THAT MADE THE HOME COMPUTER REVOLUTION OF THE 1980s 23 THAT MADE THE HOME COMPUTER REVOLUTION OF THE 1980s First published in 2021 by Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd, Maurice Wilkes Building, St. John’s Innovation Park, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0DS Publishing Director Editors Russell Barnes Phil King, Simon Brew Sub Editor Design Nicola King Critical Media Illustrations CEO Sam Alder with Brian O Halloran Eben Upton ISBN 978-1-912047-90-1 The publisher, and contributors accept no responsibility in respect of any omissions or errors relating to goods, products or services referred to or advertised in this book. Except where otherwise noted, the content of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Contents Introduction. 6 Research Machines 380Z. 8 Commodore PET 2001. 18 Apple II. 36 Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81. 46 Commodore VIC-20 . 60 IBM Personal Computer (5150). 78 BBC Micro . 90 Sinclair ZX Spectrum. 114 Dragon 32. 138 Commodore 64. 150 Acorn Electron . .166 Apple Macintosh . .176 Amstrad CPC 464. 194 Sinclair QL . .210 Atari 520ST. 222 Commodore Amiga. 234 Amstrad PCW 8256. 256 Acorn Archimedes . .268 Epilogue: Whatever happened to the British PC? . .280 Acknowledgements . 281 Further reading, further viewing, and forums. 283 Index . .286 The chapters are arranged in order of each computer’s availability in the UK, as reflected by each model’s date of review in Personal Computer World magazine. Introduction The 1980s was, categorically, the best decade ever. Not just because it gave us Duran Duran and E.T., not even because of the Sony Walkman. It was because the 1980s saw the rise of the personal computer. With the help of hefty government discounts, computers inveigled their way into primary and secondary schools around the country – even if teachers didn’t always know what to do with them. Millions more computers appeared in living rooms and bedrooms around the country. For once, Britain was ahead of the world, helping to create a golden generation of British programmers. Sure, far more of us were destined to spend hours playing Elite and Chuckie Egg rather than creating games of our own, but the combination of C64s, Spectrum 48Ks, and BBC Micros directly led to the creation of a booming British software industry that continues to this day. The question that inspired this book, though, is how did these computers come to be? There was no cookie-cutter template to follow. Companies were genuinely making things up as they went along, often to brilliant effect. Every computer you read about here has a story that surprises, and it’s almost always down to the people involved. That’s why, as much as this book is a story about each computer’s creation, it’s also a story about the people that created them. Many of them British, many of them geniuses. With billions of pounds up for grabs in this nascent industry, not everyone was on their best behaviour. Ego battled ego in a quest for fame and wealth, leading to betrayals, lost fortunes, and too many shattered dreams to count. Think J.R. and Dallas, but with silicon instead of oil. And the fens of England rather than the sunbaked plains of Texas. This book tells the stories of 19 computers that each had an impact on Britain. I apologise if your favourite is missing – I would love to have covered Apricot’s machines, the NewBrain, the Oric-1, the Jupiter Ace, and the Cambridge Z88, for instance, but those will have to wait their turn. While I fully expect people to jump straight to the computers they owned, this book has been designed to be read in any order. You can choose to start your journey 6 Introduction in the late 1970s with the Commodore PET and end with the Acorn Archimedes in 1987; you can trace the stunning rise of Amstrad, which ultimately led to its swallowing Sinclair’s Spectrum business whole. It’s entirely up to you. My final note is on accuracy. These computers were built two generations ago, which has given rumours and half-truths plenty of time to gather respectability. Wherever possible, I have gone straight to the source: that means listening to oral histories, reading interviews, ploughing through historic documents, and referring to previously written books. But most of all I have, wherever possible, spoken to the people involved. The result is as close to ‘truth’ as I can get, and if that means slaying myths that have no root in reality then all the better. In fairness, these are stories that need no exaggeration to make them fascinating. I hope you enjoy reading them. Tim Danton 7 Image by