with the two bundled cartridges for £36.95; the full model offered two cartridge ports, printer port and the bundled cartridges for £39.95. Various board upgrade options were also offered between the variants, with the product being described mainly as a vehicle to expose the bundled software packages to as many as 150,000 owners of the estimated 200,000 Electrons in the UK who "have not yet been able to acquire or use View or Viewsheet". The lack of casing was considered the most significant disadvantage, with the absence of the analogue port deemed less critical due to a general lack of support for joysticks in many games. Communications and networking To support connectivity, Acorn announced a Plus 2 network interface with availability scheduled for early 1985, together with a RS423 cartridge for the Plus 1. Neither of these products were delivered as announced. Acorn Plus 2 The Acorn Plus 2 interface was due to provide Econet capability. This interface did not make it to market. However, an Econet interface was produced by Barson Computers in Australia and possibly other individuals and businesses. Acorn Plus 4 The Acorn Plus 4 interface was due to provide a modem communications capability. Andyk RS423 cartridge Andyk announced an RS423 cartridge for the Plus 1 providing a serial port, alongside other products, in late 1985. It was priced at £34.99. Pace Tellstar/Nightingale Originally reported in mid-1985 as a collaboration between Acorn and Pace Micro Technology, but launched in early 1986, Pace offered a communications product consisting of a RS423 cartridge, bundled with a Nightingale modem and Tellstar communications software, offered at a discounted price of £145. Jafa Systems RS423 cartridge Jafa Systems announced an RS423 cartridge in late 1989 to "fill a two year gap in the market", offering a serial connector compatible with the BBC Micro together with an on-board socket for 8 KB or 16 KB EPROM devices or for 32 KB RAM, the latter being configured to present two sideways RAM banks to the system. Write protect functionality was supported to prevent certain ROM software from attempting to overwrite itself if stored in RAM. The cartridge board itself was priced at around £30, with a case costing £5 extra, and an optional 32 KB RAM adding another £20. Support for the E00 ADFS offered by PRES for that company's AP3 disc system was indicated as an application for the sideways RAM. Slogger Plus