The history of the original MSX could be viewed as a cautionary tale for British manufacturers trying to achieve standardisation.

MSX was announced nearly two years ago, but although the machines have been available in Japan for well over a year, the flower of Japan's electronics industry failed to achieve anything like the penetration of the UK market it aimed for.

The machines were intended to use standardisation to carve but a significant slice of the market last Christmas, but in the event only a few tens of thousand machines were sold, with Toshiba taking the lion's share. Many of the manufacturers failed to get more than a few hundred machines into the country.

But for all that, the Japanese companies aren't liable to go away. In the aftermath of Christmas 1984 the companies were talking about Christmas 1985 being the big one, with large quantities of MSX machines on sale for £150.

This would be MSX version one, but if the new Ataris appear as promised it's likely that an attempt will be made to leapfrog to the MSX version two standard. The next version of MSX could be a lot more dangerous.

It will be based around a 16 or 32-bit processor, probably a custom chip incorporating a Z80, and giving the new machines compatibility with the earlier versions. If the MSX companies do jump this way, and jump early, the battle will be fought by 16/32-bit machines.