Victor 9000 Application guide

Hardware Revie.,
Victor Victorious
The Victor 9000 ,Computer
Microcomputers are proliferating
because they
can do so many tasks so
well. Each time microcomputers take
over another task, they threaten some
old technology. As
word processors,
for example, microcomputers
threaten the typewriter. As number
crunchers, microcomputers threaten
the calculator. Each
company whose
main
product is threatened faces a
hard choice: perish or become a com-
puter company. What's more, such a
company must make the right com-
puter on the first try because the
fierce
competition in the microcom-
puter market gives few entrants a sec-
ond chance. The rules permit only
one roll of the dice in the game called
"You bet your company."
Victor Business Products has been
making calculators for 60 years. Vic-
tor saw the need to make a computer,
and the Victor 9000 is Victor's roll of
the dice. I've been
lucky enough to
have the use of a Victor 9000 for a
few months, and I think the machine
is an excellent microcomputer with an
outstanding array of standard
features.
216 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
Phil Lemmons
West
Coast Editor
Of course, the microcomputer
business is not really a game of
chance like dice,
but a competition re-
quiring judgment, expertise,
and a
variety of resources. Victor comes to
the competition much
better prepared
than most new entrants. First of all,
Victor is a subsidiary of Kidde Inc., a
three-billion
dollar conglomerate.
Second, Victor has experience in
designing
and manufacturing micro-
processor-based electronic
products.
Third, Victor has a great deal of ex-
perience in dealing with business peo-
ple
and the needs of the contem-
porary office. Fourth, Victor is start-
ing out with a network of 50 branch
offices in the United States to
distribute
and support the machine.
Fifth,
and perhaps most important,
the chief designer of Victor's machine
is not a novice but Chuck Peddle, a
founder of the microcomputer in-
dustry who understands as well as
anyone where the technology is going
and how to bring maximum perfor-
mance to the market at an affordable
price. (In an interview starting on
page 256 of this issue, Chuck Peddle
discusses his goals in designing the
Victor 9000
and makes some observa-
tions
on trends in the microcomputer
industry.)
Getting Started
with the Victor 9000
Victor's experience has shown them
that business people
want a machine
they can set on a desk, turn on, and
use. As
photo 1 shows, the Victor
9000 consists of a system unit, a
detached
keyboard with a coiled
cable, and a monochrome monitor
that can rest atop or alongside the
system unit.
The system unit and key-
board fit comfortably on a standard
typing table, or on a cluttered desk
designed before microcomputers
came out. While the Apple III oc-
cupies 361
square inches and the IBM
Personal Computer 420 square
inches, the Victor 9000 takes up only
310. If you buy the machine directly
from
your local Victor branch office,
Victor will deliver the machine, set it
up, connect the cables, and make sure
everything is working . The Opera-
tors' Reference Manual takes it from

Photo 1: The Victor 9000 mi croco mput er, consist in g of a system unit, k ey board, and
high-resolution green-phosph or vi deo moni t or that tilts a nd sw i ve ls.
there. It te ll s y ou how to turn on the
ma chine and insert the user- orienta-
tion disk that comes inside the
manual' s fro nt cover. Once turn ed
on, the machine reinforces the
manu a l' s advice : the bottom of the
monitor 's screen shows the image of a
little fl o pp y disk with an a rrow in-
dicating y ou should put a disk into a
drive. Th e us er-ori e nt a ti on disk dis-
plays a menu that le ad s yo u into ex-
planations of how to ba ck up the
system disk,
how to control the
vo lume of the Victor 9000's speaker ,
how to set the numeric key pad so that
it works just like a calculator , how to
use the key board, how to control the
display,
how to use the fundamental
commands of the operating system,
a
nd so on . Th e Oper ators' Reference
Manual ex plain s how to run applica-
tions pro grams, and each program
sold by Vi ctor ha s its o wn instruc-
tional ma nu a l. At least tw o of these
pro g ram s h ave their ow n dis k-ba sed
tutorials, too. In short , y ou can set
the ma chine on a desk, turn it on , and
start to use it.
Standard Equipment: Complete
and Versatile
Some computer systems to day are
sold " unbundled ," that is , in parts .
This makes the initial purchase price
seem low . F or ex ampl e, yo u can bu y
a $1500 co mputer that lacks inter-
faces for a modem or a printer ,
doesn 't have enou gh system memory
to run a major applications program ,
and has no high -speed mass storage at
all. To be sure, you can complete
such a system by ordering all the
necessary
components one by one,
but dining a la carte is always more
expensive than ordering a full dinner.
If the unbundled system is an IBM
Personal Computer or an Apple II
Plus , the buyer can save money by
buying many of the components from
third - party manufacturers. But that
can make it harder for owners to get
service for their completed machines ,
mainly because the manufacturer of
the system unit can't be expected to
support an add-on product.
The standard Victor 9000 costs
$4995. Although it is an open-bus
system with slots for addin g boards,
the Victor 9000 isn't just a lonely 8088
sitting in a bo x of empty slots and
sockets. The Victor 9000 comes with
128K bytes of RAM (random-access
read / write memory) on the system
board , two 612K-byte disk drives,
two serial I/O (input/output) port s,
two parallel ports , a truly high-res-
olution video monitor, a choice of
three keyboards with up to 103 keys,
an amplifier and accompanying
speaker, and a CODEC (coder-
decoder) that can digitize and
recons t ruct a real human voice. This
standard hardware configuration
leaves four bus slots open. Even if
you increase memory to 896K bytes ,
the machine still has two empty slots.
The standard purchase price also in-
cludes the two most popular operat-
ing system~ for the 8086/8088 proces-
sors-Digital Research's CP /M-86
and Microsoft's MS-DOS . Documen-
tation is good , too . The Op e rators '
Reference Manual is clearly written ,
beautifully typeset and printed , and
carefully coordinated with a menu-
driven user-orientation program that
is the best I've seen. (There a re hard-
ware options on the Victor 9000; I'll
discuss them later.)
All the hardware features are flexi-
ble. In
one case, the flexibility is
mechanical : a cleverly desig ned turn-
table on top of the system unit
enables the monitor to tilt as much as
11 degrees and swivel as much as 42
degrees
in either direction. Most of
the hardware is flexible, however ,
Nov ember 1982 © BYTE Public at ions In c 217

