Exidy Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a home computer system released in 1978 by the video game company Exidy, of Sunnyvale, California, and later marketed as a small business computer system under their Exidy Systems subsidiary. Based on the Zilog Z80 and the general layout of the emerging S-100 standard, the Sorcerer was comparatively advanced when released, and especially when compared to the contemporary and more commercially successful Commodore PET and TRS-80. Sorcerer sales worldwide, of around 20,000 units, is comparable to the TRS-80 model II, both targeting Small or Home Business Computer users. The overall concept originated with Paul Terrell, formerly of the Byte Shop, a pioneering computer store. Coincidentally, the TRS-80 model I was designed by Steve Leininger, a former Byte Shop employee.
Lacking financial investment from its parent company, which was focused on the coin-operated arcade game market, and which, unlike Apple, did not wish to seek venture capital, the Sorcerer was sold primarily through international distributors and technology licensing agreements. Distribution agreements were made with Dick Smith Electronics in Australia and Liveport in the UK, as well as with Compudata in the Netherlands, which included a manufacturing license to build, market and distribute the Sorcerer in Europe. Compudata developed the design into the Tulip line of computers in Europe. The Sorcerer remains relatively unknown outside these markets.
After a deal with Recortec fell through in August 1980, Exidy Systems was sold to a venture capital firm, Biotech, in summer 1981, which sold it on to Dynasty Computer Corp., Texas, in February 1982. Dynasty re-branded it as the "smart-ALEC", and sold around 3,000 bundles.
History
Origins
was operating RepCo in California, selling power supplies and test instruments to electronics manufacturers. A suggestion by Ed Roberts of MITS led Paul to start one of the first personal computer stores, the Byte Shop, in 1975. By 1977, the first store at El Camino Real in Mountain View, had grown into a chain of 58 stores, which Terrell then sold to John Peers of Logical Machine Corporation.Prior to selling Byte Shop, Terrell had introduced an S-100 based kit called the Byt8, to be sold alongside the MITS Altair and other S-100 compatible systems.
Terrell, always looking for new ventures, saw a gap in the market for a small business computer that was user-friendly, affordable, came fully equipped, and importantly without the need for any customer-assembly. At the time, the Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80 offered the out-of-the-box experience he considered essential, yet the TRS-80 required a costly computer monitor, and both machines had low-resolution graphics capabilities. The Apple II had superior graphics and color, but required some user assembly before being operational.
Looking for a suitable name, Terrell noted "Computers are like magic to people, so let's give them computer magic with the Sorcerer computer."
Design
From his days at RepCo, Terrell knew H.R. "Pete" Kauffman and Howell Ivy of Exidy, a successful coin-operated arcade game manufacturer. Terrell noted "Their graphic designs with a computer were so good they would take quarters out of my pocket." Howell, VP of Engineering, was a computer enthusiast and was interested in Terrell's concept. From its outset, the Sorcerer design was aimed as a small business computer. The wish list of design improvements over existing designs went like this:- A keyboard computer that could plug into a television set like the Apple II and TRS-80, but also plug into a computer monitor to display high resolution graphics.
- An easily programmable graphics character set like the Commodore PET, so aspiring programmers could write BASIC language programs with graphical user interfaces, like word processors and spreadsheets. The Sorcerer design would have the highest resolution in the marketplace, and innovative because the graphic characters could be reprogrammed to represent any kind of 8x8 character the programmer wanted, unlike the fixed graphic character set on the Commodore PET. Howell did such a good job in this area of the design that it was to achieve a “Most Innovative” award at the Consumer Electronics Show after its introduction.
- The fastest microcomputer chip with the most software compatibility in the marketplace. The Exidy Sorcerer used the Z80 Processor from Zilog Corp. which allowed it to run the same BASIC language software that was becoming one of the first standards in the personal computer industry, Micro-Soft BASIC. Exidy was one of the first companies to license software from Micro-Soft after they parted ways from MITS, Inc. and before they moved from New Mexico to Seattle to become Microsoft.
- Plug-In software cartridges so the computer user could immediately begin using the computer at power-on. The user would not have to load a program from tape or disk to start operating the computer. Exidy would provide three program cartridges under license: Microsoft 8K BASIC, Word Processor Cartridge, and an Assembler Cartridge. Blank EEPROM cartridges were provided for custom applications, for which design possibly had in mind foreign language character sets that would have helped to make the Exidy Sorcerer more internationally popular.
