When the 16bit Atari ST and, later, Commodore's Amiga appeared in 1985, however, it was clear that a rigid hardware 'standard' was far less exciting than individual manufacturers blazing their own trails. The MSX retail presence was last seen with 'reduced to clear' signs in department stores such as David Evans, where I well recall a serious salesman assuring me that the by-now-£49.99 computer would be "ideal for data processing" - whatever that meant.

Some of the original MSX manufacturers, such as Goldstar, followed the same path a decade later with another 'standard' format, 3DO, which offered the same advantages as MSX - a range of machines from different suppliers which would all run the same software - but also, more importantly, the same disadvantages - lowish spec, highish price, the 'same' machine at differing prices, lack of software support and no killer app. As someone very wise once said: "Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them." This was a quotation obviously well known at Sony - they chose not to support 3DO, preferring to put their considerable efforts into a next generation console, the technology of which they kept to themselves...

For those who like a 'where are they now?' ending, the dominant computer manufacturers of 1984 ended up as follows: Sinclair were bought by Amstrad, who, after meeting much success in the PC market in the late '80s and early '90s, ended up retreating altogether from computers as prices of PC clones came down; Oric vanished the same year, after their Atmos failed; Acorn's presence is now restricted to educational establishments; Atari became a hard drive manufacturer and then sold their name and all the Atari properties to Hasbro; Commodore lasted until 1994 and IBM are still IBM.

Of course, as a final footnote, the computer industry did indeed end up with a standard of sorts - and don't we all love it?