I found a crazy modified KAYPRO

[@NCommander]

Seeing this at VCF East was nuts, was happy we were able to explore it, and figure out the history at this. I'd be tempted to do a Maypro video myself, but I cant' match this, although I'd be semi-tempted to write a custom app with Turbo Pascal (or assembler) directly.

[@sneg__]

Please do it! Would love to watch that.

[@only1gameguru]

I'd love to watch something like that too. Is there an assembly manual available for the CPU?

[@MrCommodorebob]

You neeeed to do this. This video prompted me it pull out my Kaypro 10 and fire up the good old assembler. I just hope those drive bearings hold out. I wonder if anyone has tried to replace the drive bearings.

[@greatquux]

That would be awesome

[@sebastian19745]

This mod should be reversed engineered, just in case, with memories dumps and all. And, why not, make it on a PCB.And if possible, release that on public domain, maybe someone else want an HDD in his Kaypro. I for sure would want one if I had an Kaypro.

[@JeffTiberend]

i haven't used a Kaypro since the early to mid 80's. But, that is an excellent idea. Adrian Black has also been working with someone to develop some better memory test tools. I would try to check with him on if there is a port of the tools for a Kaypro and CP/M.

[@youdud44]

I am a simple man. I see a clever King of the Hill reference, I give a thumbs up. The show's the only reason I even knew what a Kaypro was. lol

[@TECHNOGEEK20000]

Same here

[@brianhedley5139]

The Kaypro tI was called that as it was a poke at Osbourne not Apple. Tthe Osbourne 1 was a similar size and spec CP/M machine which was claimed to be portable,which had reasonable success until Osbourne announced the up and coming Osbourne Two which didn't actually exist. Perople stopped buying the Osbourne One machines and waited for the second which bankrupted Osbourne. So this failure or announcing is known as the Osbourne effect. Kaypro named their machine Kaypro II to take advantage of the press coverage.

[@MichaelAStanhope]

Its groundbreaking in the way that if you drop the thing, it breaks the ground!

[@sendark001]

this got me

[@OneKnifeYeHand]

This is the computer version of the Nokia 3310!

[@dungeonseeker3087]

Back before everything was on multiple websites a few clicks away it was pretty standard for the OEMs to release full schematics and as these things were built with off the shelve component anyone who wanted to could use the schematics are the readily available component tech sheets to reverse engineer the circuits and work out how to add mods. Back then everything worked by TTL and IRQs, anyone who understands electronic logic could easily work out how to tie in to the needed data lines and IRQ ports. It really was a simpler time :D

[@scotshabalam2432]

You can't even be like "Oh back in the day" this is more modifications than we do on our modern MODULAR PCs that are meant to do this mad scientist shit on.

[@3rdalbum]

It blows my mind that this Kaypro and the original Macintosh were released in the same year. The Kaypro seems like it belongs to a much earlier age.

[@axi0matic]

It does - 8-bit Z80 vs 16-bit 68000 CPU. Plus the Mac OS ('System') was brand new, whereas CP/M had been about for a decade at that point.

[@beenine5557]

Alternately, the Kaypro was in the correct age, it's just that the Macintosh had fallen through a wormhole from the future.

[@axi0matic]

Other 68K machines (ST, Amiga) were available soon after the Mac.

[@urk5204]

The Macintosh was essentially in a different dimension back then. People who used them lived in a completely different world than those who used the DOS-based systems. (DOS including CP/M in this instance, as it was the original Disk-based operating system)

[@DumbledoreMcCracken]

The original Macintosh was basically unusable except to demonstrate the Macintosh concept.

[@RetailArchaeology]

Definitely cursed and I love it. The industrial look of it is awesome. Looking forward to more videos on this beast 🙂

[@TheBasementChannel]

Really interesting machine! Tom Adams was most likely an expat working in the oil/petroleum industry given the address in the boot screen.

[@James_T_Quirk]

The memories .. I had the Kaypro 2, CPM I remember why I moved on, great Machines at time but they got better, this machine looks like one I used at a Office in Sydney for their Accounts, requiring some storage larger than floppies offered, so shoe horned in a HD, back then I Paid $1495.00 for a 20meg ST-506 HD & Controller, for my IBM PC, So Sticking 1 in the Kaypro would not be cheap .. I still have MFM & ST506 Drives here, I use in old Laptops etc, They can last for years, the reason I still need to see SSD last as long on shelf ..

[@TrolleyMC]

Nice King of the Hill reference at the beginning. I caught on to it before you even showed the clip!

[@humanwaveform]

Yep, made me smile as well.

[@ericwood3709]

Any way we might get a dump of the hard drive contents? It would be fun to boot it up in 86Box.

