The Schneider home computers were rebadged Amstrad CPCs for the German market. -Thomas F. On Sep 14, 2018, at 1:00 AM, Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> wrote:
I’d love to know if they’ve been influenced by the Fischertechnik (construction toy from Germany) robotics sets from the 1980s.
Good question!
The answer is almost certainly "yes".
FT's web site says that company got into computers in 1985: https://www.fischertechnik.de/en/about-us/history
Google let me to a German Wikipedia entry, which automatically translated to:
"With computing, training robots and plotter scanners, Fischertechnik got involved in computer technology. Interfaces for all then common home computers appeared, including Apple II, Acorn and Commodore 64, later also for Schneider, Atari ST and IBM PCs. Programming languages for driving the models were GW-BASIC, Turbo Pascal and in later kits (1991) also the in-house programming tool Lucky Logic."
I never heard of a computer brand called Scheider, but I found their name on this advertisement: http://www.cpcwiki.eu/imgs/3/32/Fischertechnik_Covertape.jpg
Presumably the computer is a mockup: it's a terminal keyboard (dead giveaway is "line feed" key) and the monitor shows hex code. :)
But the model looks pretty cool.
I have other information about the FT/Lego connection, but I am not yet prepared to share it...