I just bought a rare computer that isn't a Mac, but which looks like one for an interesting reason...

[Huxley]

My wife and I were out running some errands yesterday and on a whim we stopped into an awesome local secondhand / junk store. We had a nice time poking around and looking at tons of interesting items, and then I spotted something that made my brain twitch: a Mac-like device, but shorter and wider than a Mac...

It turned out to be a Dynalogic Hyperion, a rare Canadian computer that was the first portable IBM compatible machine (a title usually given to the much more successful Compaq Portable). There were compatibility limitations between the Hyperion and the IBM and the Hyperion's floppy drives were apparently very unreliable, so the machine had a very short lifespan before fading into obscurity.

I haven't been able to totally confirm this yet, but a comment on Facebook indicates that the Hyperion's outer case and overall industrial design was created by Dr. Bill Dresselhaus... the same designer who oversaw the industrial design of the Apple Lisa, which itself inspired the first-generation Macintosh.

The shopkeeper let me know that this Hyperion doesn't turn on, so I'll have my work cut out for me to get it running again. Nevertheless, I'm delighted to have such a weird, rare machine in my collection, and I think it's going to make a fascinating display alongside my Macintosh 128k - two very different machines with some shared design DNA!

Huxely

 

[falen6]

very nice - great find

 

[MacUp72]

looks like an interesting thrift store..

 

[ScutBoy]

They look cool - I remember them from back in the day. I seem to remember that yes, they were almost IBM compatible

 

[Huxley]

very nice - great find

Thank you! I'm still buzzing about it a full day later

looks like an interesting thrift store..

Yeah, that place ("Urban Ore") is fascinating - a huge dusty warehouse, filled with... everything. Their inventory seems to turn over pretty frequently, but on any random day you can find old pianos, an entire bathroom, four Japanese-language slot machines, 500,000 books, loose lumber, vintage electronics, mannequin parts, and a Dynalogic Hyperion!

They look cool - I remember them from back in the day. I seem to remember that yes, they were almost IBM compatible

Haha yeah! I just recently wrote a full-length feature article about the IBM PCjr for Pixel Addict Magazine, and it was hilarious and weird to learn about an almost IBM-compatible machine from IBM. Funny that the Hyperion falls into the same category, although I'm learning that the technical incompatibilities between the PC and Hyperion may have been less severe than those between the PC and the PCjr. Either way, I have a real soft spot for these oddball machines - they're such odd ducks in hindsight!

Huxley

 

[kkritsilas]

The company that I worked for at the time (in Montreal) almost got a production contract for the Hyperion. There were a few of them brought in to analyze for setting up the production process. Interesting footnote is that one of the people in our BIOS group said most of the incompatibilities were due to the changes they made to the BIOS, and that given a couple of weeks of development, they could (mostly) be addressed by our BIOS group. Interesting part about the ones I saw was that they had an orange/amber phosphor CRT. Looked pretty cool, and the overall design was quite nice.

 

[CC_333]

Yeah, that place ("Urban Ore") is fascinating

It is!

I discovered it about 13 years ago, and I've gotten all sorts of interesting Macs from there. To name a few:

• A lot of two SEs (an 800k and a SuperDrive with the word "ZIMM" carved into the top) and a Plus
• A Quicksilver 867MHz (since upgraded to dual 1.0 GHz with a QS'02 LB because the original CPU and LB died)
• A 500 MHz PowerBook Pismo CPU card with 512 MB of RAM, still in my Pismo to this day)
• Lime tray loader iMac
• Last gen Apple Studio CRT display
• And, most recently, an 8500

Maybe we should plan a meet there sometime and together maybe we can scour the place for interesting computer stuff

I used to go there quite often before I ran out of space. Now I only go rarely, if ever (when I was there a few weeks ago, that was the first time I'd gone there for... 6 or more years. I would've gone sooner, but COVID happened).

c

 

[dcr]

Very nice. Even has a scifi-ish name.