1983 Micro prices (was Re: The Origins of DOS)

[Chris M]

--- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

> Yep. I certainly get the impression that there was a
> lot more fault-finding 
> and fixing going on the the UK than the US, though.
> People were far more 
> reluctant to invest money in a machine in the UK
> unless they could mess around 
> with it at the hardware level and stand a chance of
> fixing any problems 
> themselves (which is probably a reflection on UK
> society as a whole back then, 
> rather than being limited to computing)

 I suppose, but this presents some degree of problem
once they all seemed to start using custom logic. I
have to conclude it was a cost based decision, but was
any/all of this done by fab factories outside the
country? Yes you can open up late model XT class
machines and find a number of custom chips, the Victor
VPCII comes to mind. The later Tandy 1000's also. But
I for one in my earliest (limited) contemplations on
what to buy leaned toward something where these were
absent. Yet...the T2K had a few non-standard ic's, but
not custom. If I had known about it, I suppose I could
have stocked up while they were still available.
 


 
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