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218 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
At a Glance
Name
Victor 9000
Manufacturer
Victor Business Products
3900 North Rockwell
St.
Chicago, IL 606 J 8
Hardware
Size: width J 5 in ches. depth J 3 inches, heig ht 7 inches; weight (i ncluding two
disk dri ves ) 28 pounds
Electrical needs: input
VOltage, 95-137 V AC, 190 -270 V AC; input frequency,
47 -63 Hz
Processor: Intel 8088
Cycle time: main storage, 333
ns; access tim e, 333 ns
Memory: J 6K bytes of built-in ROM and J 28K bytes of built-in user RAM;
expandable to 896K bytes
Standard: keyboar
d; two disk drives; four expansi on slot s; built-in speaker; CODEC
(coder-decoder for digitized voice); power-on se lf- test; J 28K bytes of dynamic RAM, 4K
bytes of static graphics RAM, 1 6K bytes of ROM; -two 6 J 2K-byte floppy-disk drives; high-
resolution (8 00 by 400) green-phosphor monitor with antiglare screen, tilt and sw iv el;
two programmable asynchronous/bisynchronous RS- 232C seria l I/O ports; two parallel
I/O ports, one Centronics standard. one 50-pin
KK ; MS - DOS and CP/M-86 operating
systems; choice of three keyboar ds. detached, with numeric pad and up to 103 k eys,
cursor controls. edi ting keys, programmable function keys
Disk drives: two 6 12K -byte 5-inch, single-sided floppy -d isk drives; average access
time. 235 ms; track-to-t rack stepping time, 3 ms
Software
Operating Systems: CP/M-86, MS-DOS, Unix (t o be available fir st quarter 1983)
Languages: Microsoft GW-BASIC, price to
be determin ed; Microsoft BASIC-86, 5400;
CBAS I C-86, 5400; MS-Pascal, 5600; MS-FOR TR AN. 5600; MS-COBOL. 5800;
Microfocus Level II COBOL. 5I J 00, with Forms 2, 5 13 00
App li cations:
Word processing: Victorwriter I (Select), 5500; Victorw rit er II
(B enC hmark), 5645, with mailing list, 5890; Wordstar, 5500. with Mailmer ge, 5700
Electronic spreadsheets: Victor ca lc (Report Manager). Multiplan, Supercalc. 5300 each
Database management:
dBase II , 5695
Accounting: accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, .payroll
Other: order processing. inventory control, purchase-order writing, Time Manager
(scheduling). Project Manager, Personnel Manager, Victor
Pha rmacy System, Victor
Business Equipment Dealers System, Victor Financial and Banking System, installment
lending, communications
Hardware Prices
Standard system with sys tem unit, J 28K bytes of RAM. two single-sided disk drives,
keyboard, monitor, CP/M-86, MS-DOS, 54995
System wi th double-sided floppy disks. 55950
Winchester disk and controller, J 0 megabytes (formatted). 54495
I28K-byte memory boar d. 5800 purchased with system. 5895 purchased later
384K-byte memory board. 52500 purchased
with system. 52695 purchased lat er
because it is " soft-tooled ," i.e., under
software control. Every key on the
keyboard can be pro g rammed, not
just the 10 programmable function
keys. If you' don 't like the typefaces
displayed on the screen, you can
design your own with a utility called
CEDIT. The serial ports can be pro-
grammed for both asynchronous and
bisynchronous communications. In
the same spirit of adapting to every-
one's needs , Victor is offering a vari-
ety of applications softwar e -m ore
than one application program for
every common major task .
The System Unit
The system unit contains the main
printed-circuit board, the power sup -
ply , two disk drives , a custom
floppy-disk controller board , and
connectors for the keyboard , the two

--
--
• ----=== •
--
--
--
--
----
--
--
• •
Photo 2: The back of the system unit. Shown from left to ri ght are the keyboa1'd con-
nector, reset button , Centronics-compatible parallel port , video-disp lay-t e rminal
con nector, two RS-232C serial ports, and power connecto r. The on-off sw itch is just
abo ve the power connector.
Photo 3: The inside of the system unit viewed from above. The disk - controller board
app ears at the top , the power supply at the bottom , the spe aker at the up per left, and
two of the four expans ion slots at center left. The di sk-con troller board hides the other
two expansion slots at l eft and the 8088 processor, which is at the extreme right.
serial ports , the monitor , and two
parallel ports, Connectors for the
seria l ports and the keyboard and
monitor are on the back of the system
unit , shown in photo 2. One of the
parallel
ports comes o ut to the back
of the system unit wi th a 36-pin con -
nector that uses standard Centronics
pin assignments . With a special
24-pin connector and appropriate
software , you can use this port to
222 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
connect an IEEE-488 device to the
Victor 9000. The second parallel port
has a 50-pin KK-type connector on
the main printed-circuit board. This
port , called the "user" port, is also
fully
programmab le.
Th e main printed-circuit board
contains an Intel 8088 micropro-
cessor, 128K bytes of RAM in the
form of sixteen 64K-bit chips (parity
memory is an option), 16K bytes of
ROM (read-only memory), 4K bytes
of static RAM , a real-time clock, an
expansion bus with four empty slots,
a
programmable serial-communica-
tions chip, parallel I/O chips, an 8259
programmable interrupt controller
(to support real-time , multi-user, and
multitasking operations), a CRT-
controller chip , and the 50-pin
parallel port mentioned earlier. Photo
3 shows the inside of the system unit
viewed from above . The custom
floppy-disk controller board hides the
disk drives and most of the system
board. Photo 4 shows the system
board after removal of the drives.
Figure 1
shows a block diagram of the
Victor 9000.
The 8088 is a 16-bit microprocessor
that does all I/O 8 bits at a tim e. Two
separate 8-bit data buses, the IO bus
and the BO bus, are in use in the Vic-
tor 9000. All the Victor 9000's LSI
(large-scale integration ) I/O devices
(including the ones
on the -disk-
controller board) are driven from a
separate data bus consisting of lines
100-107. Memory , the expansion bus
(see table 1 on page 230), and the buf-
fers
for the 10 bus are driven by the
bus consisting of lines BOO-B07. Th e
programmable interrupt controller
and the "boot" ROM connect directly
to the processor data bus ,
The system clock runs at 15 MH z
and the 8088 runs at 5 MHz, or slight-
ly faster
than the 8088 in the IBM Per-
sonal Computer. The cycle time for
main memory is 333 nanosecond s
(ns); the access time
is also 333 ns.
The 8259 programmable interrupt
controller provides eight levels of
prioritized int errupts, that is, signals
to the 8088 that something else has to
be attended to. One interrupt lets the
disk controller indicate the readiness
of a sector header from a disk drive;
one interrupt is for the serial ports ;
one interrupt is for the real-time clock
and other timed operations ; one in-
terrupt is for parallel I/O chips, in-
cluding the chip that communicates
with the COOEC; two interrupts are
for the expansion bus , to be con-
trolled by boards to be added there;
one interrupt is for the keyboard; and
one is for the CRT (cathode-ray tube)
controller.
The 8088 can address a megabyte
Circ le 467 on inquiry card. --+

