Strange (to me) ACT Sirius 1/Victor 9000 in metal case

[Witchy]

Hi folks,

I'm temporary custodian of something I've never come across before in 20-odd years of collecting - a Sirius 1 made entirely of metal, even the keyboard case. When I first saw it I couldn't work out why it had flecks of rust on the top cover... ROMs appear to be v1.1 and the motherboard has quite a few ECO changes so I'm wondering if this is either a special run for someone or a pre-production model? All my other machines have a serial number beginning with M000 whereas this one starts SM1. Even the PSU enclosure is different to usual.

Before I post pics is this just a US model that's had a 240V PSU fitted?

Cheers,

Witchy

 

[durgadas311]

Just some wild guesses. At that time, there was a lot of effort being put into suppressing RFI on computers, and at least in the U.S getting FCC certification (I'm sure other parts of the world had similar organizations and standards). All-metal seems like overkill, but perhaps that was their approach - or at least initial approach. I was working with Heath/Zenith H89s (fiberglass enclosures) at that time, and Zenith's approach to FCC compliance was to coat the inside of the enclosure in a carbon (conductive) spray paint, ground it, and also add ferrite "beads" in strategic places (typically external interface cables).

Maybe the "S" stands for "Shielded"? Or perhaps this was a special version for military clients and the metal enclosures served additional purposes (in addition to shielding)?

 

[pdevine]

All the US models I've seen were plastic cases too. I've met about 10 Victor 9000's in my life and they were always plastic.

 

[Witchy]

Maybe the "S" stands for "Shielded"? Or perhaps this was a special version for military clients and the metal enclosures served additional purposes (in addition to shielding)?

'Shielded' was initially my thinking too, but even the keyboard is metal cased, as is the base of the monitor. Otherwise it's the standard machine with no special internals. Got to be a special edition for someone, perhaps military as you say.

 

[durgadas311]

FYI, keyboards were notoriously "noisy" and needed shielding as well. Pretty much every part of a computer was noisy. If it was made for Europe, it could have been that RFI laws in Europe preceded ones in the U.S. That often seems to be case. As I recall, data security laws in the EU came before ones in the U.S., as an example. At least I recall having to implement those for EU customers before we were required for U.S. customers.

 

[Gary C]

Interesting, we have two victors and one has a steel cased keyboard but I don't think the EEC (the EU didn't actually exist in the 70's/80's, the EU started in 1993) was interested in RFI, it was the FCC that meant the rare UK computers that made it to the states had to be shielded, for example the US version of the BBC was completely different to the domestic unit to meet FCC regulations.