[@SpikeGrobstein]

The kaypro was the first computer in our house. I think my dad got it either right before or right after I was born. This was back in 81, and I have memories of being 3 or so playing games on it. He still has it and it probably needs to be recapped, so I'm gonna have to convince him to give it to me so I can refurbish it. This hdd upgrade would be dope.

[@jameslangridge8849]

He's refined the "admin footswitch" phenomenon into a candle. facinating 😂

[@tookitogo]

Disassembling and reassembling can fix problems caused by tarnished connectors: the plugging/unplugging wipes the contacts clean against each other.

[@eformance]

My best guess is that the original owner of this computer would be around 75 to 84 years old now.

[@LoesserOf2Evils]

Yea! It works! Maybe Javier’s candle ought to stand beside the KayPro as a guardian angel of sorts.

[@James_T_Quirk]

Rebuilding the PC is always the Best, reseating connectors boards, cables & chips, "Tarnish" on connectors builds up, I use a Pencil eraser to clean the Contacts before reassembly as well, a good cleaning can solve lots of issues in a old PC you are waking from the dead ..

[@ruisantos4520]

Around 1982-3 we got in Angola a network based on Grundy Newbrains and a master controler that connected all this newbrains.. The O/S was CP/M and all the newbrains used to share 2 flopies and 1 printer. At the time is was available one version with 1 HardDrive as well but we, at the time, did not had the monies to buy that version.... But all worked find.

[@marcwolf60]

I had a Kaypro 2.. I loved its robust case, so I dropped a 386 board, hd, and kept the existing monitor.. I also found a drop in keyboard for it. Ran SCO Xenix for it too :)

[@ActionRetro]

That's awesome!!

[@thudtheace]

Love what looks like scorch marks on the inside of the case at 4:50 🤣

[@matonmacs]

Isn’t that a perfboard (not breadboard)?

[@wantomek]

I was worried I was the only one to notice.

[@silentrunner3067]

The Kaypro 10 had a 10 meg HD and as I recall did run a modified CPM. I have a schematic and theory of operation pamphlet. Micro Cornucopia was a small magazine that covered numerous single board and stand alone "portables" at the time.

[@soknightsam]

This is the kind of quality Saturday morning madness I live for

[@winstonsmith478]

"How do you figure this out in the days before the internet?" LOL. Magazines and/or electronics knowledge.

[@DrTofu83]

Also, Kaypro was a truly user friendly company. Whenever they heard of a User Group, they sent a salesman with every kind of data and information needed, the effort to peddle more units to serious fans. For that reason, Kaypro kept its CP/M based machines for longer than most competitors (save for Commodore that, literally, jumped back on the CP/M bandwagon with the 128 when it was too late and with a machine too slow for that), even when they ventured, shortly before bankrupcy, in the IBM Clone market.

[@SeishukuS12]

I used to have a Kaypro II, loved that thing... Wish I still had it. That's where my obsession with Wordstar started (now I use JOE). lol

[@quantumbits]

I could do everything with my Kaypro II Uhm except the internet. Back then we had dial up BBs

[@BuckeyeStormsProductions]

The Dad of a good friend of mine had a Kaypro he tinkered with. He worked as a machinist and picked it up cheap from his work when they upgraded to IBM compatible systems in the mid 80's, if I remember the story correct. I am pretty sure he used to get a newsletter (hand typed/drawn, mimeographed, and sent through the US Postal Service) that had mods and stuff you could do. He had games on it that were all text, or ASCII graphics based, and it felt retro even at the time (I had a C64 at home, and my friend had an NES in the family room, so we were true modern gamers). When I first heard Kaypro mentioned on KOTH, I got such a kick. I had never seen one before his, and never heard of them since. The thing looked so kludged together, with sheet metal and wood (yes, his had wood pieces serving some purpose) I had assumed for awhile it was a hobby-built one off, and didn't realize there was a factory spec unit at its core.

[@delgardner1753]

I saw the scorch marks on the interior of the case as you remove it, and immediately thought oh my what exploded?

[@poddmo]

It was such a blast to see many familiar filenames in those directory listings. I hope you can demonstrate a few of them next time. I'd particularly love to see BIO.BAS - "biorhythm" generators were so common and even as a 12 year old, they struck me as quacky but pretty

[@idahofur]

Oh, that is a cool bios. I had to look it up. Speeds up your machine, allows hard disks, and allows you to read over cpm floppy formats. I wonder if that is the reason the floppy drive is different than a normal kaypro one. Also somebody stated below it is multi user cpm. I wonder if the serial port would support a terminal now. Would explain the ram upgrade unless that is just for the ram disk.

