Solve the "Which microcomputer to buy" puzzle in six easy moves

There's nothing quite like an advert without a photo of the thing you're selling to really promote it, although this one does at least feature a custom Rubik's cube. 

That's maybe because this appears to be just another "beige box" IBM-a-like, and judging by most of the other clones being released at the time, if you've seen one you've seen 'em all. 

[picture: zen_dealer_percw_dec82.webp|A pre-released advert for Zen Microcomputer's mystery IBM-compatible PC, possibly also called Zen, either after a branch of Chinese Bhuddism or the ship's computer in legendary 1970s TV series Blake's 7. It shows the possibly-garbled iAPX 186/8086 microprocessor designation in the otherwise-standard specification. From PCW, December 1982]

The Zen had a fairly standard spec, although it advertised one of its CPU options as being the iAPX 186[source: PCW, December 1982, p. 213]. iAPX was a short-lived way that Intel used to describe its Advanced Performance Architecture - a term which didn't even work when condensed to an initialism and which apparently confused even Intel's own technical authors[source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAPX]. 

The iAPX 186 is otherwise known as the Intel 80186, a relatively-rare processor which was hardware-incompatible with the popular 8086/8088 series - it required different support chips - and so was largely ignored by PC manufacturers who instead waited for the 80286, released in 1982. The Zen was however available with a more-conventional Intel 8086.

In a pre-release advert in December 1982's PCW, Zen Microcomputers - the company - didn't seem to know how much it was going to sell its machine for, as it was suggesting "circa £1,400 + VAT", or around £1,610. That's about [[1610|1983]] in [[now]].
