website/content/museum/polycorp-poly-1-educational-computer.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
POLYCORP Poly 1 Educational Computer	Computers	Professional Computer	New Zealand	1981	Motorola 6809	name image company company_name specs tabs photos emulators links comments oc_id source Poly 1 Educational Computer /media/museum/photos/polycorp_poly1_1s.jpg /companies/polycorp POLYCORP label value NAME Poly 1 Educational Computer label value MANUFACTURER Polycorp label value TYPE Professional Computer label value ORIGIN New Zealand label value YEAR 1981 label value END OF PRODUCTION 1989 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE BASIC interpreter + text editor label value KEYBOARD Full QWERTY keyboard + function keys label value CPU Motorola 6809 label value SPEED 1 MHz or 4 MHz (Unconfirmed) label value RAM 64 KB label value VRAM 2 x 240x204 Display pages or\ 1 x 480x204 Display page – 48K\ 2 Text screens – 2K label value ROM 16 KB BASIC + 4 KB BIOS label value TEXT MODES Display 1 - 40x24 Text\ Display 3 - 40x24 TeleText label value GRAPHIC MODES Displays 2 & 4 – 240x204\ Display 5 – 480x204 label value COLORS 16 label value SOUND Clock chip (Unknown specs) label value SIZE / WEIGHT Big & heavy label value I/O PORTS DIN Network connector label value BUILT IN MEDIA Proprietary Networking System to a CP/M based server (no internal storage) label value OS FLEX label value POWER SUPPLY Internal label value PERIPHERALS None label value PRICE ~NZ$4000 photos emulators links title subtitle text image POLY 1 EDUCATIONAL COMPUTER /media/museum/photos/polycorp_poly1_1.jpg title url platform text Poly and Proteus emulator http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/homepages/andrew/poly/Poly.htm Windows Emulates the Poly, Proteus, and Epson MX-80 Printer. title url text The Poly Preservation Project http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/homepages/andrew/poly/Poly.htm author date text lizardb0y (New Zealand) Saturday 28th August 2010 I went to High School in New Zealand in the 80s. My school still had a computer lab with a dozen or so Poly 1 and a couple of Poly 2 computers. They were a strange looking machine, and very heavy. I remember the keyboards on the Poly 1 had copper plates at the sides to let you de-static yourself before using them. They were all networked, and shared a central "server" which looked like a large box with a couple of 8" floppy disk drives. The shared printers also plugged into the "server". Software was very simple - I remember a very basic word processor, and we were taught Pascal on it. One of the guys I went to school with is trying to preserve and document information about these machines: http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/homepages/andrew/poly/Poly.htm author date text Diego (Earth) Wednesday 22nd August 2007 The CPU speed has to be 1 Mhz, because the 6809 was never rated for 4 Mhz. (2 Mhz in Motorola made parts, 3 Mhz for some hitachi ones) 1269 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230601001859/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1269 2023-06-01

The Poly was a home/educational computer platform developed in New Zealand in the early 1980s. It was marketed to schools, but because it was prohibitively expensive and somewhat idiosyncratic, the main customers seem to have been the Australian Army and somebody in China.

Perhaps its most remarkable feature was its ability for networking, which seems to have used a protocol all of its own. For a year or two it may have been the most network capable home computer in the world, before 3Com thought to make Ethernet cards for the Apple II.

It was named after Wellington Polytechnic, where it was developed.

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Contributor: Tony Thompson

We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.