Hey it wasn't about Adam Osborne. It was about the geek revolution you bozos.
This was the first -FIRST- computer designed by and for geeks. Adam Osborne was the sales guy. Had standardized ports, parts, etc. and as a previous poster mentioned it came with a wiring diagram. You could hook it up to anything else that existed in the day. Couldn't do that w/IBM, Apple, OR KAYPRO. Lots of jokes about Osbornes but I knew several engineers that brought them on site to the field and then lugged them back to the office. Nothing else could interface to the range of existing devices. Heck, I knew two profs who wrote serial port routines themselves to get data into it. Garage industries were born on these things.
You think Microsoft or the other boys came up with the idea to 'build your own'?
They saw what happened with the Osborne. They saw people hungry to build it and adapt it.
So the next time you are yanking around inside a pc case thank Adam Osborne.