Grundy NewBrain
Encyclopedia
The Grundy NewBrain was a microcomputer sold in the early 1980s by Grundy Business Systems Ltd of Teddington
and Cambridge, England.
and hardly fitted in with Sinclair's
focus on inexpensive consumer-oriented products. When it became obvious to Sinclair that the NewBrain could not be made for the sub-£100 price he envisaged his thoughts turned to the ZX80
that was to be developed by his other company, Science of Cambridge Ltd.
The NewBrain project was moved to Newbury Laboratories by the National Enterprise Board
(NEB), the owner of both Sinclair Radionics and Newbury Labs, following the closure of Sinclair Radionics. In 1980 Newbury announced the imminent release of three NewBrain models, including a battery-powered portable computer.
documentary
series, The Mighty Micro, in which Dr Christopher Evans from the UK National Physical Laboratory
predicted the coming (micro)computer revolution. It was a very influential documentary — so much so that questions were asked in parliament. BBC Engineering was instructed to attempt to draw up an objective specification.
As a result of the questions in Parliament, the Department of Industry (DoI) became interested in the programme, as did BBC Enterprises, which saw an opportunity to sell a machine to go with the series.
Eventually, under some pressure from the DoI to choose a British system, the BBC 'chose' the NewBrain. The BBC specification was closely written around the NewBrain specification, with (presumably) the expectation that Newbury Laboratories would tender and win. It was not to be. Although the NewBrain was under heavy development by Newbury, it soon became clear that Newbury was not going to be able to produce it. Newbury did not tender, so opening the door for other companies.
The BBC's programmes, initially scheduled for Autumn 1981, were moved back to Spring 1982.
After Chris Curry
and Clive Sinclair
found out about the BBC's plans, the BBC allowed other manufacturers to submit their proposals. Chris Curry visited the BBC and persuaded them to change the specification so that Acorn could submit their design.
The BBC eventually chose a computer from Acorn Computers Ltd.
As a result of the BBC's decision, the British Technology Group, which had replaced the NEB, sold the final design and production to Grundy. Grundy had been looking for an entrant into the personal computer business, as they were already producing a CP/M 2.2-based machine, built into a 'dumb terminal' as a virtual clone of the Intertec Superbrain
.
An expansion chassis was released, providing additional paged memory of 64Kb. The Z80 can only address 64Kb of memory at a time. The paged memory system added the NewBrain to take advantage of several 64Kb modules. The expansion module included a parallel printer port and two hardware based serial ports and an expansion through bus for further modules such as the 8 and 16 way serial modules under development. The expansion module included Series 2 software, replacing those in the processor module as well as software for the new devices.
CP/M
2.2 was also available. Under CP/M 2.2 the internal BASIC ROM was paged out for the CP/M ROM but this gave only 32Kb memory to CP/M. With the expansion module fitted the three 8Kb ROMS of the processor module were paged out to give the NewBrain one of the highest available TPA (Transient Program Area - memory left after the OS demands are satisfied) to CP/M. Grundy Business Systems released two 5.25" drive formats, 40 track 200Kb single sided and 80 track 800Kb double sided. Several independent dealers provided 40 track 400Kb double sided drive. In 1983 the Sony 3.5" was becoming available and single and paired units were being supplied to dealers in the NewBrain cream cases. The 3.5" 800Kb discs also got a more effective format allowing the files from 4x200Kb floppies to be stored on one 800Kb disc.
All I/O was stream-based, and orthogonal: any device could be replaced by an alternative, although the manual did warn that devices had to be chosen with care. This approach did make it easy to write programs that could swap between input and output coming from a screen, keyboard or a tape.
The maths package had 12 figures of accuracy and a dynamic range of 10−150 to 10150, compared to most common machines having 6 figure accuracy and a dynamic range of 10−38 to 10+38. This was achieved by using base 256 for the floating point format, rather than the more common base 2, and using 6 bytes for storing numbers, rather than the more common four. Five bytes stored the basic number, with the last byte storing the sign in the first bit, and the remaining seven bits storing the exponent. For example, Pi was stored as 3.14159265358.