POWER
ON
RESET
RESET
BUTTON
8088
CPU
1------------ ------ - - - - - --
I 20 11 G '
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TRACK L ED DOO R WRITE
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STEPPER
MOTORS
DRI VE
MOTORS
AB-19 .-- -- --,
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L _ ________ ____ _
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B
ADO-7
ADDRESS
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PROGRAMMABLE
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CONTROLLER
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20
CENTRONICS
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IEEE488
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6522
PARALLEL
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AUDIO
INTERFACE
6522
SPARE
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SPARE
PORT
CONNECTOR
6522
KEYBOARD
8
MISC . CONTROL
720 I
COMMUNICATION
PORTS
RS -232C
PORTSI2J
Figure 1: A block diagram of the Victor 9000. The 8088 processor is at the left, as are the power-up R OM and the programmable in-
terrupt contro ll er . At top left is the expansion bus . The entire top center consists of the disk-controller board. The CRT controller
al1d associated static RAM appear at right. From left to right alol1g the bottom of the diagram, you see a parallelllO port that can
be col1figured as
either a Centronics-compatible or an lEEE-488 interface; a sYl1chrol1ous 1I0 interface that drives the CO DEC
224 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc

20
--------l
C· ====::::::;-;4-}-=20~~=]l
u
6522
IDISK DATAl
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~1,11~ 20 ===== 8 ==== ==~ ~ ~I=Lq~~~
rc "" .------------'- " i -
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MEMORY
1-
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(coder-decoder) that can tum a voice into a serial bit stream and vice versa; another parallel port; a keyboard interface port, based
on a 6522 that also controls some
other functions in the system; two RS-232C serial ports that can be programmed for asynchronous
or bisynchronous communications; and the timer that sets the bits per second (bps) for the communications ports and provides an
interrupt for the
system clock. Table 1 identifies the descriptions and names of the signals on the data buses and the expansion s lo ts.
November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc 225

of memory, but the Victor 9000 uses
memory-mapped I/O-that is, it ad-
dresses some of the input and output
devices as if they were part of system
memory. This increases the speed of
I/O but reduces the amount of real
memory that can be addressed. Since
the 8088
can address a megabyte,
however,
you are unlikely to feel a
pinch. Despite the
memory-mapped
I/O, the user of the Victor 9000 can
still have 896K
bytes of available
RAM.
Memory can be expanded with
128K-byte, 256K-byte, and 384K-
byte memory boards. If you add two
of the 384K-byte boards, you can
have the full 896K bytes of RAM and
still have two bus slots open. Besides
the RAM
already described, the Vic-
tor 9000 also has 4K bytes of static
RAM used with the video monitor,
and 16K bytes of ROM containing
"sanity test" diagnostics and instruc-
tions for loading the
operating system
from disk.
Mass Storage
Packing 612K bytes of data onto
one side of a SIf4-inch floppy disk
may cause jitters in people who
witnessed problems in mere double-
density systems only a
year or so ago,
but I used the drives hard during the
time I
had the Victor 9000 and didn't
experience
any problems with the
drives in
any operation with either
CP /M-86 or MS-DOS. One thing I
did to tempt fate and strain tech-
nology was to edit and save and re-
edit and resave huge Words tar text
files. Even
with files approaching 60K
bytes, the Victor 9000's drives per-
formed flawlessly.
The quality and reliability of the
disk drives result from the ingenuity
used in designing the disk-controller
board and in encoding the data . The
Victor 9000 uses Group Code Record-
ing (GCR), a technique
of compress-
ing
data by squeezing out zeros. Data
is encoded for storage in such a way
that there are never more than two
zeros in a row.
The Victor 9000 also has unusually
precise
control of the rotational speed
of the drives. One common source of
read-and-write errors is a difference in
rotational speed between two drives.
To achieve highly precise control of
228 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
Photo 4: The system board vi ewed from above. Th e 8088 processor is at the right, the
four expansion slots at the left, and one of the parallel and both serial ports are along
the
bottom. The two vert ical rows near the top, which consist of 8 chips each, are 128K
bytes of dynamic RAM.
rotational speed, Victor replaced the
control electronics normally supplied
by drive manufacturers with a
custom board that controls both
drives. A microprocessor on the Vic-
tor disk board takes tachometer
pulses from the drive motor and uses
them to control motor speed, The
board can set motor speed to any of
15 values, controlled within 1 per-
cent. Different speed settings
are used
for different tracks. Why? In order to
achieve
constant linear speed of the
media traveling
under the read/write
heads. When the Victor 9000 is doing
disk input or output, you can hear the
drive motors quietly changing speed,
as if there were a IS-speed transmis-
sion inside
with a gifted driver shift-
ing
from one speed to another as nec-
essary.
One benefit of constant linear
speed
is that the outer tracks of the
disk can hold much
more data . An-
other benefit is increased reliability.
Three 6522 versatile interface
adapters (VIAs), which are special
parallel
I/O chips, divide most of the
work of controlling the drives. Two
ports on one 6522 VIA select read-
and-write data; the second 6522
selects speed
and controls the drives'
stepper motors ; the third 6522 con-
trols head selection and the LEOs
(light-emitting diodes) that indicate
drive activity and also determines the
status of the spindle motors . The 8088
processor
controls and monitors all
the signals coming from the 6522s,
besides
monitoring the status of the
drive doors , turning on the LEOs, and
transferring
data into memory.
The track-to-track stepping time is
3 milliseconds (ms)
and average disk-
access time is 235 ms. The Victor
9000's operating systems use a logical
sector size of 128 bytes and a physical
sector size
of 512 bytes.
A valuable feature for
program-
mers who want to write disaster-
proof applications software is the
Victor 9000 disk system's ability to
condition an interrupt on the opening
or closing of the disk drive doors.
Using this feature, a program might
save a user from trying to write to a
drive with an open door , which,

