[10] During 1983, Torch had been set to be acquired by GEC in a deal that would have initially involved a £3.25 million payment covering the acquisition of 76 percent of the company from its existing shareholders as well as providing additional product development and manufacturing finance.
Nevertheless, Torch chairman Bob Gilkes noted "an exceptionally high degree of compatibility in products, in strategic thinking and in management style", whereas Acorn director Alex Reid indicated that "a rationalisation of the two companies' development efforts" would give a "substantial boost" to both companies' prospects.
[22] Despite Acorn's situation, Torch continued to promote the Graduate as "the ultimate upgrade" for the BBC Micro, signing a deal with computer retailer Lasky's to make the product available in its stores.
This refinancing came in the form of Torch's Australian distributor and customer, Catsco, taking a majority shareholding in the company, augmented with additional funds from Newmarket Venture Capital.
IXI Limited, founded by Torch's Ray Anderson, developed the general approach further with its X.desktop product that was ultimately licensed by workstation vendors.
Unipalm acquired the graphical user interface and X Window System products of Torch, with the latter being of particular commercial interest.
took on 15 former Torch employees and hardware development, also continuing to supply the workstation range; Control Universal were to market the VME boards.
Some Quad X boards obtained by Worldmark were sold but the company concentrated on PC technology and began to specialise in small form-factor computers.
The main emphasis is now on enclosure products and large LCD displays for digital signage and art installations.
[citation needed] The company provided a range of expansions for the BBC Micro under the Unicorn brand, although this name was also applied to a particular variant of the HDP68K product.
[35] The Z80-based products including the HDP68K were bundled with the Perfect suite of applications to run under Torch's CPN operating system (a clone of CP/M).
[40] The C-500 models provided the base 6502-based BBC system augmented with a Z80A second processor having its own 64 KB RAM, whereas the C-68000 models upgraded the Z80 CPU to a Z80B device and added a Motorola 68000 CPU plus 256 KB RAM, supporting the UCSD p-System and Unix System III (as with the Torch HDP68K/Unicorn).
[46] Designed by Prism and Transam and sold through a joint venture, Wren Computers, with manufacturing undertaken by Thorn EMI, the Wren ran CP/M Plus and was bundled with the Perfect applications suite, M-Tec Computer Services' BBC BASIC, the Executive Desktop suite (offering a range of personal organiser and accessory tools), and communications software.
Regarded as a transportable machine, the Wren was seen as "proven technology" but "good value for money" at its release in 1984,[47] in contrast to the Communicator which was seen as "impressive" little more than a year earlier at a much higher price.
[4] The Z80 Disc Pack was designed to sit beneath the BBC Micro itself and use short cables to connect the two units together, this raising the height of the keyboard by approximately three inches and making typing "a little difficult".
The Z80 second processor supplied as part of the product, also available as the ZEP100, was connected to the Tube expansion connector but actually fitted internally within the computer.
Unlike many BBC Micro second processor solutions, it connected to the host computer using the 1 MHz bus expansion port.
[12] Originally developed and announced by Data Technologies, a company founded by Torch founder Martin Vlieland-Boddy, and set for launch on 14 June 1984,[55] two principal product variants were to be offered - the G400 with only one floppy disk drive costing about £690 (or £600 plus VAT[55]), the G800 with two drives costing about £1000 (or £869 plus VAT[55]) and bundled with the Thorn-EMI Perfect software suite[56] - each configured with either 128 KB or 256 KB of RAM.
[62] During the development of the Graduate, rumours that the product would be made available for the Acorn Electron were dismissed by Data Technologies who indicated that there were "no plans" for such a variant.
[67] Reviewers were generally positive about the Unix functionality provided, with compilers, linkers, editors and other tools being included with the system.
However, such praise was tempered by a disappointment with the responsiveness of the system, one reviewer calling "the frequent short pauses fatiguing",[66] another lamenting the "four minutes (no less!)
to log on" and that "[w]hen using the screen editor 'vi', the regular transfer of data to disc, unnoticeable on most systems, takes about three seconds on the Unicorn".
[75] Alongside the main processor system, and reminiscent of Torch's previous products involving the BBC Micro, a service processor (a 6303 with on-chip RAM and ROM) controlled the video and sound systems, keyboard and mouse, serial and 1 MHz bus, and the real-time clock.
[74]: 53 To support graphical interaction with the Unix-based system, the OpenTop environment offered a "Macintosh-style desk-top" featuring a menu bar, desktop icons, and multiple overlapping resizable windows, with windows supporting existing terminal-based applications as well as applications written to take advantage of the OpenTop facilities.
Pricing of the base system without monitor was £3995, with 10-inch and 13-inch colour displays, made by Sony but using a case specially designed for the Triple X,[75] being supplied for £699 and £799 respectively.
[81] BT would eventually produce its own 68020- and 68030-based Unix systems - the M6320 (a "desk-top model"), M6520 and M6530 - comprising the M6000 range, apparently mostly aimed at multi-user timesharing as opposed to the workstation emphasis of the Triple X.
[82] Torch also promoted the Triple X for Cambridge University's Project Granta, an initiative aiming to provide large numbers of workstations to researchers and students at the institution.
Similar display capabilities to the Triple X were provided, with a system upgraded to a 20 MHz CPU supporting a higher 1024×768 pixel resolution.
[84] A similar combination of Motorola chipset, OpenChip DMA controller, VME bus, storage, and network interfaces was marketed by Torch Technology in 1990 as the QS product family.
Torch Computers were credited at the end of all Dempsey and Makepeace episodes and were frequently featured in the background of the SI-10 headquarters sequences.