Apricot PC
The Apricot PC is a personal computer produced by Apricot Computers, then still known as Applied Computer Techniques or ACT. Released in late 1983, it was ACT's first independently developed microcomputer, following on from the company's role of marketing and selling the ACT Sirius 1, and was described as "the first 16-bit system to be Sirius-compatible, rather than IBM-compatible", indicating the influence that the Sirius 1 had in the United Kingdom at the time.
It achieved success in the United Kingdom, with reviewers noting the system's high resolution display and its trackball cable.
It used an Intel 8086 processor running at. A 8087 math co-processor was optional. The amount of memory was, expandable to. It came with a 9" green phosphor CRT display capable of a character text mode or a graphical mode, and was equipped with two floppy disk drives and a keyboard with an integrated LCD display.
The Apricot Xi was a similar computer released in 1984, with a hard drive instead of a second floppy drive.
Software
The system was delivered with SuperCalc, and several system utilities, asynchronous communication, an emulator for, Microsoft Basic-86, Basic Personal and ACT Manager. Optionally available were Microsoft Word, Multiplan, WordStar, dBase II, C-Pascal, UCSD Pascal, C, Fortran, COBOL and.There are 20 known commercial games for Apricot PC
| Title | Publisher |
| AP004: MS-BASIC Games No. 1 | TP Group |
| AP006: Games No. 2 | TP Group |
| AP008: Games No. 3 | TP Group |
| AP010: GW-BASIC Games No. 1 | TP Group |
| AP016: Chess | TP Group |
| Cutthroats | Infocom, Inc. |
| Deadline | Infocom, Inc. |
| Enchanter | Infocom, Inc. |
| Infidel Model | Infocom, Inc. |
| Planetfall | Infocom, Inc. |
| Seastalker Model | Infocom, Inc. |
| Sorcerer | Infocom, Inc. |
| Starcross | Infocom, Inc. |
| Suspect | Infocom, Inc. |
| Suspended | Infocom, Inc. |
| The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Infocom, Inc. |
| The Witness | Infocom, Inc. |
| Zork I - The Great Underground Empire | Infocom, Inc. |
| Zork II - The Wizard of Frobozz | Infocom, Inc. |
| Zork III - The Dungeon Master | Infocom, Inc. |
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.Due to this incompatibility, software designed for an IBM PC could cause the system to crash.
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.
Technical data
- Processor: Intel 8086. Socket for optional Intel 8087 co-processor.
- BIOS: 2 × EPROM containing the BIOS
- Memory: RAM expandable to on board.
- Storage: 2 × 3.5" floppy drives with or capacity
- DMA chip: Intel 8089
- Graphics: Comes with a green phosphor screen 9" that weights. Can display one of these modes:
- * Text 80 × 25
- * Text 132 × 50
- * Graphics at 800 × 400
- Mechanical Keyboard 101-key QWERTY, 8 function keys and 6 keys standard dynamic membrane with an LED to the left of each one to indicate they are active. An LCD with 40 × 2 characters is included, which can display the key assignment. Weighs and can be attached to the frame underneath for easy transport.
- Housing: plastic cream weighing about 6.4 kg The front half of the top shows a depression to bring the monitor. In the front two 3.5" floppy drives that can be protected with a shutter for transport. Under these, a carrying handle. At the rear two proprietary Apricot connector slots for expansion, parallel printer port of Centronics micro ribbon 36 pin connector type, serial port DB-25 connector, monitor connector and power supply with a switch.
- Support for two internal 3,5" Sony floppy disk drives
- Input / Output:
- * External monitor connector.
- * Parallel printer port, Centronics micro ribbon 36-pin connector
- * RS-232 serial port
- * Two expansion connectors or internal Apricot
- Operating system came with standard MS-DOS 2.11 and CP/M-86.