Be Excellent To Each Other

This rather wonderful graph was posted on El Reg a few days ago. Home computer market positions per 2 week period for the second half of 1983.



And before anyone asks, no CPC's as Amstrad didn't launch it until April 1984 with the first machines actually hitting the shops in June 1984.

Full article here -http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/03/charted_1983_home_computer_sales_in_uk/

If attachment doesn't work - http://regmedia.co.uk/2013/01/03/chart.png

Fantastic. Having to closely check the stickers on the otherwise identical boxes of each game to ensure you were buying the correct version... and then reading a manual covering multiple formats and wondering about the weird or different features/screenshots of computers other than your own.

Example: I had the DOS version of Afterburner II. The manual described the C64 version, including needing to do some trickery with the joystick button to load missiles into the 'missile bay' before they could fire. On the DOS version, it was one button for gun and the other for missile. How odd.

Likewise, the instrument panel in Solo Flight looked completely different on one format (either C64 or Apple ][) against all the others. However, that version also did speech and I remember being sure there must be a way to get that to work on my (again, DOS booter) version.

Oh well.

*inserts side B of Disk 3*

Fab stuff. Some very obscure machines in amongst that lot.
Shame there aren't actual sales numbers as well, though.

that key needs some work!

The sharp PC didn't last long, did it?

The article points out that that this is for all microcomputers that cost less than £1000. Also the chart is in ranked positions, not absolute sales. So position 10 could sell either 1 unit more than position 11 or a million!

Also obviously the chart is just the top 20. Doesn't mean the machine doesn't exist because its outside the top 20.

That's a lot of machines... And I thought there was too many about today!

Nice to see something that's not US-focussed. I'm getting sick of those "here's the entire history of computer sales" infographics that entirely omit Sinclair and BBC machines.

Please go back and edit your post until such time as I find it satisfactory. Thank you.

Nice to see something that's not US-focussed. I'm getting sick of those "here's the entire history of computer sales" infographics that entirely omit Sinclair, BBC and Oric machines.

Ah, the Oric 1... fond memories of going into "Laskys" computer shop in Colchester as was, as a cheeky schoolboy, programming their machine with a spoof "Customer Survey" which went along the lines of asking seemingly bona fide, innocuous question screens before asking punters whether they thought the sales staff were (1) Poor (2) Abysmal (3) Ugly or (4) Shit. Lol.

Quite amusing to see some bloke about my age now dutifully going through it before being baffled and embarrassed by that final question.

(Mind you, that surely has to be the shittest computer keyboard of all time?)

I distinctly remember surreptitiously formatting TRS-80 floppies (with all the demo software on them consequently wiped) in the Tandy shop as well, which was nice of me - looking back, I was a right little bastard lol.

Not unlike when Windows started appearing on demo machines in Radio Shack or Future Shop. Lacking any demo software, they'd often put a screensaver with the name of the store/computer/price on. So, naturally, change it to 'Future Shop staff are assholes' and then password protect it.

Some staff cottoned on to this and preemptively set passwords to protect their message. So just reset the computer and then wander elsewhere while it reboots to avoid arousing suspicion, then return to set your new nasty message and change the password.

Soon after, demo machines no longer had keyboards or mice.

Ah, kids pissing around with the shop hardware. LordSurAlun was one step ahead of you when the GX4000 was launched. Presenting the Amstrad Cartridge Demonstrator System.





12 cartridges sit inside it. Users select a game. They are permitted to play the game for a certain period of time before it exits back to the menu screen.

In the shop it was setup to look like an arcade machine. Quite clever really and one of the few things Amstrad did get right with the marketing of the system as Southampton Dixons had a queue of people waiting to get on theirs.

Our local Comet just had a GX4000 on show, running Burnin' Rubber constantly, with no-one going near it. I vaguely remember them having a NES cartridge selector thing prior to that though.

Burnin' Rubber had an arcade style "attract" mode so at least it wasn't a bad game to demo with. I assume it was done intentionally as I can't think of many other Ocean CPC games that did it.

1983 computer section of the Hamleys catalogue.

Warning, links to Sinister Facebook. Click to advance pages.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=286058148080594&set=a.286052674747808.73189.273368722682870&type=3&theater

[edit] Blimey, they have a Sord M5 on sale. Had never even seen a picture of one before.

I've been catching up with some episodes of Ch4's gadget-show-a-like "Gadget Man" which has Stephen Fry try some new gadgets and then talk about them (mainly look crappy and expensive) however on the last one (episode 3 or 4) they had him talk to Sir Alan and he gave him a quick look at some historic Amstrad items - un-mentioned but on the table while they were talking was a GX4000

I don't imagine he wants to talk about that given the entire thing was carried out with the kind of rank ineptitude that he would fire Apprentice contestants for.



"You went out and used my money to produce that shit? Did you do any research into your competitors? Are you trying to sell a Fisher Price spaceship? Where are the bloody games? For that reason, you're fired."

He was very pleased to show 'the forerunner of the ipod' which looked like a music center where the front opened out and you just inserted a large amount of CD's

Looking on Ch4's website it looks like that ep has just been expired from the 'watch again' feature and its not on youtube

There are a few images here :

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/step ... d-computer

They talked about the Amstrad Notepad http://www.channel4.com/programmes/step ... ad-notepad



And this is the jukebox thingy : http://www.channel4.com/programmes/step ... ad-jukebox

Spot the error on that page. Amstrad PCM 8256 indeed. Morons.

The NC100 would have been more innovative if the entire thing hadn't been a rip off of this:



It's just a much improved Z88. Sugar can't really claim credit for making a better version of someone elses product.

On the other hand, the Penpad was genuinely innovative. Amstrad had no idea Apple were producing the Newton and likewise Apple had no idea Amstrad were producing the Penpad. Both were shit, but the Penpad spectacularly so as the handwriting recognition barely worked. Cue some man in a suit:



Oh and Al, pretty sure CD changers were around before Amstrad had a stab at it. You'd be falling over them in Tandy long before you started using the updated logo on the model pictured. Twin tape, yes Amstrad introduced that as well as the twin VCR (in Europe at least, he copied the designs from Japan).

And then we all used it to steal CPC games. Ironing!

I quite like the series, but, good grief, their researchers have picked some odd choices. In one episode alone, they showed three of the four very worst iOS controllers (the Duo ones and the Atari one—all they missed was the bloody awful Taito Space Invaders one), rather than showing off the iCade. Perhaps it's down to who provided samples and also name recognition (Atari!), but GAH. The original iCade even looks like a little arcade cab, rather than some shitty piece of branded plastic.

Found this earlier. It's an article from Computing With The Amstrad, August 1987, which reports on the market share for software for all 3 major 8 bits.



I don't understand the two sets of figures. Are the first the share of the machines sold and the second the share of software sold?

Either way again its nice to see hard figures for a change.

Blimey, that makes next to no sense at all. I've read it about a dozen times and I still can't work out what they mean.
I do like the fact that the Speccy's market share has "significantly declined" by 0.6% though.

To be fair, Computing With The Amstrad was shit and was only remarkable for the fact that it was the magazine that Amtix merged with.

Like I say, the only thing I can assume from that badly written article is that the first figures are hardware, and the second are software. Although it could be anything!

Coming back to the graph that Chinny posted, no wonder owners of Apple IIs, Atari 8-bits and Tandy CoCos were so reliant on (expensive) imported software from the States. Seeing as they were massively outsold by so many competitors.