Letters To The Editor

Dear Sir,

There must be a number of Nascom 1 owners who, like myself thought they were purchasing a kit for a complete and usable micro system. This system offered the possibility of software exchange via cassette.

Now I am reading in the INMC News and elsewhere about Nasbug T1/​T2,​T4, B-BUG, Tiny Basic, 3K Tiny Basic, Level A, Level B, etc. No doubt Nascom et al. are hoping to tempt owners such as myself to expand our systems and run more sophisticated programs.

From the Nascom owner’s angle this is most unsatisfactory. There is a notable lack of information as to the interdependency of the various developments, e.g. is 3K Basic compatible with Nasbug T1? Does 3K Basic require 8K of memory? How compatible are 2K & 3K Basic? What comes after T4? What happened to 8K Basic?

The hobbyist needs to be able to be confident before he starts expanding that

(i)

His expansion will serve his needs.

(ii)

Costs will be controlled.

(iii)

His old software will still run.

(iv)

Software from other sources will run.

(v)

Further developments will not make his system obsolete.

The name of the game is “information”.

Can we have some?

Yours faithfully,

J.Griffiths
West Yorkshire.

Dear, Mr.Griffiths,

Upward Compatibility

The INMC promises to do its best to ensure that you have a computer system which can be expanded and improved, without hopeless incompatibility resulting.

/