Refurbishing a Data General/One #ReverseEngineering
The Old Vintage Computing Research blog reverse engineers a vintage Data General/One MS-DOS machine.
Designed cooperatively by DG and its Japanese subsidiary Nippon Data General, the DG-1 hit most of its marks. Not least of its innovations was its size and weight (less than 14″ by 12″ or about 35cm by 30cm, three inches thick and around ten pounds or five kilos) as well as the 720K 3.5″ floppy drives and custom full-size monochrome LCD panel, both manufactured by Epson.
The built-in modem option and internal communications program made it a portable option for existing customers who needed a Dasher terminal on the road (and emphasized that Data General hardware was preferred: the option was specifically for remote workers using DG’s Comprehensive Electronic Office suite on AOS) and it was at least as DOS-compatible as most other non-IBM PCs were at the time (provided you stuck to BIOS calls, that is).
See a very thorough history and reverse engineering of this pioneering machine here.
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So cool to see the DG One getting some attention and love. I was at DG from 1989-1994, and worked with some of the engineers that had developed those machines. The “who made the first laptop?” question might be up for debate, but I was told that it was the first commercially available laptop running MS-DOS. As I recall, there were three reasons why the DG One wasn’t a bigger hit: 1) The transreflective LCD display in the early model was horrible, almost unreadable. 2) Early models used a nonstandard low-power UART, so every software package that used the serial port (WordPerfect for printing, comm software, etc.) needed a special version built for the DG One, and 3) DG axed a distribution deal with Radio Shack over putting a Tandy label on them. Ultimately a sad ending for that product, but it wasn’t uncommon for Data General back then.
So cool to see the DG One getting some attention and love. I was at DG from 1989-1994, and worked with some of the engineers that had developed those machines. The “who made the first laptop?” question might be up for debate, but I was told that it was the first commercially available laptop running MS-DOS. As I recall, there were three reasons why the DG One wasn’t a bigger hit: 1) The transreflective LCD display in the early model was horrible, almost unreadable. 2) Early models used a nonstandard low-power UART, so every software package that used the serial port (WordPerfect for printing, comm software, etc.) needed a special version built for the DG One, and 3) DG axed a distribution deal with Radio Shack over putting a Tandy label on them. Ultimately a sad ending for that product, but it wasn’t uncommon for Data General back then.