website/content/museum/comx-world-operations-ltd-comx-35.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
COMX WORLD OPERATIONS LTD COMX 35	Computers	Home Computer	Hong Kong	1983	RCA CDP-1802A	name image company company_name specs tabs photos adverts emulators links comments software oc_id source COMX 35 /media/museum/photos/comx35_rside_1-400px.jpg /companies/comx-world-operations-ltd COMX WORLD OPERATIONS LTD label value NAME COMX 35 label value MANUFACTURER COMX World Operations LTD label value TYPE Home Computer label value ORIGIN Hong Kong label value YEAR 1983 label value END OF PRODUCTION Unknown label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE COMX Basic label value KEYBOARD Calculator type keyboard, 55 keys QWERTY\ Carriage Return (CR), RT, ESC, SHIFT (x2), DEL label value CPU RCA CDP-1802A label value SPEED 2,8 MHz label value CO-PROCESSOR Video : RCA CDP1869 & CDP1870 chipsets label value RAM 32 Kb RAM which are available for BASIC programs label value VRAM 3 Kb CMOS static RAM label value ROM 16 Kb label value TEXT MODES 40 columns x 24 lines. 64 upper case ASCII characters label value GRAPHIC MODES None, but 64 user programmable graphical characters label value COLORS 8 label value SOUND 1 channel synthesiser - 8 octaves, 16 volume steps and special effects + white noise generator label value SIZE / WEIGHT 29 (W) x 16 (D) x 4.5 (H) cm label value I/O PORTS Tape, Monitor, 44-pin Bus expansion label value BUILT IN MEDIA None label value POWER SUPPLY 9V ac 500 mA external power supply unit / center positive - -(o- + label value PERIPHERALS Expansion box, floppy disk-drives, printers, 80-column card, RAM expansion label value PRICE £130 (UK, june 1983) photos adverts software emulators links title subtitle text image COMX-35 null title subtitle text image EXPLODED VIEW Copyright Olivier Boisseau / old-computers.com /media/museum/photos/comx35_assemblage_1.jpg title subtitle text image WHITE MODEL Even rarer ?! /media/museum/photos/comx35_white_1.jpg title subtitle text image KEYBOARD CLOSE-UP /media/museum/photos/comx_35_keyboard_1.jpg title subtitle text image COMX 35 BOX /media/museum/photos/comx_35_box_1.jpg title subtitle text image PC1 BOX /media/museum/photos/comx_pc1_box_s1.jpg title subtitle text image UK ADVERT (1983) Thanks to Nosher.net for this advert /media/museum/pubs/comx35_pub_pcw_1983-06_021_alsycomx35-m.jpg title subtitle text image SWEDISH ADVERT The COMX-35 was sold by Noxon in Sweden. /media/museum/pubs/comx35_noxon_pub_1.jpg title subtitle text image SAVLA PC1 ADVERT The COMX PC1 was also marketed as the Savla PC1 in India ! Thanks to HereBeDragons for this picture /media/museum/pubs/savla-pc1_comx35.jpg title url platform text 1802 Emulator http://www.comxclub.hobby-site.com/ Windows Beta version of COMX and 1802 Emulator running on windows title url platform text RCS Elf Emulator http://www.elf-emulation.com/ Unix / Linux Beta version of a COMX emulator for Unix/Linux (Windows compilation available) title url text Comx 35 - Your Computer review from 1983 http://www.gondolin.org.uk/hchof/reviews/yc-comx35.html The title says it all title url text COMX club - Nederland http://www.comxclub.hobby-site.com/ Simple page with contacts of the Club author date text Joey Rivers (Australia) Friday 30th December 2011 COMX-35 was my first computer when i was in the airforce in 1983. If memory serves me correctly I paid $299 including a tape of "100 Free Games". These turned out to be a home made cassette of very basic "BASIC" games. I think I bought one commercial game COMX INvaders. I remember trying to justify my purchase at the time by boasting about the built in Joystick and the powerful interrupt driven command in the BASIC. Regrettably it was not well supported at the time and I sold it a couple months later for $200 which I put towards my C64. But thats another story! author date text COMX CLUB Netherlands (The Netherlands, Nijmegen) Monday 21st May 2007 The Club is going very well, a emulator is in the process of building and the website is finally done. Feel free to post your info, comment of suggestions to me. Address and numbers can be found on the contactpage. author date text Qedqubit ((Netherlands)) Friday 23rd February 2007 it appeared in 1979, it was the 1st computer i saw, my teacher typed 10 print "the teach is crazy" ande explained that adding a semi colon caused the words to be printed along the line instead of on the nexxt line if you added 20 goto 10. i was hooked, 2 years l8r i convinced my father to buy a timex sinclkair 1000, the 1st day appeared in 1981 in holland author date text Juha (Finland) Thursday 8th February 2007 I made a finding a year ago from a basement of a old store. I found 20 boxed COMX-35's, 15 casette recorders and 10 "Fantasticks" ... if you are interested in you can contact me :-) author date text Hudson (USA) Tuesday 16th January 2007 I bought my first PC in 1983 - a COMX 35. Comparing to the Apple IIe at that time, it came with some interesting features: 1. You don't need a dedicate monitor - your TV is your COLOR monitor! No, you don't need a color display card. 2. If you have a walkman and a blank cassette tape, you get your I/O and storage device! (if you don't mind to wait for 10 min. to load a simple, stupid game). 