Sord/CGL Advert - November 1982

Sord seems to be advertising in reverse as it's starting out advertising software before any of its actual hardware, but that's probably because this is really an advert for potential resellers, rather than the public.

That said, it's still a bit abstract, as it's advertising its PIPS - Pan Information Processing System - as a solution to the problem of the BASIC programming language.

PIPS was a high-level language apparently 20-times easier to learn than BASIC, although it's answering a question that wasn't really being asked. Although BASIC had many shortcomings, it was by far the most popular home-computer programming language for a reason - it was already easy-enough to learn.

The hardware which is mentioned in passing includes the Sord M5, which had been launched in Tokyo only the month before. This was a Z80-based machine which was almost an MSX micro - a standard devised by Microsoft Japan which was meant to make things easier for software and hardware manaufacturers.

It didn't do too well in the UK as its price put it in the "ferocious under £200 market"^[1], but it was still more expensive that Sinclair's Spectrum or Commodore's 64 - both of which had thousands of software titles backing them up.

MSX didn't do that much either. Although the Japanese invasion had been feared since the 1970s, Japanese companies were hesitant to take on the highly-competitive UK market until they were absolutely sure, and by that time it was too late.