Durango Systems
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer hardware |
| Founded | September 1978 |
| Founder | George E. Comstock, John M. Scandalios, Charles L. Waggoner |
| Products | Durango F-85, Durango 700, Durango 950, Durango Poppy |
Durango F-85
Launched in September 1978 by Durango Systems Corporation, the Durango F-85 represented an early entry into the personal business computer market. Its creators, George E. Comstock, John M. Scandalios, and Charles L. Waggoner, were former Diablo Systems employees. The F-85 operated on its own multitasking OS called DX-85M, which incorporated a built-in Indexed Sequential Access Method (ISAM) file system with file locking capabilities specific to each task. Alternatively, users could run CP/M-80 on the machine. A distinctive feature of DX-85M was its use of a text-based configuration file named CONFIG.SYS, predating the adoption of this filename by MS-DOS/PC DOS 2.0 by five years in 1983.
The hardware featured single-sided 5¼-inch floppy disk drives with 100 tracks per inch (tpi), offering 480 KB of storage through high-density 4/5 group coded recording technology. These drives were controlled by a Western Digital FD1781 floppy disk controller and utilized 77-track Micropolis disk mechanisms. Subsequent versions introduced double-sided drives, effectively doubling the storage capacity to roughly 960 KB per disk.
Durango later transitioned from the "F-85" label to a numeric model naming scheme, designating the 700 as the base model and the 950 as the premium version. Following this, the company developed the Durango "Poppy," a more advanced 16-bit computer based on Intel’s 80186 and 80286 processors, which ran MS-DOS to better align with prevailing industry standards.
See also
Further reading
- https://books.google.com/books?id=XPDvkYPCkWgC&pg=PA86
- https://books.google.com/books?id=Alpvxl7sBqIC&pg=RA1-PA63
- https://books.google.com/books?id=qZiwCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA185
External links
- Durango F85 at Old Computers: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=939