dk'tronics

23 Sussex Road, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth

Since the 48K Spectrum was launched the opportunities it offered has attracted peripheral manufacturers throughout the world.

One of these manufacturers was bound to emerge as the "brand leader" and in the case of the Spectrum this turned out to be DK'tronics. The company is based in Saffron Walden in Essex and proudly boasts a history dating back to the ZX80. All the company's products are manufactured in England at their own factory and they have now established themselves as world leaders, exporting to over 30 countries!

That's dk'tronics describing themselves in a 1985 advert. It was around the same time that founder David Heelas spoke to YOUR SPECTRUM and gave a little more detail on the corporate history:

"I started four years ago just prior to the launch of the ZX81. Our first product was a 16K expansion pack for the ZX8O. It was just me, then part-time, and I got interested because of my interest in electronics. The stupid thing was that I could see the market growing but not to the extent it has; although the ZX81 created the interest, it took the Spectrum to take it the distance.

"I went full-time with the launch of the ZX81. The business was all mail-order then, but I was getting a very good response. I had to do everything myself -manufacturing, packaging, selling and posting- and I was working in my bedroom, my garage, my shed -anywhere there was room! 

All this goes to explain why dk'tronics' first address is a very unremarkable terraced house in Gorleston less than a quarter of a mile from the river Yare, which separates Gorleston from Great Yarmouth proper.

YOUR COMPUTER
October 1981 page 52

That 16K RAM pack would cost around £166 in 2025 and right now I could buy 16GB RAM for less than half that price. November saw dk'tronics offering games as well as hardware. This was pretty standard at the time. 

Software at unbeatable prices. 50 programs on one cassette. Invaders, Breakout, Tank Battle, Torpedo, etc. Also includes Education, Maths, Business. All for 1K RAM. £6.95.

By December, four games were on offer; 

DEFLEX — £3.95. This totally new and very addictive game, which was highly acclaimed at the Microfair, uses fast moving graphics to provide a challenge requiring not only quick reaction, but also clever thinking. One and two player versions on same cassette.

LIFE — £3.95. Uses M/C to achieve a processing speed of three generations a second on a 20 x 32 grid with a superbly flexible colony editing system. This is without a doubt the best ZX Life available.

3D/3D LABYRINTH — £3.95. You have all seen 3D Labyrinth games, but this goes one stage beyond; you must manoeuvre within a cubic maze and contend with corridors which may go left/right, up down. Full size 3D graphical representation. This Program is written in MC/ BASIC.
All above software on one cassette at £5.95.

CENTIPEDE — £4.95. This is the first implementation of the popular arcade game on any Micro anywhere. Never mind your Invaders etc., this is positively stunning. The speed at which this runs, makes ZX invaders look like a game of simple snap. This Program is written in MC.

The reference to Centipede making ZX invaders look like a game of snap is clearly a dig at another company but I can't work out who. Deflex, 3D/3D Labyrinth and Centipede were written by Jeff Minter [1] who would go on to be a star programmer in his own right and create his company Llamasoft. Jeff Minter wrote about those first few games on his blog, back in 2012:

Pre-Llamasoft I did do a little collection of games which were sold briefly as a package for about a fiver by my old brief publisher DK’Tronics for whom I’d done some ZX81 work and with whom I parted on not the best of terms after a dispute over royalties for the DK’Tronics Graphics ROM on the ZX81. 

I normally track the growth of companies by looking at how their adverts change but nothing much seems to happen if you do that with dk'tronics. Life is dropped from adverts in January 1982 and the company start selling the graphic ROM which would cause the dispute with Jeff Minter. The ROM is described as fitting:

Neatly inside your computer under the keyboard. The module comes ready built, fully tested and complete with a 4K graphic ROM. This will give you 448 extra preprogrammed graphics

It's a clever piece of kit and I get the impression dk'tronics focused more on supporting it than expanding their general software range. May sees the company offer a ROM version of Centipede, described confusingly as "The only real version of Space Invaders on the ZX81." I think the naming was a mistake, corrected the following month when two more ZX81 ROM games were added, Space Invaders and Asteroids, and Deflex was dropped. Defender, another ROM game, was added to the line up in August. Finally, in November, there's Meteor Storm, another game available in ROM and regular ZX81 versions.  I have no idea how these ROM games worked, I guess they needed to be loaded from tape on to a ZX81 with the ROM chip installed. 