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Pin Signal 1 /0
Description
50
A19 1/0 Bu ffered-address bits 8 to 19 . Th ese
1 A18 1
/0
l in es are driv en from the 8088 during
49
A1 7 1 /0
normal operation a nd are v al id from
2 A16 1/0 the falling edge of address-latch
48 A15 1
/0
enable (A LE ) to th e ri sing edge of t he
3 A14 1
/0
next ALE . If an external device takes
47 A13 1 /0
control of the system v ia HOLD an d
4 A12 1
/0
HOLD AC KN OWLEDGE, the se lines
46 A 11 I /O are tri-stat ed.
5 A10 1 /0
45 A9 1/ 0
6 A8 I /O
29
BD 7 I
/O
Time multiplexed buffered addressl
22
BD 6 I/O data bus. During normal operation,
28 B
D5 1 /0 the lower 8 bits of addre ss ( AD O-
23 B D4 I /O AD7) are va lid on the falling edge of
27 BD 3
I/ O A
LE .
24
BD 2
I/ O
26 BD 1
I/ O
25 B OO
I/O
9 ALE 0 Buffered addre ss- latch en a bl e. Pr ocessor s ig na l that indicates
BDO - BD 7 contain va lid addresses. Typically used to l atc h low-
order 8 bits of address.
11 RD 0 Buffered read strobe.
Pr ocessor si gnal indica ti ng 'a read cycle.
14 WR 0 Buffered write strobe. Processor signal
in dicating a w ri te
cycle.
8 D
EN
0 Buffered data enab le . Pr ov id ed by the processor for use as an
enable for transceive rs.
33
DL ATCH 0 Data latch. The falling edge of this signal m
ay be used to
strobe data ge ne ra ted from a processor read access.
30 EX
TI O External I/O. Contr
ol line that prevents internal data-bus bu f-
fers from conflicting with external buffers when mapping ex-
ternal I /O in to address s pa ce E OO OO to EFFFF hexadec im al.
CS EN should be u se d as a control signal to di sa bl e inte rn al
buffers via EXTIO and enable external buffers if us in g address
space
EOOOO to EFFFF. Addresses used by t he system cannot
be disab le d by EX TI O.
19 CS EN
0 Chip se lect ena bl e. This line is sy nchronized to PH AS E 2. It is
true from a
fa lling edge of PHA SE2 to th e next fa ll ing edge of
PH AS E 2, when a dd ress s pa ce E OOOO to EFFFF he xadecimal
is accessed.
40 CLK15B 0 1 5- MH z clock. S ign al from which all system timing is derived.
Its pe ri od is 66.6 ns with a 5 0% ± 1 0% duty cycle.
38 CL K5 0 5-M Hz clock. Signal is in ph ase with the 8088 clock input. I ts
period is 200 ns with a 33 % duty cyc le.
20 PH AS E2 0 1-MHz clock. Signal is asynchronous wi th CL K5. Its period is
11' s with a 40/60% duty cycle. Useful to interface 6800 -t ype
I/ O circuits.
21 XA CK External acknowledge. This line is no rma ll y hi gh an d may be
pulled low by exte rn al devices r es ult in g in p ul li ng the 8088
READ Y input low, generating wait s ta tes. This line is resyn-
chro
ni ze d by the system logi c.
17 HO
LD Input to the 8088.This is an ex te rn al requ es t for control of t he
s ys tem buses.
18 HLDA 0 Buffered ho
ld acknowledge. Sys tem r es pon se to HO LD r e-
q ue s t. Wh en true (high) the fo ll owing signals are tri-stated:
A8-A19,
BD O- BD7, A LE , 10 1M, RD , WR , DT IR, DEN , SSO, and
I NT A
DLATCH is contro ll ed by external log i c.
41 RE ADY 0 Status line. This line reflects
th e sy nchroni ze d READ Y in put to
th e 8088.
10 10iM 0 Buffered 8088 sta
tu s l in e. Di stinguishes between a memory or
I /O bus cycle.
7
SSO 0 Buffered 8088 status line.
Conti nued on page 234
Tabl e 1: The s ig nal names and descriptions for the Victor 9000 expansion bus . The
expansion bus is basi ca ll y a buffered extension of the sys tem's 8088 processor plus
add itional timing and co ntr ol signals re quir ed to interface the sy stem. The expansion
bus consists
of a mult iplexed buffered data bu s (BDO-BD7 ), a buffered addr ess bus
(A8-A 1 9) , and va ri ous timing, control, interru pt , and p owe r lines.

Circle 215 on inquiry card.
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DATA CHAMP FEATURES . ... ..... .
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capabilities
• Powerful, easy to use REPORT writer
and LABELS programs
• General purpose program to pass
DATA CHAMP files to popular word
processing packages
• Programs can be accessed through a
helpful, descript i ve MENU Program,
or may be run directly by the more
experienced user
• Frequently used sequence of answers
to a
program may be stored and then
subsequently recalled
with a single
response
• Available for CP/M" users (64k), or
IBM PC/DOS·· users (128K)
Order now, and take advantage of our
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234 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
Pin Si gnal
11 0 D
escripti on
12 DT/R 0 Buffered data transmit/receive. Processor signal typically used
to contro l the direction of system transceivers.
The combination of 1
01M, DT/R, and SSO provide current bus-
cycle status:
10/M DTIR
SS O D
escription
0 0 0 Instruction fetch
0 0 1 Read from memory
0 1 0 Write from memory
0 1 1 Passive (no bus cycle)
1 0 0 Interrupt acknowledge
1 0 1 Read from
110
1 1 0 Write to
I/O
1 1 1 Halt
15 NMI Nonmaskable interrupt.
An edge-triggered input which causes
a type-2 interrupt. A transition from high to low initiates the
in-
terrupt at the end of the current instruction.
16
IR O Interrupt request. This input should be driven with an open col-
lector driver; it
is "collector ORed" with five 6522s and one
6852 and
is pulled to + 5 volts (V) through a 3.3K-ohm resistor.
A low level
on any of these circuits generates a high-level input
to the system 8259 at I
R3 level.
43 IR4
Interrupt request level 4. Direct access to IR4 of the system
8259.
42
IR5
Interrupt request level 5. Direct access to IR5 of the system
8259.
13 RESET
0 System reset. Generated at power on or from the Reset switch.
44
Ground
39 Ground
35
Ground
31 Ground
37
+5 V
36
+5 V 250 mNexpansion board
34
+ 12 V 250 mNexpansion board
32
-12 V 50 mNexpansion board
under CP I M-86 and depending on
the B IOS (basic input! output
system), would crash the program
and lose the data that the user intend-
ed to save_
Display
The first thing that you notice
about the Victor 9000 is the quality of
its
display_The clear definition of
characters
and the sharp mono-
chrome graphics are a pleasure to the
eyes_ A nylon mesh minimizes glare_
A total of 320,000 pixels (picture
elements), 800
by 400, account for the
high resolution. (The Apple III has
graphics resolution of 560
by 192,
and the IBM Personal Computer of-
fers 640 by 200). One immediate
benefit of the high resolution
is the
availability of a 132-column
by
50-line display format for electronic
spreadsheets like Victorcalc
and
Multiplan. The extra 52 columns and
25 lines make a large table much
easier to comprehend and reduce
your dependence on notoriously
volatile human memory. It should be
possible to
have more than the stan-
dard 25 lines available for word pro-
cessing, too, but the two Victor
word-processing programs
that I used
did
not take advantage of the higher
resolution,
nor did the third, which I
saw but did not use. Ph oto 5 shows
the Victor display with an assortment
of character sets.
Photo 6 gives a taste
of the machine's breathtaking graph-
ics capabilities, and photo 7 shows a
scientific application of the high
resolution.
The Victor 9000 uses the Hitachi
46505 C RT - controller chip ,
equivalent to a
Motorola 6845. A
separate memory-arbitration circuit
allows the
CRT logic to access system
memory. Together the controller chip
and the memory-arbitration circuit
minimize the demands made by the
display on the processor and give the
displ
ay logic access to the entire 128K
bytes of
on-board RAM.
Two hardware registers contain
pointers to tell the
CRT -controller

