Apricot PC Xi

[NeXT]

I've been chasing down a Xen for nearly 20 years now with no success but I was surprised when recently I was offered this little machine which I really couldn't nitpick. It was an Apricot.
The PC Xi is the Apricot PC, but with a 10mb hard disk, more ram and in charcoal black, otherwise it was still the same under the hood.

It's very clean, came with piles of documentation and software, it has an aftermarket V30 and BIOS upgrade and best of all it works! I don't think I've ever seen a Rodime drive behave this well. The floppy drive likewise needed the usual regreasing but reads and writes diskettes fine.
It also came with some REALLY nice product pamphlets and a brochure for the Apricot Portable. I am currently hunting down a scanner large enough to take it because while I can find the pamphlets I ahve never seen the brochure.

 

[NeXT]

Whoops! Migrated a photobucket account and it broke all the image links. Here. lets try this again.

I've been chasing down a Xen for nearly 20 years now with no success but I was surprised when recently I was offered this little machine which I really couldn't nitpick. It was an Apricot.
The PC Xi is the Apricot PC, but with a 10mb hard disk, more ram and in charcoal black, otherwise it was still the same under the hood.

It's very clean, came with piles of documentation and software, it has an aftermarket V30 and BIOS upgrade and best of all it works! I don't think I've ever seen a Rodime drive behave this well. The floppy drive likewise needed the usual regreasing but reads and writes diskettes fine.
It also came with some REALLY nice product pamphlets and a brochure for the Apricot Portable. I am currently hunting down a scanner large enough to take it because while I can find the pamphlets I ahve never seen the brochure.

 

[ika]

That's a nice find! If my memory serves, the Apricot is a rebadged & upgraded version of the venerable Victor 9000/Sirius 1 but with 3.5" floppy instead of the 5 1/4". It was available in the European marketplace. Can anyone confirm this?

I have a Victor 9000 waiting to be restored. I'm still missing the keyboard for it. I miss the 5 1/4" floppy sounds from the Victor 9000 as it increased/decreased the rpms for the inner/outer tracks!

-ilkka

 

[NeXT]

That I can find the Apricot PC maintained Victor compatibility, but I'm not sure how they expected someone to overcome the physical media differences. Until the Xen, Apricot never shipped an Apricot product with a 5.25" floppy drive.

I really want to find a place to scan that Apricot Portable brochure. It is beautiful but wider than any of my scanners can take.

 

[mark0x01]

That's a nice find! If my memory serves, the Apricot is a rebadged & upgraded version of the venerable Victor 9000/Sirius 1 but with 3.5" floppy instead of the 5 1/4". It was available in the European marketplace. Can anyone confirm this?

I have a Victor 9000 waiting to be restored. I'm still missing the keyboard for it. I miss the 5 1/4" floppy sounds from the Victor 9000 as it increased/decreased the rpms for the inner/outer tracks!

-ilkka

They weren't related, Victor was from the USA and Apricot from the UK but often distributed via the same channel

Trained on Victor 9000 and serviced Apricot as well in their day.

I also have a Victor 9000 waiting to get some love.

 

[AngryBirb]

This is in such a great shape. A couple of my PC's are 30 years older and don't look as good as yours...

 

[8bitMark]

That looks in great condition. Have you got the keyboard working? I’m about to attempt keyboard repair but need to get power supply recapped first as a cap has blown

 

[NeXT]

I keep forgetting to order replacement Keytronic pads when they come back in stock. They sell fast.
I'm tempted to make more again like I did with my Lisa but its a very time consuming task.