Exidy Sorcerer

The Exidy Sorcerer is a home computer that the video game company Exidy, of Sunnyvale, California, released in 1978. It was built around the Zilog Z80 processor and followed the general layout of the emerging S-100 bus standard, which made it comparatively advanced next to the better selling Commodore PET and TRS-80 of its day. Exidy later marketed it as a small business computer through a subsidiary called Exidy Systems. Worldwide sales were around 20,000 units. Because the parent company concentrated on the coin-operated arcade game market and did not seek venture capital, the machine was sold mainly through international distributors and technology licensing agreements, including Dick Smith Electronics in Australia, Liveport in the United Kingdom and Compudata in the Netherlands, whose design grew into the Tulip line of computers. Exidy Systems was sold in 1981 and again in 1982, and the last owner rebranded the machine as the smart-ALEC. A user group in Australia kept supporting the Sorcerer long after Exidy discontinued it.