Exidy Sorcerer

Paul Terrell entered the computer industry by starting the first personal computer store, the Byte Shop, in 1975. By 1977, the store had grown into a chain of 58 stores, and Terrell sold the chain to John Peers of Logical Machine Corporation.[1]

With free time on his hands, Terrell started looking for new ventures. He wanted a consumer computer that was user-friendly beyond anything currently in the marketplace. At the time, the Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80 offered the out-of-the-box experience he considered essential, yet required a costly computer monitor in spite of their inadequate graphics. The Apple II had superior graphics and color, but required some user assembly before being operational.

Terrell's objective was a machine offering the best of both worlds. Looking for a suitable name, he noted "Computers are like magic to people, so let's give them computer magic with the Sorcerer computer".

Terrell was friends with H.R. "Pete" Kauffman and Howell Ivy of Exidy, a successful arcade game manufacturer. Terrell noted "Their graphic designs with a computer were so good they would take quarters out of my pocket." Howell, VP of Engineering, was a computer enthusiast and was interested in Terrell's concept. The wish list of design improvements over the existing designs went like this:

• A keyboard computer that could plug into a television set like the Apple II and TRS-80 but also plug into a computer monitor to display high resolution graphics.
• An easily programmable graphics character set like the Commodore PET, so aspiring programmers could write BASIC language programs that would impress their friends. The Sorcerer design was eloquent with the highest resolution in the marketplace and innovative because the graphic characters could be reprogrammed to represent any kind of 8x8 character the programmer wanted and was not fixed like the graphic characters on the Commodore PET. Howell did such a good job in this area of the design that it was to achieve a “Most Innovative” award at the Consumer Electronics Show after its introduction.
• The fastest microcomputer chip with the most software compatibility in the marketplace. The Exidy Sorcerer used the Z80 Processor from Zilog Corp. (the same as the TRS-80 from Tandy, while the Apple II and Commodore PET used the 6502 processor from MOS Technology) which allowed it to run the same BASIC language software that was becoming one of the first standards in the personal computer industry, Microsoft BASIC. Exidy was one of the first companies to license software from Microsoft after they parted ways from MITS, Inc. and before they moved from New Mexico to Seattle.
• Plug-In software cartridges so the computer user could immediately begin using the computer at power-on. The user would not have to load a program from tape or disk to start operating the computer. Exidy would provide three program cartridges under license: Microsoft 8K BASIC, Word Processor Cartridge (which was the “Killer App“ for PCs at the time), and an Assembler Cartridge (for programmers to write their own custom software for proprietary applications). Blank cartridges were provided for custom applications and the most popular application was customer generated foreign language character sets, which made the Exidy Sorcerer the most popular international PC .
• An expansion unit designed to the industry standard S-100 bus so that all of the low cost peripheral products then currently available could be attached to configure a computer system.

The Sorcerer made its debut at the Long Beach Computer Show in April 1978. The standard plug-in attachments to the keyboard case (included in the base price of the unit) were a printer port for hard copy devices, cassette port for mass storage, and serial port for communications. Some of these were included with the competing products and some were add-on.

The Exidy Sorcerer was competitively priced at $895 and went to market in Long Beach California in April 1978 and generated a 4,000 unit back-log on introduction. Shipments did not start until later that summer.[2]

Exidy sold the rights to the design of the Exidy Sorcerer to Dynasty Computer Corp. of Dallas, Texas. They made minor updates and re-released it as the "Dynasty smart-ALEC".

Export of personal computers was complicated by the requirement of US Government State Department approval but this was more than offset by the financial advantage afforded by the customary export terms of sale under letter of credit, yielding immediate cash, as compared to chasing payments from domestic retailers on 30-day credit terms. Exidy was thus keen to concentrate on international sales though recognizing the importance of its US presence for development and marketing purposes.

Exidy took this to another level by licensing production both domestically and internationally, increasing total production and market penetration without calling on cash flow. With its unique programmable character set for foreign language characters, the Exidy Sorcerer was in a league of its own. Advance royalty payments and license fees made this business a priority for Exidy, Inc.

The first Sorcerers sold in the UK were imported direct from the US by a small company based in Cornwall called Liveport Ltd. Liveport also eventually designed and built extra plug-in ROM-PAC cartridges and an add-on floppy disk drive (based on Micropolis units) that did not require the expensive S-100 chassis. Sorcerer sales in continental Europe were fairly strong, via their distributor, Compudata Systems. The machine had its greatest success in 1979 when the Dutch broadcasting company TELEAC, in a move to be emulated later by the BBC with its BBC Micro, decided to introduce its own home computer. The Belgian company DAI was originally contracted to design the machine but they failed to deliver and Compudata delivered several thousand Sorcerers instead.

Sales in Europe were strong and, when the Dutch Government endorsed computers for small business, Compudata decided to license the Exidy design for local construction in the Netherlands with government support. After several years of Exidy production, Compudata developed their own 16-bit Intel 8088–based machine called the Tulip, replacing the Sorcerer in 1983. One of the largest computing user groups in the Netherlands was the ESGG (Exidy Sorcerer Gebruikers Groep) which published a monthly newsletter in two editions, Dutch and English. For some time, they were the largest group in the HCC (Hobby Computer Club) federation. The Dutch company De Broeders Montfort was a major firmware manufacturer.

The Sorcerer was successful in Australia as a result of strong promotion by its exclusive agent Dick Smith Electronics, though there was price resistance as it was considered beyond the means of most hobbyists. The Sorcerer Computer Users group of Australia (SCUA) actively supported the Sorcerer long after Exidy discontinued it, with RAM upgrades, speed boosts, the "80-column card", and even a replacement monitor program, SCUAMON.

The history of the Sorcerer has some parallels with Exidy's competitor Bally's attempts to build a home computer based on the Astrocade. In contrast to the Astrocade's (and Datamax UV-1's) limited text capabilities but excellent graphics, the Sorcerer had excellent text and only limited graphics.