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Five small computers

carlsson

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
6,274
Location
Västerås, Sweden
Today I received an Oric-1 48K, which kind of completes (ha ha!) my collection of small home computers. Well, I'd like an Oric Atmos and perhaps some more, but at the moment there is no other micro that I really fancy getting.

Here is a portrait of my five smallest computers:



First row: Acorn Electron (34 x 16 cm)
Second row: Oric-1 (28 x 17 cm), Sord M5 (26 x 18,5 cm)
Third row: COMX 35 (29 x 16 cm), ZX Spectrum (23,5 x 14,5 cm)

And all five work! 8)

 
Very nice Anders,

I see the occasional Oric and Electron come up for sale on my local site. So far I've resisted bidding for them.

I'd love to have lots of these home computer models but (unless people GIFT them to me) I've made an agreement to myself to stick to the classic models on my list. Otherwise I'll just run out of room!

Maybe I'll have a "phase II" stage of collecting after I've got everything I want. It may require careful negotiations with the spouse though :)

Tez
 
Oric's tend to be relatively valuable so if you come across one cheap, buy it and resell if you don't want to keep it.

The nerd in me went one step further and weighed these five computers:

Acorn Electron: 1166 gram
Oric-1: 828 gram
Sord M5: 992 gram
COMX-35: 739 gram
ZX Spectrum: 559 gram

I know I didn't post the height of each machine, otherwise you could calculate their densities. :-D
 
, but at the moment there is no other micro that I really fancy getting.

Come, come now - lest not be hasty. 'no others?' Surely, there is always maybe just 'one' more - :)

Those five are very nice - I especially admire that Acorn Electron. Over here in the States I suppose it wouldn't work because of our electrical power differences. I imagine there are adapters for such things though. I'd really fancy a BBC Micro. I've seen them before at eBay UK - but shipping is out of the question. Alas, I'll have to make due with emulators for those nifty 'foreign' computers.
 
The Electron has an external power supply, which slightly improves chances to run it without a step-up converter. Officially it runs on 18V AC, but if you have no expansion peripherals connected it may run as low as 5V DC. Of course you could get a 110V to 230V step-up converter, they're an abundance on eBay etc. I think PAL composite video or even worse RF may be a bigger issue for you than the electricity.
 
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