In an earlier posting I discussed the state of the art in the consumer electronics field in 1984. Having explored the archives a little further in recent weeks, I’ve dug up a few more relics from the 1980s to remind us what we had to get by with a quarter of a century ago.
These programs, and other advertisements in the magazine, remind us that at the time there were a broad variety of computers vying for market share. One game, ‘Subhunt’ by Deane Whitmore, offered two and a half pages of ASCII text - ‘a great game for the Spectrovideo 318 or 328’, while a tuition page offered continuing lessons in machine code for the Sinclair Z80. A full-page advert for Sinclair computers reminds readers of the political upheavals going on in New Zealand in 1984, drawing attention to the fact that its offers are ‘still at pre-devaluation prices!’ On the magazine’s back cover, a full-page advert promotes the long-dead Sega SC3000 home computer (retailing for only $399) with the tagline ‘What good is the latest technology if you can’t afford it?’
The magazine’s lead story is Martin and Faye Hall’s mostly favourable review of the new Apple II-emulating CAT computer offered by Dick Smith. (Dick Smith was a major advertiser with Computer Input; the CAT also featured in my earlier post). Here’s an excerpt to remind you what computer users were being offered in 1984:
The CAT is one of the latest and more impressive computers to join the Dick Smith personal computer range. It offers to the potential buyer many enhanced facilities and features, a wide range of software, along with a capability for system expansion. Many of the features offered are not found to the same degree in other similarly priced computer systems.
The CAT uses a 6502A microprocessor with an operating clock speed of 2MHz. The basic computing unit comes complete with a 64K byte on-board RAM and a 32K byte ROM. Of this ROM, 24K bytes are used to provide the user with Enhanced Microsoft BASIC language. The CAT can be expanded up to a total of 192K bytes of RAM […]
The CAT is being marketed with its primary competitor as the Apple IIe and from our study of the CAT we found it a worthy competitor. It should be acknowledged though, that the CAT is very much a newcomer in the computer market and still has to stand the test of time and many users.
As a computer system in its own right the CAT offers many advanced features not seen in other similarly priced computer systems. The CAT, priced at $1295 for the basic unit, has bridged the cost gap between serious computing and pure entertainment. It offers an impressive alternative for potential computer users who have a limited price budget, but want a serious computer not just a toy.
The specifications listings go on to recount the CAT’s ‘80 or 40 character display’ and ‘560 x 192 HI RES colour graphics with a choice of 8 colours’. That sound? It’s the future knocking at the door.
3 comments:
Classic stuff there ET. Ahhh... the memories.. particular flash-backs re the Motorola 6502, spent many an hour building my own home PC motherboards using that CPU and various other Intel 8-bit wonders. And of course the re-keying of Assembler instructions and BASIC who can forget that torturous exercise.
It left me wondering though, how did you get the text from that mag into this blog post? Did you do a little gratuitous re-keying of your own for old times sake :-)
The greatest moment of my life (up until age 14) was having a program my brother and I wrote in Vic 20 Basic published in Computer Input magazine. It was called Weed Eater(?) and involved navigating a bug around the screen to eat as many weeds you could in 30 seconds. Eat one weed and another one would randomly pop up elsewhere on the screen. Inevitably all our school friends made lots of mistakes typing it in so it never worked for them and was therefore deemed to be a pile of ol' crap.
@Deeknow - Yep, good solid QWERTY skills as taught by a scary lady teacher in Form 3 typing class. I considered including a line of programming but it wouldn't've made particularly fascinating reading, what with all the GOSUBs and REMs and all.
@AL - I distinctly recall typing in some game from CI or a similar magazine so I could play something on my ZX81. But I didn't have a tape recorder so once I'd finished playing it, it was wiped. Hard disk? What's that?
Post a Comment