[@TedSeeber]

A common mod from that era- add hard drive, add ramdisk, load ramdisk from harddrive and you've got a permanent floppy that runs faster than either.

[@TheTurnipKing]

I bloody knew that homebrew interposer was going to be a RAM upgrade. Assuming the chip that's been lifted up is the CPU. Those IC's are almost certainly going to be addressing logic. The z80 can only address 64k of memory at a time, so any RAM expansion over and above that - as you might expect on any kind of early 80's PC with a HARD DRIVE - is going to involve adding logic to select RAM banks. and raising up the CPU like that gives you full access to all the buses. So the wires are almost certainly going to the chip enable for the original RAM chips, and then you can just use OUT instructions to enable different RAM banks. You'd have to reverse engineer the board to figure out exactly how the addressing logic works though, and figure out which port it's looking for to enable particular banks... or find something on the hard drive which demonstrates it. Presumably T.L. Adams had some custom software on there to actually use the expanded memory.

[@thedude_-__-_7528]

I sure hope he backed the drive up.

[@kitsune-chan6897]

The candle pleases the machine spirit

[@minty_Joe]

I was waiting for Steve to exclaim, 'IT CHIMED! HOLY CRAP, YOU GUYS!!', when the KayPro booted in the footage.

[@cwaldrip]

Totally unexpected video, but totally worth watching. Why I love this channel!

[@adiamondforever7890]

I have several Kaypros, one with a factory hard drive. Haven't touched them in years. Almost as bad as the quad core G5, which works just fine, but I am using something with newer software (MacPro). I still have a Kaypro case I put an Apple IIGS in it, a floating ground hard grounded and I stopped using it. Too many power supplies. Have fun

[@dogdive]

That King of the Hill clip had me goofed up for an hour.

[@MatroxMillennium]

I'd love to find a Kaypro one of these days. Not badly enough to eBay it, but if I found one locally for a low enough price I'd pick it up. At the moment, I have three "luggables": An Osborne One, a TRS-80 Model 4P, and a Commodore SX-64.

[@ewmegoolies]

Luggable was the word used to describe it when I bought mine

[@kcshowalter7000]

Still can't believe I missed you at VCF! So much cool stuff and great people!

[@ewmegoolies]

My first PC was a used kaypro I purchased in 92, the monitor no longer worked and had a CGA card and monitor with it. And the keyboard was replaced with a plastic one.Two years later I upgraded to a 386 and gave the kaypro to my dad and he used it as his first computer to run a dos flavor of QuickBooks for his restaurant until he retired in 1997. It was still running off it's 10 Meg hard drive and making backups to the original floppy drive. I gave him my okidata dot-matrix printer to use on the kaypro. When he retired I upgraded him to a Pentium and he discovered what Windows was all about. Oh, and I was able to dial up bbs and called a buddy to played modem games with each other. Later I even threw a network card in to get it on the internet. There used to be a software that would let you take your dial-up internet connection and share it to the network. Paid $200 for the kaypro

[@SenileOtaku]

yeah, I should have gone to VCF East on Saturday (I was there Friday). And my wife had no idea of what most of the machines were anyway.

[@dansimpson6844]

I had to haul one of those around for work back in the 80's.

[@funwithmatteo3769]

Finally, an action retro video *not* sponsored by PCBway

[@andrew_sar]

1:15 All i could think about when I saw this thumbnail was peggy hill upgrading from the kaypro to a blueberry imac g3

[@NullStaticVoid]

my friend Will modded an old Kaypro. He put a Mac plus in it. Same display size. Basically we just played Tetris on it. btw in the days before internet we had BBSes like The Well.

[@turnkit]

I once took a kaypro hard drive and recovered dBaseII database using a msdos data recovery program that recognized the headers. Prob my memory is a bit mixed up on that but that’s how I remembered it.

[@turnkit]

That was at a computer store in Montclair CA called K-Club which was started by a former Kaypro salesman.

[@TheGlitchyMario]

Maybe cursed, but NOTHING is more cursed than the cursed Macintosh.

[@Pentium4Proto]

4:30 I have that exact toolkit, nice.

[@thomasfuchs78]

Awesome, more non-Mac content please!

[@petemc4190]

OMG that's the "it's not Y1k compliant" machine!!!! I hope you spend the rest of the weekend polishing a grandfather clock after getting this...

