The original Kaypro II User's Guide

Here is a little something some people might find useful or maybe just interesting? It's a print-quality scan of the first Kaypro II User's Guide. (10.1 Mb)

This guide appears to be the earliest user manual for this class of machine and according to this site, it is quite rare. The illustrations show my particular version of the Kaypro II i.e. the one with vertically-oriented disk drives. This model was very short-lived and was soon replaced with units sporting the more conventional horizontal drives. Also, the manual has friendly cartoons and a overtly non-threatening style common with microcomputer guides of the early 1980s. It reminds me somewhat of my own System 80 set of manuals.

What do I mean by a non-threatening style? Well, believe it or not, computers WERE threatening to many people in those early days. Most folk couldn't type and these machines were complicated to use. People were genuinely intimidated by them. Some manuals tried to make new users feel comfortable by using a whimsical style of writing, typified by David Lien's excellent Learning Level II for the TRS-80 Model 1. Such prose appears patronising today but it wasn't for its time.

Nowadays of course, computers are just consumer items and no one fears them.

Many thanks to Philip Avery who loaned me the manual to scan. Enjoy.

Tez

2nd February, 2010