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NAME  

Home Computer System

MANUFACTURER  

Interact

TYPE  

Home Computer

ORIGIN  

U.S.A.

YEAR  

1979

KEYBOARD  

QWERTY, 53 keys

CPU  

Intel 8080A

SPEED  

2 MHz

RAM  

8 or 16 Kb

ROM  

2 Kb

TEXT MODE

17 characters x 12 lines

GRAPHICS MODE;

112 x 78 dots

COLORS

4 Colors

SOUND

1 voice, 4 octaves

SIZE/WEIGHT

46 x 27 x 10 cm / 6 kg

I/O PORTS

2 joysticks, TV output

POWER SUPPLY

External PSU

PEREPHERIAL

Built-in tape recorder, 32 Kb RAM Card, Stringy FDD

PRICE

$299

 

Interact Home Computer System

The Interact computer had a very short life in the USA. It had only just got into production in 1979 when the Interact Co. of Ann Arbor MI, went bankrupt. Several thousand machines were produced though. Some of them were sold by liquidator Protecto Enterprizes of Barrington, IL, but the main part was sold by MicroVideo, also of Ann Arbor. Protecto bought lots of back-of-the-magazine ads for years, always printed with "WE LOVE OUR CUSTOMERS".

The Interact shipped with 2 joysticks, a built-in tape recorder, a TV RF modulator and 2 KB of ROM. Everything, including BASIC, must be loaded from tape. The tape unit did include an erase head, but it was not connected! Tapes had to be erased on a regular cassette recorder before being reused. Another surprising feature is that the "1" key is after the "0" key at the far right of the keyboard. Thus the row starts with 2 and finishes with 1...

MicroVideo supported the machine from 1979 till 1980, making some hardware perepherials like 32K RAM card and stringy floppy drive, replacing the original minimalist EDU-BASIC language with a Microsoft 8K graphic version, and even publishing 3 issues of 'Interaction', a newsletter of the Detroit Interact Group.

The Interact computer finally vanished from the US market in late 1980. However, a French company bought the rights of the machine and started selling the Interact under Victor Lambda name on the French market.

For five years, several improved versions of the Interact computer, called Hector, were launched in France. The last version, the Hector MX, featured high resolution graphics and 4 built-in languages!


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