INMC 80 News |
May–September 1981 · Issue 4 |
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I was very interested in the article on p.49 of INMC80-3 concerning the cartridge drive. Do you know where I can get more information about the deck?
M.Millington, Edinburgh.
I read with amazement the review of our high resolution graphics board in your Feb/April issue by your reader Richard Bateman. What surprised me most was the totally unprofessional way in which the review was performed without checking the facts, as the review contained many inaccuracies which I would like to set right.
| (i) | Apart from the company name (IO not I/O), the address is wrong. |
| (ii) | The display is NOT 3-dimensional! |
| (iii) | The component count and manual size are both incorrect. |
| (iv) | An explanation of how it works IS included. |
| (v) | NO irreversible modifications have to be made to the board. |
| (vi) | The number of connections required is incorrect. |
| (vii) | The board is compact and WILL fit anywhere. |
| (viii) | NO system RAM is lost as it is NOT dedicated to graphics (It may be used as normal when graphics mode is not selected.). |
| (ix) | Overpriced… Well in judging this may I point out that the board produces a FULLY bit mapped high resolution graphics display (and is NOT a character generator), is fully built and tested and as such compares very favourably with any other graphics product for this machine on the market. |
L. J. Noble (Director IO Systems Ltd), _ _______ ______, Mill Hill, London, ___ ___.
(Please read the review again – you have missed several key words. – Ed.)
Congratulations on an excellent magazine, each issue seems even better than the one before. David Hunt’s “Teach Yourself Z80” is really good. I like his light hearted style of writing and at last Z80 language is starting to make sense. Keep up the good work.
I’m a teacher and use my Nascom 2 at a local Primary School. Children between the ages of 8 and 11 use various C.A.L. programs without any problems and they think a great deal of my Nascom.
Can I appeal through you to contact other Nascom educational users. I’d like to form a group of people that write and use Nascom Educational software.
Because of the time it takes to write and debug programs not much educational software is around and I believe that if Nascom educational users could get together to ‘swop’ programs then it would be to the benefit of all.
Many educational authorities recommend either the RMZ380 because of its reliability or the PET because of its range of software and relatively low price.
Neither machine, I believe, is as good as the Nascom and price-wise the Nascom is or should be in a competitive position. Providing we educational users can provide a range of software then the Nascom could be used in schools a great deal more than at present. Without such software I imagine sales would be at a minimum despite the advantages of the machine itself.
A user club specifically aimed at the educational user would benefit all concerned as I believe the ‘380’ is much too expensive for most schools and in addition their new system will likely take it out of the thoughts of many educational users because of the high costs.
The Pete are relatively cheap but are getting an increasingly bad name for reliability in the educational sector. Can Nascom take their place? Perhaps if Nascoms problems were sorted out quickly then Nascom might make inroads into the educational sector.
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