I took a look at a North Star Horizon from 1977, a wood-cased S-100 bus machine that really did ship that way from the factory. This one had the real wood top and sides, aluminum on the front, bottom, and rear, and a power LED on the front that didn’t match the ad I showed from the period. It also had two floppy drives in the front, with one wearing a North Star “quad capacity drive” sticker.
To put it in context, I flipped through a couple of 1977 Byte magazines and compared what else was on the market at the time. The ads and articles showed how strong the S-100 world still was, with systems from IMSAI, Cromemco, Southwest Technical Products, and Processor Technology sitting right alongside the newer all-in-one personal computers like the TRS-80 Model I and Apple II. I also found a North Star Horizon ad that matched the machine pretty closely, including pricing for single-drive and dual-drive versions, plus mention of North Star DOS, BASIC, and expansion options.
North Star itself started in 1976 under the name Kentucky Fried Computers, selling peripherals for IMSAI before changing names after pressure from Kentucky Fried Chicken. I also found that they sold mail-order gear from other companies, including Processor Technology, Cromemco, and even the Apple-1. That early mail-order angle fit well with the Horizon, which sat right in the middle of the late-70s transition from kit-style S-100 systems to more self-contained personal computers.
Around the back of the Horizon, I pointed out the large fan, power switch, reset switch, fuse, and a set of serial and parallel ports. There were also extra cutouts for additional serial hardware, and North Star offered expansion that let the system support multiple terminals. That made this more than just a single-user floppy box, and it showed how these machines could scale up in a small business setup.
I also showed the Hazeltine 1500 terminal that came along with it. The terminal powered up and produced a prompt when I tested it, so I was hopeful it would mostly need cosmetic attention. The main visible issue was the front anti-glare screen and gasket, which had slipped down in front of the CRT, while the keyboard, indicator panel, DIP switch settings, and rear serial connections all looked intact.
Once I opened the Horizon, the reason for the weight was obvious. It had a very large transformer, a huge capacitor, a big fan, and a linear power supply layout that took up a good chunk of the case. The machine used a 12-slot S-100 backplane, and inside I found a Z80A processor card, two 32K RAM cards for a total of 64K, and a floppy controller card connected to the drives with a ribbon cable.
The date codes on the boards and stickers on the hardware placed this particular system in 1980, even though the Horizon itself was introduced in 1977. I also noticed that many of the socketed chips on the RAM cards had worked their way upward, so I pressed them back down into place. The cards had onboard regulators, and there were also wire-link style configuration parts used for addressing and setup, which was a good reminder of how manual expansion still was on systems like this.
I didn’t power the Horizon up yet. I stopped after the inspection and planned to check the power rails in the next video before trying to boot it in the next round.
— Aaron
Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:29 – History
09:58 – Kentucky Fried Computers
11:20 – North Star Horizon
14:20 – PCBWay Ad
14:46 – Hazeltine 1500 Terminal
19:41 – Internals
31:25 – Wrap Up