Compy 386

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Side view seen in fingers

The Compy (or at least an old computer monitor) appearing in puppet form in Puppet Time

The Compy appearing in Powered by the Cheat form in mile, under the name "Compa"

That is not a small number! That is a BIG number! From virus

The end for the Compy

The Compy 386 was Strong Bad's second computer, and in his words, "a spectacle of graphics and sound." He used this machine to answer his Strong Bad Emails after the Tandy 400 was thrown out at the beginning of "invisibility". This machine was built by Compy, Inc and seemed to have something against The Cheat.

In the Strong Bad email "virus," Compy 386 suffered from serious technical problems, and was destroyed by Bubs' shotgun. Bubs later sold it to Homestar Runner as seen in the Broken Compy Menu. The Compy was replaced with the Lappy 486 in the email "animal."

Debut: invisibility

Fun Facts

• The Compy 386 seems to be a take on the old Compaq Deskpro 386, which has a similar monitor and keyboard.
• You can click on the little wheel to change the screen contrast from black to blue.
• The blue "386" display when Strong Bad turns on the Compy 386 in "invisibility" refers to the blue IBM logo.
• The monitor in the Puppet Time movie is an old Apple II monitor. The keyboard is a recent model of the Dell QuietKey keyboard that came with earlier Dell computers.
• In the email "mile", the Cheat called the Compy "Compa".

The Real Computer

Like the Tandy 400, this was an almost-reference to a real computer. There was a 386 processor, which was very popular in its day, but there was no company called "Compy" that made a 386 version of their computer. The "386" logo in "invisibility" looks like the real-life logo of IBM. He seems to be using a DOS, but in "big white face" we see him emulating an early version of Mac OS.