AMX Mouse

Last updated
AMX Mouse
AMX Mouse (top).jpg
Connects to
Common manufacturersAdvanced Memory Systems
Introduced1985;40 years ago (1985)
Type computer mouse

AMX Mouse was a 1985 computer mouse sold by the British company Advanced Memory Systems. [1] The mouse has 3 buttons. It was sold with a dedicated interface, and usually with some accompanying software such as AMX Art (MacPaint clone), AMX Pagemaker, AMX Palette, AMX Control and Icon Designer. [2]

Contents

Box AMX Mouse box.jpg
Box

Market

The AMX Mouse product was sold for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and BBC Micro computers, [3] [4] along with the Acorn Electron (through Advanced Computer Products), [5] these being popular home computers at the time. As such, it allowed modern user interfaces to be present in common household machines.

It was compatible with art software such as OCP Advanced Art Studio [6] or Max Desktop. [7] The game Starglider is also listed as being compatible. [8]

Other software

Other available software from the manufacturer was: [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acorn Electron</span> Personal computer sold in Britain

The Acorn Electron was introduced as a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a price more competitive with that of the ZX Spectrum. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC II together with the operating system. Announced in 1982 for a possible release the same year, it was eventually introduced on 25 August 1983 priced at £199.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Graphical user interface</span> User interface allowing interaction through graphical icons and visual indicators

A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation. In many applications, GUIs are used instead of text-based UIs, which are based on typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the graphical user interface</span>

The history of the graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, covers a five-decade span of incremental refinements, built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code, but with basic elements in common that define the WIMP "window, icon, menu and pointing device" paradigm.

BBC BASIC is an interpreted version of the BASIC programming language. It was developed by Acorn Computers Ltd when they were selected by the BBC to supply the computer for their BBC Literacy Project in 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acorn Computers</span> British computer manufacturer

Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England in 1978 by Hermann Hauser, Chris Curry and Andy Hopper. The company produced a number of computers during the 1980s with associated software that were highly popular in the domestic market, and they have been historically influential in the development of computer technology like processors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acorn Archimedes</span> Personal computer

The Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, England. The systems in this family use Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and initially ran the Arthur operating system, with later models introducing RISC OS and, in a separate workstation range, RISC iX. The first Archimedes models were introduced in 1987, and systems in the Archimedes family were sold until the mid-1990s alongside Acorn's newer Risc PC and A7000 models.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Workstation</span> High-end single-user computer

A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has been used loosely to refer to everything from a mainframe computer terminal to a PC connected to a network, but the most common form refers to the class of hardware offered by several current and defunct companies such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Apollo Computer, DEC, HP, NeXT, and IBM which powered the 3D computer graphics revolution of the late 1990s.

Timeworks Publisher was a desktop publishing (DTP) program produced by GST Software in the United Kingdom and published by Timeworks, Inc., in the United States.

Xara is an international software company founded in 1981, with an HQ in Berlin and development office in Hemel Hempstead, UK. It has developed software for a variety of computer platforms, in chronological order: the Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Z88, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and more recently web browser-based services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Master</span> Microcomputer

The BBC Master is a home computer released by Acorn Computers in early 1986. It was designed and built for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was the successor to the BBC Micro Model B. The Master 128 remained in production until 1993.

The Acorn Communicator is a discontinued business computer developed by Acorn Computers. Mentioned in the computing press in late 1984 as the C30, previewed in early 1985 with estimated pricing between £500 and £800, in late 1985 with a built-in LCD display, and subsequently unveiled in a slightly different form, the system sold in very low numbers to companies requiring a computer with a built-in modem.

The Acorn Business Computer (ABC) was a series of microcomputers announced at the end of 1983 by the British company Acorn Computers. The series of eight computers was aimed at the business, research and further education markets. Demonstrated at the Personal Computer World Show in September 1984, having been under development for "about a year" and having been undergoing field trials from May 1984, the range "understandably attracted a great deal of attention" and was favourably received by some commentators. The official launch of the range was scheduled for January 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Micro Power</span> British video game publisher

Micro Power was a British company established in the early 1980s by former accountant Bob Simpson. The company was best known as a video game publisher, originally under the name Program Power. It also sold many types of computer hardware and software through its Leeds 'showroom' or via mail order.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Micro expansion unit</span>

A BBC Micro expansion unit, for the BBC Micro is one of a number of peripherals in a box with the same profile and styling as the main computer.

Torch Computers Ltd was a computer hardware company with origins in a 1982 joint venture between Acorn Computers and Climar Group that led to the development of the Communicator or C-series computer, a system based on the BBC Micro with a Z80 second processor and integral modem, intended as a viewdata terminal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of personal computers</span>

The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of the microprocessor, individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. Early personal computers – generally called microcomputers – were sold often in electronic kit form and in limited numbers, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BBC Micro</span> Series of British microcomputers by Acorn

The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers designed and built by Acorn Computers Limited in the 1980s for the Computer Literacy Project of the BBC. The machine was the focus of a number of educational BBC TV programmes on computer literacy, starting with The Computer Programme in 1982, followed by Making the Most of the Micro, Computers in Control in 1983, and finally Micro Live in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Home computer</span> Class of microcomputers

Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single, non-technical user. These computers were a distinct market segment that typically cost much less than business, scientific, or engineering-oriented computers of the time, such as those running CP/M or the IBM PC, and were generally less powerful in terms of memory and expandability. However, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporary business computers. Their most common uses were word processing, playing video games, and programming.

RISC OS, the computer operating system developed by Acorn Computers for their ARM-based Acorn Archimedes range, was originally released in 1987 as Arthur 0.20, and soon followed by Arthur 0.30, and Arthur 1.20. The next version, Arthur 2, became RISC OS 2 and was completed and made available in April 1989. RISC OS 3 was released with the very earliest version of the A5000 in 1991 and contained a series of new features. By 1996 RISC OS had been shipped on over 500,000 systems.

References

  1. "AMX Mouse". Spectrum Computing.
  2. Frey, Franco (April 1986). "AMX MOUSE". Crash. No. 27.
  3. "AMX Mouse, For the BBC Micro". CLASSIC COMPUTER BROCHURES. Advanced Memory Systems Ltd. 1984.
  4. 1 2 Whytehead, Chris (2011). "Advanced Memory Systems AMX Mouse". Chris's Acorns. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  5. "Now Electron can have its own mouse". Electron User. Vol. 4, no. 3. December 1986. p. 5. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
  6. "Advanced Art Studio". World of Spectrum. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  7. "Max Desktop". Spectrum Computing.
  8. "Input Devices Supported : AMX Mouse". MobyGames. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-03-29.