Electric Pencil

 

Electric Pencil (also known as The Electric Pencil) was the first word processor written for a microcomputer. The original version was created by Michael Shrayer and released for the MITS Altair in December 1976. The TRS-80 version was released almost two years later and it dominated the market until the introduction of Scripsit.

Electric Pencil was one of only five pieces of software inducted into the 80 Micro Hall of Fame in 1983, with the panel stating that Electric Pencil “demonstrated conclusively that a TRS-80 could be used for serious word processing, and was the model for later word processors.”

Origins

Michael Shrayer purchased an MITS Altair computer kit after seeing the January 1975 issue of the Popular Electronics. He later expanded his Altair with a paper punch, video display, and keyboard and he began writing machine language programs.

What became known as Electric Pencil started when Shrayer made some improvements to an editor assembler package called Software Package 1 or SP-1. He named his improved version Extended Software Package 1 or ESP-1. Shrayer decided he didn’t want to use a typewriter to write the documentation for ESP-1 but to use his Altair instead. There were no suitable programs available, so he decided to write his own. As he stated in an 1984 article in Creative Computing:

I developed the original Electric Pencil to document something called ESP-1. At that time, I didn’t even know that a product like Pencil was called a word processor. In fact, Electric Pencil was the first word processor ever written for a microcomputer. I used Pencil to document ESP-1 and then itself.

The new Electric Pencil program was unlike anything else available, and there was great demand for the program. Shrayer began selling it through his company, Michael Shrayer Software, Inc. Peoples wanted versions for computers other than the Altair, and 78 different versions were created for different computers and operating systems by 1980.

The popularity of Electric Pencil made it an early target for software pirates. By one estimate, ten copies were pirated for every legitimate copy sold.

Electric Pencil for the TRS-80

Electric Pencil title screen

Electric Pencil was adapted in 1978 to the TRS-80 Model I by Small System Software. The price was $150.00 for the disk version and $99.95 for the cassette version (with both Level I and Level II versions on the same tape). It was enormously successful, becoming the dominant TRS-80 word processor.

The Electric Pencil advertisements promised a number of features:

Write text, delete, insert, or move words, lines, paragraphs, save text on tape (or disk), then print formatted copy with our TRS232 or Centronics printer (RS-232C with disk version). Right justification, page titling and numbering, transparent cursor and repeating keyboard. Upper case only, or lower case with modification.

 MANUAL

Sinclair Spectrum +2

The Sinclair Spectrum +2 was the first Sinclair computer made by Amstrad after they bought the rights of the Sinclair computers products. Thus, it is not suprising that the Spectrum +2 is very similar in shape and functionality to the Amstrad CPC-464. It was a kind of mix between the Spectrum 128 and the CPC-464 !

Even though it used several features of the CPC-464, such as the built-in tape recorder and a good full-stroke keyboard (at last!), it is above all an improved Spectrum 128. Thus, the sound chip used is still the well-known Yamaha AY-3-8912 which is the sound chip of the MSX computers, Oric computers,Atari ST series) and many other computers of the 80’s. It was the most popular sound chip at the time.

As on the Spectrum 128, two BASIC versions were implemented : the 48k BASIC to remain compatible with the original Sinclair Spectrum, and the 128k BASIC which was already introduced with the Spectrum 128. There was still a calculator mode in the start-menu but the « Tape tester » option of the 128 had been removed since the tape-recorder was built-in.
As with the other 128k models, and due to the limitations of the Z80 CPU which can only address 65536 bytes, the 128kb RAM was not directly usable (unless with bank-switching routines), but could be used as a RAM disk.

There were several models of the Spectrum +2 : the Spectrum +2 (grey case) which had a motherboard nearly identical to that of the 128, and the Spectrum +2A and +2B (black case) which were simply Spectrum +3 computers with a tape-recorder instead of the disk drive. It means that their motherboards were quite similar to that of the +3. The difference between the +2A and +2B was mainly due to a move in production from Hong Kong to Taiwan.
Note that the first ROMs developed by Amstrad for the +2 model caused compatibility problems with the old Spectrum software, so they changed a few things in later ROMs.


When Amstrad conceived the +2A/B and the +3 they redesigned the motherboard and made some internal changes on the bus. They also removed the keypad scanning routines of the Spectrum 128 and +2 (remember the keypad sold with the Spanish Spectrum 128k ?).

Source: www.old-computers.com