23 Dec
2016
23 Dec
'16
7:34 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Corlett
Sent: Friday, December 23, 2016 2:59 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?
The "at least in the US" caveat is important
:)
Sinclair's Z80-based ZX Spectrum was outrageously successful in the UK.
Every
teenage bedroom seemed to have one by the late 1980s. The various
6502-based machines from Acorn and >Commodore were relatively uncommon, and
I've seen exactly one Apple II.
People who know Uncle Clive's unwillingness to spend a penny more than he
has to
on bulding computers may wonder why they selected the relatively
expensive
Z80 over the 6502, but it was because they managed to
trick the Z80's
address-fetcting and instruction decoding cycle into generating
video on the
ZX80 and ZX81, and thus saved more money elsewhere. It
wasn't until the
Spectrum that they bothered with DMA like proper computers, and
then didn't
*need* to stick with the Z80, but chose to keep it
anyway.
I was in London in 1981 and happened upon a computer faire. Here is a
write-up published in Seattle's Northwest Computer Society newsletter. It is
an American's view of the English computer scene.
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Newsletter.htm
Photos
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Photos.htm
Michael Holley