Spectrum Computing tells me that Asteroids and Meteor Storm were by programmer Don Priestley. He had previously written ZX81 games for Bug-Byte. The most recent of these was Mazogs, published around June 1982. I don't know the circumstances which caused Don Priestley to leave Bug-Byte but there can't have been much of a gap before he started work at dk'tronics. HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY profiled the company in November 1983 and briefly described how he joined the company:

dk'tronics was one of the companies involved in the bidding [for Mazogs]... "I didn't even see him [David Heelas] for nine months, because I was living in Lancaster, and he was in Great Yarmouth," Don recalls. "We actually met for the first time at a ZX Microfair in September 1982."

That Microfair also marked dk'tronics' entry into chain store sales. Don recalled: "This bloke came along and started asking questions about 3D Tanx, and he turned out to be from [WH] Smiths. The number of tapes he wanted for his first order -4000- turned out to be more than all the tapes we'd sold by mail order."

Much later, after dk'tronics, Don Priestly talked to CRASH about 3D Tanx:

'3D Tanx was one of the most successful games ever written,' says Don. 'It sold at high levels consistently over nearly 15 months, averaging about 5000 a month. Levels unheard of now,' he adds ruefully. 

(November 1986, page 108)

David Heelas decided to put his business on a more professional footing. Don Priestley was appointed software director in March 1983 and the company moved somewhere slightly more accessible than Great Yarmouth.

Unit 2, Shire Hill Industrial Estate, Saffron Walden, CB11 3AQ

CAMBRIDGE EVENING NEWS
24 March 1983 page 31

Confession time. I'm not 100% sure about the location of  Unit 2 (or indeed Unit 6, where dk'tronics move next). The Shire Hill estate seems to use unit numbers and building numbers interchangeably. 

May 2025

Google being what it is these days, it gives different results for the same search terms. In May, when I arrived in Saffron Walden [2], I was reasonably certain the Saffron Snooker club was based in Unit 2. Now, Google also offers me up this building on the other side of the road as a potential address. Bah! And indeed, humbug! Either way, dk.tronics wasn't in Unit 2 for long. No more than about six months before they moved to this address.

Unit 6, Shire Hill Industrial Estate, Saffron Walden, CB11 3AQ

May 2025

How confident am I that this is Unit 6? Let's say 7/10. The building is certainly of the right vintage and it's big enough to hold a rapidly expanding hardware and software company. Unit 6 was where dk'tronics was based when HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY spoke to David Heelas and Don Priestley. By this point, Don Priestley had become essential to the success of the company. In addition to 3D Tanx, he had converted his two ZX81 games Dictator and Mazogs to the Spectrum; with dk'tronics renaming the Spectrum version Maziaks to avoid any objections from Bug-Byte. In the course of the HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY profile, there is talk about a range of 46 games for the Spectrum, BBC, Atari, Commodore 64, and VIC-20.

CRASH profiled dk'tronics in October 1984 after the trauma of a summer slump which saw Imagine fall into receivership along with Rabbit, Salamander, and Carnell. This interview put a sales figure of 140,000 on 3D Tanx and yet the overall attitude of the company to software is very dismissive. Overpriced, too expensive to make, difficult to advertise, and, most remarkably, "we don't need the software profit," according to finance director Neil Rawlingson. It's true. dk'tronics was doing very nicely from hardware sales alone:

Dk tronics main stay is still the Spectrum keyboard which has been selling well for over 3 1/2 years now and must be in the homes of nearly 10% of all Spectrum owners. Strangely enough, there were originally doubts on the viability of an aftermath [3] keyboard for the Spectrum. In the end. The improvement from the ZX81 flat membrane keys to the Spectrum moveable rubber keys did nothing to stop this lucrative market and Dk'tronics have never looked back.

