Introduction

The Silicon Village was an ambitious project set up in the wake of the closure of Micronet 800 by some of the same staff to cater for the domestic Prestel users whom were perceived as having nowhere specific to go.  By linking up with John Clarke Computing, whom provided viewdata services for commercial operators, and using the new Mercury 5000 network, they were able to offer local call access to the service, a distinct advantage over the various local services already available, even if it did mean charging users for their time online.

Many of the contributors to Micronet moved over to continue to publish on The Silicon Village, but it would appear not to have been the commercial success that it could have been.  The home market was moving towards Windows PCs, and the Internet was starting to make an impact.  Many of the contributors found it easier to publish on the "World Wide Web", where they also found a larger audience.

Today, The Silicon Village still exists on the Internet, although the site is unmaintained and in a state of disrepair. The translation of the original viewdata pages to web pages seems to have lost all the graphics, and there are many broken links and missing pages.  It would seem to be a very sad end to a promising service.


In 1993, a demonstration disc was made for users of the Acorn Archimedes that included a sample of the service and access an subscription details.  A single copy of !SVRead_Arc was found on the Internet, which turned out to be a !Sparkplug archive file that, as well as the browser, included the pages in an easily translatable form.  So, for the first time, by the wonders of modern technology, anybody with a web browser can now access the The Silicon Village demonstration right here on viewdata.org.uk: You don't need an Acorn Archimedes any longer!