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HomeComp History and Lore
This section covers the fictional company history and alternate-history context behind the public HomeComp releases.
It is not intended to reveal the entire future HomeComp timeline at once. The public history expands as the public ecosystem releases expand.
For the current release, this section focuses on the period leading to the September 1977 HC-77B launch.
It covers:
- the HomeComp project premise
- the early founding context
- the UK microcomputer background
- why the HC-77B launches as a front-panel 6502 machine
- how the September 1977 release fits into the wider HomeComp ecosystem
Later company history will be added as later public releases make it relevant.
HomeComp is an alternate-history retrocomputing project built around a fictional British microcomputer company.
The central question is simple: if a small UK computer company had started carefully in the mid-1970s, avoided some of the real industry's later mistakes, and built a coherent ecosystem over time, could it have survived beyond the early home-computer boom?
HomeComp is the fictional answer to that question.
The project begins with the HC-77B, a 1977 front-panel MOS 6502 microcomputer, and expands outward through hardware, firmware, software, documentation, adverts, peripherals, and emulator releases.
The fictional HomeComp story begins in 1975.
The founding premise is deliberately playful: with impossible foreknowledge, enough starting capital, and a careful understanding of where the home-computer market would go, HomeComp is created as a British microcomputer company ahead of the first major home-computer wave.
The company does not begin with a polished consumer home computer. That would be too early, too expensive, and too risky for 1975–1977.
Instead, the first objective is more modest and more historically plausible:
- build a serious expandable machine
- keep the price within reach of hobbyists and experimenters
- avoid over-promising
- create a platform that can grow through expansions and software
- establish a product identity before the market becomes crowded
That first product is the HC-77B.
The HC-77B belongs to the late-1970s single-board and early hobbyist microcomputer period.
This was the era of machines and kits that asked users to meet the computer halfway. Many systems were not yet friendly home appliances. They were boards, monitors, hexadecimal keypads, cassette interfaces, expansion connectors, and manuals.
The HC-77B is designed to sit in that world.
It is not a 1980s keyboard home computer arriving early. It is a believable 1977 launch system: a front-panel 6502 machine with cassette support, expansion capability, and a path toward richer use through TTY, keyboard, video, RAM, and later software.
The HC-77B begins as a front-panel machine because that is the right scale for the launch period.
A full keyboard-and-screen home computer would have made the first HomeComp release more expensive, more complex, and less credible for a young company in 1977. A very limited trainer would have been cheaper, but too narrow to support the wider ecosystem HomeComp is meant to become.
The HC-77B therefore occupies the middle ground:
- more serious than a pure trainer
- simpler than a full home computer
- expandable enough to grow
- understandable at the hardware level
- capable of supporting real software over time
Its front-panel monitor gives the user direct control of memory and execution. Cassette support gives it practical storage. Launch expansions such as TTY, keyboard, and video provide room for more comfortable use without changing the identity of the base machine.
The September 1977 launch represents HomeComp's first public step.
The HC-77B establishes the company's early product philosophy:
- start with a real machine, not a toy
- make expansion part of the design from the beginning
- support practical storage through cassette
- document the machine properly
- build an ecosystem gradually rather than all at once
At launch, the HC-77B is presented as a 1 KB base system with a clear path to 4 KB expansion. TTY, keyboard, and video expansions are available at launch, and cassette support is part of the system identity from the beginning.
This keeps the September 1977 release focused. It introduces the machine, the company, and the public emulator environment without pretending the entire HomeComp world exists on day one.
The public HomeComp history is release-led.
That means the wiki only documents company history that is relevant to released public material. When a new fictional product, software title, peripheral, manual, or ecosystem update is released, the history section can expand to explain its context.
Each public addition should deepen the HomeComp story without requiring the launch premise to be rewritten.
The project README gives the short public pitch and personal background.
This section exists to provide the structured fictional history behind the released HomeComp material. It should remain focused on the public release timeline rather than becoming a complete private design bible.