On Mon, 25 May 2020 at 20:49, Fred Cisin via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > > I apologise for offending you. Sloppiness and insnesitivity on my part, > not a deliberate attempt.
Just saddened, Fred, not offended. I never had a ZX81, but the door-wedge joke is as old as the machine. I think its historical position as the first usable computer for under £100 is sealed, though, so if you're gonna use the joke, get it right... "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "How many Germans does it take to change a light bulb?" ... Doesn't work. Same thing. I did show my late Uncle Tom how to use the ZX81 he bought himself, though. Using knowledge I'd gained fooling around with PETs at school. I typed in a Lunar Lander type game, saved it to cassette, and got it working, as I recall. He was deeply impressed; he had planned to return the machine as faulty. His widow, my Aunt Valerie, is 85 now and just remarried. Good for her! I vaguely hope she still has the ZX81 and lets me have it... I'd love to own the first privately-own computer I ever used as a child. > Character graphics were never an acceptable substitute for bit-mapped. Agreed. And whereas it's easy to forget now, I think the roles of colour and sound in gaining the attention of children is underestimated. I look at the specs and capabilities of something like the Acorn Atom in 1980 -- _way_ ahead of a ZX80 or ZX81, and to me now, looking back, far more desirable (and far more expensive, of course). But to me at 12? Black and white, silent? REPEAT...UNTIL loops? *BOOOORING!* > > Here, the default TRS80 was $600, which was about 300 pounds, > but you could get it without the [ordinary] cassette recorder monitor > (which was a tuner-ectomied RCA TV) for $400, which was about 200 pounds. > But, instead, it looked as though they just replaced the dollar sign with > pound sign, and ignored the exchange rate! So, you paid about twice as > much for the machines. I have heard prices of PET: 600 pounds (V $600), > Apple: 1200 pounds (V$1200), and TRS80: 500 pounds (V $400 to $600) Yep, that was standard practice. I am sure I've mentioned it before, but around 1984-1985 and possibly for a while after, there was a company in London that sold US-model Apple Macintosh computers for about 2/3 of the price of Apple UK. The way they operated was: • you placed your order • an employee took a taxi to Heathrow Airport and bought a walk-on ticket to New York (NB: we don't really *do* walk-on tickets in Europe. Almost all flights involve crossing an international boundary, customs, passport control, etc. So you pre-planned it, as it meant ~2h of security at each end. Ergo, walk-on tickets are super-expensive.) (P.S. to N.B. the Schengen zone has somewhat reduced this in continental Europe, but the security requirements and checks are still onerous.) • the staffer got into a taxi from JFK to the nearest Apple dealer, bought a Mac cash. • the staffer got a taxi back to the airport, while opening the box in the cab so it wasn't new sealed goods which attract import taxes • the staffer flew back to Heathrow • you collected your Mac from the shop This *still* meant a 15-25% profit margin on a new Mac, since UK prices were 2.5x higher than UK prices. The price differential of about £1000 allowed for a decent profit of a £200 or so after all the taxi fares and the air ticket. This is why Apple introduced a policy of limiting its international warrantees to people living in the country where the machine was bought -- until jet-setting businessmen complained, when it was reintroduced as a perk of your rather expensive computer. > ham radio shack was slang for wherever a amateur radio hobbyist set up. > Other than that, "shack" referred to an improvised/impromptu dwelling, > such as ones made of tar paper, so it had similar negative connotations to > everybody but amateur radio. When they wanted to move upscale, they set > up "Tandy Computer Centers/Stores" to start to get away from the "Radio > Shack name. It was ABOUT 1983 that they discontinued using the "Radio > Shack" name. Transition is apparent betwen models of the Model 100 and > the "Color Computer". Aha! Bear in mind, as I said, we didn't have most TRS-80 models here. The CoCo was the 6809 one, right? The underlying reference design was put in a different case and sold as the Dragon 32 here. https://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2012/08/01/the_dragon_32_is_30_years_old/ I *think* but am not sure that the TRS-80 range existed but barely sold -- it was so expensive for a somewhat indifferent spec that non-US machines looked far more competitive. One model was related to the Dragon. Another was related to the