Photo 5: The video monitor displaying characters in different fonts and sizes.
Photo 6: A graphics display on the Victor 9000 video monitor.
Photo 7: A scientific application of the Victor 9000 video monitor.
236 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
chip where two tables are located in
system
memory. The first table is
called screen RAM and the second
table is called
dot RAM. These two
tables interact together
with the CRT-
controller chip
to produce the display
on the monitor. Just how they in-
teract depends
on whether you are in
the
character mode or the high-
resolution graphics
mode .
In the
character mode, the screen
RAM (which is really the 4K bytes of
static RAM) acts in a
manner similar
to the refresh
RAM of modern video
term inals. The screen RAM in the
Victor 9000,
however, uses a 16-bit
word to represent each of the 2000
character positions displayed on the
monitor: 7 bits define the character
according to its ASCII value, 4 bits
can be thought of as font designators,
and the remaining 5 bits determine
the character's attributes (underscore,.
reverse, etc.). In
order to locate the
actual dot representation of the
character in dot RAM, the 11 bits
defining the
character and font are
then combined
with the pointer that
points to the dot RAM by the CRT-
controller chip.
Each
character is made up of 16
scan lines of 10 pixels (dots) each.
Dot
RAM contains a pixel map of each
character in the font, with a 16-bit
word devoted to each of the 16 scan
lines of the
character cell for a total of
32 bytes per character. Only 10 bits
of each scan line are actually
displayed, however.
A 128-character font occupies
4K
bytes of dot RAM, and multiple fonts
may reside in dot RAM simultaneous-
ly.
Thus the entire process is similar
to that of modern video terminals ex-
cept
that system RAM is used instead
of a fixed character ROM .
In graphics mode, however, the
process
is different. When graphics
mode is entered, the screen RAM is
loaded with data so that the CRT-
controller chip is forced to cycle
through 1250 consecutive "character"
cells in dot RAM. Because the dot
RAM is actually system RAM, you
can then use this 40,000-byte area
(1250 cells, 32 bytes per cell) as a bit
map for high-resolution graphics,
with each of the 320,000 bits being in-
dividually
addressable.

The Victor 9000 can display char-
acters in half intensity, in reverse
video , underscored, or blinking.
Brightness
and contrast of the screen
as a whole
are also under software
control. Applications programs
should therefore be able to manipu-
late these factors, and the Victor
operating systems themselves enable
you to adjust brightness and contrast
from the keyboard. While software
control of brightness
and contrast
could be useful for achieving special
visual effects, I found myself wishing
for plain, old-fashioned contrast and
brightness knobs on the monitor.
Whenever you load the operating
system , it resets brightness and con-
trast to its own default values. Pre-
sumably these default values could be
altered to suit individual taste, but
otherwise you have to enter a few
keystrokes (pressing the Alternate
key along with the Brightness key and
the Contrast key) to adjust the
monitor whenever you reload . the
system. This becomes a
minor an-
noyance if you 're in a hurry .
D A T A
THE·SMALL
VOICE·HEARD
238 November 1982 © BITE Publications Inc
Circle 117 on inquiry card.
110 Ports
The two standard RS-232C serial
ports on the Victor gaO\) 'nave
remarkable versatility. The Intersil
7201 programmable communications
chips can support full-duplex asyn-
chronous communications , as can
most serial ports on other microcom-
puters. But the 7201s can also
support
both bisynchronous communications
and SDLC (synchronous data link
control), a special kind of bisyn-
chronous communication . Software
determines
which type of com-
munication the ports will perform
and at what speed (up to 19.2 kbps
for asynchronous operations, and up
to 56
kbps for bisynchronous). The
significance of the Victor 9000's use of
7201 chips is that you will probably
never have to add a special board to
communicate with another computer ,
even
if your company switches from
IBM to DEC mainframes
or vice
versa.
The 6522 parallel ports (designer
Peddle's favorites) are also
program-
mable. Certain pins can be selected
for use as interrupt signals. As noted
earlier, one
port has a standard
Centronics-compatible 36-pin con-
nector . A special 24-pin connector
and appropriate software can turn
this
port into an IEEE-488 interface.
The second parallel port has a 50-pin
KK-type
connector on the main
printed-circuit board. This port,
called the user port , is also fully pro-
grammable .
Keyboard
The Victor 9000 has a separate
keyboard connected to the system
unit by a coiled cable that is long
enough to let you hold the keyboard
in your lap if you wish. A still longer
cable
(12 feet) is available as an op-
tion.
Three keyboards with up to 103
keys, all sculpted and most with auto-
repeat capability , are available and
have a soft touch that is easy to adjust
to. Victor gives its
distributors a utili-
ty program , KEYGEN, that programs
the keyboard without requiring
knowledge of 8088 assembl y
language.
That should make it possi-
ble for
distributors to tailor the key-
board for any application that a

