Talk:Dulmont Magnum

Other mentions

• The Microbee Software Preservation Project (MSPP): Dulmont Magnum repository(Free Membership required) or see https://sites.google.com/site/dulmontmagnum/ for files
  • Computing Today: NEWS: ENTER THE 'MACRO' PORTABLE, Page 33, November 1983, Electronics_Today_International (ETI)
    • The Dulmont Magnum, a portable 'macro' computer was officially launched at the 10th Australian Conference in Melbourne in September.
    • PerCompAsia '83 Conference, 19-21 October 1983' Worldtrade Center, Singapore, The Straits Times, 3 October 1983, Page 20 Advertisements Column 2
  • story_of_dulmont_eti_85_07.pdf, July 1985 ETI on the rise and fall of the Dulmont Magnum/Kookaburra and everything in between.
  • dulmont_magnum_review_yc_83_10.pdf, October 1983, Your Computer (Australian magazine), Official release and review of the Dulmont Magnum (by Les Bell)
  • dulmont_magnum_advert_yc_83_10.pdf, October 1983, Your Computer, Advert from President, agents for the Dulmont Magnum.
  • Re: What genuine Australian microcomputers were there?, Postby ajpcmp » Tue Nov 05, 2013 11:56 am, Dulmont Magnum – a brief history, In the late 1970's I was the International Development Manager for Dulmison Pty. Ltd. Dulmison was an Australian company that had its head office in Wyong, NSW and production facilities in Wyong, New Zealand, Thailand and the USA. It also had commercial interests in Mexico, Hong Kong and Japan. On a trip to Georgia USA to buy land and build a new factory (Dulmison Inc.) I was travelling in a car across Alabama with Dulmison's MD Clive Mackness and the newly appointed USA General Manager Colin Morriss. We were discussing how to store the data on the business cards that we had collected and decided it would be possible to produce business cards with a magnetic strip and wipe the card through a calculator similar to the scientific calculator produced by Texas Instruments. Thursday 24th May 1979 was the day the idea for the Dulmont Magnum was conceived between myself, Colin Morriss and Clive Mackness as we travelled across the USA. I specifically remember this as the following day the three of us were boarding aircraft at Atlanta Airport, Colin Morriss headed for Chicago, and we went to London. When we met back in Atlanta the following Tuesday Colin related a terrible story. He had arrived at O'Hare Airport in Chicago to meet his parents who were arriving from the UK. Whilst in the terminal he witnessed a plane taking off that, after take off, lost its engine and caused it to crash on the airport killing all 271 people aboard. You may understand why that date has stayed in my mind. The idea of a storage calculator was explored and expressions of interest sought from Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard but to no avail. As Dulmison owned foundries, machine workshops and had significant expertise in the field of electrical engineering it was decided to produce the product in-house. The senior executive team at that time included Philip Dulhunty, Executive Chairman,Brian Gray, Joint MD, Bill Humphries, Australian GM, Geoff Glasson, Chief Electrical Engineer and Frank Smith who was involved in the early production coordination prior to the creation of Dulmont Pty Ltd. One thing led to another over the course of the following twelve months, specifications were modified and the result was the Dulmont Magnum laptop computer. Dulmont was founded as a new entity to produce the product. The name Dulmont is derived from the Chairman and Founder of Dulmison Pty Ltd, Philip Dulhunty and a Belgian entity Tramont., By Graham who indicted he was the Industrial Designer who designed the Magnum.

• "Battle of portable computers hots up". The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995). ACT: National Library of Australia. 10 September 1984. p. 19. Retrieved 13 April 2015., Earlier this year, Dulmont scored a notable first amongst Australian computer makers with its Magnum 16-bit lap, or briefcase-sized, machine. The new Hewlett-Packard model will compete against the Dulmont Magnum.
• "'Big breakthrough for Australia'". The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995). ACT: National Library of Australia. 8 November 1983. p. 16. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
• "New Products". The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995). ACT: National Library of Australia. 4 February 1985. p. 14. Retrieved 13 April 2015., The Time Kookaburra portable computer, for merly the Dulmont Magnum, now comes with a 16-line liquid crystal display, making it a more convenient machine for accounting, according to the Canberra distributor, President Computers. The new model costs $2,887, compared with $2,495 for the 8-line machine. Time is now ex perimenting with a 24 line liquid crystal display. The Kookaburra would get a portable, battery driven 86mm disc drive, a carrying case and better graphics this year, the dis tributor said. The machine's case was being redesigned to give it Time livery.

