On the offensive from Japan

JAPANESE manufacturers look set to launch a major assault on the UK micro market early in 1984.
The major manufacturers have teamed up with Microsoft to produced a common operating standard allowing the different machines all to run the same software.

The so called MSX standard means that the machines — from Toshiba, Sanyo. Sony, Matsushita, National and Hitachi — will all be Z80- based and run Microsoft Basic.

The MSX computers will be competitively priced and will arrive on these shores at more or less the same time — in the first months of 1984.

One manufacturer, however. Spectravideo, is already selling two MSX standard computers in this country. First deliveries of the company’s SV318 and SV328 machines began two weeks ago.

Despite being moderately successful in America. where they have been on sale for several months, the two computers have not received much attention in the UK. Peripherals for the machines are expensive and the computers arrived too late to make any impact on this Christmas. Bulk deliveries were not available at the time the high-street multiples sorted out their peak season buying.

The SV318, at £199, has 32K Rom and 32K Ram (with 16K addressable in Basic). It has a built-in joystick, cartridge slot, and will run a disc drive system with CP/M. Graphics features include a 256 x 192 pixel display and 32 user-definable Sprites.

The SV328, priced at £275 has no Joystick built-in but features a keyboard with separate numeric pad, 48K Rom and 80K Ram.

Both computers require the use of a dedicated cassette player (£44.90).

Add-ons are as follows: 7 slot expansion unit (£114) into which can go a Centronics interface (£67.90), RS232 (£67.90), disc drive interface (£75.90) — to connect to a slim-line drive (£228.90)- 16K Ram card (£33,50) and 64K card (€102.40).