3. Built-in joystick (my newest Dell don't even have one included!) author date text Dennis Heijmans (The Netherlands) Saturday 2nd September 2006 I'm start a club for people who are still owning and/or using the COMX-35. Everybody with ideas or interest kan email of fax. See the homepage for more info. author date text Marcel van Tongeren (Sweden) Tuesday 28th March 2006 A beta version of a COMX emulator is available, have a look at http://www.elf-emulation.com/. At this moment the site only has a unix/linux version however I have managed to compile it on windows. Let me know if you want a copy of the exe. Note a comx rom image is needed to run the emulator. Thanks a lot Mike! author date text Dennis Heijmans (Nijmegen, Nederland) Sunday 5th June 2005 My father bought the COMX-35 in 1983 en we both enjoined it very much over the time. Later he bought also a PC-1 model and en FDD controller with two 360k drives.\ These last items are my problem right now.\ I am using the COMX again, but the master disk for the COMX DOS system is missing, so i can't use any floppy disk anymore !\ The master disk is needed to format a disk so you can put software and data on it.\ When anyone can help me, i would really appreciate it and am willing to trade it for copies of software on cassette and/or disk. I have a lot of tapes with original programs, games and even listing on paper ! Also almost all of the comx-club editions are in my possession. HELP ME ! PLEASE ! author date text Anonymous (Finland) Wednesday 21st July 2004 If an emulator is to be written, a dump of the COMX-35 operating system ROM is essential and must be acquired by way of an EPROM reader. Without it nothing can be done as to emulating the machine. A framework for easy emulator development called MESS (www.mess.org) would preferably be used as it contains a ready CDP1802 cpu core and other facilities that greatly ease the development process. author date text Barend Scholtus (Holland) Monday 8th March 2004 The COMX35 is the first home computer my father bought and it is the first computer on which I learned to program. I remember spending hours and hours trying to figure out how to get a bulleton the screen with CPOS. I was too young (7 or 8?) to read the English manual. We had a game with a horse race. Nice. We also had a game with a submarine that needs to shoot oil carriers and others boats and even helicopters from the air. I remember that once I played a single game for so long that I got unlimited lives. That must have been a bug though. Anyway, I haven't seen any COMX35 emulators around and that's a big pity. I also don't have a COMX35 myself. I would be interested in writing an emulator myself, since I'm a software engineer anyway. I'm also interested in having a COMX35 again. But no idea where to start. author date text Peter (Australia) Saturday 17th January 2004 Hi guys and gals, I have a wonderful Comx 35 computer. I used to do all sorts of stuff like, program games, music and graphics. Not hi-res graphics but character graphics using the SHAPE command. Just loved the Comx35 when redefining characters the screen would flicker and give you a head rush. Music was great too, 2 sound channels using the MUSIC command ( square wave ) and the NOISE command for drums. It sound very sad but it worked. Playing the game from Comex like SHOOT N RUN and WORM were my favoriots. We did have more but can't find them now. I still have the comx 35 with manual etc but I beleive it has a memory fault. Anyway just my contribution to a fantastic 35k cpu 1802 1Mhz computer. The 8 colours weren't bad either.\ Peter author date text Peter Schijven (Netherlands) Thursday 12th June 2003 My brother (who is 12 yeard older than i am) had one. Later he bought the COMX-PC1 and he sold the COMX-35 to a neightbour (Zoetie). author date text Yariv (ISRAEL) Sunday 12th January 2003 I have a COMX-35 in the box with the original manual and software takes (2 of them). i collect old stuff and got this thing couple of months ago but i didn't bother to play with it yet. It has even a translation of the manual to Hebrew. By looking in the manual it seems like it has a very limited basic. author date text Martin Persson (Sweden) Saturday 5th October 2002 There is a Swedish webpage about old computers who have a page about the COMX-35.\ The info is in Swedish but there is a copy of a test from a computer magasine thats in English. http://home.bip.net/peter.kiefer/comx35_2.htm author date text Roelf Brouwer (Holland) Wednesday 7th August 2002 I have a comx-35 with an interface and printer. Everything in original. Mmm, what can I say about the comx-35. My fahter had a photo shop. And he was joingning a group what now still excist in the photo-branche. The name is called 'Combi-Foto'.\ These goup has bring the COMX-35 exclusevly on the market. With basic-learning books and the software was atended to be free. Well, you should share listings of basic-programms. So, the comx35 was marketing here as a computer for and by the users. You know, when you put on the comx-35 you get a sound? Or if you reset. It's a nice ding-dong-dong. I have not so much programmed with the comx-35 I was more the ZX-Spectrum fan and later the Amiga 500. Well, for a few years ago I buyed a TRS-80 Model-1. The computer what infected me with my hobby. I was only 11! Now I am 33 and have still a lot of fun with them. /software/get-your-gadget 110 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230606203800/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=110 2023-06-06

