Amstrad PC1512 (1986)

Amstrad PC1512

Launched Autumn 1986

By 1986 the IBM PC had been around for five years, and that machine and those compatible with it had largely taken over the business microcomputer market. But the home market was different, with companies such as Apple, Atari, Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair and Amstrad holding the bulk of the sales with a variety of mutually incompatible machines.

Om paper, Amstrad was the least technically innovative, but probably the most business-savvy. The Amstrad PCW had been launched the year previously, based on a combination of new and old technologies which created a very useful and exceptionally good value machine that had become a surprise hit for home users.

After the PCW, Amstrad turned its eye to IBM PC compatibles. But instead of looking at business users, Amstrad was interested in tapping into the home market. It seems obvious today that you can play games and do work on the same computer, but home ownership of PCs worldwide was still very low. Perhaps the time was right for Amstrad to change that.

Launching in the autumn of 1986, the Amstrad PC1512 immediately caused a shockwave in the markets that it was launched in. Following the example of the PCW, the PC1512 combined new and old elements and packaged it up in a smart box with a rock-bottom price. The most basic PC1512 (monochrome display with a single floppy disk) cost juts £399 plus VAT (sales tax). Various options were available, and at the top of the range a colour version with a hard disk cost £949 plus tax. That was still a lot of money in 1986, but even the most basic IBM PC XT would set you back at least £1500.

Inside was an Intel 8086 (launched in 1978) clocked at 8 MHz, nearly twice that of the IBM version. 512KB of RAM was standard (expandable to 640KB via an expansion card) plus a tweaked CGA adapter. Cleverly the power supply for the PC was actually in the monitor which handled the necessary conversion from AC to DC and saved on the cost. This also meant that the PC didn't need a fan anywhere as the monitor cooled by convection and the heat dissipation from the main board was minimal.. but it also meant that you always had to use an Amstrad monitor. The PC1512 could output greyscales on a monochrome monitor which was useful for those on a budget.

A set of brightly-coloured floppy disks came with MS-DOS 3.2 plus GEM and GEMpaint from Digital Research, along with Locomotive Basic (an Amstrad favourite). GEM was the most-used application after DOS, providing a rudimentary but useable graphical environment. GEM could be used with the rather rat-like proprietary Amstrad mouse which was included in the bundle.

In the back were three expansion slots that could be easily accessed via a slide-off cover rather than by using a screwdriver. A joystick could be plugged into the proprietary keyboard and - perhaps as a nod to Amstrad's roots in audio equipment - there was a volume control knob for the internal speaker. Despite the proprietary nature of some of the components, the PC1512 also came with a standard serial and parallel port.

The PC1512 was a huge sales success for Amstrad, topped only by the PC1640 launched in 1987 which has 640Kb RAM as standard and upgraded EGA graphics, but this lost the useful greyscale capabilities of the PC1512. The PC1640 addressed most of the shortcomings of the older version and was an even bigger success, and it managed to break out of the home market into schools, colleges and small businesses. The PC1512 and PC1640 sold in the millions.

Amstrad PC1640 with 20MB hard disk

Part of the sales success wasn't just that it was cheap, but it was also very well built and extremely reliable.. despite rumours circulating otherwise (possibly put out by competitors). The PC1640 represents Amstrad's computer business at its peak, but unfortunately this success was not to last.

Even though it was cleverly packaged, there was no doubt that the PC1512 and PC1640 were pretty old hat. Amstrad then set to work on the PC2000 Series, comprising of a low-end 8086-based machine, a midrange 80286 and a high-end 8086. Launched in 1988, this was a much more modern design, and these should also have been a huge success.. but they had a fatal flaw.

The problem was the hard disks - a batch of faulty Seagate drives led to an unacceptably high failure rate followed by a product recall that seriously damaged Amstrad's reputation. Amstrad later sued Seagate and won millions of pound worth of damages, but Amstrad's reputation never fully recovered. Amstrad kept going in the PC market, launching the PC3000 through to PC7000 ranges until the early 1990s along with some portable PCs. Amstrad's final PC product was the unusual Amstrad Mega PC which also had a Sega Megadrive built in.

Today the Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640 are quite collectible, with prices going up to £650 (€720) or so for a top-of-the-range unit in good condition. Old computers take up a lot of space, so survivors are uncommon. Of course, you can get a pretty decently specified modern PC for that sort of money too.. but nothing else quite has the same retro appeal of Amstrad's finest.

Image credits: Marcin Wichary via Flickr and Maurindaco via Wikimedia Commons.

3.5-inch HD floppy disk (1986)

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk. At first glance it was neither floppy nor disk-shaped, but this storage medium became the de-facto standard for file exchange throughout the 1990s.

Floppy disks had been around for about two decades before 1986, starting with the dinner mat-sized 8-inch floppy (which really was floppy), then the popular 5.25-inch floppy used by the original IBM PC and many other contemporary systems. Both those formats were essentially the same thing in different sizes, and both suffered the same problems of bendability and an exposed magnetic surface that could easily be damaged.

The 3.5" format was first introduced in 1983 and was a huge step forward. A hard plastic case with a sliding metal or plastic shield protecting the magnetic surface provided much more protection for the disk, dispensing with the need for a sleeve that older floppies used. The disk could be write-protected with a slider (the 5.25" disk used a stick-on label) and the floppy itself would easily fit in a shirt pocket which made it very transportable.