: em owner happens to have. For
------' matter, since the key caps are
easy to rearrange, you could replace
the
standard QWERTY keyboard
layout with the Dvorak (see "A Short
History of the Keyboard" by Phil
Lemmons in this issue, page 386), and
the calculator-style numeric pad with
the more efficient push-button
telephone arrangement.
Three principal models of the
keyboard are available: one for pro-
grammers, one for word processing,
and one called "standard." Some of
these leave 7 programmable keys
free, some leave
10 free. But these
three models are only the beginning.
Like almost everything in the Victor
9000, the keyboard is "soft-tooled."
An 8048 8-bit microcomputer, which
has its
own ROM, translates the out-
put of each key. Pressing or releasing
a
key causes the generation of a code
corresponding to the key's location.
The 8048 constantly scans the
keyboard to detect changes in the
state of
any key. When the 8048 sees
a change, it generates
an 8-bit code.
WI CAT
has the 68000
While others are promising, WICAT
Systems for nearly two years ha s been
quietly delivering their complete 68000
computers.
The
Sy stem 150 is a popular desktop
computer with large memory and
hard dis
k, unmatched in price/
periormance The System 100 is
its
expandable software compatible high
pe riormance companion.
Conc urr ent's integral '" database
and menusystem greatly accelerate
th e d ev elopment of applications Full
UNIX'M
System 3 with no compr o-
mises is ready.
Conc
urr e nt c an di scuss your needs
and help you
sele ct the proper
configu
ra tion. Pl ease write or ca ll
[phone].
Seven bits identify the key, and the
other bit indicates the key's new state.
The data is sent serially to a 6522
parallelllO processor that interrupts
the central processor after receiving 8
bits.
The 8088 performs final inter-
pretation of the keystroke using the
keyboard table produced by the
KEYGEN utility and then incor-
porated into the operating system.
Victor's
system-generation soft-
ware enables you (or Victor
distributors and offices) to construct
versions of the operating systems that
incorpor~te different tables of key-
board values. Several standard tables
to support specific applications
packages exist, such as a table that
programs the ~eyboard for Wordstar,
, and Victor's software-support people
can construct more keyboard tables
as the library of software grows.
It
is conceivable for two people,
one using the QWERTY keyboard
and the other using the Dvorak
keyboard, to share the same machine
without coming to blows. In order to
avoid having to move the key caps
Motorota 68000. 256K memory. 10 MB Winch es ter
disk.760KB floppy.terminal.
sys tem softwar e. choice
of Pasca
l. FORTRAN. C. A sse mbler. BASI C. COBOL
Single user 1S0-1 .. . . . $ 9ASO
Three users 150-3 ..... $10,850
Six users 150-6(512K) . $12,850
MU LTI BUS IS a trademark of INT EL Corpo ration
UN IX IS a trademark of Bel l Laboratories
OPTIONS: gr aph i CS . prin ter s. IEEE 488 inst r umen-
ta ti ons In t erface . Vi deod isk controllers. AI D boards
Concu rrent Corporation
1870 Madison Road Cincinnati, Ohio 45206
HIGH PERFORMANCE MICROCOMPUTERS FOR SCIENCE &INDUSTRY
242 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
Circle 123 on inquiry card.
around at every change of user, the
two people would have to ha ve one
keyboard each. All they would need
then
would be two different versions
of the
operating system, one incor-
porating each person 's favorite
keyboard table. Just plug in one
keyboard and load one operating
system , then unplug the first
keyboard, plug in the second, and
load the second operating system.
The change would take less than a
minute.
To sum up , the Victor keyboard
has lots of keys
and unsurpassed
adaptability.
Software
Operating systems: Both CP /M-86
and MS-DOS come with the machine
at no extra charge. Each is approx-
imately 40K bytes in size. Victor is
promising to offer Unix for the Vic-
tor 9000 sometime in the first quarter
of 1983.
The company is planning to
demonstrate it
at COMDEX (Las
Vegas) later this month .
Languages: Victor offers Digital
Research CBASIC-86 , Microsoft
GW-BASIC , Microfocus CIS-
COBOL, Microsoft COBOL,
Microsoft FORTRAN, and Microsoft
Pascal. GW-BASIC (GW for Gee
Whiz)
is an enhanced version of
Microsoft BASIC-86. It
is the BASIC
that runs on the IBM Personal Com-
puter. Gregg Williams discussed it in
his January 1982 BYTE article "A
Closer Look at the IBM Personal
Computer " (page 36). The Victor ver-
sion of GW-BASIC implements all
the commands listed in that article ex-
cept
On Pen and On Stri g. (On Pen
enables handling input from a light
pen.
On Strig does the same for a
joystick.) Victor GW-BASIC maps
the color-related commands on the
IBM Personal
Computer to levels of
intensity
on the Victor monochrome
monitor .
Microsoft FORTRAN
is an im-
plementation of FORTRAN
77 and
requires 256K bytes of
RAM . CIS-
COBOL from Microfocus (with
Forms 2, Level
5) is an ANSI
(American National Standards In-
stitute) high-intermediate-level ver-
sion of
COBOL and runs in a
128K-byte
CP /M-86 system. MS-

COBOL is an ANSI intermediate-
level implementation of the language
and requires MS-DOS and 128K
bytes of RAM. CBASIC-86 runs
under CP1M-86 and requires 128K
bytes of
memory. GW-BASIC re-
quires the same
amount of memory
and MS-DOS. MS-Pascal runs under
MS-DOS and requires 256K bytes of
RAM.
Applications software: The ap-
plications software available directly
from Victor
for the Victor 9000 must
set some kind of record. A
variety of
)I~
ATARI'
0·- ---
software ultimately becomes avail-
able for every popular micro-
computer, but Victor is itself pro-
viding a variety of correctly installed
software from the beginning.
Taking
into account the variety of human
taste, Victor is offering more than one
program for the three kinds of major
applications that almost everyone
needs:
word processing, electronic
spreadsheets,
and database manage-
ment.
For
word processing, Victor offers
three different programs: Victor-
OI(l DATA
,
All Prices Subject To Change
COMPUTERS PRINTERS
ATARI
400K-16K - $289 80G-16K - $649
410-$77 810-$429
830-$155 850-$159
ALTOS
5 -150 - $2249 5 -50 - $4599
NORTHSTAR
Advantage-$2600 Horizon 64QO-$2600
TELEVIDEO
802 - $2649 802H - $4999
806 - $5249 800A - $1400
FRANKLIN ACE 1000
$1099
244 November 1982 © BITE Publications In c
OKIDATA
M80 - $305 M83A - $649
M82A - $399 w/Tractor & Gr ap. $479
M84P - $999 M84S - $1099
ANADEX
9500A - $1290 9501 A - $ 1290
CITOH
F-10P - $1370 F-10S - $1479
1550P - $659 Prowriter 1550CO - $709
8510AP - $479 8510ACO - $570
DATASOUTH
OS120 - $595 OS180 - $ 1249
DIABLO
630RO-$1945 620-$1295
NEC
8023 - $469 7710 - $2350
3510- $1949 7720 - $ 2590
TI
810- $1240 820- $1795
Viewpoint - $485
HAZEL TINE
1500- $ 995 ESPRIT - $515
TELEVIDEO
910 - $569 925 - $718
920 - $735 950 - $ 899
ZENITH
Z19 - $699
~"""".,..."'"
Circ le 185 on inquiry card.
J
writer I (Select, from Select Informa-
tion Systems), Words tar (from
Micropro),
or Victorwriter II (Bench-
mark, from Metasoft). Select is easy
to learn,
but Wordstar seems to me to
do more and run faster. I ha v en 't used
Benchmark
but I've seen it in use, and
it seems to rival Wordslar.
Victor also offers three electronic
spreadsheets: Victorcalc, a version of
Report Manager (from The Image Pro-
ducers), which has an optional train-
ing disk;
Multiplan (f rom Microsoft ),
said to be quite powe rful; and Super-
calc (from Sorcim),
noted for its very
effective HELP feature.
At this writing, Victor is shipping
only one database management pro-
gram, dBase
II (from Ashton-Tate),
but Victor promises a second data-
base manager soon.
Condor Com -
puter Corporation does offer its Con-
dor Series 20 DBMS for the Victor
9000.
Victor also offers the following
software: accounts receivable, ac-
counts payable, general ledger, pay-
roll, order processing,
inventory con-
trol, purchase-order writing, time-
management, project
mana gement,
pharmacy management , financial and
banking , installment lending, and
software for managing a Victor
dealership. As
you can see, Victor is
pursuing some "vertical" markets
(specialties such as
pharmacy ) as well
as the "horizontal" markets (general
applications such as accounting and
word processing).
Both bisynchronous
and asyn-
chronous communications software
are
on the way, too.
Performance in BASIC
I was hoping to have a running ver-
sion of GW-BASIC on the Victor
9000 in time for this review in order
to run some of BYTE 's benchmark
programs . GW-BASIC may be avail-
able as you read this. (Microsoft is
still adding enhanc ements.) Rather
than wait, I ran the benchmark tests
under the version of Microsoft
BASIC-86 that Victor was using to
write some of its utilities and demon-
stration programs. While the resul-
tant timings of the Victor 9000 prob -
ably give a rough idea of the Victor's
capabilities, you hav e to keep in mind

