Peacock Computers
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Peacock Computers is a Pantocratorian company which has sold personal computers and computer software since its founding in 1980. It is the only significant domestic player in the Pantocratorian personal computer market, where it accounts for about a quarter of all personal computers sold (28% in 2006, 26% in 2005, 27% in 2004). Over the past two years its personal computer business has been eclipsed by its PeacockPod range, a range of digital music players which has sold over a billion units world wide.
Ordinateur Paon Classique
The Ordinateur Paon Classique (Peacock Computer Classic), or the Ordinateur Paon as it was originally branded, was the first personal computer produced by Peacock Computers. Peacock Motors had, in a lawsuit, acquired the design of the computer from an electrical engineer in their employ, named Jacques Penault. Penault was employed to design fuel injection control systems for high performance engines then in the research and development phase at Peacock Motors, but with his project stalled he had used his time to develop a microcomputer design based on many of the same integrated circuits employed in his project. When the designs were discovered, Peacock Motors successfully contested ownership of them on the basis that Penault had designed the computer during business hours, and had therefore been salaried to develop the computer. Peacock Motors decided to attempt to commercialise the design, and sold it to Peacock Holdings Group, which founded Peacock Computers to mass produce Penault's design.
The Peacock Computer Classic was an eight bit microcomputer with sixteen kilobytes of RAM. Penault's original design mostly employed integrated circuits developed by Peacock Motors' research and development teams, and included expansion slots which would allow the computer's RAM to be upgraded to up to sixty-four kilobytes with only a minimal amount of soldering. Penault's design was refined for mass production, consolidating the four different circuit boards in it into one easily produced circuit board, at the expense of the memory expansion slots. Penault's design also called for an eight inch floppy disk drive, but this was replaced by a much cheaper to produce tape drive, which could save to and read from ordinary audio cassettes, albeit slowly. It was sold as an all-in-one unit with the keyboard and four-colour monitor, initially retailing for ∂1,200. The only peripheral available was a dot matrix printer, which sold for ∂320 by itself.
Along with the hardware designed by Penault, a small suite of software was developed by Peacock Computers for the computer. The box in which the computer itself was sold included a primitive word processor, two games, and a typing tutor, each on its own cassette. Six other software titles were available at release, and throughout the production life of the computer, Peacock Computers would release sixty three separate pieces of software for the Peacock Computer Classic, with hundreds of others developed by third party developers.
It was released on 18 November 1980, and while it enjoyed strong Christmas sales, its sales slowed in early 1981 due to its relatively high price. Peacock Computers continued to refine its production techniques and in mid-1981 dropped the official retail price by ∂200, and then by another ∂120 just before Christmas 1981, which was the Peacock Computer Classic's biggest sales period. After the Peacock Computer Enhanced was released in 1982, its predecessor was rebranded "Peacock Computer Classic" - prior to this, it had simply been sold as the Peacock Computer. Its price was significantly cut on the release of its successor, and would continue to be reduced until its production ended in 1984, at which time it sold for ∂254.
Ordinateur Paon Augmenté
In 1981 Peacock Computers hired Jacques Penault, the original designer of the Peacock Computer Classic. After the engineer had lost his court case over the rights to the design to Peacock Motors in early 1979, he had resigned from the company and had attempted to start his own company. After the Peacock Computer Classic's release, Peacock Computers approached Penault about becoming the lead designer on its next product, already called the Ordinateur Paon Augmenté (Peacock Computer Enhanced). Penault originally declined, but relented when Peacock Computers made him a board member and offered ∂540,000 to buy out his floundering business.
The original design for the Peacock Computer Classic would be the starting point for the Peacock Computer Enhanced. Switching to an external monitor, tape drive and power supply gave Penault space inside the computer's plastic case for the memory expansion slots which the Peacock Computer Classic had abandoned from his original design. Each slot was now occupied by a new memory chip, bringing the Peacock Computer Enhanced's total RAM to 64 kilobytes. The clock speed of the processor from the Peacock Computer Classic was also increased, but the rest of the hardware was otherwise quite similar, except a variety of ports were added to allow for the creation of a wider range of peripheral devices.