The COMX 35 is a computer designed and manufactured in Hong-Kong by COMX World Operations LTD. The computer is based on an RCA CDP-1802A processor running at 2.8 MHz. The machine contains a total of 35 kB of memory of which 32 kB can be used by the user.

This computer is quite oscbure, and little is known about its history, particularly in Honk-Kong.

It was desgined and manufactured in Hong Kong by COMX WORLD OPERATIONS LIMITED. It was also sold in Sweden by Noxon AB, and in the UK by ALSY Computers Ltd, but it is in the Netherlands that he had most success (at least for Europe concerns).

The company that imported the COMX-35 to the Netherlands, West Electronics, supplied almost all of COMX software for free and copyright-free (or for a small fee for tape, disc and / or shipping). West Electronics also hosted several homemade software competitions, resulting in the fact that most software found today for the COMX-35 are actually in dutch.

There is no graphic mode, but user definable characters can be used to simulate graphics. The sound features are poor as there is only one single channel beeper. You can hear it when pressing a key. The Basic is very simple, with not a lot of specific statements, since there is not much to play with...

The keyboard is said to be waterproof (can someone test that for us ?) and used goldplated contacts under the keys (if you've got one, you are rich :-)). There is a built-in joystick to the right of the keyboard (very easy to break), a bit like on the Spectravideo SV-318. And just above it, is the power Led.

Different hardware extensions were made available, including an expansion box allowing 4 extension cards to be connected simultaneous. Cards were available to connect floppy disk drives, printers (parallel, serial and thermal) and an 80 column monitor. A 32K RAM extension was available as well, however the additional RAM was not usable or supported by COMX BASIC.

The chosen CPU, the RCA CPD-1802, was also used in the RCA Studio 2 videogame system and a development/hobby systems using Chip-8, like the Cosmac RCA VIP. This 8-bit processor is still being manufactured in many forms, as it is radiation-resistant. It was also used as the heart of the Voyager, Viking and Galileo probes !

The COMX-35 is black but can also be found in a white case. This model is rarer than the black one.

The COMX-35 did have a successor: the COMX-PC1. This was just a COMX-35 in a different housing and better keyboard. This PC1 was also sold as the Savla PC1 in India!

The design of the COMX-35 is quite similar to the Pecom 64 and the Telmac 600, even the BASIC is based on the same code as these computers. All 3 were based on Quest Super BASIC.

The COMX Basic is interesting and has some original features such as TIME and TIMOUT functions. TIME(X) can be used to start a clock and when X units of time has elapsed, the TIMOUT Y is used to jump to a subroutine beginning with the line number Y. Pretty neat !!

---

Thanks to www.homecomputermuseum.nl, ww.comxclub.hobby-site.com and www.emma02.hobby-site.com for some of the info.