Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 04/88 - checked

April 1988

Lots of people hate standards, and lots of others hate Christmas. Sometimes, they are even the same people. Yet both have a place in the great panoply of life. Both, for example, can be appallingly restrictive of what you do, how you do it and, most important of all, when.

Yet, sometimes, they have their place. Christmas is OK if you like that sort of thing, and it can have the peculiar effect of pulling together people in a friendship and camaraderie which never exists at any other time of the year. It would, of course, be worth the all the brouhaha of commercialism if some of that friendship extended beyond Boxing Day.

Standards can be a pain, as well. You can see many-a word written against them by any number of individuals and small companies with better ideas than the current standard. Very often they are right. We all know that the IBM PC standard is something of a Turkey and that any systems designer could come up with something better while lying fast asleep in the bath.

That, as I discovered the other day, is not the point. Regular readers will no doubt remember that I am not the world's worst denigrator of standards in computing. I have some negative views on how they restrict innovation and development, but appreciate how we have to live - and interact - in the real world. My discovery, is all about this last point.

The intuitive may have detected that Christmas is not my all-time favourite period in the year. It is a time which can have some side benefits, however, especially if you work as a writer and have a large writing job to complete. Christmas is then ideal, for that implement of torture, the telephone, stops ringing and getting in the way.

That week between Christmas and New Year was, therefore, set aside for a clear run at this particular job I had to do. No phone meant no interruptions, because no one else was working; no keyboard meant no output.

Yes, there came upon me the one thing I hadn't expected (one never does). The keyboard on my PC crapped out, failed, deceased, declined to respond to my urgent probings (ed: careful, this is a family magazine). In a word, I was stuck.

Without thinking, I picked up the phone and dialled my local dealer (who had expertly fixed the beast in the past). No answer came the firm reply. Of course, no one works between Christmas and New Year, do they? So why should the dealer have service engineers sitting around twiddling their thumbs. I thought it was damned inconsiderate, but I had to accept it was sensible.

There then came upon me one of those feelings. I expect you know the type: I believe it is called 'panic'. There was I with large writing job to complete by the end of month, and no computer to do it on. After a small, therapeutic scream, I realised I did actually have a solution to hand. So I picked it up.

Having written about a third of the job, some 5,000 words, I turned to a review machine I had in the office. The Z88. What! I here you cry, Uncle Sir Clive's latest door stop!?!

Yes, I'm not afraid to admit it. The little thing saved the day.

Now, like many journalists, I have had a good go with the Cambridge Computers gizmo and had to admit that I find it extremely useful. But then, journos have an odd life-style (no comments please) and the ability to do things like write while travelling on trains and planes is great for us, but possibly a trifle OTT for many others.

Nevertheless, the thing has worked and worked well. It is also tough. Mine has been to the States and back, sharing a shoulder bag with cameras and tape-recorders, surviving X-ray machines and all. It has also had the great advantage of PC-Link, the software comms package which lets you squirt files back and forth between the Z88 and an IBM compatible PC. This also works: (if that sounds snide, I apologise, but so often these good ideas don't in practice).

Here was my salvation. I multi-tasked myself by writing furiously into the Z88 (some 6,000 words all told) while at the same time phoning round trying to borrow a PC from someone. This was still needed because the work had to be delivered as an ASCII file on a PC-formatted disk. I found a dealer I know up in Derby, National Computer Supplies, open and as the boss was coming past my way the next day, yes, he would drop something off.

A Tandon PCX20 duly arrived, but it was a brand new one so there was no serial port. As my invalid Olivetti has an integral port, there was no board to swap out. So, there I sat with a machine that could finish the job, a machine with half the job already on it, and no means of connecting the two.

Like a knight in shining armour, handsome and leonine David Tebbutt came to my rescue. Being a hack of no mean proportions himself, he understood the problem I faced, offered a loan of his own PC, his office, and his hospitality for a very pleasant evening that combined the minimum of work with the maximum in temporary hedonism. The result was satisfactory, the file were ported from the Z88 to the appropriate disk.

It is also worth considering a couple of points about how it was achieved. The disk which carried the original files that made up the job started life with work done on an Olivetti M21 PC compatible (old, hard driven and forgiven for its lapse). Further files were created on a Cambridge Computers Z88 and ported to the disk via Tebbo's PC (the make of which I admit I do not know). The job was then finished and knocked into shape on a Tandon.

Four different computers had a hand in that job, and I got away with it because they all worked to the same standard. Compared to that ability, the detailed nature of the standard is secondary.

The other point worth considering, especially if you ever do anything on a PC that smacks of work and has a timescale attached, is that a fall-back position is essential. Without that Z88 being available, I would have been dead in the water. We all get 'conned' by the real reliability of modern PCs. We all think they may just go on forever. They don't, they can't. So if you need to be, be prepared.

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