The light pen followed the keyboard and the new range now includes the dual port and programmable joystick interfaces and the three channel sound synthesiser.

The number of games released does drop remarkably, from about 31 in 1983 (the CRASH interview claims 267 programs were launched in September 1983 alone but that must be quite a misprint) down to around 7 in 1984. Don Priestley would step down as software director in 1984 and he would end up writing the last three games from dk'tronics. The CRASH profile also described the current setup of the company:

At present the hardware production is still at Great Yarmouth. Only the admin and marketing are situated in Saffron Walden. Production accounts for 30 of the 52 personnel.
1985 will see the transfer of the production to Saffron Walden uniting the personnel in a specially built £300,000 factory unit. Quite a long way from the 8 x 7ft bedroom from where it all started back in April 1981.

Saffron Walden, CB11 3AQ

May 2025

So where was the specially built factory? I don't know. After 1985 dk'tronics operates from the unhelpfully vague address above; the postcode remains the same, so it's fair to assume it's still on the Shire Hill estate, but where? Emails to whereweretheynow@gmail.com if you know. 

The early months of 1985 busy. I like to try and write this stuff in some sort of chronological order so bear with me while I get things organised. January 1985 saw dk'tronics announce the purchase of intellectual property rights for Currah Computer Components. Currah made a piece of kit called the MicroSpeech which allowed your Spectrum to talk like a strangulated Dalek. At the end of 1984 Currah got into financial difficulty and dk'tronics negotiated their purchase from the official receiver. David Heelas gave a blunt interview to YOUR SPECTRUM in April 1985 in which he coyly described the price as "an undisclosed but substantial five- figure sum." The deal caused confusion because the MicroSpeech system was manufactured for Currah by another company called Welwyn Systems and, according to a SINCLAIR USER report

"Welwyn has no right to sell anything after it has disposed of its stocks." [David Heelas] added, "we have all the tools for the injection-moulded cases". Those will be supplied to Welwyn under the terms of the contract and in that way, Heelas reckons he will be able to monitor the number of units Welwyn will be producing.

Under the terms of Welwyn's contract with Currah was a clause stating that if Currah went into liquidation, Welwyn would have the rights to sell the products remaining in stock and to manufacture a stated number of units.

Richard Phil brick from Welwyn says "Our output is limited to the terms of our contract, we will be selling and manufacturing around 120,000 units.

Whatever happened, Welwyn appear to have been a thorn in the side of dk'tronics' purchase. They continue to advertise the Currah MicroSpeech through the rest of 1985 and dk'tronics don't appear to mention the product again. Maybe they found it more profitable to manufacture the units for supply to Welwyn.

COMPUTER & VIDEOGAMES
January 1985 page 29

Minder appeared in the spring of 1985. I can see why dk'tronics hoped it would be a big deal. The television series was at the height of its popularity. The October 1984 episode, Second Hand Pose was watched by 16.4 million people. Why did the game fail? I should leave that question to the philosophers but I think there were two main problems. One, it was expensive at £9.95. Two, I'm not sure Minder appealed to a lot of the kids who were buying or asking for computer games. I watched it but I watched it with my parents. It wasn't necessarily a programme I felt was aimed at me even though it was one I enjoyed. 

The Spectrum and Amstrad versions of Minder were both by Don Priestley. The C64 version went AWOL. Naughty old COMMODORE USER reviewed it by writing about the Spectrum version. They presumably expected the C64 version to be more or less identical; they'd also do this in December 1986 with a review of Twice Shy.

Minder got a SINCLAIR USER cover on the June 1985 issue. There was also a big preview the same month in C&VG, which included comments from Don Priestley. He talked about development and how the game was completely rewritten after feedback from the first round of playtesting that the game was: "probably the most mindnumbingly boring game that they had ever played". C&VG also described how:

Don Priestly, author of the Minder game, spent several weeks studying Thames Television's broadcast catalogue — a list of all the programmes Thames have produced over the last few years — trying to choose a TV programme to convert into a game.

