[ Retro Scan of the Week ] The Poppy Computer
August 26th, 2013 by Benj Edwards
Rose vs. Poppy: Which would you choose?
I’ll admit that I’ve never encountered a Durango Poppy in person, nor do I know much about them aside from ads like this in old magazines.
So I did some digging, and I found that the Poppy model seen here was an 80186-based system that ran either MS-DOS for a single-user setup or Xenix for a multi-user configuration. It retailed for between $4,395 and $11,475 in early 1984 ($9,881 to $25,798 when adjusted for inflation), which was quite a bit of money — but actually far cheaper than IBM’s comparable offerings at the time.
A March 5, 1984 issue of InfoWorld available through Google Books has a neat article that mentions the Poppy.
I didn’t realize it at first, but the rose in the ad above is meant to symbolize IBM. IBM’s PC ads at the time featured Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character, which always carried a rose.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you ever purposely pass up IBM hardware for a cheaper alternative? Tell us about it.
August 26th, 2013 at 11:33 am
Back in the day, I managed to convince the company I was working for to buy a Commodore PC-40 versus the IBM version. Saved a whole lot of money and got a better machine at the same time.
August 27th, 2013 at 1:36 pm
I saw plenty of PC clones among my friends in the 80s. There were a couple of Tandy 1000s, a Commodore PC (with monochrome Hercules graphics), a Laser XT clone with a hard drive that needed to be manually parked before you could power down the machine. Our first PC was a no-name beige box 386.
The closest I came to a genuine IBM was the room full of PS/2s at the high school, which were great for no other reason than their Model M keyboards.
I never saw an IBM in a home setting until the Aptiva in 1994.
August 29th, 2013 at 7:20 pm
I remember the old adage, “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment.” Just think of the IT shops that couldn’t purchase a possibly better product because upper management was sold on the IBM brand.
December 28th, 2013 at 8:38 pm
At college here in the uk in the mid 80`s, we had quite a few Sanyo pc clones, they were not 100% compatable with ibm software (probably due to the weird hardware) and had a lot worse performance than the genuine ibm ones. They did look kinda cool though, quite slim and silver coloured.
Generally, pc`s were too expensive and graphically/sonically poor for home use and even the college didnt have many.
First one I saw in someones home that wasnt for business use was around the time Doom came out (1994?).
I also remember someone having a pc in an Amiga 500 style case around the same time, i think it was made by Amstrad or Sinclair Research. It really wasnt very good compared to, well anything else available at the time tbh.
October 1st, 2018 at 1:38 pm
The Poppy II included a socket for a then-very-new 80286 CPU. The Xenix system used this to run, with the 80186 providing the I/O. MS-DOS, of course, used only the 80186.
I was part of the development team on this system. Personally, I argued for the Motorola 68K as being more up to the task, but the Durango BOD had an Intel VP on it who stated unequivocally that it would be a cold day in hell before a Durango system would use a Motorola CPU.
I remember the many bugs in pre-release steppings of both the 186 and 286. Cost us a lot of time. Intel was tasked with getting the Xenix kernel running on the 286 and that wasn’t very timely either.
The terminal is a Beehive unit–a modified VT220 clone, IIRC.
I’d still like to get my hands on one of these, just for old times’ sake.