Page "Aster CT-80" Paragraph 10

Initially Aster computer b. v. was called MCP ( Music print Computer Product ), because it was specialized in producing computer assisted printing of sheet music.

The director of the company was interested in Microprocessor technology and noticed there was a market for selling kits to computer building amateurs, so they started selling electronic kits to hobbyists, and employed four persons at that time.

They also assembled kits for people without soldering skills, especially the " junior Computer " from Elektor ( a copy of the KIM-1 ), and the ZX80 from Sinclair.

Among the kits sold there were also alternative floppy disk drives for TRS-80 computers.

But these needed the infamous TRS-80 expansion interface, which was very expensive, and had a very unreliable floppy disk controller because it used the WD1771 floppy disc controller chip without an external " data separator ".

To fix this problem MCP developed a small plugin board which could be plugged into the socket for the WD1771, and which contained a data separator, and a socket for the WD1791 to support dual-density operation.

Still, the expansion interface was expensive and due to its design it was also unreliable.

So they decided to also develop their own alternative in the form of an improved floppy disk controller and printer interface that could be built right into a floppy disk enclosure.

The lack of RAM expansion offered by this solution was solved by a service in which the 16 KB RAM chips inside the base unit would be replaced by 64 KB RAM chips.