Times
Victor 9000 Radio S
hac\<.
B AS IC· 86 5.21, 4·MHz Z80 TRS·80
Benchmark
MS·DOS 1.2 IBM
Applesoft
MBASIC 4.51
Mode l II
Empty do·loop 7.7 6.43 6.66
5.81
7.98
Di vision 21.8 23
.8
29 .0
24.9 19.4
Subroutine jump
16 .9 1
2.4 13 .9
9.4 1
7. 1
MID$ (substring) 24 .6 2
3. 0 32.3 1
8. 6 24
.8
Prime·number program 197 .0 190.0 2
41 .0
151 .0 1
89 .0
Di sk·write program
50. 3 32 .0 17 5.0
NA
24 6. 0
Disk·read program
21 .3 22 .9 21 7. 0
NA
96.0
Table 2: The timings of several microcomput e rs in running seven BASIC ben c hmark program s. The computers timed were the
Victor 9000 running Microsoft BASIC -86 5.21 und er MS - DOS 1.2, the IBM Personal Computer running IBM Personal Com put er
BASIC under MS-DOS 1.0, the Apple II Plus running Appl e soft BASIC, a 4-MHz Z80 running MBA SIC 4.51, and a Radi o Sha ck
TRS-80 Model II running Model II BASIC. Th e listings of the first five be nchma rk pr og rams appeared in the January 1 98 2 BYTE
with the re vi ew of the IBM Personal Com pu ter. The disk-write and di sk -read pr og ra ms are printed here as listings 1 and 2.
that the BASIC used was not the stan-
dard interpretive BASIC for this
machine. Also keep in mind that the
timings for the IBM
Personal Com-
puter were done with IBM BASIC, a
version of GW-BASIC and not the
same as the BASIC used on the Victor
9000 in these tests. Both the IBM Per-
sonal Computer and the Victor 9000
have 8088 processors; the IBM runs at
4.77 MHz, t he Victor 9000 at
5 MHz . The two systems have dif-
ferent disk drives and contro ll ers,
which may account for the dif-
ferences in disk I/O benchmarkS. I've
run the benchmarks on the Victor
9000 under MS-DOS, since IBM Per-
sonal Computer DOS is an installa-
tion of MS- DOS, in order to avoid
further conf using the issue. Of
course, the two different installations
of an operating system that is fun-
damentally the same can also leave
room for differences in performance .
Having offered all the foregoing
caveats, I can at last refer you to table
2, which shows the Victor 9000's per-
formance , alongside t hat of several
other popular microcomputers, in
seven benchmark BASIC programs .
The first five benchmark programs
are list ed in Gregg Williams's article
in the January 1982 BYTE. Listings 1
and 2 give the sixth and seventh pro-
grams. The Victor 9000 performed
comparably to the IBM Personal
Computer-a little slower on the
empty do - loop , a little faster on divi-
sion, a li ttle slower on t he subroutine
246 No vember 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
jump, about the same on the string
operation , and a little slower on the
prime-number program. There is no
dramatic difference between the IBM
Personal Computer , the Radio Shack
Model II , and the Victor 9000 in the
computational benchmarks . The
4- MHz Z80 system still does best
overall!
However , dramatic differences in
the disk-write
and disk-read bench-
marks do exist. The Victor 9000
writes a 64K-byte file in 50.3 seconds,
almost 31 /2 times faster than an Apple
II and almost 5 times faster than a
TRS -80 Model II. The Victor 9000
reads a 64K-byte file in 21.3 seconds,
roughly 10 times faster than an Apple
II and 4 1/2 times faster than a TRS-80
Model II . The IBM Personal Com-
puter is even. faster than the Victor
9000 in the disk-write test-32 .0
seconds compared to 50.3 seconds.
But the Victor reads the disk to verify
the data after writin g to disk; the IBM
does not. Subtracting the Victor's
read time (21 .3) from the write-and-
read time (50. 3) gives a " write-only "
time of 29 seconds, or 3 seconds faster
than the IBM Personal Computer. In
the disk-read test, the Victor is almost
2 seconds faster than the IBM Per-
sonal Computer.
Here is evidence that the IBM Per -
sonal Computer and Vi ctor 9000 real-
ly do represent a new generation of
microcomputer. In terms of computa-
tion, the two 8088-based systems
don 't significantly outs trip their com-
petitors, but in disk I/O, none of the
ot her computers comes close to the
Victor or the IBM. Whatever the
reason-the direct memor y access
(DMA),
something about the pro-
cessors, or a generation's experience
in design-the Vict or 9000 and the
IBM Personal Computer leave promi-
nent 8-bit systems shown in the table
far behind even thoug h the 8088 does
I/O 8 bits at a time, too.
Given the
truism that most pro-
grams are "input! output bound "-
that is, I/O is a more important fac-
tor in their overall performance than
is speed of computation-the choice
narrows to the IBM Personal Com-
puter and the Victor 9000. And then
the choice depend s on whether
greater storage capacity or faster disk
output is more impor t ant to you . The
Victor 9000's verify-aFter-write disk
I/O accounts for its being about a
third slower than the IBM Personal
Computer in disk output bu t also
helps ensure reliability because the
Victor packs almost 4 times the stor-
age of the IBM on disks of the same
size.
Marketing and Distribution
Victor is supplementing its own so
branch offices with many indepen-
dent Victor 9000 dealers. The existing
network of branch offices gives Vic-
tor an edge over most of its com-
petitors . Victor has an edge over
IBM, ironically because of somethin g
that Victor doesn 't have-compar-

Listing 1: A BASI C d is k-w ri te bench mark program that wr it es a 64K-b yte f il e.
H l CL El\R H HlO
40 AS ="1234567 8 1234567 8 1234567 81 234 567 8"
60 B$=A$+A$ +l\$+l\$
80 NR =5 00
10 0 OPE N "R ", #1, "TEST"
12 0 FIELD # 1, 128 AS Z$
140 FOR I = 1 TO NR
160 LSET Z$=B$
180 PUT #1, I
200 NEXT I
22 0 CLOSE #l
24~ PRINT "DO NE"
Listing 2: A BASIC d is k-read pr ogram that reads the f il e generat ed by the program in
listing
1.
10
CLEAR
1000
80 NR
=500
100
OPEN
fiR",
#1, "TEST"
120 FIELD #1,
128
AS Z$
140 FOR
I = NR TO
1 S'l'EP
-1
160 GET
#1,
I
200
N EXT
I
220
CLOSE
#l
248
PRINT
"DOl·j E"
able but more expensive computers
whose sales must be protected. While
IBM (at least, at the IBM Product
Centers where I've asked) tells people
to buy a Displaywriter if they want
letter-quality output and a first-rate
word-proce ssing program , Victor is
eager to sell good word-processin g
programs and to sell and interface a
letter-quality printer.
Maintenance and Support
Victor is offering three types of
maintenance service: you can carry
y our system to a Victor service
center , have Victor send a messenger
to swap a failed component , or have
Victor send a technician to repair
your system on the spot. This sur-
passes IBM's service offerings, which
had set a new standard for the in-
dustry little more than a year ago.
Victor 's SO branch offices are gear-
ing up to provide s oftware support as
well as hardware maintenance .
Because Victor will be the source of
so much s oftware on its own
machine, software support should be
easier for Victor than for most com-