In his mind there were only two which really fitted the bill — Minder and Dangermouse. In the beginning, he would have preferred to have written a game based on Dangermouse but the rights had already been sold to Creative Sparks. 

Probably by the end, Don Priestley would have preferred to write Danger Mouse. In a 1998 interview with Phillip Bee he recalled the horrors of demonstrating the game at Thames Television:

Trying to demo "Minder" (the most un-demo-able game ever written) at the Thames TV Headquarters. This being a Friday afternoon, practically all the people in the building turned out to watch this miserable performance, including a loud-mouthed drunk who did his best to mangle the wreckage by shouting "Anyone who thinks they can make money with THAT might as well piss into the wind". Mind you, he was right.

SINCLAIR USER's mostly accurate gossip column Gremlin mentioned the Minder press launch, and noted how:

Most of the questions were bawled out by an imposing female from the Daily Mirror, "Everyone knows you have to get a game into the arcades to make any money," she insisted , asking if Minder was "the new Pac Man." "Is it a battle game or what?" ranted this refugee from a Surrey gymkhana. Nice to know the Daily Maxwell still has a finger on the pulse of Britain . . 

Still it was worth it in the end because Patricia Smyllie's 48 word story tucked away in the corner of page 15 undoubtedly contributed to the success of the game.

DAILY MIRROR
Friday 19 April 1985 page 15

April 1984 was when YOUR SPECTRUM ran their blunt interview with David Heelas. As well as talking about the purchase of Currah, he looked back over the success of dk'tronics (they had sold 80 to 90,000 of their £45 replacement keyboards for the Spectrum) and described the software market as "a rat race":

We made a lot out of software, especially in the period between 1982-83... When we started, a game lasted six months, now you're lucky if it is around for six weeks! There must be around 300 companies chasing an ever diminishing market, and that's without considering piracy. Too much hassle all round.

Going back to that June 1985 Gremlin column in SINCLAIR USER. There are two back-to-back stories about dk'tronics. Under the one about the Minder press launch is this:

DK vendetta

Meanwhile, DK'tronics is suffering from the attentions of an ex-employee with a grudge. The character has been sending out press releases on photocopied DK'tronics notepaper delving into owner David Heelas' private life.

Without going into the gory and irrelevant details, it appears David made a court appearance recently at which he announced he was selling the company and moving to Great Yarmouth. Not so, according to DK. Which leaves Gremlin pondering two questions. Who is penning the poisonous press releases, and why did Heelas tell a court he was selling up if he wasn't . ?

POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY also picked up the story in their 25 April-1 May edition under the headline, DK'Tronics up for sale:

DK'TRONICS, the software and peripheral company, is up for sale.

The news, which follows the launch of its licensed game Minder last week, came to light during a court case in Saffron Walden, Suffolk.

Standing accused of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm was DK Tronics' managing director David Heelas. Having pleaded guilty, he said through his solicitor that he was selling the company and moving to Great Yarmouth.

Heelas, who assaulted a man he suspected to be having an affair with his wife, was given а conditional discharge for one year and ordered to pay £25 costs.

It is thought one of the other directors of DK'Tronics is planning to buy the company.

What happened next? Did David Heelas stay with the company? Did it get sold? I don't know. However post spring 1985 dk'tronics pulls down the shutters. There are no more interviews and the stream of advertising becomes a trickle. The company had once been a regular monthly advertiser in CRASH, sometimes running huge eight-page spreads like this one from September 1984. There is nothing after a May 1985 advert for Minder. The same for SINCLAIR USER where the last advert is for a new piece of hardware called the games player interface. The same appears to be true for C&VG. Popeye, when it finally appeared in the autumn of 1985 gets no advertising at all, astonishing considering it was almost universally praised.

