Also known as ACT Apricot | Release date Late 1983 (1983) | |
Operating system CPU 4,77 MHz @ Intel 8086 CPUSocket for optional Intel 8087 co-processor. | ||
The Apricot PC was a personal computer produced by Apricot Computers. Released in late 1983, it was Apricot's first computer made for business use.
Contents
The press received it well, especially for the high resolution 800 × 400 of its time and its trackball cable (future models used IR).
It used an Intel 8086 processor running at 4,77 MHz. Optional 8087 math co-processor were possible. Memory is 256 kB expandable to 768 kB. CRT green-screen 9" with text mode 80 × 25 or graphics 800 × 400 pixels. Equipped with two floppy discs and a keyboard with an integrated LCD display. Released in 1983, it achieved success in the United Kingdom.
The Apricot Xi was a similar computer released in 1984, but with a hard drive instead of a second floppy-drive.
Software
Due to incompatible BIOS, trying to run a software package like dBase III would result in a system crash.
The system was delivered with SuperCalc, and several system utilities, asynchronous communication, an emulator for IBM PC, Microsoft Basic-86, Basic Personal and ACT Manager (a GUI for MS-DOS). Optionally available were Microsoft Word, Multiplan, WordStar, dBase II, C-Pascal, UCSD Pascal, C, Fortran, COBOL and Basic Compiler 5.35.
IBM PC compatibility
The manufacturer did not completely clone the IBM BIOS, so although it ran MS-DOS and CP/M-86, it was not IBM PC compatible as the underlying system BIOS and hardware was very different. An Intel 8089 I/O controller was used, instead of the Intel 8237 DMA chip used in IBM computers; the ROM was only a simple boot loader rather than a full BIOS; and there was no 640k barrier. The floppy disk format was "not quite compatible"; attempting to read an ordinary PC FAT floppy in an Apricot, or vice versa, would result in a scrambled directory listing with some files missing.
Apricot later offered the possibility of converting the computer into an IBM compatible PC by replacing the motherboard with one equipped with an Intel 80286 processor.