80-Bus News

Letters to the Editor

Nascom Plus Typewriter

Congratulations to you and your team on 80-BUS News. Has anyone tried using an Olivetti or Sanyo dual purpose printer/​electric typewriter on a Nascom 2 yet? For some user-friendly advice on this would be well received. Electric typewriters have limited graphics but good quality printing.

With all good wishes, Ambrose Lambert, Stratton on the Fosse, Bath.

Polydos

Hello, angry of Tonyrefail here (again). Just writing to let you know that (i) my Nascom has just committed suicide, (ii) my dandruff has entered the terminal stage, and (iii) since writing to you a few months ago on the subject of starting a program exchange group for Polydos users, a la Dr. Dark’s “circle of iron”, I have received NO letters from you or anyone else (I counted them twice, just to make sure, and it’s definitely NONE!).

I know my letters tend to be a little flippant, but I hope you took the time to read my last letter before throwing it in the bin! Or perhaps the people who use Polydos are a bit more apathetic than ”yer average NAS-NUT, and I’m the only one ‘wot wrote to you’.

Anyway, if you do hear from anyone interested in starting a Polydos fan club would you please TELL ME ABOUT THEM. Or, if such a group already exists, could you put ME in touch with THEM?

Do you know how lonely it is living half-way up a Welsh mountain? It would be very nice to talk to someone. Well, it’d make a change from talking to the sheep, they all have BBC micros, and hence, can’t run Polydos (BAA)!!!

Yours, D.G. Richards, Tonyrefail, Mid Glamorgan.

Nascom – Who Are They?

Could somebody who reads this letter who is someway involved with Nascom/​Lucas Logic please tell us why we, that is the devoted keyboard bashers, never hear or see anything advertised or reviewed to run on the micro? I personally have had a Nascom/​Gemini etc., since it first came out (October 1979 I think) and whilst Gemini have continued to advertise on their own and through the Microvalue group, Lucas apparently have gone into limbo, is it the lull before the storm?

I now am presently looking to upgrade my system to high resolution colour with a Pluto board, if I can find somebody that stocks it and doesn’t only get to special order, so that I can receive via the computer the weather satellite pictures transmitted from such as Meteosat 2. I have at present got a system working on a BBC model B which works, but the colour resolution and definition isn’t high enough (note this is linked to the Nascom via the RS423/​RS232 port), so if there is anybody reading this who wants to get rid of a Pluto board (cheap!!) I would be very interested and then I could write a piece telling you how I did it.

One other point can somebody at Henry’s tell me if there are any more SYS’s for CP/M since number 15 and if the Utilities disc has been added to or revised in the last six months.

Yours faithfully, D.J. Roche, B. Tech (Hons) A.M.I.E.E., Workshop, Notts.

[Ed. – On the question of SYS, this was withdrawn from sale some months ago, as outlined in previous issues of this mag. As regards one of your other points “Dear Nascom – is there anyone alive there?"]