Popeye was another troubled game. It was supposed to be released in the autumn of 1984, which is when the game's advertising campaign actually appeared in magazines but to quote David Heelas in YOUR SPECTRUM:

It could have been out now if the programmer hadn't done a runner on us.

PERSONAL COMUTER GAMES carried a news story in December 1984 which gave some scant details about this version of Popeye:

DK'tronics have launched Home Sweet Home, a game featuring those cartoon favourites Popeye, Olive Oil and Bluto. The game casts the player as Popeye and takes place on a building site where he is trying to build a home for Olive and Sweet Pea.

The game is available on the Spectrum, Commodore 64. MSX and Amstrad machines at £5.95.

The PCG news report suggested dk'tronics would also release a game based on another King Features Syndicate comic, Hagar the Horrible. Like the original version of Popeye it never appeared. Popeye did, after being handed on to Don Priestley to develop from scratch. He told CRASH:

A version of Popeye had already been written by A N Other, and it was duff -a platform and ladders game.

The reason for Popeye's rapturous reception in September 1985 was the graphics. They are huge and colourful and look like they shouldn't be possible on the Spectrum. They came about because of the requirements of licencing the original comic:

'The graphics happened by chance. The licensors -King Features- were at pains to point out that any game had to include fair representation of the central cartoon characters, so I sat down with a large grid and came up with a figure of Popeye that was seven characters high and six wide -42 characters to move for each frame!
'I nearly abandoned it then. It was just too big! What could I do with it? The game really developed in the way it did because the figures were so big. I found the reviews pleasantly surprising. Unfortunately DK had lost interest in software by this time, and the bottom had fallen out of the market. They were ready enough to offer it to MACMILLAN.'

MacMillian rereleased the Spectrum version and commissioned Five Ways Software to write the Amstrad and C64 versions that had never appeared. In the summer of 1986 MacMillan used Popeye to soft launch their own Piranha label and Don Priestley would refine the Popeye graphics and make big colourful games his trademark. He wrote several titles for Piranha, the best being Trap Door. However, MacMillian showed no interest in buying Don's next game.

I don't want to give the impression that dk'tronics completely withdrew from advertising but the firm does go from ubiquity to near invisibility. Through to the end of 1985 a few hardware adverts appear, like this one which ran in a six month block to September 1985 in SINCLAIR PROGRAMS. There is also this odd advert in issue zero of AMTIX (but not AMSTRAD ACTION) to promote the launch of their new range of Amstrad hardware.

AMTIX
October 1985 page 13

Just because dk'tronics eases back on the advertising doesn't mean the company is not doing well. In 1985 there were plenty of ways of getting products out there. Catalogues and mail order lists existed, or they could have been supplying hardware direct to the shops. One other reason for the break in advertising might be because the company was returning to its ancestral seat.

Longs Industrial Estate, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, NR31 6BE

Benny Hill's Madcap Chase was also Don Priestley's last game for the company, and the last game from dk'tronics. It's clearly written post-Popeye to take advantage of his new graphics technique. The game wasn't so much released as quietly dumped into the shops in the hope no one would notice. There was no advertising and, probably because no artwork was prepared for an advert, the game had no cover. Instead the front of the box featured an uninspiring screenshot. 

The game used a well drawn picture of Benny Hill on the loading screen. Is this a hint of how the cover might have looked if someone had been willing to spend money? Benny Hill's Madcap Chase marked the end of the Thames licencing deal. The Sweeney and Rainbow, as suggested by PCG back in December 1984, never appeared,. Reaction to Benny Hill was much more muted. Reviewers were still impressed by the graphics but the gameplay was less fun. Don Priestley kept schtum when CRASH asked about the game:

By this time Don had left DK'TRONICS, though he was to write one more game for them, Benny Hill's Madcap Chase. 'But I don't want to talk about that,' grunts Don. Why not? 'The less said about Benny Hill the better'. Do you think it fails as a game or as a TV spin-off? Don pauses, 'yes'.

And that was it. dk'tronics exited the software industry although they carried on making hardware for at least two more years. Here's an example of an advert from 1987 showcasing their Amstrad add-ons and a terrible new slogan.

