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Concept

Computer published 42 years ago by Corvus Systems

Listed in MAME

Concept © 1982 Corvus Systems.

TECHNICAL/MACHINE PICT.
1

This computer uses a state-of-art (at the time) MC68000 CPU. Its CCOS
operating system is a variant of the Merlin operating system by Silicon Valley
Software: it is a mono-tasking OS, with source-level compatibility with the
UCSD p-system, and vague reminiscences of UNIX. The Concept has a bitmapped screen, which enables to mix text in any style and size with graphics, and some programs were reportedly WYSIWYG (which was uncommon at the time).

The system includes a primitive window manager. The most original feature is probably the rotatable screen that can be used either in horizontal or vertical position: however you need to reboot the computer after flipping the screen. Another feature of interest is the integrated network support: the Concept can be used either as a disk-less network computer or as a full-featured personal computer, and you could connect Concepts, Apple IIs and IBM PCs in an heterogeneous Omninet LAN.

TRIVIA

The Concept was announced in the spring of 1982.

The price was about $4000 for a 256-kbytes system in 1984 ($1000 for extra 256-kbytes, $750 for floppy, from $2000 to $4000 for hard disk according to size).

SOURCES

Machine's bios.
Machine's picture.