The Bosman 8, was made by "G.Z.E. Unimor" (Gdanskie Zaklady Elektroniczne Unimor) in Poland (Gdansk to be precise). It was released in 1987 as a system for schools and offices, but even CAD/CAM software was developed for this machine and later, as being too expensive (cost 1 300 000 zl) and extremely hard to get (apparently only 1000 models have been produced), Bosman 8 was used mainly as a terminal for automatized processes (designing printed boards).
The main particularity of the Bosman 8 is that what you think is only an external disk drive is in fact the computer itself! Yes, everything is in this small box. But it needs to be connected to a terminal and a monitor. Two keyboard/terminals were available: AN-2001 and ANG-3001, the latter featuring graphic possibilities. Indeed, the Bosman 8 seems to let the terminal manage all the display, hence different display features according to what "keyboard" terminal you are using... In fact it looks like the Bosman 8 was conceived as a system to turn an already existing terminal into a real computer.
The main unit was powered by a Z80A processor running at 4MHz, and has 16 KB of ROM. Another original feature is the amount of memory available. The User Manual claims to offer 512 KB of RAM (60KB operating memory and a 416KB on disk, which doesn't even make the count). In fact it seems that the Bosman 8 has 64 KB RAM (60 KB free for user?) and then can use 7 more 60 KB banks stored on disk, through a bank switching technique. Clever and quite original...
Two 3"1/2 or one 5"1/4 (200 KB?) floppy drives were built-in the system (max disk size was 800 KB - DS DD according to the manual). The monitor shipped with the Bosman 8 was a monochrome Neptun 159. There were also two more types of 12 ''monochrome monitors developed for it - an "M4902" and a "M4801" that was capable of working with a CGA or Hercules type display.
The whole system was apparently available in two colour versions: a bright gray model and dark gray model, but the differences are unclear (anyone can help?).
It run on a CPM/R operating system and the manual says it's compatible with CP/M
2.2.
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Contributors: Tomasz Droszcz (info & picture)
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Bosman has two 3" floppies, not 3.5" - it was the same floppy drive as used in Timex FDD 3000. Itself it has no graphics card - it uses terminal (ANG-2001 - text only, ANG-3001 - text and graphics). It has 512KB of RAM, paged as 60k blocks (not 64 - 60!) - top 4KB was reserved by OS, RAM over first 64K was used as internal disk.
Monitor connector is DB9, but it is used for video signal AND power drawed from power supply in monitor.
I heard there was a version without floppy - for network usage? I can''t confirm - I haven''t seen any.
