Nascom/Lucas Advert - April 1980

Although other companies had offered cases for, or had even sold ready-cased versions of Nascom's existing model 1 or 2 single-board micros, the System 80 was Nascom's first attempt at offering its own ready-to-go complete computer.

Based upon the Nascom 2 board with a choice of firmware on a variety of EPROM chips such as Intel's 2758 or TI's 2716, the System 80 also included the latest Revision B RAM board.

As well as that, the fibre-glass case contained an integral frame and motherboard using the company's own Nasbus - soon to be renamed the 80-Bus - which could host up to four extra boards in addition to the CPU board itself.

It also included an uprated 5 Amp power supply, whilst the case itself was designed to allow an additional five-card expansion box to be stacked on top and plugged into the main system's motherboard.

Other boards thought to be available - some of which were new to the System 80 concept - included a 2KB programmable character generator, a 6K colour graphics board which could support the "three main television systems", a board for input/output which used Intersil's 6402 UART, and a disk controller which could support up to four double-sided double-density (DSDD) 5¼" floppy disks^[1], giving at least 1MB of storage.

Nascom claimed that the price of the System 80 got more competitive as the system got larger, suggesting that a fully-populated system with 96K of RAM would retail for £1,750, although that's plus VAT. That would be around £12,400 in 2026 money.

Unforunately for Nascom, the timing of the System 80 was unfortunate as it coincided with the company going into receivership.

When it was finally bought by Lucas Logic, and despite adverts such as this suggesting that the System 80 was already available and ready to sell, the project was cancelled and it apparently never reached production^[2].