....but don't for a moment think that these aren't powerful computers, as simplistic as they might appear to be. One of these with only 16k of memory and a 5MB hard drive will run the accounting, inventory scheduling, payroll etc etc etc for en entire company and four or eight users can use it simultaneously. In their Basic Four guise, as the Basic Four model 1200, thousands of these ran hotel chains, public warehouses, hospitals, manufacturers, lumber mills and hundreds of other types of businesses. What triggered their being phased out was a perceived advantage to having PCs installed instead of dumb terminals, in order to distribute the processing load.
Well, to close out here, there is now a fully-functioning real Microdata 1600 on the West Coast. I intend putting it to work. It's capable of controlling processes too. Hmmm I've watched a few Wallace and Gromit films and rather fancy the idea of waking up to fresh coffee already made and the prospect of watching jam fly across the room to land perfectly on toast as it pops out of the toaster!
Jeremy MacDonald