ the sytem disk in drive 0 an press 2 keys, if I remember well, like $ctrl$ and $del$. Maybe you simply try two keys which seem familiar in this respect, or which might ring a bell.

I still have the D-Basic disk, and also Star-Basic, which I used for programming software with for my company at the time.

All the best $ let me know.

Regards from Hamburg
Peter Breitenfeld

If you hit the right keys, it should boot from disk.

i am a CPA and purchased one of these machiness in 1982 or so and another one a year later. They were wonderful computers and I still have both of them and the software. I fired one up yesterday but found that I had forgotten how to get them up an going. Oh, well, the machines now are a lot faster and easier to run but the Durango was great.