We'll get to the cover star in a moment, and delve into the news first. The big thing here was the forthcoming 1983 General Election. Computing was becoming a hot topic and all of the main parties had something to say about it. Whether those words would have swayed the voters of 1983 is impossible to say now (sarcasm alert), but the gist of the replies to PCN's questions are telling. The Conservative's is littered with numbers, of amounts spent or to be pledged, Labour's is all about ideas and concepts, whilst the SDP-Liberal Alliance's is rather evasive on key points.
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| There's a pub based "Thatcher's Foot" joke here somewhere... |
There is more about the election in the news which focusses on the hardware ITN would use for their coverage. Peter Sissons would operate a VT80 graphics computer with "amazing colour graphics" at a resolution of 1024 pixels, 256K of memory and using 16-bit words. A VAX 11/750 with 4Mb of memory and a total of 500Mb worth of Winchester disks ran everything, a second VAX did the number crunching, and there was a third on stand by. Peter Snow of the BBC would also be using a VAX with some slightly different hardware attached.
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| How many??? |
In other news, Kodak was promising a 10Mb 5.25" floppy at no more than double the price of a typical disk, whilst both Telesoftware and Acorn's Teletext (ah, Mr Biffo in the 90's!) adaptors had been delayed until August. And of course there was the PCN chart - the top 20 computers under £1,000, and the top 10 over that amount. As you can see, the sheer number of sub-£400 machines is mind-blowing. It's not surprising that the market slumped from around mid-1983 to the dramatic Christmas of 1984. By the spring of 1985, only Sinclair, Amstrad and Commodore would have a reasonable business chance of standing on their own feet. Sinclair would later fall foul of Clive's fascination with the C5 electric vehicle, Amstrad were sitting pretty because Alan knew how to make money, and Commodore was an international giant. Of the rest, Atari would be a different company by then, and Acorn would be under the wings of Olivetti after the Electron mis-step/fiasco.
A few more observations: even at this point, the Apple II was stupidly over-priced, and it would take a hell of a loan/wage to put one in the family home. As for the over £1,000 lot, the Osborne 1 was a outlier being (semi) portable and all, the IBM PC was a niche high-cost unit, and pretty much everything else (aside from the obvious exclusions) ran C/PM. In the real world, if you were lucky, you got a Spectrum, or maybe a Dragon. If you were rich, you got a BBC, and if you were blessed with the luck of the Spartans, you got a Jupiter Ace. Oops!
Moving on, we have a letters page, a Microwaves section (where readers submitted tips for a £5 reward), some book reviews (a goodly selection this issue), before we get to the first of the features: how to get a Tandy Color talking to a Dragon. A useful piece if you had one or the other considering their basic (and BASIC) similarities. Next is part two of a guide to making music, and other sounds, on your Oric, before we head to the graphics world and transferring programs from the Genie to the Colour Genie.
The first review is for a word processor for the Dragon, the second an attempt at putting Forth on the Specturm - each to their own, I guess. The review of GPS (Graphics Processing System) for the Apple II is vaguely positive but notes that it hangs quite often although its graphics capabilities have aged well since it's long distant launch.
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| Two out of three ain't bad. |
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| Putting the stick in joystick. |
A joysticks round up next, pitting the Kempston Competition Pro against the Spectravision Quickshot (I owned both of these, though not at the same time), the standard Atari stick, and the BBC Joystick. There isn't an overall winner, although the BBC option does get some stick (not sorry at all) for being a pain to hold - which is literally the whole point of its existence.
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| Ooohhhhh! Pretty! |
And now to the cover star: the Ajile, an IBM compatible from Canada (originally the Canadian Dynalogic Infotech Hyperion - yep, I prefer Ajile!). On the plus side, it's lighter than an Osborne, rocks an 8088, 256k of RAM, two (count 'em) 320k IBM format floppy drives and a seven inch 80 x 25 amber CRT. If it's graphics you're after, high res 640 x 250 is available. The downsides include the keyboard (feels tacky and cheap), a botched software package (it includes the Multiplan spreadsheet package, a comms package and a text processor that can't print...), and the price - this would have set you back £4,100 including VAT. Wowzer!
Games coverage includes Everest Ascent on the 48k Spectrum, a series of titles for the Colour Genie, Qix for the Atari 400/800, and Micro Maze for the Jupiter Ace.
There's programming stuff too, with PCN ProgramCards (11 this issue), for you to cut out and keep - this month an action game called Cupid for the 48k Oric-1. Following this is a guide to user clubs around the country - and a varied lot they are too. Not just the aforementioned formats, there's also a Comal user's group. one for the Casio FX-500-P, and two (!) for the DEC PDP series.
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| I feel the need, the need for telecoms speed! |
The back of the issue is taken up with the Databasics section - a guide to printers, monitors, disk drives, plotters, and modems (up to 1200 baud for the top of the range models). Three pages of classified ads leads the way to the Microshop small ads, before the final page offers us the usual light-hearted banter that many mags used to include.
But what about the adverts? Oh boy! Buckle up, kids!
An ad for computer rental is the first to catch the eye - have an Apple IIe from £4.58 per week. The Apple III could be had from £12.98 pw, whereas the IBM PC was a princely £13.98! Fittingly for the age (and younger readers should Google it if they don't know), you could contact the company (OEM - nicely done) via telephone or Telex. What communication wonders we have lost!
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| A lost age where renting a computer could be cheaper than buying one. |
Next is a regular for PCN, the Software Centre (see end of post), offering games for everything from the BBC Micro to VIC 20 via Atari, the ZX81 and the Dragon 32. Many start from under a fiver, but could go as high as £30 and over, especially for Atari software.
Hewlett Packard was flogging its HP-86 with PPP (Personal Productivity Pac), although no prices were mentioned (look back up this post, it's in the over £1k category), where as CAL were trying to convince potential buyers that its machine was better than an IBM, as well as being British (see end of post).
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| Some mixed messaging there between desktops and portables. |
Epson had their QX-10 "Human compatible business micro" that thinks you should be impressed by the machine on your desk... if you had much of a desk left by the time that base unit was plonked on it. To be fair though, most business machines were similarly as huge.
Akhter Instruments Ltd were going all in on the Texas Instruments TI 99/4A, selling it for a low price of just £149.95. They had plenty of peripherals and tons of software too, so if that was to be your machine of choice, they had you covered.
But what's this? Could it be? Yep, it is Silica Shop (whose adverts were ever present once the 16-bit generation kicked in). Their first page is a cornucopia of retro gaming goodies: the Mattel Aquarius for just £79, the Colecovision for a fair bit more (£147), where are the Vectrex was a bargain £149 - remember, it had its own display. Those Atari 400/800 prices don't look too bad either.
Page two is less starry. Although that VCS price looks tempting, that's for second hand machines, and the Intellisvion seems to be forgotten even though it's quite the bargain at £98. There again, this was the time of the home micro in Britain so consoles were less of a thing.
One last ad (and a tangent) is for a Sales Executive. Based around London and the Home Counties, this position offered a £9k basic wage, £16 on target, and a company car. Convert that to today's money, that's about £29-52k now. There again, average house prices were around £24k and interest rates were around 9.8%. Makes you think...
Anyway, that's a PCN issue from 1983. Like most, if not all things past, a different country, but interesting to see how things were before DOS slowly took over the world. The question is now, which year do we go to next?
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| Software Centre |
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| CAL |
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