AMSTRAD ACTION
August 1987 page 37

"Leading from behind"? Really? I understand the sentiment -all the hardware is designed to be plugged into the back of your computer- but I don't think "Leading from behind" is quite the right way to phrase it. The hardware on offer is Amstrad versions of the products dk'tronics previously made for C64 and Spectrum owners; memory expansions, light pens, speech synthesisers, and early hard discs. The problem for dk'tronics was, they were selling to a shrinking market. The 8-bit Amstrad, C64, and Spectrum computers were on their way out. People were increasingly buying Amigas and Atari STs; machines which came with built in printer interfaces, mice, and decent sound so people didn't need peripherals in the way they used to. The second hand 8-bit computers were being passed down to younger children who didn't need a Centronics printer interface. The last gasp of dk'tronics came in December 1987 when another hardware company, RAM Electronics, announced they had brought the rights to the dk'tronics name and products, much as dk'tronics had done to Currah two years earlier.

May 2025

Yes, that's a fire engine. I've no idea what was going on when I visited Long's Business Park, as they prefer to be called these days but it was clearly quite serious. There was no way I was going to walk past on to the estate, and to be honest I didn't know which specific unit dk'tronics called home. From 1986, they listed their address as either Longs Industrial Estate, Gorleston, or Englands Lane, Gorleston on-Sea, or just Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, but all the addresses pointed to the same place; an 

industrial estate ten minutes walk from where it all started in 1981.

Kayde Electronic Systems

That's mostly the end of the story. Except for a couple of dangling threads. In April 1982 a company called Kayde Electronic Systems starts selling various bits of hardware including add-on keyboards for the ZX80 and 81, and RAM packs. 

SINCLAIR USER
April 1982 page 30

I stumbled across Kayde by using Great Yarmouth as a more convenient search term for dk'tronics. I initially wrote their existence off as a coincidence, but not a nutty one. A reasonable sized town like Great Yarmouth can support two companies working in the same field. Sheffield had Alligata and Gremlin Graphics at the same time. What caught my attention was when I noticed Kayde and dk'tronics were both selling the same products at the same time.

SINCLAIR USER
July 1982 back cover

YOUR COMPUTER
July 1982 page 8

dk'troincs sells a 4k graphics ROM for £29.95. Kayde sell what they call a 4K graphics board for the same price.
dk'tronics sells a flexible ribbon connector as do Kayde.

dk'tronics sells ZX81 games called Centipede and 3D/3D Labyrinth so do Kayde.

Once I noticed this, the weirdness seemed to stack up. The tone of language in adverts is similar, Kayde's comment that their keyboards "should not be confused with toy keyboards currently available on the market" reminds me of dk'tronics line about their Centepede game and how it "makes ZX invaders look like a game of simple snap." And there's that odd headline in the very first Kayde advert, ZX80/81 WAR! War with who?

Okay, it's 43 years later. After all this time I might as well try and divine the relationship between Kayde and dk'tronics by studying the flights of birds. Rivals, friends, trading partners, secret lovers? In that July 1982 advert Kayde are advertising ZX81 games called 3D/3D Labyrinth and Centipede. This might be the root of the royalty dispute with Jeff Minter. If dk'tronics sold unwanted stock of his programmes to Kayde then Minter would have seen them on sale but would not be receiving money for them.

Longer term, Kayde are clearly their own company. Incorporated on 28 May 1982 (nearly a year before dk'tronics, 23 March 1983) they start out based in 48/49 Exemouth Road, Yarmouth (a pair of terraced houses now) and by July 1982 they have moved to an address which I can't locate on The Conge in Great Yarmouth. They start selling VIC-20 software in time for Christmas 1982 and by May 1983 they have a London Showroom in New Eltham, 1 Station Approach (probably here, maybe). All this while dk'tronics is still thinking of moving out of David Heelas' bedroom. Kayde and Argus Specialist Press got into a dispute over Kayde's game The Valley, in June 1983. The game was originally published as a listing in COMPUTING TODAY, April 1982 and Kayde were selling a version as The Kayde Valley for the VIC-20 in September 1982. Kayde's Dean French told POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY:

Our response is that we will continue to sell the game. It is true that our programmer took the idea for the game from the magazine, but it is entirely our own conversion. We had the game available for the Vic, long before Argus ever did.

