Hi welcome to tear down! Tuesday We love vintage computers here on the Eevblog and I've got a real obscure one for you today. This is the only laptop manufactured in Australia It's the Delmont Magnum otherwise known as the Kookaburra this states from 1983 and yes it is Ms-dos are compatible. Ran Dos 2.11 made in Australia and look at this beauty. Oh what a Bobby Dazzler haha We've got an 80 by 8 or 80 by 16 LCD Depending on when it was made, the early ones were 80 by 8.

another round about 83. it was discontinued in 1986. Cost about 3000 Australian dollars back then for the 96 km model or four grand for the 256 K model. Wow and check this out I Love this lever here that actually just tilts, just tilts via way of just this metal bar in there that LCD oh my goodness that's horrible.

Oh Anyway, this would have been reasonable at the time 1983 vintage and as I said, the only laptop ever made in Australia by Delmont it's the Magnum is the model, but internationally it was called the Kookaburra probably even called that here as well. Hands up, if you had one of these puppies, apparently they only ever made eleven thousand of these things. It's got an 801 86 processor which is which was really powerful for the time. I Don't know many computers that use the 801 86 back then.

I think the Tandy 2000 did and it's got these I can get in there that doesn't sound good ROM Cartridges Look at this thing so it's got the mag writer so that would be the word processor and Meg calc version -. well it's been updated and yeah, it's got these little air cartridge. the ROM cartridge are programs in it, but it didn't really have any other removable story and that was a pretty big downside of this thing. And here's an old ad for the thing, which is hilarious in a local newspaper here.

and apparently it had a 20 hour battery life. Now we actually know who the designers of this are according to the Wikipedia page for this. Yes, there is one. It's a few fan boys out there apparently.

Um, John Blair is the original designer of this thing and once it went into production, then the engineer was taken over by Terry Crews. So wonder if those guys are still around in the industry? They drop us a line on the back here. haven't got a huge amount of stuff. one big expansion connector here.

this would be a custom job II for whatever I don't know. Anyway, standard our point: one inch header there. then we've got your 15 yd Connect It's not sure what they're for either. We've got a pot in there.

maybe for the LCD contrast will be my guess. and an RCA is that monitor output? Perhaps for an external monitor? or is it audio output or whatnot? and a DC jack? and well, that's about it. Got ourselves a heatsink on there. But anyway, you know what we say.

you're on the eevblog. Don't turn it on. Take it apart. Beauty made in straw, you bloody.

Ripper Boy don't want electronic systems proprietary limited I don't know how to pronounce that. Dole menthe dual mine I Yeah, whatever. Interestingly, I'm AC Voltage input Hmm. Anyway, it's the Model D M256.

so almost certainly this is the 256 round model, so he might have the upgraded one here. But serial number a thousand and seventy two and that would be pretty genuine. - they're not fudging the numbers there. that would be unit little thousand and seventy two off the production line.

All right, let's see this puppy come out. Probably got it back to front. Tada. oh is that our process it down in there? Oh yeah, baby, come on, come on, hang on.

hang on. Ah yeah. mid 80s vintage smell. All right.

Anyway, this baby is gonna lift up like that and we are in like Flynn Whoa. what's that crustiness? Mmm. memory. Oh so it looks like we've had a slight problem with some sponge there that some I'm not sure what they were doing with the sponge.

there's not what they trying to hold down the roms. Anyway, got all the roms here and all the memory. Check it out. Oh man, but yeah, that stuff's pretty crusty down there.

Look at it anyway. that shouldn't do any harm. I'm not sure what the deal here is with a serial number that doesn't seem to match up the one on the back 6,300 Anyway, our don't want electronic systems. the Magnum at 256 Copyright 1983 Thank you very much for playing now! I'm gonna guess that this here is the main boot rom the BIOS and the ones down here.

