Games - Exidy Sorcerer

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	Games - Exidy Sorcerer

The Sorcerer was one of the early home computer systems, released by the videogame company, Exidy. It was comparatively advanced when released, given its competition of Commodore PET and TRS-80, but due to a number of problems including a lack of marketing, the machine remained relatively unknown. Exidy eventually pulled it from the market in 1980, and today they are a coveted collectors item.

History

The Sorcerer was first launched in 1978 (although some sources claim 1977, which appears unlikely), at a price of $895 running at 2.106 MHz with 8 kilobytes of RAM. The expansion systems and drives were released at the same time.

Sales in Europe were fairly strong, via their distributor, CompuData Systems. The machine had its biggest brush with success in 1979 when the Dutch broadcasting company, TELEAC, decided to emulate the BBC's success and introduce their own home computer. The Belgian company DAI was originally contracted to design their machines, but when they couldn't deliver, CompuData delivered several thousand Sorcerers instead.

By 1980 Exidy had already decided to give up on the machine, but sales in Europe were strong enough that CompuData decided to license the design for local construction in the Netherlands. They built the machine for several years before developing their own 16-bit Intel 8088–based machine called the Tulip, which replaced the Sorcerer in 1983.

One of the largest groups in The Netherlands was the ESGG (Exidy Sorcerer Gebruikers Groep) which published a monthly newsletter in two editions, Dutch and English. They were the largest group for a while in the HCC (Hollandse Computer Club) federation. The Dutch company De Broeders Montfort was a major firmware manufacturerer.

The Sorcerer also had a strong following in Australia. This is most likely due to Dick Smith Electronics, being a leading electronics and hobbyist retailer at the time, pushing the Sorcerer quite heavily. The Sorcerer Computer Users group of Australia (or SCUA) actively supported the Sorcerer long after Exidy discontinued it, with RAM upgrades, speed boosts, the "80 column card", and even a replacement monitor program, SCUAMON.

The history of the Sorcerer has interesting parallels with Exidy's competition's attempts to build a home computer, Bally's various attempts at making a "real" machine out of the Astrocade. It is particularly interesting that while the Astrocade (and Datamax UV-1) had limited text capabilities but excellent graphics, the Sorcerer instead had excellent text and only "usable" graphics.

Description

The Sorcerer was an interesting combination of parts from a standard S-100 bus machine, combined with their custom display circuitry. The machine included the Zilog Z80 and various bus features needed to run the CP/M operating system, but placed them inside a "closed" box with a built-in keyboard similar to machines like the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64. The rest of the S-100 expansion capabilities were instead to be provided in an external box.

Even the basic machine was usable on its own, an advantage over other S-100 machines. It included a small ROM containing a simple monitor program which allowed the machine to be controlled at the machine language level, as well as load programs from cassette tape or cartridges. The cartridges, known as ROM PACs in Exidy-speak, were actually eight-track tape cases containing a circuit board and edge connector to interface with the Sorcerer.

With additional hardware plugged into the S-100 bus (actually a dual-50-pin connector on the back of the machine) the Sorcerer could directly support floppy disks, and boot from them into CP/M (without which the disks were not operable). Another expansion option was a large external cage which included a full set of S-100 slots, allowing the Sorcerer to be use like a "full" S-100 machine. Still another option combined the floppies, expansion chassis and a small monitor into a single large-ish box.

Graphics on the Sorcerer sound impressive, with a resolution of 512×240, when most machines of the era supported a maximum of 320×200. These lower resolutions were a side effect of the inability of the video hardware to read the screen data from RAM fast enough; given the slow speed of the machines they would end up spending all of their time driving the display. The key to building a usable system was to reduce the total amount of data, either by reducing the resolution, or by reducing the number of colors.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Exidy Sorcerer ]

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Games - Exidy Sorcerer

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