Morrow Pivot II

Morrow Pivot II
Morrow Pivot II
Pivotcjacobs627.jpg
Developer Morrow Designs

The Morrow Pivot II, circa 1985, was a portable personal computer manufactured by Morrow Designs. With two drives, 320 kilobytes of memory, and a monochrome backlit liquid-crystal display, the Pivot II had a list price of US$ 1,995.

The Morrow Pivot II included one or two 5-1/4" floppy drives. [1] Laptop computers normally had 3-1/2" floppy drives, while most desktop computers used 5-1/4" drives which made data interchange difficult, unless using an external drive to transfer data. Unlike the typical laptop, this machine was in a vertical configuration with a fold down keyboard. The only external component was a single AC adapter. It was a little top heavy for lap top use, but worked well on a desk or airplane tray table. There were two versions, the first of which did not have a full 25 line display. This was also sold as the Zenith Z-171 [2]; the never-released Osborne 3 appears to have had a similar design.

While modern laptops don't share its design, it was arguably the most practical machine until desktops embraced 3-1/2" floppies. The vertical configuration is sometimes called a lunchbox computer. Lunchbox machines normally have a tilt out LCD or plasma display, standard motherboard, standard hard drive/floppy/CD/DVD/tape drive bays, built in power supply, no battery, detachable keyboard, and full length ISA or PCI expansion slots. These are modern equivalents of the Osborne 1, Compaq portable, or other luggable computers, but with flat panel displays and standard desktop-size components.

See also

References

  1. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=My8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&dq=morrow+pivot&hl=en&ei=zAd9TIW0HISdlgfdvvTrCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=morrow%20pivot&f=false InfoWorld magazine, Dec. 2, 1985 page 46 Pivot II Update: Warning Signal Gives Portable a Higher Score
  2. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=py8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA46&dq=morrow+pivot&hl=en&ei=zAd9TIW0HISdlgfdvvTrCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=morrow%20pivot&f=false InfoWorld magazine, March 3, 1986 page 46


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