Benchmarks show that even though the NewBrain performed double accuracy calculations, it was one of the fastest 8-bit
computers available for several years, completing PCW Benchmark 8 in 7.0 seconds. For comparison against other contemporary machines, the Sinclair Spectrum took 25.3 seconds, the BBC Micro took 5.1 seconds, but with fewer significant digits. The 16-bit
IBM PC took 3.5 seconds.
The graphics screen was separate to the text screen, and was opened as a new output stream that shared space with the text screen. The graphics commands were based on 'turtle' keywords and provided a flexible means of drawing. The last two generations of NewBrain ROMs included new graphics commands - ROM 1.9 had two more commands, and ROM 2.0 some more. But to ensure compatibility little software would use these additional commands. The programmers were working on version 2.2 as well as versions for different keyboards, including Greek
and Swedish
as well as French
and German
. Grundy had been considered offering the Series 2 ROMS to existing users. This required the existing soldered in ROMS to be removed from the circuit board and a socket soldered in. The tight fit and labour cost was high on this retro fitting, and the failure of the company in 1983 meant that users were never aware that this was being considered.
The version of BASIC
was an extended version of ANSI BASIC, the facilities of which were similar to those in Microsoft BASIC
. The graphics package included commands that could draw dots, lines, arcs, filled-in areas and annotated axes.
Grundy offered a 'Software Technical Manual'. This manual documented various routines that could be called in the ROM and the calling parameters. It was left to the NewBrain user groups to publish the details of how to access these routines through the indirect call (a low-memory address was called with the relevant routine parameters, and this address would call the ROM-specific location of a jump table which, in turn, then called the final routine.) Even screen access required this indirect use, as the screen location would change as new input and output streams were created, including high-resolution (for the time) graphic streams. Memory maps and other technical information were included in numerous technical notes which were supplied to dealers and owners free of charge. The Technical Manual had a retail price of £50.
HiSoft produced NewBrain versions of their Pascal compiler and editor. A number of CP/M applications were converted to using the NewBrain's CP/M terminal and made available on NewBrain 5.25" and 3.5" formatted diskettes. These included Z80 Assemblers and debuggers, Pro Pascal and Pro Fortran
, TCL
Pascal, dBase
II, Wordstar
3.3, Peach Tree accounts and business applications and Superfile database and CP/M versions of Hisoft Pascal, Modula-2
, Z80 Assembler and text editor.
Many third party software houses (e.g. IEL, MicroMart, Black Knight Computers) provided independent software for the NewBrain, which was supplied to users such as the British Ministry of Defence, and Cambridge University.
. They created a server to which several NewBrains could use its floppy discs to load programs down the serial cable and simple switching enabled the teacher to view the screen of the students. They also demonstrated a keyboard with predictive text laid out in a non-QWERTY fashion. They were given television coverage, but the NewBrain's part in this was not mentioned.
Tradecom's NewBrains were supplied entirely by existing stock. A press release was made of a new factory in India to provide NewBrains for the Indian market and to supply Europe, but nothing materialised.
NewBrain user group has PDF downloads of various publications, and a link to a Greek
website that contains a PC-based emulator. The Dutch website has many of the programs that were available for the NewBrain, and these can be run on the emulator.
Teddington
Teddington is a suburban area in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in south west London, on the north bank of the River Thames, between Hampton Wick and Twickenham. It stretches inland from the River Thames to Bushy Park...
and Cambridge, England.
Beginnings
The NewBrain project was started in 1978 when Sinclair Radionics began design work with Mike Wakefield as the designer and Basil Smith as the software engineer. This project was intended to provide competition for AppleApple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
and hardly fitted in with Sinclair's
Clive Sinclair
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair is a British entrepreneur and inventor, most commonly known for his work in consumer electronics in the late 1970s and early 1980s....
focus on inexpensive consumer-oriented products. When it became obvious to Sinclair that the NewBrain could not be made for the sub-£100 price he envisaged his thoughts turned to the ZX80
Sinclair ZX80
The Sinclair ZX80 is a home computer brought to market in 1980 by Science of Cambridge Ltd. . It is notable for being the first computer available in the United Kingdom for less than a hundred pounds...
that was to be developed by his other company, Science of Cambridge Ltd.
