Looking For Germans

By Oliver Debus
Originally published in EUG #13

I'd be very pleased to get in touch with any other Electron/BBC users in Germany. I do know of another three people who own a BBC B/Master computer. However, two are over sixty and have moved onto 486 PCs (and lost interest in the BBC) and the other (who is about thirty) is very busy with work and family so does not have or want to spend much time on his computer.

Through the persons I mentioned, I even came across a disk of the GERACUS (German Acorn User Group) although they don't seem to exist any longer. People over here are interested in the Archimedes if they're interested in Acorn at all. There are over seventy Acorn dealers in Germany and it seems they are about to make it here now.

When they first started marketing the Archimedes here four years ago it was more expensive than ordering from Watford Electronics. Acorn is now very competitive with the A3000 which is really good value for money for a RISC computer (1000 DM = 400 pounds).

You probably know the Volkswagen (VW) 'beetle' car? When it went out of date and people demanded better, further developed cars, VM began to stop making and producing new cars. However, they sold a licence to Latin America where they started making and marketing it. I wonder, couldn't this happen with the BBC/Electron, selling them to the Eastern countries? I could image the BBC Master repacked in a standard PC housing with a standard PC keyboard, disk drive and option of a hard drive.

Oliver Debus
Kempten, GERMANY

If a revamped BBC Master such as you have described were produced at a reasonable price, I for one would be happy to buy it. However, such a project might be seen as an attempt to 'fob' the people in Eastern and/or so-called "third-world" countries off with outmoded compuer equipment while the (relatively) affluent West continues to forge ahead, reaping the benefits of all the latest advances in technology. Little bit of politics there, my name's Will Watts. Goodnight!

Will Watts, EUG #13