• Interest and Offer In US, By Norman Kemp, Page 32, The Age - Jul 17, 1984
• Govt Holds Key To Rescue Of Local Computer Maker: Suitor., By Stephen Hutcheon ,Page 17, The Sydney Morning Herald - Oct 1, 1984
• Government Indicates Stronger Commitment, By Stephen Hutcheon ,Page 13, The Sydney Morning Herald - Oct 8, 1984
• Time takes its new product range to show in Las Vegas, Page 42, The Age - Dec 4, 1984

• 1985, Magnum Magcalc plug-in for Dulmont laptop computer
• 1984-11-01, Photograph edition: A Briefcase Portable From Down Under., The Magnum can operate for up to fifteen hours on rechargeable batteries.
• dulmont Page 1 The Archivist Collection Manager, images of 9 different "DM256"'s
• Dulmont Magnum; the first Aussie micro., By John Anderson. Page 58-62, Creative Computing Magazine (January 1985) Volume 11 Number 01
• a portable computer killjoy, By Jack Stone, Page 45, Computerworld, 18 Jun 1984, Teleram...we have acquired the rights to dstribute the Dulmont Magnum, which we believe is the most powerful MD-DOS lap computer on the market.
• Noble, D (1984-10-12), "Buyer to Integrate Magnun", Computerworld Australia, v7 (n15), Computerworld Pty. Ltd (Australia): p1, ISSN 0813-295X {{citation}}: |pages= has extra text (help), Time Office Computers (Manufacturing) Pty. Ltd. will integrate the Dulmont Magnum portable microcomputer, Magnum, into an ergonomic workstation. The development follows the government's approval for loans for Time to acquire the company. The company will market the workstation under a different name, The Kookaburra. The unit features a 16-line LCD, MS-DOS 2.11, 256K-bytes, word processing and an electronic spreadsheet.
• Kookaburra, Computerworld - 26 Nov 1984 - Page 40 - Vol. 18, No. 48

• Newsbriefs:Australian lap computer in U.S:, By Jessica Paioff, Page 15 ,InfoWorld, 6 Aug 1984, A plugin modem fits into the same slot designed for the software.
• Genius versus bricks-and-mortar in the head,By Steve Keen, 9 Jun 2014, Business Spectator, Because Terry was the brains behind easily the most innovative computer product ever to come out of Australia: the Dulmont Magnum (see Figure 1). This was a genuine laptop computer, the very first in the world, whose design pre-dated the IBM PC. Any new product Terry Crews is involved in is bound to leap well ahead of the competition, because that was his track record with the Dulmont Magnum itself.
• The three-in-one Aussie device that could kill the PC, Hannah Francis, 3 Jun 2014, Business Spectator
• Petitions-24 October, 1984 Mr Speaker - Parliament of New Wales, Page 10, DULMONT ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS PTY LIMITED, When the Government made its recent decision to provide a loan and guarantee worth $1 million to the Dulmont Magnum Company, was he aware that the Australian Industry and Development Corporation and several large investment companies had already declined to invest in this company?
• Vintage Laptop Computers: First Decade: 1980-89, Paperback – July 12, 2006, by James E. Wilson (Author), ISBN: 1598004891, Dulmont Magnum, Page, 38
• TANDY LAPTOP COMPUTING - PORTABLE 100, Magazine 1985 January: Meet the Dulmont Magnum
• CHM084 Dulmont Kookaburra Portable Computer 1983 , Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, Flickr, Kookaburra Portable Computer, Dulmont Electronic Systems, Australia, 1983, The Australian Kookaburra Laptop (the "Dulmont Magnum") had MS-DOS, a word processor, spreadsheet, and appointment programs permanently in ROM. It weighed "only" 10.5 pounds. Design, begun in 1979, included novel power-management circuitry developed at the University of New South Wales.,Speed:8MHZ Memory size:96K Memory type:Semiconductor Memory width: 16-bit Cost:$2,495,Gift of Darryl Smith, X1519.98

