{"id":998,"date":"2013-08-26T08:51:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T13:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=998"},"modified":"2013-08-26T09:32:31","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T14:32:31","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-the-poppy-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/998\/retro-scan-of-the-week-the-poppy-computer","title":{"rendered":"<span id=\"retro_color\">[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> The Poppy Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/poppy_large.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/images\/retroscan\/poppy_small.jpg\" alt=\"Durango Poppy Personal Business System computer advertisement - 1983\" class=\"retroscan\"\/><\/a><span class=\"freecaption\"><em>Rose vs. Poppy: Which would you choose?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll admit that I&#8217;ve never encountered a Durango Poppy in person, nor do I know much about them aside from ads like this in old magazines.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8212; but actually far cheaper than IBM&#8217;s comparable offerings at the time.<\/p>\n<p>A March 5, 1984 issue of InfoWorld available through Google Books has a <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=mS4EAAAAMBAJ&#038;lpg=PA51&#038;dq=durango%20poppy&#038;pg=PA51#v=onepage&#038;q&#038;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">neat article<\/a> that mentions the Poppy.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t realize it at first, but the rose in the ad above is meant to symbolize IBM.  IBM&#8217;s PC ads at the time featured Charlie Chaplin&#8217;s Tramp character, which always carried a rose.<\/p>\n<p><center><em>[ From Personal Computing, November 1983, p.213 ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> Did you ever purposely pass up IBM hardware for a cheaper alternative?  Tell us about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rose vs. Poppy: Which would you choose? I&#8217;ll admit that I&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27,26,10],"tags":[139,150,577,579,138,578,60],"class_list":["post-998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers","tag-139","tag-advertisement","tag-durango","tag-personal-business-system","tag-personal-computing","tag-poppy","tag-retro-scan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}