The NewBrain project was moved to Newbury Laboratories by the National Enterprise Board
National Enterprise Board
-History:The National Enterprise Board was set up in the United Kingdom in 1975 to implement the Wilson Labour government's objective of extending public ownership of industry...
(NEB), the owner of both Sinclair Radionics and Newbury Labs, following the closure of Sinclair Radionics. In 1980 Newbury announced the imminent release of three NewBrain models, including a battery-powered portable computer.
BBC micro project
In early 1980, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Further Education department conceived the idea of a computer literacy programme, principally in response to the impact of a 1979 six-part ITVITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
series, The Mighty Micro, in which Dr Christopher Evans from the UK National Physical Laboratory
National Physical Laboratory, UK
The National Physical Laboratory is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, London, England. It is the largest applied physics organisation in the UK.-Description:...
predicted the coming (micro)computer revolution. It was a very influential documentary — so much so that questions were asked in parliament. BBC Engineering was instructed to attempt to draw up an objective specification.
As a result of the questions in Parliament, the Department of Industry (DoI) became interested in the programme, as did BBC Enterprises, which saw an opportunity to sell a machine to go with the series.
Eventually, under some pressure from the DoI to choose a British system, the BBC 'chose' the NewBrain. The BBC specification was closely written around the NewBrain specification, with (presumably) the expectation that Newbury Laboratories would tender and win. It was not to be. Although the NewBrain was under heavy development by Newbury, it soon became clear that Newbury was not going to be able to produce it. Newbury did not tender, so opening the door for other companies.
The BBC's programmes, initially scheduled for Autumn 1981, were moved back to Spring 1982.
After Chris Curry
Chris Curry
Christopher Curry is the co-founder of Acorn Computers, with Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper.-Early life:...
and Clive Sinclair
Clive Sinclair
Sir Clive Marles Sinclair is a British entrepreneur and inventor, most commonly known for his work in consumer electronics in the late 1970s and early 1980s....
found out about the BBC's plans, the BBC allowed other manufacturers to submit their proposals. Chris Curry visited the BBC and persuaded them to change the specification so that Acorn could submit their design.
The BBC eventually chose a computer from Acorn Computers Ltd.
As a result of the BBC's decision, the British Technology Group, which had replaced the NEB, sold the final design and production to Grundy. Grundy had been looking for an entrant into the personal computer business, as they were already producing a CP/M 2.2-based machine, built into a 'dumb terminal' as a virtual clone of the Intertec Superbrain
Intertec Superbrain
The Intertec Superbrain was an all-in-one commercial microcomputer first sold by Intertec in 1979. The machine ran the operating system CP/M and was somewhat unusual in that it used dual Z80 CPUs, the second being used as a disk controller...
.
Available models
Two main models were released. The model 'A' had display to either a TV or a monitor. The model 'AD' also included a one-line, 16-character, vacuum fluorescent (VF) display on the unit which permitted operation with or without a TV screen or monitor - the VF display responded to the cursor keys and scrolled around the screen display area. One additional model was released, but this was a custom version for a pharmaceutical chain, with no screen display - only the VF display - and was never generally discussed.An expansion chassis was released, providing additional paged memory of 64Kb. The Z80 can only address 64Kb of memory at a time. The paged memory system added the NewBrain to take advantage of several 64Kb modules. The expansion module included a parallel printer port and two hardware based serial ports and an expansion through bus for further modules such as the 8 and 16 way serial modules under development. The expansion module included Series 2 software, replacing those in the processor module as well as software for the new devices.
CP/M
CP/M
CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...
