Interface - Up the Junction

Add-on cards for the IBM PC are emerging in decks. Microage Distribution's (01-205 7688) Graphics Edge plug-in card comes with a light pen interface and a printer port at £684. The company says the card is compatible with Lotus 1-2-3 and the Microsoft Flight Simulator, and allows you to run graphics software simultaneously on both colour and monochrome monitors. At £247, Magic Card is for the electronic office and has two useful packages at no extra cost - PC-Write is a word processor and Formmanager a filing system.

KPG (01-995 3573) has produced a multi-function card, Ideamax 384, with 64K of memory and three interfaces at £318. Pop Ultrapak into your PC and you get a 132 x 44 display and compatibility with several business packages. At £747 Ultrapak is available from MBS (07535 68171).

Attach a Sanyo disk drive kit to your MBC550 and turn it into an MBC555. At £343 you can have a twin disk machine with three packages: Infostar, Mailmerge and Spellstar. Contact Sanyo (Watford 46363). A range of floppies from US firm Memtek is now available in the UK. Prices range from £4.25 for a twin-pack of single-sided, double-density disks to £31.25 for a pack of ten double-sided, double-density disks. Contact Memtek (Middlesex 47241).

With an Inmac adaptor you can plug in an IEEE interface device to a RS232 (V24) connector - which means there's no messing about with the connectors on cables. The adaptors are available from Inmac (09285 67551), in two forms - either male/male or female/female for £33 each.

Commodore uses looking for a printer can try three new machines. The MCS 801 is a dot-matrix printer which prints up to seven colours. For £399, it runs at 38 cps, produces graphics, offers tractor feed and takes two copies. At the same price a letter-quality daisywheel printer gives you bi-directional printing at 18 cps from a full range of typefaces. For a no-frills dot-matrix printer the MPS 802, printing at 60 cps and costing £345 may be what you need.

DRG's (0934 415398) Ensign 1650 is a dot-matrix printer at £343. It gives 165 cps, friction and tractor feeds and has seven character sets and five modes. Also there's the TEC A10/30 at £792 which has features such as bold and shadow printing modes with underlining; it runs at 30 cps.

A couple of fast dot-matrix printers are available from Thame Systems (084-421 5471), the MC2200 and MC4200 at £516 and £642 respectively. It you're having printer compatibility problems, Interface Systems (0424 225683) has come up with a range of printer interface adaptors. With Microway, you can opt for the printer of your choice, without tampering with your hardware. The unit costs £89.