INMC 80 News

force to display all the existing and new goodies, and (hopefully) deal with the myriad technical problems that we feel sure people will bring along. There was also talk of a seminar, although some projections of numbers will have to be gone into before this aspect is proceeded with. I guess Nascom adverts will start to carry invitations or something. Be that as it may, as Nascom aren’t ‘talking telephone numbers’ for the cost of hiring a stand, we’ve already decided that we are likely to dip into the INMC80 funds and have a stand for ourselves. So with luck you can come along and meet us, and if there’s a bar, treat us to a noggin or two.

Have you noticed we have competition for the affections of Nascom owners? Program Power have started a ‘Nascom News’ type venture. The press release in Computer Weekly rather implied that this was sponsored by Nascom, and I have heard a number of comments to that effect. Well it ain’t. Private enterprise strikes again. Having read the first issue, and noting we have been credited where due, I can say that it is very interesting. The current issue tuns to 32 pages and has more ‘hardware’ content than we normally publish. It’ll be interesting to see how well it does, although it would be churlish to wish them anything but the best of luck.

One more quick commercial before getting on to the bus debate. Tangerine have just announced a modification to their Tantel Prestel adaptor. So apart from being able to talk to main frame Prestel computers via the phone, the Tantel can also talk to your Nascom via its tape I/O. There are some minor mods required on the Nascom, but these are simple. This means your Nascom can receive data from Prestel, or your Nascom can generate colour graphics for display via the Tantel adaptor. Could be useful. After giving Tangerine’s 6 amp power supply a plug in the last issue, and wondering if they’d got the price wrong, it has shot up in price by about 25.00 (I wonder if they read INMC80 News!!). Still at 80.00 including VAT it’s still difficult to beat.

Now on to other matters, the ‘Bus Debate’. May I thank you for the response, I can’t say that we’ve been suddenly inundated with letters, a steady flow is nearer the mark. There haven’t been a vast number, but about 3% of the membership have replied, and from the spectrum of views, I think these can be considered representative. If you haven’t yet given us your views and wish to, please write, we can only try to do as the membership wants. One thing I did ask was to just indicate your views on the matter in hand. This was a mistake on my part, and most of those who answered must have seen it for what it was, as most of the replies have been very detailed, closely argued, on average two pages each and on an interesting variety of different kinds of paper. It has been quite fun reading them and they confirm my suspicion that Nascom owners are all highly literate and erudite people and definitely a ‘cut above the rest’ of the home computing fraternity. My thanks, for apart from the Nascom only – Bus debate, we now have a far better idea of what people expect from this newsletter than if the replies had only been mono-syllabic. To the replies themselves, these cover a broad spectrum of varying shades, but by far the most boil down to ‘leave the format, balance and content exactly as it is, but please remember we all have Nascoms at the heart of the system, so keep it relevant to using the Nascom’. Of course, both extremes were represented, from the signed post card with ‘NAS­COM ONLY’ written on it in 1″ letters, through a similar card that said ‘NASBUS RULES, OK’, to the Gemini compliments slip received with ‘Gemini only’ written on. The latter we disgarded as possibly having a vested interest!! We will be printing a representative selection of the letters in the letters column, but there were many detail points raised on a variety of issues, some of which I intend to take up now.