Gemini Micro Advert - March 1985

This advert, very reminiscent of the famous Saatchi and Saatchi "Labout isn't working" campaign^[1] of 1978 and '79, is for Gemini's MultiNet low-cost multi-user networking system.

MultiNet was based upon the idea of a single fileserver - a computer with a large Winchester hard disk - and up to 31 satellite user stations. Each of these user stations would then appear as if they were running their own copy of CP/M and had their own shared disk space - not in the sense that users could freely share the same files though, but simply that they had a chunk of disk to call their own^[2].

The fileserver and satellite were connected together over a twisted-pair network, capable of running at 256K Baud. As with other systems that shared resources in this way, reponse got worse as more users were added to the system, but it was said that up to around ten users would notice much of an impact.

The advert suggests a price of £750 per workstation, or around £2,900 in 2024. However, the MultiNet network cards were available separately, so those already in the Gemini ecosystem could presumably upgrade their systems for less.

An Advanced Digital Corporation advert for its multi-user plug-in card to turn the standard IBM PC into a 32-user system. From Personal Computer World, March 1985.

The company was apparently concerned enough about piracy of its cards that it removed the identifiers/serial numbers from the I/O chip^[3] in order to make it more difficult to copy. There was certainly a lot of competition around, with other companies such as Advanced Digital of the US offering similar features for standard IBM PCs and off-the-shelf ASCII terminals.