On 23 December 2016 at 10:59, Peter Corlett <ab...@cabal.org.uk> wrote: > The "at least in the US" caveat is important :)
Absolutely. > Sinclair's Z80-based ZX Spectrum was outrageously successful in the UK. Every > teenage bedroom seemed to have one by the late 1980s. The various 6502-based > machines from Acorn and Commodore were relatively uncommon, and I've seen > exactly one Apple II. Pretty much, yes. The VIC-20 did OK, and the C-64 later, as the price came down. However, back then, around '81-'82-'83, a working Spectrum setup cost about a quarter of what a C-64 cost. It was the premium games machine for the children of fairly rich folks. The BBC Micro, at another quarter or third over the price of a C-64 but with a superb BASIC instead of CBM's abomination, was what the unfortunate children of very serious, very wealthy people bought. Not nearly so many games and not very good. Whereas the Apple ][ cost more than 2 BBC Micros -- as much as a small car. And it wasn't all that good anyway, because by then, it was a 5YO design. So only misguided millionaires owned them. Some unlucky kids got the Oric-1, a not-common but not-all-that-bad 6502 machine, around '83 or '84. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/28/the_oric_1_is_30_years_old/?page=1 The US world was profoundly different from, well, the rest of the planet. As usual. Americans got amazing-sounding fancy machines that cost from as much as a car to as much as a house, with stuff like *expansion slots* and *professional OSes* that could run business software that [a] cost as much for a single copy as a well-specified complete Sinclair setup with monitor and disk interface and drives, and [b] was utterly uninteresting to schoolkids. Cheap British computer: £100. Cheap American computer: $1000. Even though back then £1=$2 or something, still, the American kit was all ludicrously expensive and as rare as rocking-horse droppings outside North America. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053