Hong Kong-made Video Genie: http://knut.one/VGS.htm I never saw one, but I know they were around -- I saw mention of them in the magazines and things. > And, the USA market was oblivious to any offerings elsewhere. Indeed. But as discerning admirers of vintage kit, nowadays, we know better, right? Right? > I was able to get two used Epson HC-20, which was later marketed in USA as > HX-20 (with beige instead of grey case, and removal of Katakana from > keyboard aand character ROMs. It had an impressive Microsoft BASIC for > its time. > Then, I got a friend going to Japan to get me an Epson RC-20 (wrist watch > with Z80-like processor, RAM, ROM, and a serial port) NEVER sold in USA. Epson _printers_ were very common here, indeed the defacto standard for years for dot-matrix devices. Still are very common in inkjets. They sold lots of PCs in the early days, too -- before Amstrad came out with PCs such as the PC1512 and 1640 which drove the price down by about half. Suddenly everything else seemed uncompetitive. > I bought a used Yamaha MSX from Mitchell Waite, and it was the only MSX > that I ever saw. Well, I barely saw it - within an hour of getting it, my > assistant, who was into music borrowed it permanently. > I bought a Sony SMC-70 (3.5" drive, obviously Italian case design, and had > had some amazing demonstrations, without actually becoming readily > available for sale. The MSX 1 machines were here, but fairly rare. MSX1 did not impress me. MSX2 looked great, very impressive, on paper, and MSX2+ and Turbo-R were amazing -- some of the most-upgraded 8-bitters ever. > I never got an Amstrad, but I was impressed with the 3" disk design, and > had some 3" drives. Hitachi designed I believe. > . . . , and a couple of Toshiba T300s (fairly ordinary NON-PC-DOS MS-DOS > machine with 720K 5.25" drives; I patched PC-Write's video segment to run > on them). At one point, I loaned them to the local USA Toshiba Nuclear > Magnetic Resonance Imaging group. I don't think I have _ever_ seen a *desktop* Toshiba! Hugely important company in notebooks/laptops and even some huge clamshell not-really-portable gas-plasma machines. > You are absolutely right. I screwed up. BIG TIME. > I apologise. again. OK, OK! > We have a national culture of ehtnocentricity and arrogance. "We're > number one!" (particularly in COVID-19!) True. Mind you, closely rivalled by the UK who are catching up fast. I am glad I left. > We have a spectacular level of ignorance and gullibility sometimes! > https://www.cnet.com/news/more-than-40-of-republicans-think-bill-gates-will-use-covid-19-vaccine-to-implant-tracking-chips-survey-says/ It is to weep. > The Monster Raving Loony party gave up on establishing in USA, because we > can be TOO loony, and elect candidates beyond their jokes. :-D > > WARNING FOR THE SARCASM IMPAIRED. THIS IS HUMOUR. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CORRECT > > IT. > > We wouldn't know humour unless you remove the 'u'! Our FAVORITE COLOR is > GRAY. And we use 'z' instead of 's' Most Brits do not realize it [sic] but all the 'z' spellings are legal in British English too. I use them from preference, partly as I work in US English, partly because I enjoy hand-writing a cursive Z, and partly because I enjoy annoying people. https://www.learnenglish.de/spelling/spelling-ise-ize.html > Our TV "Sit-Coms" can not compare with what are called "Brit-Coms"; Ed > O'Neill is quite goos as Al Bundy, but not as good as Richard Wilson as > Victor Meldrew. Ah, there you go. I veer the other way. There was great UK/ TV comedy in the '70s and '80s, a little in the '90s (e.g. Father Ted), and very little since, IMHO. > For light reading, I have most of the published writings of Douglas > Adams and Terry Pratchett. As former president of the Official Douglas Adams Appreciation Society, I approve of this message. > > No, you're thinking of Windows. > > Absolutely. > The more that I use Windoze XP and 7, the less that I hate them; so they > want to force me to switch to 10, and probably have to search to find > suitable software for what I want. I put Windows Thin PC on an old Sony Vaio P recently and yes, I had forgotten how much I liked it... but I am happier with MacOS and Linux now. > I have always been impressed by her silly sense of humour, such as her > flip watch and her cup holder. But even more impressed at her > demonstrations of homemade transistors and ICs. Very true. Also the distinction of being the only person ever fired from Valve, I believe...? -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: [email protected] – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: [email protected] Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
