What You See Is What You Get: My Autobiography by Alan Sugar

Author:Alan Sugar [Sugar, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Business & Economics, Economic History
ISBN: 9780230750562
Publisher: Macmillan UK
Published: 2010-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

By the autumn of 1988, we were ready to enter the new Intel 20286 and 20386 PC market. Mark Jones came up with a design for a whole new range of computers - the PC2000 series - which would comprise the model PC2086 (which was simply a re-engineered PC1640 based on the Intel 8086 processor), the model PC2286 (using the 20286 processor) and the model PC2386 (using the 20386). This range of computers would offer a combination of twenty-four different configurations. One of our designers came up with the aesthetics for the product and it looked excellent, thanks to a front profile that was more stylish and much thinner than that of the competition.

This design was to play a part in the impending demise of Amstrad in the PC market.

Because of my supposed Midas touch, final decisions on how a product should look from a cosmetic point of view were made by me, based on the options put forward by our designer. Normally, I'd agree the design and pass it on to the engineers as a fait accompli. I did the same for the PC2000 series.

In the case of the PC2086, this was no problem. However, big problems arose on the PC2286 and PC2386. When it came to engineering the internal construction, we had to split the circuitry between two PCBs and it was a real pig's ear of a design. I recall being in Japan at the time with Bob when the reality of this design mess hit us squarely in the face, but we made the very bad decision to carry on. We did discuss scrapping it and starting from scratch, but unfortunately the pressure was on for Amstrad to bring out 286 and 386 machines fast. We were already seen to be late entrants into the 286/386 market, considering we were supposed to be the bigshots of the PC world, having taken over 30 per cent of the total European sales. What's more, rumours that companies like Olivetti were also about to bring out low-cost 286/386 machines added to our panic. We made a bad call and ended up making a bad product.

I won't get too technical, but to understand the disaster that was about to unfold, I need to explain something about hard disk drives and how they work. In those days, the hard disk drive had to be connected to the computer using a hard disk controller card which would plug into one of the slots available on a standard IBM PC. The card itself was a very expensive item.

Amstrad's philosophy had always been to condense everything onto one PCB and not have separate items, so I commissioned our team to design our own hard disk controller chip and lay it down on the main PCB instead of buying a separate hard disk controller card, which I believe in those days cost around PS60. The chip that we laid down on the PCB would cost some money but we saved approximately PS45 this way.

We bought

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