• (French)L'Ordinateur Individuel n°63, octobre 1984, Page 75, Magnum: un portatif qui a du coeur au ventre

Sections

Specifications

• Hardware:

• Options:

• Peripherals:

• Connectors:

• Software:

• Included Custom-Written Utilities:

Distributors

President Computers was the Australian distributor.

International was ?

Company Failure

The Electronics-Today International (ETI) article from July 1985 ("The Story of Dulmont" by John Fairall) gives a pretty good background on what happened. They had hyped the Magnum up for a long time, but they hadn't expected so many bugs in the hardware and software. They were running out of cash and started selling units before it was finished. Reviews were bad and their distributors backed out. Without money to properly finish, Dulmont was bought up by Time Office Computers at fire-sale prices. Ben (talk) 03:29, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Excerpts from the article:

The Story of Dulmont: An exciting new idea, keen forward-looking engineers, even an enthusiastic backing company isn't enough to translate "inspired project" into "going concern". Just concern. We're not sure if this story is a tragedy or a moral.

Talking about it today, [Tramont manager] Godesar's eyes still glow with enthusiasm at the potential he saw for the machine. How many Avon ladies are there in the world? How many travelling salesmen? Thousands, hundreds of thousands. And each represents a potential sale.

Godesar sat down with the Dulmison people and worked out the development program. Funds were going to be a problem, but there was optimism in the air. The job was to keep the company afloat, let the engineers get on with it, and try to sell. They joined the company names together and called themselves Dulmont. And the product? In a moment of boyish enthusiasm they named it after a six gun from the old wild west. Small with a powerful punch. “The Magnum”.

Ten months later, pre-production machines were rolling out of the factory and [Dulmison engineer] Irwin began the hunt for bugs. And bugs there were in plenty. Sort out one and another appeared. It was, perhaps, inevitable. It took time to sort out, and time was what they didn't have.

A decision was taken to ease the cash flow problems by putting the product on the market. It was too early. All over the coun- try, enthusiastic computer writers, distribu- tors and a cast of thousands had been primed to expect something miraculous from the Dulmont company. At last it was here. And the bloody thing didn't work. They weren't delivered when promised. Software didn't do what it was supposed to. All kinds of key combinations would send it crazy. David Irwin today, shakes his head: "We needed an extra six months".

The company lurched along for a couple of months. Sales were slow. Reviews in the press went from glowing to polite to down-right bad. Another blow fell. The US distributors, the key to all the company's hopes, started to hear worrying stories about Dulmont's financial health. The message came across the Pacific: “Thanks, but no thanks. Call us when you have got your act together”.

On 15 August, [1985,] Tractionel and Dulmison decided that the end had come. Losing the US distribution and inability to get FIRB [Foreign Investment Review Board] approval for an increase of foreign capital had made their liquidity problems worse; it began to seem like flogging a dead horse.

Roberts [owner of Time Office Computers] also sells a small stand-alone computer, the Time 4500, for the office environment. It's a bit long in the tooth now though, and he was in the market for something new. The demise of Dulmont happened just at the right time. It was a nice package. Time got the Magnum for a song. Both Dulmison and Tramont are a little coy about saying exactly how much they lost. Godesar says that a figure around $1.5m would not be too far amiss.

In spite of the problems the future looks bright for the Magnum. Time, with inexorable bad taste, has named it the "Kookaburra". Time is a business supplier and intends to market the Kookaburra to the people it knows and understands. Don't expect to see it in Dick Smith's. Dealerships are being expanded internationally. French software has been written and over 1000 have already sold there. The elusive US market still beckons.