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 8-Bit Computer wars. Pick your favourtie or add... 
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Joined: Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:38 pm
Posts: 53
I think an in-depth analysis of the late 70s/early 80s computer market, based on interviews and talks with the engineers and originators would be interesting to get the stories behind the dry facts that are known.

The sheer number of companies and models shows a faith in the market that can't really be realistic at the time they were operating. We know the Amiga started as an investment idea (did those dentists ever get their money back btw?), but you have to wonder what were behind the descicions of others. "Everyone" could pick parts from the shelf and make a computer, why did someone think that _them_ doing exactly that would be preferred to the next door business?

What I am most interested in knowing is how many were aware of Moore's law, and factored it into their business plans?


Fri Jan 09, 2015 12:24 pm
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Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
Posts: 1780
It would be good to see. I doubt Moore's law figured in the plans of most outfits, simply because each given model of computer was expected only to have a couple of year's life. Design would take something between a few months at one extreme to something over a year at the other. The difficulties were
- is there even going to be a market for computers
- is this particular design going to sell at all
- how to get it ready for mass manufacture for some Christmas market
- how to get some software houses writing for it ahead of time
- financing purchase of moulds for the plastics
- financing orders of quantities of tens or hundreds of thousands of components

If you have confidence, and finance, and if you're right to have confidence, you get significant savings from large quantities. If you make small quantities, they cost more and of course you can't sell computers you didn't make.

It was very difficult, and risky, and a lot of outfits failed. Amstrad and Commodore did well because they had cash and cash flow from earlier product lines. Sinclair got in early with a very cheap machine, but it sold in enough quantities to finance the next round. The ZX80 case is vacuum-formed - that's horrible, but it's cheap and with minimal capital outlay. All of those three outfits had lots of experience with retail and with components sourcing from previous product lines. Acorn is a bit of an outlier, and arguably they did fail, in that they had to sell out to Olivetti because of the Electron debacle. Sinclair also failed, after the Spectrum - very few QLs sold and the business was sold off to Amstrad.

The books I'm aware of each tell just one strand of the story.

As for picking parts off the shelf and making something, see the people on hpmuseum.org trying to make a calculator. $300 to $400, with no profit, versus expectations which come from products made in the millions by well-financed and experienced outfits. It's all about quantity!


Fri Jan 09, 2015 1:32 pm
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Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2013 2:33 am
Posts: 165
NorthWay wrote:
I think an in-depth analysis of the late 70s/early 80s computer market, based on interviews and talks with the engineers and originators would be interesting to get the stories behind the dry facts that are known.


Some of them won't talk or talk together with other people involved.


Fri Jan 09, 2015 8:29 pm
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