2.2 was also available. Under CP/M 2.2 the internal BASIC ROM was paged out for the CP/M ROM but this gave only 32Kb memory to CP/M. With the expansion module fitted the three 8Kb ROMS of the processor module were paged out to give the NewBrain one of the highest available TPA (Transient Program Area - memory left after the OS demands are satisfied) to CP/M. Grundy Business Systems released two 5.25" drive formats, 40 track 200Kb single sided and 80 track 800Kb double sided. Several independent dealers provided 40 track 400Kb double sided drive. In 1983 the Sony 3.5" was becoming available and single and paired units were being supplied to dealers in the NewBrain cream cases. The 3.5" 800Kb discs also got a more effective format allowing the files from 4x200Kb floppies to be stored on one 800Kb disc.
Commercial Application
Over 50,000 NewBrain units were sold to educational, scientific, industry, small business and banking sectors; as well as to home users. Scientific use was strong because of the unusually high precision of the NewBrain's floating point computations and its very high-resolution graphics. Business use was also proportionally high due to the availability of CP/M based software. The main industrial use was within the pharmaceutical industry.Software
The unexpanded NewBrain contains software provided in ROM, primarily BASIC, a full screen editor and device drivers. Other packages were also included within the ROM (e.g. maths and graphics packages) and were accessible to BASIC and any other software.All I/O was stream-based, and orthogonal: any device could be replaced by an alternative, although the manual did warn that devices had to be chosen with care. This approach did make it easy to write programs that could swap between input and output coming from a screen, keyboard or a tape.
The maths package had 12 figures of accuracy and a dynamic range of 10−150 to 10150, compared to most common machines having 6 figure accuracy and a dynamic range of 10−38 to 10+38. This was achieved by using base 256 for the floating point format, rather than the more common base 2, and using 6 bytes for storing numbers, rather than the more common four. Five bytes stored the basic number, with the last byte storing the sign in the first bit, and the remaining seven bits storing the exponent. For example, Pi was stored as 3.14159265358.
Benchmarks show that even though the NewBrain performed double accuracy calculations, it was one of the fastest 8-bit
8-bit
The first widely adopted 8-bit microprocessor was the Intel 8080, being used in many hobbyist computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, often running the CP/M operating system. The Zilog Z80 and the Motorola 6800 were also used in similar computers...
computers available for several years, completing PCW Benchmark 8 in 7.0 seconds. For comparison against other contemporary machines, the Sinclair Spectrum took 25.3 seconds, the BBC Micro took 5.1 seconds, but with fewer significant digits. The 16-bit
16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
IBM PC took 3.5 seconds.
The graphics screen was separate to the text screen, and was opened as a new output stream that shared space with the text screen. The graphics commands were based on 'turtle' keywords and provided a flexible means of drawing. The last two generations of NewBrain ROMs included new graphics commands - ROM 1.9 had two more commands, and ROM 2.0 some more. But to ensure compatibility little software would use these additional commands. The programmers were working on version 2.2 as well as versions for different keyboards, including Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
and Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
as well as French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. Grundy had been considered offering the Series 2 ROMS to existing users. This required the existing soldered in ROMS to be removed from the circuit board and a socket soldered in. The tight fit and labour cost was high on this retro fitting, and the failure of the company in 1983 meant that users were never aware that this was being considered.
The version of BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
was an extended version of ANSI BASIC, the facilities of which were similar to those in Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC was the foundation product of the Microsoft company. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first BASIC, and the first high level programming language available for the MITS Altair 8800 hobbyist microcomputer....
. The graphics package included commands that could draw dots, lines, arcs, filled-in areas and annotated axes.
Grundy offered a 'Software Technical Manual'. This manual documented various routines that could be called in the ROM and the calling parameters. It was left to the NewBrain user groups to publish the details of how to access these routines through the indirect call (a low-memory address was called with the relevant routine parameters, and this address would call the ROM-specific location of a jump table which, in turn, then called the final routine.) Even screen access required this indirect use, as the screen location would change as new input and output streams were created, including high-resolution (for the time) graphic streams. Memory maps and other technical information were included in numerous technical notes which were supplied to dealers and owners free of charge. The Technical Manual had a retail price of £50.
