A little while ago I asked who developed the Zero 1 system for Hornby.
I noted in Issue 74 of The Collector a =91Member Profile=92 on Malcolm Tyler who claims to be the former owner of a Singapore based factory making electronic modules for watches. He suggested to a then Hornby director that they design the =91modules=92 along the same lines.
The factory manufactured and delivered to Margate over half a million R995 modules ! Wonder how many still work ?
One thing I don=92t recall from my Zero 1 days is something in the article called a =91R957/8 mimic diagram=92 which showed which way the points were set. Assume they were just a simple illuminated display ?
Yes Robin Palmer did go on to form ZTC Some say ZTC originally stood for Zero Two Controller !
Another system I never came across at the time was the Airfix MTC ( Multiple Train Control ) system, looked a bit more futuristic than Zero 1 but same basics eg 16 loco=92s etc
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The bit about track cleaning made me smile =93 and almost totally removes the need for track cleaning=94
The RRP of the kit was also cheaper than Hornby if I recall ?
The Hornby decoders could be set to operate on all 16 available addresses but the Airfix ones had 4 different types (A, B, C & D) which each could be set to one of only 4 addresses, so still a maximum of 16 but more complicated. It was less successful than Zero 1.
It looks like that is a pre-production advert (how many of us got taken in by companies taking our money before any product was available?). The production R.958 display consoles were like that shown in
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$(KGrHqYH-CoEttqNdQ-0BLhWmHBDBg~~_35.JPG I have a couple rescued about 18 years ago from the back of a warehouse. By that time the rechargeable battery on the motherboard had leaked and I had to carefully remove it, clean and repair the tracks around it and replace it with a flying lead to a rechargeable battery in a holder. I also got 3 display boards along with the accesories but had to make up the extra bulbs for the display with bits from Maplins. It's still attached to the (originally Zero1 controlled) layout I built behind our loft room 30 years ago. Although the trackwork was updated to ZTC control the points are still Zero1 controlled (although they need parts replacing now) and continue to work with the boards still displaying their settings. Although it was possible to programme in routes the power available from the Hornby point units was not enough to operate more than one Peco point motor at a time so in practice that didn't work.
It was a shame that Hornby pulled the plug on further development of zero1 eg the interface to link the micromimic to a PC (eg a BBC mocro or ZX Spectrum through the serial port), a way of increasing the number of locos controllable above 16 by fitting a small decoder between the loco and the decoder which would be turned on by a point command.
From what I remember of the Airfix system its FDM rather than TDM based meaning you were limited to the frequencies available whilst Zero 1 was TDM (Digital) and was limited to the chipsets used. Probably a better explanation of the difference on Wikipedia.
That's correct. 12 years ago I did upgrade to the faster Strong ARM processor and 10 years ago I upgraded to RISC OS 4.02 and added a Viewfinder card to give a 16million colour display at 1600x1200. It still works well. The news etc reader !Pluto is fast and easy to use as is the latest version of the web browser !Netsurf - the only problems are with poorly written sites and those using proprietory add ons but one click of the mouse and these can be sent off to a PC on the network to decipher. I've used this machine virtually everyday for the last 15 years in which time we have got through 6 windows machines.
I don't think many people know how widespread the ARM chip is used.
HP printers, mobile & video phones, routers, internet radio's .... the list goes on and on.
Sorry to the other members on the group but I do like to sometimes go back to when we in the UK were at the leading edge of technology and manufacturing.
There are currently more "ARM" chips in daily use than people on the planet.
Transport, white goods like washing machines, mp3 players etc, hearing aids etc etc.
The secret of ARM Ltd's success is that they never manufactured anything just licensed the technology to many other companies who use the ARM core as a basis for their chips and then add on other functions.
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