Marcin Wichary/ Creative Commons Research Machines 380Z A niche in which to survive 9 Too small to rival IBM; ambitions too big to remain a supplier of components. Those were the forces that drove two entrepreneurial Oxbridge graduates to create their first computer for schools. To trace the story of the Research Machines 380Z, we need to travel back in time to 1973. This was the embryonic age of computing, when companies were selling electronics in kit form. (An era, incidentally, that was reborn by the Raspberry Pi 40 years later.) It was a time when ambitious British entrepreneurs could hold a conversation in the pub about starting an electronics business without being ridiculed. As normal, though, there is no straight line between idea and finished product. Mike Fischer and Mike O’Regan started their first business together after building a brain wave analyser for rats. You did not read that incorrectly. ‘I was working as a contract electrician for a company called Roussel Laboratories, a drug company,’ says Fischer. ‘They wanted a special piece of scientific equipment built, and they knew I could do that sort of thing. So I got the contract to build it. It was a rat’s brain wave analyser.’ He laughs at the memory. ‘It was not a large market.’ With the rat money safely in the bank, the two Mikes decided to create a new company called Research Machines Limited. It was, on the face of it, a triumph of hope over reality: neither Mike had any business experience, with only £200 cash and a German typewriter between them (the pound sign achieved, O’Regan explains, by typing capital L, backspace, hyphen). O’Regan remembers Fischer saying, ‘There’s this company IBM, which stands for International Business Machines. It’s hugely successful. Maybe we can be the equivalent in the scientific market.’ This was also the reason behind the slightly archaic name Research Machines. However, much to Intel’s annoyance, they traded using the name Sintel; O’Regan recalls a threatening letter from Intel’s solicitors that accused Sintel of ‘passing off’ as Intel by instructing its staff to answer the phone, ‘Good morning, it’S intel.’ ‘Needless to say, that was not the case,’ says O’Regan, ‘and our tiny business was not even in the same market as theirs. I can’t remember if we replied or not, but anyway we didn’t hear any more from the solicitors, though it was a bit scary for us startup innocents to receive such a letter.’ The two companies could hardly have been any different. Where Intel was already a world-renowned chip maker, having created the revolutionary 4004 microprocessor 10 Research Machines 380Z in 1971, Sintel started life as a mail-order business selling components via small ads in electronics magazines. Fischer’s enthusiasm for tinkering meant it wasn’t long before it was advertising project kits too; if you wanted to build your own digital clock back in the early 1970s, Sintel was the place to go. There was only so much money to be made from selling kits, and the pair wanted to build ‘something’ more substantial. When Fischer read about the new Zilog Z80 microprocessor, he realised that thing was a computer. ‘It was the 1st of April 1976,’ says Fischer, ‘which I remember because it was April Fool’s Day. We decided that we would have a go at making a computer based on the Z80.’ They had enough money in the bank to buy parts for 250 computers and, in a bold move, that’s exactly what they did. ‘We realised that microcomputers were going to become mainstream in the business world. And I thought that there was an opportunity to get in there before the big people, but that opportunity wouldn’t last,’ says Fischer, adding that he was realistic enough to know that the likes of DEC, HP, and IBM would soon trample on them – although in reality it took IBM five years to catch up. ‘Our plan was to go into that market for a few years and then go and do something else, something derivative.’ However, fate was to take a different turn when two advisors from the Berkshire County Council approached Sintel asking for advice on how to build a microcomputer for education. ‘We freely gave them lots of advice, and then suggested “Why don’t we build a computer and you see whether it’s appropriate?”.’ The two Mikes soon realised that education was a niche they could attack. ‘We thought we’ll survive a little bit longer if we specialise in one market and do some software for that market as well,’ recalls Fischer. ‘So for the first few years, we spent a lot of time at exhibitions explaining to people why we wouldn’t sell them a computer.’ First, though, they had a system to build.