We have every intention of continuing with the program.

Which they did, under a new name of The Swamp. Then, in August 1983, Kayde went into liquidation and this is where coincidences start to stack up. SINCLAIR USER reported in November 1983 that:

Customers who have replied to Kayde advertisements in Sinclair User should contact the advertising department by letter. Alternatively, Kayde can be contacted on 0799 26009.

Guess which Essex town has the dialling code 0799. It's Saffron Walden. Which brings us to...

Add-On Electronics

Companies House records Add-On Electronics as founded on 14 July 1983. By November 1983 they are advertising Kayde's old games, but not The Kayde Valley/The Swamp. So Add-On Electronics appear to have brought up Kayde's intellectual property. Where is Add-On Electroincs based? It's Units 2, 3 & 4 on the Shire Hill Industrial Estate. Who are Add-On Electronics, well in February 1984 HOME COMPUTER WEEKLY describe them as:

A new company has been formed by Radofin, makers of the Aquarius computer, and Custom Cables International, which makes software and interfaces. Add-On Electronics is to supply support for the for the Aquarius in Europe and software and add-ons for all home micros.

Custom Cables International gave their address as Units 2, 3 & 4 Shire Hill Industrial Estate and I've found recruitment adverts which confirm they were located at Unit 2 at the same time as dk'tronics, March -November 1983. Oh, and the Peter L. Brownlie mentioned on the dk'tronics recruitment advert further up the page shares a name with Peter Brownlie, the director of Custom Cables International. Oh, and Miss T. Green, the Personnel Officer for CCI, in a recruitment advert from the 18 April 1983 edition of THE CAMBRIDGE EVENING NEWS, is also the Personnel Manager for dk'tronics in another CAMBRIDGE EVENING NEWS recruitment advert in the 27 October 1983 edition.

You know who also worked for CCI? Neil Rawlinson, Mr  "we don't need the software profit," in the October 1984 CRASH profile. He's the named contact in a CCI recruitment advert in the 9 September 1982 edition of the SAFFRON WALDEN WEEKLY NEWS [4].

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I set out trying to find a business relationship between Kayde and dk'tronics and instead I've found one between dk'tronics and CCI/Add-On Electronics. It really looks like the move to Saffron Waldon marks the point where dk'tronics and CCI come together in some form. I wonder if the move back to Great Yarmouth at the end of 1985 was a result of  David Heelas taking the company back there. The "DK'Tronics up for sale" report in PCW is based on a story from the SAFFRON WALDEN WEEKLY NEWS (18 April 1985, page 8). Maybe the original reporter got some wires got crossed and CCI was selling the company, and David Heelas was buying it and taking it back to Great Yarmouth.

The cover for 3D Tanx is from Spectrum Computing, Dictator is from C64 Wiki, and Minder, from CPC Rulez

[1] I'm not sure about the other game. Life is a mystery, as Madonna once sang.
[2] You know who else was based in Saffron Walden? Sensible Software. A company utterly resistant to my researches. I have failed to work out where the company were based in either Chelmsford, the Cambridgeshire town of March, or Saffron Walden. If you know where Sensible Software were based in Chelmsford, the Cambridgeshire town of March, or Saffron Walden, then please email whereweretheynow@gmail.com. Make the subject of your email "I know where Sensible Software were based in Chelmsford, the Cambridgeshire town of March, or Saffron Walden" and don't forget to include an address.
[3] Aftermath is the word CRASH uses, it doesn't make sense.
[4] I think it's also fair to assume he was the same Neil Rawlinson mentioned in this CAMRIDGE EVENING NEWS story from 1985.

CAMRIDGE EVENING NEWS
4 November 1985 page 6

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