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question: was there anything like an Apricot home computer sold in UK in or before summer 1983?

T

thephysicist

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Hello

in 1983 I met my fate in form of a home computer in Brighton/England. I was a foreign exchange student and stayed for 3 weeks with a nice family who had a home computer I've never ever seen since. It had a shape similar to a Dragon 32, but I think it had "Apricot" printed on it. And I also "think to remember" that the cartridge port was on the top of the computer. Does anyone have any idea?

thanks
Michael
 
Maybe you are thinking of the Atari 800. Or the Acorn Electron.
 
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thanks but a no on either. The system had Basic built in - which rules out the Atari. And I'm pretty sure there was a "circle" command - but even more so I'm sure there was no chapter on machine language (I looked up the Acorn Electron manual :))

Michael
 
To my knowledge, the ACT/Apricot range of computers ran MSDOS in some form or another. I don’t recollect any of the range having BASIC on ROM.

Also, I don’t recollect a ‘cartridge’ port being on an Apricot.

The ACT/Apricot machines were more designed for the business (rather than home) market.

I used an Apricot ‘portable’ (https://computerhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Apricot-computer.jpg) once as an RS232 terminal to an operator display computer on a nuclear power station.

The operator typed the desired mnemonic into the infra red keyboard for the display they wished to view.

Because this machine had an in-built microphone and voice recognition, I also trained it to respond to phrases to display the formats. One of the very early uses of voice recognition in an industrial setting!

The system was only installed as a temporary measure during commissioning, but it is still remembered by the ‘older’ operators because of the voice recognition capability!

Dave
 
There was the Apricot ACT-800 at that time, but no pictures online. It was supposed to be imported from North America but didn't detail what computer it was based on.
 
We had a couple Apricot machines at school- they were broken, but I recall one had an LCD along the top of the keyboard by the function keys, presumably to create templates. It had a cartridge slot on the right hand side beside the LCD.

Beyond that I know nothing of them, other than their existence.
 
I think as you already received here the only thing that might be ACT before 1983 was the ACT-800. Completely mysterious device that nobody has photos of, nobody has specs of and there's nothing left of them. All sources for the machine today are just lifted from elsewhere, even the shell company who owns the Apricot name today has nothing but the same lifted paragraph. Last year I stumbled across a youtube video that was ACT talking about their then new Apricot PC and discussing their previous products. If there was a computer between the days of developing midrange and mainframe software and the Sirius venture they did not mention it once.
Edit: I went to go find a link to the video and its gone. I can find a commercial but not the 20 or 30 minute long tape rip.

At this point unless someone provides a photo or reliable proof it actually existed, I don't think it ever existed, period. The history of ACT and their computers instantly becomes easy enough to google once you look for the Sirius 1/Victor 9000, which they didn't even design.
Also, ACT didn't use the Apricot name for a computer line until the Apricot PC. ACT didn't rebrand to Apricot until several years later, at which point their products were the Portable, F-series and the Xen, with the last one posibly being what PhilipA remembers but that wasn't a cartridge slot on the right side. It was the bus expansion connector.
 
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Found the video. For whatever VCR they pulled this from, the video is great but holy crap the wow and flutter are bad.


Yeah they go from software to Sirius and make absolutely no mention of anything in between.
 
Gonna bump this as I was asking myself about the ACT-800 again and it seems something has surfaced!

The ACT-800, or the Computhink Minimax II was a system marketed as early as 1980.

ACT Series 800 / Computhink Minimax II - Computer - Computing History

Marketed by ACT in England as the Series 800, and in America as the Computhink Minimax II.Marketed by ACT in England as the Series 800, and in America as the Computhink Minimax II. The ACT Series 8...
www.computinghistory.org.uk
 

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