One company that has its own reasons to rue the collapse of Computers for All is Comx World Operations Limited, the manufacturer of the Comx 35.

Last week Thomas Yu, Comx's general manager and director, and Ken tracton, the firm's marketing support director, travelled from Hong Kong and sought PCN's assistance in finding Computers for All and to set the record straight about the Comx 35.

The machine, which uses an 1802 processor chip and comes with built-in joystick and 32K of RAM, was favourably reviewed by PCN in issue 15 and Comx expected it to sell well with a price tag of £120.

It appointed another Hong Kong-based comapny called Germaine to act as its UK distributor.

The first it knew that Computers for All was distributing its machine in the UK was when it read in PCN (Issue 35) that Computers for All had withdrawn the machine because of quality control problems.

It contacted Computers for All, which until then had been under the impression that Germaine was the manufacturer. The problems with the machines that Computers for All had seen were traced to two faulty ICs in the machine.

Mr Yu said that the IC manufacturer now guards against the causes of the faults. As a result, machine failure rates are low. "We have sold 4-5,000 machines in Holland and the return rate has been 0.4 per cent," he said.

All this information was communicated to Jerr Weinrich, one of Computers for All's directors, who promised in a telex at the end of November to issue a press release to put the record straight. But PCN received no such press release and Comx has not been able to get replies to its telexes since.

Comx is now looking for a new UK distributor and is anxious to relaunch the machine.

Concerns about the lack of software support have been overcome, Mr. Yu said, as the company now has a library of more than 150 programs including languages such as Pascal and Forth. It has also produced a serial/parallel interface and a 40 column thermal printer for the machine.