- An expansion unit designed to the industry standard S-100 bus so that all of the low cost peripheral products then currently available could be attached to expand the computer system. This would allow a Sorcerer system to expand as its small business user grew.
Launch in the US
The Exidy Sorcerer was competitively priced at $895 and went to market in Long Beach, California in April 1978 and generated a 4,000 unit back-log on introduction. Shipments did not start until later that summer.
Successes outside the US
Export of personal computers was complicated by the requirement of US Government State Department approval but this was more than offset by the financial advantage afforded by the customary export terms of sale under letter of credit, yielding immediate cash, as compared to chasing payments from domestic retailers on 30-day credit terms. Exidy was thus keen to concentrate on international sales though recognizing the importance of its US presence for development and marketing purposes.Exidy took this to another level by licensing production both domestically and internationally, increasing total production and market penetration without calling on cash flow. With its unique programmable character set for foreign language characters, the Exidy Sorcerer was in a league of its own. Advance royalty payments and license fees made this business a priority for Exidy, Inc.
The first Sorcerers sold in the UK were imported direct from the US by a small company based in Cornwall called Liveport Ltd. The base price was. Liveport also eventually designed and built extra plug-in ROM-PAC cartridges and an add-on floppy disk drive that did not require the expensive S-100 chassis. Sorcerer sales in continental Europe were fairly strong, via their distributor, Compudata Systems. The machine had its greatest commercial success in 1979 when the Dutch broadcasting company TELEAC, in a move to be emulated later by the BBC with its BBC Micro, decided to introduce its own home computer. The Belgian company DAI was originally contracted to design the machine but they failed to deliver and Compudata delivered several thousand Sorcerers instead.
Sales in Europe were strong and, when the Dutch Government endorsed computers for small business, Compudata decided to license the Exidy design for local construction in the Netherlands with government support. After several years of Exidy production, Compudata developed their own 16-bit Intel 8088–based machine called the Tulip, replacing the Sorcerer in 1983. One of the largest computing user groups in the Netherlands was the ESGG which published a monthly newsletter in two editions, Dutch and English. For some time, they were the largest group in the HCC federation. The Dutch company De Broeders Montfort was a major firmware manufacturer.
The Sorcerer was successful in Australia as a result of strong promotion by its exclusive agent Dick Smith Electronics, though there was price resistance as it was considered beyond the means of most hobbyists. The Sorcerer Computer Users group of Australia 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.
Description
The Sorcerer design combined elements of the popular MITS-derived S-100 bus architecture, not yet standardised, with custom display and i/o circuitry, all housed within a custom "closed" case. The ROM-pac idea came from Howell Ivy's days at Ramtek, where he started working on arcade games before joining Exidy. The machine included the Zilog Z80 and various bus features needed to run the CP/M operating system; a port of CP/M was done by the four-man software team at Exidy led by Vic Tolomei, in consultation with Digital Research. The "closed" case featured a built-in keyboard similar to later machines like the Commodore 64, and the Atari 8-bit computers. The Sorcerer's keyboard was a high quality unit with full "throw". The keyboard included a custom "Graphics" key, which allowed easy entry of the extended character set, without having to overwork the Control key, the more common solution on other machines. Leading its peers, the Sorcerer included lower-case characters in ROM, as well as user-programmable characters stored in RAM.Unlike most S-100 CP/M machines of its era, the Sorcerer did not have any internal expansion slots, and everything that was needed for basic computing was built-in. A standard video monitor was required for display, and optionally a standard audio cassette deck was needed for data storage. The Sorcerer included a small ROM containing a simple monitor program, written by John Borders, 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 PAC"s in Exidy-speak, were built by replacing the internal tape in an eight-track tape cartridge with a circuit board and edge connector to interface with the Sorcerer. These allowed the Sorcerer to run applications immediately on start-up, rather than having to load them from tape cassette like its peers.
The machine was usable without any expansion, but if the user wished to use S-100 cards they could do so with an external expansion chassis. This was plugged in via a 50-way ribbon cable to the expansion slot in the rear of the Sorcerer. The Exidy S-100 chassis is a large external cage which included a full set of S-100 slots, allowing the Sorcerer to be used as a "full" S-100 machine.
Using the same S-100 expansion slot, a user could directly attach floppy disks and boot from them into CP/M. A later form factor of the Sorcerer combined the floppies, and a small monitor into a single box, that resembled the TRS-80 model II. A Winchester drive was also later offered.