They must be Ms-dos cuz this thing does not have a drive at all. So yeah, that would have to contain. You know there's got to be Ms-dos 2.11 in here somewhere to actually load up. It doesn't load up from the cartridges which plug in here and over here.

they're just our application cartridges. like them, probably implemented as a you know, drive A and drive B or and sorry, Well yeah, I mean drive A II could be the roms down there to load Ms-dos So yeah, I think that's what's going on there. but there's L you know 186. Oh, I'll show you I'll close up of that for all you fan boys.

So it's in a ceramic leadless package and it's got this little holder on there and there it is. It's actually not marked at all, but we have ourselves a date code the third week 1984 and other chips on here 83 late 83 vintage. so that certainly dates this to, you know, the first quarter 84 manufacturer. Look at this beautiful budge we have here.

Oops. We need to add some delay in there. Resistor Diode cut. Three caps in their rule.

Someone's tweaking something to get it working. Beautiful. Oh yeah, look at that. you're welcome.

There's another boy John an Op-amp down in there near our battery backup for our real-time clock. There's a few more bodger's elsewhere on the board, but this was actually very common back in the day to find mods like this. You know? Rhys pin in Boer It's probably not as quick and easy as it is these days, so yeah, you know the manufacturers had no problems doing that. even the biggie.

So let alone a small one like this. We got ourselves a real eye and a mod next to it. Um, as part of our power input circuitry. so that's interesting to find a relay in there.

wonder what it's doing? Anyway, pair it up, you might hear it go cath up. and we've obviously got our battery in here. I Didn't really notice that we've got to cover at the back behind the screen, but very interesting that we've got some Springs up here. Check it out.

Like what? Anyway, not sure what's doing there, but I think I can get that off. Hmm yeah, that's a very oddly designed cover. I'm not sure what's doing there. more that sponge.

that's just leave that it just disintegrates with time. Oh wow, don't breathe it. But anyway, Five Diesel my kids thank you very much. Beautiful to get 20 odd hours.

That's Locust. it's you know it's an 801 86. Is that the CMOS version? I think so I think it was just a regular 801 86. Was her a CMOS version? Hmm.

Anyway, um, that was really decent battery life back then and you could just of course I presume it had recharging circuitry in there from the external plug pack. But anyway, that's very nice. We can power it up with that or try to anyway. It's actually give it a quick pair unless feed us six volts into that from an external supply and straight on the battery terminals.

Let's see, she pals up. Oh Oh What is that? Can you see that? Oh, there, we got some lines on the LCD. It's not, It's not terrific. Look at that.

Hmm, no wah, wah and I also work. Confirm that using the external AC input using my variable frequency converter here to generate 8 volts. What was the seven volts Ac And no, we got exactly the same result. So so much for that.

Anyway, check out this power board. Look, we've got four big beefy wires running over here from the board. Now this connector? Rubbish. They're soldered straight in and that was the heatsink on the back that we saw before.

Got some power transistors behind here and l AC Diode bridge right here. so I don't mind that. You know it's a sort of a brute force solution there. Don't worry about thermals of the desire, what are we gonna do? I Just whack at a separate board on the back and work the heatsink out the back of the case.

No worries, she'll be right. Wait, hang on. it's working. Check it out.

I Took all the roms out actually I copied them both the Ms-dos ones and the main bias ROM and I worked them back in. played around a few times, it still didn't work. are still getting that crap. but Darrell's finally able to our sequence it with the on/off button on the front and we're in like Flynn Sorry about the contrast on this but it is pretty darn horrible.

And let's go Ms-dos F12 Bingo! you are now in Ms-dos to restart the menu type menu. Whoa derp. Oh there we go, we're in. Magnum Doc Meg's on main menu menu.

Okay, so menus just a batch file. got mode Wow duh /p This brings back memories. Ah, don't work. Let's run.

check disk there it is 128 K total disk space. We only have a lousy yes 67 K or so left after out load in Ms-dos Absolutely no surprise that this thing works after all these years. there's not much to go wrong with them. really.

it's all these old PCs are usually tear apart. Pretty robust tech from back then so not ready error reading drive B Oh oh oh come on and I'll actually press reset and see if that works I Don't like having the reset button here I mean look, it's just it's just sitting there. Um, doesn't seem to do anything anyway. Umm, so much for that.