The original 1983 variant could only store 360KB on a PC (single sided, double density), doubled to 720KB in 1983 (double sided, double density) and then doubled again to 1.44MB in 1986 (double sided, high density). There was never a commercially available "single density" 3.5" disk, this name was carried over from the convention used on 5.25" floppies. In 1987 an attempt was made to double the capacity again with the 3.5-inch ED diskette, but this never took off.

The HD version could hold a decent amount of data, be it spreadsheets, games or smutty pictures and it became very popular with this drive becoming standard in just about everything. This type of disk drive remained standard in PCs until the early 2000s when the rise of USB thumb drives and the internet finally made floppies redundant.

Although obsolete for most uses today, they can still be found in industrial controllers and development systems. One irritation of Windows XP was that you sometimes had to load drivers in from floppy disk, in an era when floppy disk drives themselves were absent. And the disks themselves are not cheap these days, coming in at about €1 a pop or more.

But the floppy disk itself has left one lasting legacy, as the almost universal "save" icon in applications. Instantly recognisable by almost everyone, include those too young to actually remember floppy disks themselves..

Image credits [1] [2]

Acorn BBC Master (1986)

Launched 1986

Thirty years ago we were seeing a great shift from away from the first generation of 8-bit home computers to 16 and 32-bit platforms such as the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. But 8-bit computing wasn't dead yet, and low cost devices such as the Amstrad CPC 6128 and PCW along with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 showed that there was still life in these simple devices yet. The Acorn BBC Master belonged firmly in the second camp, an improvement over the original BBC Micro launched five years earlier. There were various models of Master available, but the most common one was the Master 128.

Although the original BBC Micro was a popular and technically capable device, one key problem it had was the lack of memory. The 6502 processor at its core could only directly address 64KB of memory, 32KB of which was used by the ROM and up to 20KB was used by graphics.. and a about half of the meagre amount left was allocated to the system. The BBC Master 128 got round this problem by allowing memory to be addressed in banks which could be paged in and out when needed.

The Master added two cartridge slots and a slightly upgraded processor, and crucially video memory was now separate from main memory. As ever, the array of expansion ports was impressive - there was a floppy disk interface, optional network interface, A-D convertor port, serial and parallel port, plus expansion ports and most interesting of all a "Tube" interface for a second processor.

The Tube allowed for a second 6502 processor, or a Zilog Z80 allowing CP/M capabilities or even a National Semiconductor 32016 which could run a variant of Unix. When running with a Tube coprocessor, the Master simply handled the input and output which allowed the Master to run theoretically anything that could be squeezed into one of the beige expansion boxes.

There were other versions of the Master too, notable the Master Compact with a difference case design and integrated 3.5" disk, the Master AIV (used in the BBC Domesday Project) and the Master 512 with an Intel 80186 CPU and 512KB of RAM. In one form or another, the Master was around until 1994 when it was finally discontinued. It proved quite popular, primarily in the UK education market.

Although it had some interesting features, it was hardly a groundbreaking machine. As it turns out, Acorn were developing something that would change the world - the ARM-based Acorn Archimedes that was launched the next year. But more about that another day. These days the price a BBC Master ranged between around £50 to over £200 depending on condition and peripherals.

Image credits: [1] [2]

Psion Organiser II (1986)

Launched 1986

Launched thirty years ago, the Psion Organiser II is arguably the world's first commercially successful PDA. Combining a usable set of applications with an expandable software and hardware platform, the Organiser II shifted half a million units in its lifetime and introduced the power of handheld computing to both companies and individuals alike.

By modern standards the Organiser II has a familiar feel to it, with a footprint similar to a large smartphone such as an iPhone 6, although about 50% heavier and more than three times thicker. The front of the Organiser was almost entirely taken up with a keyboard (with the keys arranged alphabetically) with a small two-line LCD on the top. Inside was a Hitachi CPU clocked at a little under 1MHz and power was provided by a tradition 9 volt PP9 battery which could run the Organiser II for months.

There were a variety of data storage options, from simple RAM modules that would lose data when the battery was removed to "write once" programmable ROM packs (which had to be erased with ultraviolet light) and later EEPROM packs. Hardware expansion included a serial module which allowed you to transfer data to another computer system. It didn't take long for corporations to adapt the Organiser II to allow them to collect data "in the field" which could then be uploaded to corporate mainframes.

You could program your own applications, or you could use the inbuilt diary and calculator to organise yourself. Third-party applications became available, and there was even a rudimentary word processor.

As you might guess, this wasn't the first Psion Organiser, but it was a huge improvement over the original launched two years earlier. And although Casio and Sharp had been making pocket computers for some time, the Organiser II is acknowledged by many as being the first usable personal digital organiser.

The Psion Organiser II was followed by more powerful PDAs running the EPOC operating system, which eventually evolved into Symbian. Because of the large number sold and the almost legendary reliability of these devices, there are plenty of Organiser IIs on the market today, with prices ranging from a few pounds to just shy of £100 depending on condition and features. And unlike a lot of vintage devices, the Organiser II is something that you can still use today to keep yourself.. organised.

Image Credit - babbagecabbage via Flickr