[@mar4kl]

Cool! At my first programming job, I used a Kaypro 2, a Kaypro 4, a Kaypro 10 and a Kaypro 16. (All Arabic numerals, no Roman ones.) It was the summer of 1986, and these were all stock PCs. As I recall, the 2, 4 and 10 were dual floppy machines running CP/M. The Kaypro 16 had a hard drive - a whopping 10MB, IIRC - and ran MS-DOS. I'm waiting with baited breath for your next vid on this machine. I had no idea it was ever possible to run CP/M from a hard drive, and I'm really curious as to how this mod works.

[@spikederailed]

Where can i buy that candle?

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

If it boots off of the hard drive, then what does it boot FROM?

[@cheater00]

when people ask me why mickey mouse keeps bobbing in his first cartoon i'll just show them this dude

[@david5562]

Love to see this thing. A while back i was working at a thrift store where a Kaypro 10 came in. I remember playing all day with the thing ;)

[@oscillatine]

This thing is quite like my old french 1982 Sanco (Sanyo-Cofelec) 8001, which still boots perfectly.

[@soknightsam]

Can't post a link it seems but a quick search for Thomas L. Adams Saudi Arabia brings up some interesting results for obituaries for a man under that name having lectured there in the early 80's. He sadly passed in 2018

[@amnottabs]

I checked out of curiosity and the man in the obituary was called Thomas W Adams

[@soknightsam]

@@amnottabs ah yes I do stand corrected. Your diligence is appreciated

[@zoopercoolguy]

I did find a Thomas L Adams Jr. on Linkdin who seems to have a sort of electrical engineering background. I wonder if he might be the son of the Thomas L Adams who owned the Kaypro.

[@WilliamHostman]

back in the 80's, i loved the family Kaypro II...

[@greatquux]

First time I’ve seen a Santeria candle work! I can get you plenty more at my corner bodega. 🤣

[@tekvax01]

Upgrading RAM and burning new EPROMS was homebrew computer 101 back in the 70s and 80s. I modified several TRS-80s, Apple ii+ and Apple GS machines back in the day. Digital addressing, Chip selection, Chip enabling, RAM and ROM mapping are not rocket science.... I know that, because I did rocket science too, back then! There are lots of excellent books that describe how these old computers worked. Don't just think it is magic, read, and learn my friend!

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent video and work! Looking forward to your next KayPro video

[@hicknopunk]

Get Planetfall on that Kaypro ASAP!

[@ryderrepairs]

0:45, a hank hill joke! haha

[@RandomRetr0]

LOL!! Nice North Philly shirt! Someone went to Jawn 🤣

[@andrewtormo7662]

Was literally about to comment "was that a King of the Hill reference" when you played the clip lol

[@mraaron1584]

my watch has more memory then that thing.

[@grimmpickins2559]

Not my usual watch shenanigans (I tend towards 90s hijinx or Macaphilia) , but I really enjoyed this one. I really don't need to start collecting old stuff like this, I can barely fit the ones I have, LOL. Thanks Sean!

[@vikingnoise]

I played Hunt the Wumpus tons on a TI-99. I love that game 😊

[@GarthBeagle]

1:54 You mean a "zed-80" CPU of course!

[@ps5hasnogames55]

bri'ish "people" be like zed 80 computer crisps

[@ToTheGAMES]

zed ftw \o/

[@joelavcoco]

That depends entirely on where the computer was made. Yes for a Speccy, no for a Kaypro.

[@minty_Joe]

Party on, Garth! 😁

[@PixelPipes]

I need that candle for like....10 things sitting in the closet. Kaypros are awesome, and they're heavy enough to kill someone accidentally!

[@3rdalbum]

Are you going to replace the spinning hard disk with an SSD? :P

[@zaxchannel2834]

I only know about Kaypro because that King of the Hill episode. I must've missed the kaypro, I was at VCF East on Saturday :P

[@niivoenterprises-4217]

I have a kaypro ii, although it does not look at all like that one. I havent used it much.

[@niivoenterprises-4217]

Time to curse my kaypro >:)

[@KrocCamen]

Whilst I'm no CP/M expert I understand the basics of its architecture; because the Z80 CPU has a 16-bit bus, it can't address more than 64 KB of RAM without banking and there was no standard (like EMS/XMS on the PC) for this on CP/M machines meaning that only programs written to use a particular banking scheme could make use of additional RAM. The 61.7K you see at the start is the "TPA" -- Transient Program Area -- the maximum amount of contiguous RAM available for a program. Above the TPA sits the BDOS (CP/M OS) and the BIOS (although in this case it's very likely the BIOS ROM is banked out to provide more addressing space for RAM). This is why the additional RAM is being used as a RAM disk, because it's not usable in a general-purpose sense for programs.

