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Sugar - snippet of Alan from the past
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<blockquote data-quote="spiney" data-source="post: 130052" data-attributes="member: 192438"><p>Amstrad was orignally a British company making cheap Hi Fi (anyone remember the products?). Alan Sugar then made lotsa money by combining all audio separates into 1 unit (with single power supply, hence much cheaper).</p><p></p><p>The 1st Amstrad "business computer" was the PCW, sold as a dedicated word processor (locoscript), with built in printer. It also had cp/m (which in those days ran on many different 8080 microprocessor systems, before we had DOS), so you could use it as a general purpose computer. I used one, and remember it well, it was unique.</p><p></p><p>A particular problem was the floppy disc format, as Amstrad chose three and a quater inches, whereas PCs first standardised on 5 inches, then three and a half! So, you could swap discs between different Amstrad PCWs, but could only communicate with other computers running cp/m via the serial port. </p><p></p><p>The 1st Amstrad "PC" was nothing special, as there were by then many PC clones, including Dell etc.</p><p></p><p>(Multi-process mp/m almost became the operating system for PCs, but instead we got the horribly dire DOS, only because Bill Gates missed a meeting!).</p><p></p><p>For the PCW see: <a href="http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=189" target="_blank">www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=189</a> .</p><p></p><p>For cp/m see: <a href="http://www.gaby.de/ecpm.htm" target="_blank">www.gaby.de/ecpm.htm</a> .</p><p></p><p>For Gates/ Kildall see: <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905109_mz063.htm" target="_blank">www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905109_mz063.htm</a> .</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="spiney, post: 130052, member: 192438"] Amstrad was orignally a British company making cheap Hi Fi (anyone remember the products?). Alan Sugar then made lotsa money by combining all audio separates into 1 unit (with single power supply, hence much cheaper). The 1st Amstrad "business computer" was the PCW, sold as a dedicated word processor (locoscript), with built in printer. It also had cp/m (which in those days ran on many different 8080 microprocessor systems, before we had DOS), so you could use it as a general purpose computer. I used one, and remember it well, it was unique. A particular problem was the floppy disc format, as Amstrad chose three and a quater inches, whereas PCs first standardised on 5 inches, then three and a half! So, you could swap discs between different Amstrad PCWs, but could only communicate with other computers running cp/m via the serial port. The 1st Amstrad "PC" was nothing special, as there were by then many PC clones, including Dell etc. (Multi-process mp/m almost became the operating system for PCs, but instead we got the horribly dire DOS, only because Bill Gates missed a meeting!). For the PCW see: [url="http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=189"]www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=189[/url] . For cp/m see: [url="http://www.gaby.de/ecpm.htm"]www.gaby.de/ecpm.htm[/url] . For Gates/ Kildall see: [url="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905109_mz063.htm"]www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905109_mz063.htm[/url] . [/QUOTE]
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Sugar - snippet of Alan from the past
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