Daves Old Computers - Telcon Zorba

One of the last portable CP/M machines to be produced, the Telcon ZORBA was unsuccessful due to the market having been dominated by the Osborne and KayPro machines, and do the the fact that portable PCs were becoming available.

The Zorba offered several terminal emulations, and the ability to read a wide variety of CP/M disk formats, which make it a capable machine which was well regarded by it's users.

Due to financial problems, the Zorba was picked up by Modcomp shortly after it's release, who formed the "Modular Micros Inc." to market the machine. Even so, the Zorba was produced for only one year.

One of my Zorbas was donated by Bob Sinclair.

Click any photo to view a large high-resolution image.

Telcon Zorba. Note the full-face floppy drive doors, and the positioning of the power connector and master circuit breaker reset on the FRONT of the machine. As you can see, this is a later edition machine bearing the "Modular Micros Inc." name.

Back of the Zorba with the protective cover over the I/O ports removed. Note that at this time, the personal computer industry had not standardized on the use of male connectors for serial ports, and female connectors for parallel ports - since both are female on the Zorba, a warning label is provided.

Here is the Zorba closed up and ready for travel. The keyboard is clipped into place on the front (bottom in this photo) of the machine.

This is the Zorba chassis with the faceplate and outer shell removed.
Here is a view from the back.
Here is a closeup of the mainboard.

Zorba documentation. Also shown is another warning sheet describing the serial<>parallel port issue.

Zorba original disks.