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From The Archives
How Amstrad revived a forgotten operating system
Amongst the goodies on David's CP/M CD is a series of CP/M newsletters from the 1980s. This is an excerpt from the January 1987 issue of 'Read Only - the monthly news magazine of the Tampa Bay Kaypro User's Group and the DataCOM Super Systems(tm)'.
Dear Steve,
What prompts me to put pen to paper is the article headed 'The CPM Connection' in your Sept. '86 issue. To those of us on this side of the pond, it appears rather whimsical, since, over here, CPM is anything but dead and is in the the throes of a full-scale revival!
The responsibility for this activity is entirely due to one British computer manufacturer - AMSTRAD. From launching their first machine in October 1984, they have now sold over 1 million machines worldwide. The range extends from a 64k games unit up to a 512k business machine and all have one thing in common - they all come bundled with CPM. [...]
On the PD (public domain) side, there is a lot of activity. NSWEEP attracts fans daily, MEX is far and away the most popular communication program, and DAZLSTAR is the most popular disassembler. A new program that you won't yet have seen over there is SCRIVENER, which is such a different concept that the author couldn't find anyone willing to market it, so he placed it into the public domain! You will not have seen anything like it. It's sort of a spreadsheet, sort of a text processor and has some database commands and some programming structure and ... well, I guess that it's as radical a concept as VisiCalc was when it first appeared!
This isn't all academic, by the way, because the AMSTRAD [PCW] computer is on sale in America, through the Sears-Roebuck chain. The reason that you might not have heard about it is because, over there, it's called the Amstrad Typewriter.
In England, the machine took the market by storm, because it was sold as a replacement for the office typewriter. Its bundled WP capability was stressed and the computing aspect played down. However, users were quick to realize that there was also a powerful computer with their WP and the marketing has taken this into account.
Not so in America, where it cannot compete as a computer, since its US $799 price tag makes it a lot more expensive than the domestic competition. So, Sears sells it just as a dedicated WP system and the computing side is not even mentioned. Next time you pass a Sears store, take a look at this strange beast!
Yours truly,
Barry Pickles, 13 Norman St.,
Manchester M12 5PR
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