MUPID

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MUPID
Mupid.jpg
Manufacturer MCG
Type Btx terminal , home computer
publication 1982
End of production 1989
Factory price ATS 1,000 
processor Z80A @ 4 MHz
random access memory 128  KB , 64  KB of which is freely available for program and BTX pages
graphic 230/320/480 points / line, 16 fixed and 16 freely definable colors
Sound nv
Disk external, floppy disk drive, cassette recorder
operating system CP / M from MUPID 2
predecessor nv
successor set

The MUPID was a device developed and manufactured in Austria by the Graz university professor Hermann Maurer and his team, with which it was possible for the first time to connect normal television sets to the Austrian, German or Swiss BTX network. The device had some of the characteristics of a home computer , but the standard version lacked non-volatile storage options (e.g. hard disk , floppy disk drive ).

In a way, MUPID and BTX anticipated some of the functions of the Internet in the 1980s .

History and Development

M ehrzweck U niversell P rogrammierbarer I ntelligenter D ecoder is the official interpretation of Akronymes MUPID. The co-inventor Hermann Maurer has noted to fan discussions in the late 1990s that the suspected of fans interpretation M aurers U nd P oschs I ntelligenter D ecoder is actually original and therefore equally applicable. The second co-inventor Reinhard Posch , today Chief Information Officer of the Austrian Federal Government , has not yet commented publicly on this question of interpretation.

The MUPID was developed as a screen text device on behalf of the Austrian Post and Telegraph Administration from the IIG , Institute for Information Processing Graz under the project management of Hermann Maurer for the PRESTEL standard.

From 1982 the MUPID 1 in Austria was made available to its Btx customers by PTV, usually for a monthly fee. In March 1984, the one-time purchase price for a MUPID 1000 cost ATS (72.67 euros) and a monthly rent of 130 schillings (9.45 euros).

In contrast to other Btx terminals , it could also be used as an independent home computer . An external modem was connected to the television set via the Cenelec interface for the connection to the Btx control center .

With the changeover to the CEPT standard, the MUPID 2 was brought onto the market in 1984 . By using the CP / M operating system and external floppy drives, he tried to keep up with developments on the home computer market. At this time, devices such as the C64 or Tandy experienced a real boom. In contrast to the Mupid, however, these were not Btx-compatible or not approved by the postal administrations in Austria and Germany.

A further development was the MUPID card , with the help of which it was possible to make a PC, for example IBM PC XT or IBM PC AT Btx-compatible.

Marketing / Export

In 1983 the company MCG, Mupid Computer Gesellschaft , was founded with the participation of the companies ELIN , Siemens Austria , VÖEST and Motronic , each with 25%. The company's goal was the further development, production and marketing of the MUPID both in Austria and abroad.

The MUPID was exported to Germany and Switzerland with some success, but the quantities expected by the producer were not met in any country. This is mainly because the number of customer connections for BTX forecast by the postal authorities was never reached.

Applications

In addition to being used as a home computer, the MUPID was also used by companies. On the one hand, data could regularly be loaded inexpensively from an "external computer" and then displayed offline , on the other hand it was possible to maintain the MUPID software centrally due to the use of the telesoftware (not a matter of course at that time).

Some typical uses were:

The End

As the importance of BTX decreased, so did the MUPID. Production stopped in 1989. In the meantime, like many other computers, it has become an interesting collector's item. In the 1990s, Austrian Post recycled the inventory of MUPIDs and handed them over to schools for teaching purposes. Some Austrian higher technical institutes secured quantities and used the devices for various projects.

Web links