Maybe I gotta hold it down? No. Anyway, I'll turn it off, then back on. Nope, no. I can't use the on/off key.

Mm-hmm Alright, you tried turning the power off, then on again. I turned it on. There we go it. press C on key.

What? hello McFly Nope. There we go. Latched on. No, we get that garbage again.

So it's a temperamental beast. We've got a CDP 1854 that's an old-school UART there's and we've got times. two of those because there's two Adi 15s on the back so they didn't use like D nines. No.

ID Right next to the ROM Here we've got an Intel P 82 76. that's an old-school CRT controller because this thing does actually have a CRT output via the RCA connector on the back. So the interesting thing you'll note about this is what's missing here. we've got.

you know, like you might think, oh, these are the you know, three big chips, But no, we've seen that these are the UARTs We've got to see our T controller. so where's the rest of it? The rest is pretty much all just jellybean logic. You know? 7400 series logic is set for the eight OC 186th. So where's all the stuff that usually comes in a NATO 86 based PC Because the Odo 186 is basically an upgraded 86 Cor.

Where's the you know the program will interrupt our controller? Where's the timers? Where's the clock? Jen's all that sort of jazz. Well, the 801 86, if you have a look at it, is actually a highly integrated processor. It actually integrates all that stuff in there, as well as being a faster 808 E6 in general. So that's why they can get away with none of the usual support stuff.

You've just got all your jellybean interface, logic and stuff like that. so that's it. We've got our processor, we got all our glue jelly bean logic UART CRT all our memory our ROM our clock calendar is up here. That's that puppy up there with the battery and the 32 Kilohertz watch crystal next to it.

and Bob's your uncle. That's about it. Oh, I just missed out on the backboard. Had some extra stuff for the buzzer and that's about it.

The power transistors they'd be using for the charging as well, because no doubt this thing would be rechargeable via the external plug Back here. So there you have it. The Dolmen Magnum Kookaburra made in Australia The only laptop slash notebook ever made in Australia. The only other Pc compatible machine that I'm aware of that was ever made in Australia and I stand to be corrected on this is the Tearin T 40 and I Believe they even wrote their own rom they didn't use like Phoenix bios or anything else back then, which was quite remarkable if memory serves me correctly.

Anyway, this is really a horrible machine. Just like in terms of just the construction. I Hate the screen, the mechanisms, all the all the silly little plastic clips to get the covers off. I Don't know how on earth they expected these things to work I Mean this is bloody ridiculous.

It's yeah. Physically, it's a horrible design and expandability. Yeah, it's got some serial ports and whatever this custom thing is. I Don't know if they ever got around to selling any customer you know face for it.

You know why you'd bother with the CRT I'll put on an eye, but yeah, and no ability to save anything internally. No floppy, no nothing. And obviously this external interface and you know, design for some sort of floppy disk based system. Something like that.

Perhaps some sort of storage solution because where is the battery backed? SRAM I'm not sure if it actually had that internal battery I think that's only for the real-time clock? I'm not sure if that actually kept the SRAM alive like say, the classic Tandy 100 for example. you could you know, just leave all your stuff in ramp Anyway, if you had one of these, please let us know the Kookaburra Wow anyway. I hope you enjoyed that. I Have a older and more interesting retro computer teardown for next week, so stay tuned for that.

So I've been wanting to do this one next week for quite some time, but this little interesting one popped up and I couldn't resist it. Maybe in Australia Oh goodness yeah, whatever happened to Dole Mont Systems? Does anyone know? Hmm. and the designers of this thing? anyway? yeah, not very popular. Eleven thousand odd sold hi Have I got a collector's item? Maybe? Anyway, next week's one I'm quite excited about they're reasonably difficult to get in Australia at a reasonable price.

I Managed to pick one up and we're gonna do some more retro telly on next week. If you want to guess what it is, answers on the back of a postcard. Catch you next time you.