HiSoft produced NewBrain versions of their Pascal compiler and editor. A number of CP/M applications were converted to using the NewBrain's CP/M terminal and made available on NewBrain 5.25" and 3.5" formatted diskettes. These included Z80 Assemblers and debuggers, Pro Pascal and Pro Fortran
Fortran
Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing...
, TCL
TCL
TCL or Tcl may mean:* Biochemistry** TCL * Companies** TCL Corporation, a Chinese electronics company** Twin City Lines, former public transit via streetcar in Minneapolis*Computer languages...
Pascal, dBase
DBASE
dBase II was the first widely used database management system for microcomputers. It was originally published by Ashton-Tate for CP/M, and later on ported to the Apple II and IBM PC under DOS...
II, Wordstar
WordStar
WordStar is a word processor application, published by MicroPro International, originally written for the CP/M operating system but later ported to DOS, that enjoyed a dominant market share during the early to mid-1980s. Although Seymour I...
3.3, Peach Tree accounts and business applications and Superfile database and CP/M versions of Hisoft Pascal, Modula-2
Modula-2
Modula-2 is a computer programming language designed and developed between 1977 and 1980 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich as a revision of Pascal to serve as the sole programming language for the operating system and application software for the personal workstation Lilith...
, Z80 Assembler and text editor.
Many third party software houses (e.g. IEL, MicroMart, Black Knight Computers) provided independent software for the NewBrain, which was supplied to users such as the British Ministry of Defence, and Cambridge University.
The end
Tradecom purchased Grundy Business Systems in 1983 in order to fulfill a contract to supply microcomputers to schools and training centres in the NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. They created a server to which several NewBrains could use its floppy discs to load programs down the serial cable and simple switching enabled the teacher to view the screen of the students. They also demonstrated a keyboard with predictive text laid out in a non-QWERTY fashion. They were given television coverage, but the NewBrain's part in this was not mentioned.
Tradecom's NewBrains were supplied entirely by existing stock. A press release was made of a new factory in India to provide NewBrains for the Indian market and to supply Europe, but nothing materialised.
What remains
The DutchNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
NewBrain user group has PDF downloads of various publications, and a link to a Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
website that contains a PC-based emulator. The Dutch website has many of the programs that were available for the NewBrain, and these can be run on the emulator.
Specifications
| Pricing: | Model AD 229.00 GBP, Model A 199.00 GBP (United Kingdom, 1982), 48,000.00 GRD (Greece, 1985) |
|---|---|
| Emphasis: | Education, Portable computing, Programming, Small business |
| Timeline: | Released: 1982 |
| CPU type: | Zilog Z80A |
| CPU word length: | 8 bits |
| CPU clock rate: | 4 MHz |
| ROM Size: | 24 KiB |
| RAM Size: | 32 KiB |
| Maximum RAM Size: | 2 MiB MIB MIB may refer to any of several concepts:* Master of International Business, a postgraduate business degree* Melayu Islam Beraja, the adopted national philosophy of Brunei* Motion induced blindness, a visual illusion in peripheral vision... |
| Number of keys: | 62 |
| Keyboard and one-line VF display chip: | COP420 MCU |
| Graphics modes: | 256×256, 320×256, 512×256, 640×256×2 |
| Text modes: | 32×25, 32×30, 40×25, 40×30, 64×25, 64×30, 80×25×2, 80×30×2 |
| Total number of colours: | 2 |
| I/O Ports: | 2× Tape recorder (1,200 Baud), Composite video, Expansion, 2x RS-232 (to 19,000 Baud), UHF TV output |
External links
- Binary Dinosaurs' History of Grundy Business Systems - an inside view
- A second history, plus photographs
- Press release on the sale of the NewBrain to Grundy
- Old Computers Museum's entry on the NewBrain
- Dutch NewBrain user group
- More NewBrain photos
- The current Newbrain emulator website
- The Newbrain emulator website -- an older version
- Grundy Newbrain Repair Information
