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#### Corvus Concept

Known Issues:
The keyboard is not emulated fully.
Hard disks, serial ports, and Omninet are not emulated.
Only the original floppy controller (8" SSSD disks) is emulated.

Usage:
The driver can boot from a 8" SSSD floppy image. Start the computer and press
'F' when the computer asks for a boot device.
You may invoke the MACSbug debugger as well by pressing the key 'D'. However,
this version of MACSbug requires a terminal to be connected to the serial port
to do anything useful, so you are out of luck.

History and Trivia:
The Concept was announced in the spring of 1982.
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, but
don't delude yourself: it is no GUI. 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.
Available programs were mostly business applications: word processor,
spreadsheet, grapher, database, accounting... Thanks to its large screen, its
WYSIWYG capability and to the use of various hierarchical menus, the Concept is
relatively user-friendly for a 1982 business computer. There were also Pascal
and FORTRAN compilers, a BASIC, a UCSD runtime, an 8080 simulator, a port of
the CP/M OS, a version of SPICE to simulate discrete ICs, and even a paint
program that could take advantage of a mouse.
The price was about 4000$ for a bare 256-kbyte system in 1984 (1000$ for extra
256kbytes, $750 for floppy, from 2000$ to 4000$ for hard disk according to
size).

Generated on Tue Jul 15 11:11:04 2003