Scor­pio News

“For example; four Gemini GM8200’s (i.e. 32 T800s & 128 Mbytes memory) and one Gemini GM8201 (T800 & 64 Mbytes memory, graphics processor, 8 T800 graphics transformation pipeline) housed in a powered rack, a colour monitor, a host computer, and Occam, Fortran, C and Pascal compilers costs less than £120,000 delivered and installed !”. I’m lost for words ! And the final line in the same data sheet, just to put things into true perspective: “The GM8200 has eight light-emitting diodes, each of which light when the error line on its associated T800 becomes active”. Wow !

Nascom anniversary

As regular readers will know, last November was the 10th Anniversary of the launch of the Nascom 1 micro-computer – one of the first micros available in the U.K., and the origin of the equipment that 99% of you are using. I asked for interested people to write in and say how they would like to celebrate this, and then arranged the get-together that we eventually had.

We all met at a conference hotel in Bath for the week-end (Bath being a reasonable average distance from everyone’s home). We persuaded various 80-BUS dealers and manufacturers to subsidise the event, and in the end he cost to the attendees was virtually nothing (beyond the cost of getting there, plus a drink or thirty !).

Friday evening was just a free for all in the bar, with everyone getting to know each other, and all of us putting faces to names; 80-BUS News and Scorpio News contributors present included Dave Hunt, Richard Beal, me !, Doctor Dark (alias Chris Blackmore), Clive Bowden, Rory O’Farrell, etc., etc.; dealers included Brian Wingfield from Arctic Computers, David Searle from Kenilworth; representatives from the relevant manufacturers; and so on. Various little sub-groups formed and some discussions went on into the early hours.

Saturday mid-morning was a more formal event. Yours truly did the chairing, and we had presentations of various new (and not so new) 80-BUS/​Nasbus compatible products. Some of these were then made available to those present at very respectable savings, and a number of people eagerly took advantage of this.

Saturday afternoon was “free”. Some people stayed around and chatted. Others had their wives and girl-friends with them and went off for a look at the local sights and (unfortunately and expensively for some !) shops.

After an extremely pleasant (and rather dopey making) meal, Saturday evening consisted of a few brief, but very interesting talks, on a number of different topics – the pros and cons of different programming languages, “did you know ?”s about various 80-BUS software, Bioss etc., some hardware tips and hints, etc. There was then a question and answer section, and finally retirement to the bar and/or bed.