[@johncate9541]

There is a ton of room in those cases. Several years ago, I was a regular on a site where a guy got ahold of a non-working Kaypro 2 and turned it into a luggable then-modern PC running an AMD Athlon. As for that one, it has all those games, but I didn't see Global Thermonuclear War anywhere!

[@johncate9541]

@Whyworry Street I was on YT before I ever joined Quora. And I have an interest in computer hardware and in history, so I watched the video. Nothing more.

[@organiccold]

That's a cool computer. Don't forget to save the files in the hard drive.

[@SlowPCGaming1]

"Portable" because it has a handle on it. It was part of the Luggables that precluded the release of smaller and lighter weight computers with thinner screens. With entries like anagram, patterns, etc it looks like he was either playing or making word games. Use it with the Epson printer that is referenced on the computer to make cool printed games for people to enjoy. Or was he using the floppy drive to create his own game disks to sell to people with labels created on his Epson?

[@eekee6034]

I like the word that style of computer got in the end: _luggable._ That says it all, as far as I'm concerned. :) LOLOLOL "Y1K compliant"! Has anyone tested the Antikythera mechanism? XD I love that style of case too, for the same reason. Well, that and the fact that there's usually plenty of room inside. I'm sure the modder of this Kaypro appreciated that too. I've heard of people using Lego as spacers! XD Oh man! That's the kind of mods I almost did in the 80s. :) It's definitely just like working on a hotrod. The only thing I'd do differently to this is I'd like to build the computer from scratch. _Coincidentally,_ I also loved kit cars as a teenager. :) Part of the reason I didn't do any of this is because I was just born too late. I was only just getting to understand how to mod an 8-bit computer in 1988. And parts _still_ weren't really cheap enough for me in my impoverished state. If you can't afford to risk breaking anything, you can't afford to learn. I think I'll get back to Adventure as soon as I've finished my friend's old text adventures. I've never finished it for some reason. Good to see it on an 8-bit. Oh wow! DDraw's basic operation with the flashing pixel graphics cursor leaving a line or not is exactly like a drawing program I wrote for my Atari. I had no idea I was doing anything remotely like any professional program. XD

[@hicknopunk]

I was wondering what the point of the ram upgrade...then you said a ram disk.

[@cjsebes]

Great to see you breathing life into that thing at VCF East.

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

That was A good look inside very interesting machine

[@SyCoREAPER]

That mess and length of wires is nauseating but impressive that somebody way back when, figured out what they did and even 'documented' their work with sticky notes/labels.

[@AiOinc1]

They make MFM to SCSI translators, you should see about adding a CD-ROM drive to this...

[@s8wc3]

MFM to SCSI... SCSI to IDE... IDE to SATA... Hey smokers, Druaga1 here...

[@Civilwar.relics]

I just found a old k pro 10 with all the parts and key board. Idk if i want to add it to my museum or sell it

[@eformance]

I appears that Thomas L. Adams worked for Saudi Arabian Parsons Limited around 1986, it's an Engineering consultancy.

[@sendark001]

dude that candle what the hell y'all are mad lads

[@uni-byte]

Are you sure it's not the controller from a Kaypro 10?

[@MaCJaX88]

I need a bunch of those candles please..

[@marksmith9566]

I always liked the Kaypro but we had Digital Group computers in the office. Also had a Compucolor terminal/computer with medium resolution rgb screen.

[@aaron71]

"How did they do this stuff before the internet?" Magazines!! Schematics for all sorts of mods used to be published that way :)

[@ActionRetro]

Magazine? What's that, some sort of paper website? 😂

[@KazyEXE]

I wonder if you could find out who TL Adams was

[@tobiwonkanogy2975]

i wondered if they might ever see this . Or their children even . very cool

[@askhowiknow5527]

This is multiuser CP/M Regular CP/M looks and functions so much like DOS you won’t believe it

[@Captain_Char]

I have a kaypro2x, but I also am using an HXC floppy emulator and use tera term to transfer files to the kaypro over serial

[@DatBlueHusky]

I hope you backup that hard drive, there might be stuff on there thats not online

[@danieluchwal3515]

My dad had bought two of the KPros at auction one was green and one was an Orange CRT they were heavy as

[@christophermclarksr5965]

User groups and Magazines were the source we got mods from..

[@rager1969]

Did Xbox hire Kaypro's branding manager?

[@akaJughead]

Digging the haircut, it was starting to get pretty crazy.

[@askhowiknow5527]

We have DOScember and Marchintosh We need MayPro (CP/May?) to be a real thing

[@michelr.2000]

@Action Retro - since you have so much 80s and 90s Aplle devices, I wonder if you could do a show comparing ATARI ST vs MAC using Cubase back in the days.

[@therealamirhere]

HOYEAH!