Osborne 1 Restoration, Done!

It’s been a busy Summer! 

I had been saving the Osborne 1 that I acquired in 2021 to restore during the summer.  It needed a reasonable amount of work, but also was extremely yellowed. Osborne computers, like a lot of computers from the early 80’s become quite yellowed over the 40 years of their existence.  So, I decided to make the Osborne 1 restoration a summer 2022 project so I could effectively Retro-Brite the computer case returning it to its original appearance.

Like classic cars, there is some debate over whether to Retro-Bright at all.  Before I started restoring computers years ago, I decided to write down my philosophy about restoration.  My overall goals are always to get the computer back to 100% functionality but also try to get them back to 100% of cosmetic appearance as well.  I believe you need to have both to really honor the original design of the computer.  If designers wanted the computer to be a horrible yellow, they would have made it that way!  I would never paint a computer shell to get it back to its original color, but Retro-Bright is more of a bleaching process that I feel is completely legitimate.  There is no better example of how well Retro-Brite works than the Osborne 1.

The Osborne restore was probably the most challenging one I have done to date.  Part of that was at my hand as I broke as many things as I fixed early in the restore.  It wasn’t, that bad, as I ended up really learning about the machine along the way.

I’m proud of this little computer. Check out the Osborne I page!