panies. Furthermore, the soft-tooled
design of the Victor 9000 makes it
easier
for Victor than for any other
company at this writing to adapt its
system to
new software.
The
Victor branch offices also sell
all the necessary supplies
for the com-
puter-paper, print wheels, disks,
cables, dustcovers, etc.
Finally, Victor
has a toll-free
number to help dealers with any
problems in Victor-released software
and another toll-free number for
technical
support.
Optional Hardware
Victor is now offering both double-
sided floppy-disk drives, increasing
storage to 2.4 megabytes,
and a
separately housed Winchester
hard
disk, providing 10 megabytes (for-
matted) of storage.
For those
who have too much in-
vested in the 8-bit
world to say good-
bye , Victor will recommend a Z80 Ex-
ecutive
Card that runs CP 1M 2.2
(8-bit)
programs without modifica-
tion.
Victor also sells a full range of
printers-letter quality (40 characters
per second), inexpensive
dot matrix
(80 cps), and high-speed dot matrix
(400 cps).
Reservations
I do have a few reservations about
the Victor 9000; there's always some-
thing. In principle, I
would prefer a
computer with an 8086 and a 16-bit
252 November 1982 © BYTE Publications Inc
data bus . How much' difference in
performance this would really make
we still don 't know . [For some indica-
tion of the difference, see BYTE's
Bits, October 1982 BYTE, page
468. .
.. M. H.J I would prefer a
computer with a standard bus , par-
ticularly the $-100 bus so that existing
peripherals could be
added . Of
course, the IBM Personal Computer
doesn't use a standard bus either, and
Victor , like IBM, is making available
technical information
about its bus .
As I noted earlier, I would prefer
brightness
and contrast knobs, and
probably a knob for audio volume as
well. But these are truly trivial con-
siderations,
and I can see the advan-
tage of being able to control these
things with software.
I
would like a battery-based clock-
calendar,
but a board could be added
to provide that, and someone will
probably make such a board if Victor
doesn 't.
If life without a joystick and light
pen is for you without joy and light,
then the Victor 9000 is
not for you.
(On the other hand, if you love these
sensory
I/O devices, you would
probably find the CODEC so fasci-
nating that you wouldn't rest until
you 'd taught the machine to yodel.)
You might fault the Victor 9000 for
not having standard CP 1 M-format
8-inch floppy disks, but few new sys-
tems do,
and Victor deliberately
chose 5%-inch drives to keep the
system's
"footprint" small and packed
in the data to provide double the
storage of a standard CP 1M single-
density 8-inch disk.
My only serious reservation about
the Victor 9000 concerns the pricing
of hardware options and software.
The basic system price is better than
fair, especially because of the ver-
satility of the
standard hardware . But
with the double-sided floppy-disk
drives, the
Victor 9000 costs $5950,
almost $1000 more than the price
with single-sided drives. The 128K-
byte memory expansion board costs
$800 if you order it with the machine,
and $895 if added later; the 384K-
byte board costs $2500 if purcha sed
with the machine, and $2695 if pur-
chased later.
The $4495 price for the
10-megabyte
hard disk includes the
controller
but still seems high. $0
many hard disks are available for the
IBM Personal
Comp uter for so much
less money.
(Of course, none of those
is from IBM.)
No doubt , if third-
party suppliers start offering alternate
sources for
hardware, these prices
will
drop.
As to software prices, Wordstar is
$500 and Mailmerge is an additional
$200; Victorwriter II (Benchmark) is
$645, and its mailing-list program is
another $245. Victorcalc, Sup ercalc,
and Multiplan each cost $300, which
seems reasonable
but not aggressive.
The price of dBase II is $695, and that
seems reasonable
but not aggressive.
In
my opinion, more aggressive mar-
keting
through lower software prices
Circle 3 on inquiry card.

Conclusion
would help Victor gain a wider mar-
ket and establish itself as a computer
compan y.
The other side of the coin is that
Victor does have the cost of maintain-
ing its
branch offices and a high level
of support. Both Sirius Systems Tech-
nology (which, in
collaboration with
Victor, is marketing internationally
the Victor 9000
under the name Sirius
I) and Victor have large and busy
software staffs installing three operat-
ing systems and dozens of applica-
tions
programs. Who else is doing as
much?
The Victor 9000 is an excellent
microcomputer. Th e available service
and support and the machine's ability
to fit
on a typing table make the
machine ideal for the business
market. The "soft-tooled" hardware
makes the machine adaptable to un-
foreseen external changes (such as
your company's home office chang-
ing
mainframe computers and expect-
ing
you to be able to communicate
with the new one). The keyboard has
a good feel, ample keys, and adapt-
ability that approache s the limit of
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254 November 1982 © BYrE Publications Inc Circle
75 on inquiry card.
logical possibility. The video monitor
would make your eyes applaud if
anatomy permitted. Ma ss s torage ,\;
ample and reliable. The Victor 9000's
abundance of standard hardware
means that your four expansion slots
are really free; even with 896K bytes
of RAM , two slots remain free. You
could have all that memory, a Win-
chester
controller , and a network in-
terface board without the added bulk
and expense of an ex pansion chassis.
The company is offerin g a
remarkable range of software, in-
cluding more than one program for
word processing, spreadsheet calcula-
tions,
and (soon) database man age-
ment.
You can personal iz e the computer
with the utilities for programming the
keyboard and designing character
fonts for the display. The CODEC
voice-outpu,t system stimulates the
imagination, especially
when and if
an input board comes alon g. Will
Victor design software that enables
the Victor 9000 to read a
letter aloud
in a real human voice while you
proofread the final copy? Will the
Victor 9000 support spoken electronic
mail? Will
Victor enhance the time-
management progr am with polite
spoken reminders?
Given the choice
between an IBM
Personal Computer with two of its
standard floppy-disk drives and a
Victor 9000
with two of its standard
floppy-disk drives, I would take the
Victor 9000.
The Victor is clearly
superior in quali ty of display ,
amount of standard memory , stan-
dard number and versatility of 110
ports , and number of available ex-
pansion slots. The prices of Victor's
memory boards and Winchester disk,
however,
would give me pause and
may hamper Victor's marketing ef-
fort.
Finally,
two intangible reasons for
buying a Vict or 9000 deserve men-
tion . First, the Victor 9000 is
everything to Victor Business Prod-
ucts, not the "low end" of a long line
of computers. Second, owners of the
Victor 9000 will
have the pleasure of
knowing that new products and
enhancements for their machine will
be coming from a design team headed
by Chuck Peddle.•