Husky were originally called DVW Microelectronics based in Coventry UK, and the original Husky from 1981 was a rugged data collector-type handheld device designed for Severn Trent Water. Thanks to their little machine appearing on Tomorrow's World the Army said 'we'd like military versions of those, please' and gave DVW lots of money. The resulting machine was a green version of the commercial one and was a resounding success.

The followup was the Hunter, an aluminium-bodied little brick of a machine that ran a CP/M-like OS called DEMOS and was powered by 4 AA batteries. The whole machine was waterproof, and if you visited DVW's premises in Coventry at the time you'd be greeted by a working Hunter in a pirhana-infested fishtank in reception. DVW changed their name to Husky around 1984.

The Hunter series were a massive success and earned their stripes in all sorts of military applications from the Rapier missiles to being nailed into tanks for data collection and diagnostics. Their toughness is legendary and we often joke about using one to prop up a house or perhaps raise the car up for a little maintenance underneath. They're actually designed to survive a 1m drop onto concrete as well as being waterproof. Outside world connectivity is a single 25 pin serial port and a power connection which I worked out was called an FGG.0B from LEMO - still being made today, though branded as a USB keyboard connector.

This one is a Hunter 2 and was struggling to work, and when it did it had screen issues as you can see in the pics. I stripped it down and cleaned it out - the inevitable battery damage had occurred but not from the internal VARTA for once, that still holds a charge. Fortunately the area of board that was damaged doesn't appear to be used in this model. The display issues were down to a dry joint in the LCD connector, so once that was fixed I set about getting hold of HCOM which is the software that runs on DOS/Win3.1/95/98 and lets you upload/download files to the Hunter. With the usual RS232 adapter madness I got it working through DOSbox and transferred ZORK down to the little beast. The data path was Win11 -> DOSbox -> emulated COM port -> FTDI USB serial -> 9-25 adapter -> pin/socket changer -> null modem adapter -> Husky.

You know it's a CP/M machine when it's running ZORK! I don't think the other popular games like Catchum and Ladder will work too well on the little display though :) The machine's been sat working for over a week now with the same batteries, and a LEMO plug is on order from The Pi Hut. Hopefully you can see this machine at RetroFest Swindon next year!

Cheers Pete :D