Which computer, the Digi-Comp I or the Acorn Electron, was made as a budget friendly version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer?
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Digi-Comp I The Digi-Comp I was a functioning, mechanical digital computer sold in kit form. It was originally manufactured from polystyrene parts by E.S.R., Inc. starting in 1963 and sold as an educational toy for US$4.99.
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Acorn Electron The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC v2 along with its operating system.
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Amiga 1000 The Commodore Amiga 1000, also known as the A1000 and originally simply as the Amiga, is the first personal computer released by Commodore International in the Amiga line. It combines the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU which was powerful by 1985 standards with one of the most advanced graphics and sound systems in its class, and runs a preemptive multitasking operating system that fits into 256 KB of read-only memory and shipped with 256 KB of RAM. The primary memory can be expanded internally with a manufacturer supplied 256 KB module for a total of 512 KB of RAM. Using the external slot the primary memory can be expanded up to 8.5 MB.
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Compaq Portable 386 The Compaq Portable 386 was a computer released by Compaq Computer Corporation in 1987. Its street price upon its release was US$12,000–14,000 for a model equipped with an 20 MHz Intel 80386 CPU, 2 MB RAM, 16 kB ROM , 1.2 MB 5¼-inch floppy, 40 or 100 MB hard disk , and a 10" amber colored gas-plasma display. Power is supplied using a mains electricity outlet, a battery exists however just stores the BIOS configuration. Option for Intel 80387 (FPU). An expansion box for two IBM-AT ISA card slots available.
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Disk II The Disk II Floppy Disk Subsystem, often rendered as Disk ][, is a 5¼-inch floppy disk drive designed by Steve Wozniak and manufactured by Apple Computer. It went on sale in June 1978 at a retail price of US$495 for pre-order; it was later sold for $595 ( ) including the controller card (which can control up to two drives) and cable. The Disk II was designed specifically for use with the Apple II personal computer family to replace the slower cassette tape storage. These floppy drives cannot be used with any Macintosh computer without an Apple IIe Card as doing so will damage the drive or the controller.
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IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida.
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Sideways address space The "Sideways" address space on the Acorn BBC Microcomputer, Electron and Master-series microcomputer was Acorn's bank switching implementation, providing for permanent system expansion in the days before hard disk drives or even floppy disk drives were commonplace. filing systems, application and utility software and drivers were made available as Sideways ROMs, and extra RAM could be fitted via the Sideways address space.
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Byte (magazine) Byte was an American microcomputer magazine, influential in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s because of its wide-ranging editorial coverage. Whereas many magazines from the mid-1980s had been dedicated to the MS-DOS (PC) platform or the Mac, mostly from a business or home user's perspective, "Byte" covered developments in the entire field of "small computers and software", and sometimes other computing fields such as supercomputers and high-reliability computing. Coverage was in-depth with much technical detail, rather than user-oriented.
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Sony SMC-70 The SMC-70 is a computer produced by Sony from 1982. Although it resembles a home computer, it was designed for professional video generation, for example in Cable television applications, and digital video effect generation. It was the first computer that used the just invented (also by Sony) 3.5" micro floppy disk drive that later became industry standard. It had a few distinctive aspects that set it aside from many of it contemporary systems. For example, it did not use a version of Microsoft BASIC, but its own Sony developed BASIC, and it could handle and display kanji characters.
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Dunjunz Dunjunz is an action game made for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron home computers and released by Bug-Byte in 1987. It is essentially a clone of the popular video game "Gauntlet" where players controlled fantasy characters from a top down view. Unlike "Gauntlet", each of the characters is given their own viewport onto the dungeon and can explore independently.
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History of personal computers The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1980s. The 1981 launch of the IBM Personal Computer coined both the term "Personal Computer" and "PC". A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of the microprocessor, individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. Early personal computers – generally called microcomputers – were sold often in electronic kit form and in limited numbers, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians.
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Altair 8800 The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue (published in late November 1974) of "Popular Electronics", and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in "Radio-Electronics", and in other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold thousands in the first month. The Altair also appealed to individuals and businesses that just wanted a computer and purchased the assembled version. The Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution as the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a "de facto" standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.
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Sinclair QL The Sinclair QL (for "Quantum leap"), is a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as an upper-end counterpart to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The QL was aimed at the serious home user and professional and executive users markets from small to large businesses and higher educational establishments, but failed to achieve commercial success.
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PDP-5 The PDP-5 was "the world's first commercially produced" minicomputer and Digital Equipment Corporation's first 12-bit computer.
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Cops 'n' Robbers Cops 'n' Robbers is a game for home computers published by Atlantis Software originally in 1985 for the VIC-20 and in virtually identical form on the Commodore 64. It was ported to the Commodore 16/Commodore Plus/4 (1986), Acorn Electron and BBC Micro (1987) and the Atari 8-bit family of computers (1988). The game was controversial when released as the player is the "robber" and must shoot the "cops."
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Compaq Portable III The Compaq Portable III is a PC/AT-compatible computer released by Compaq Computer Corporation in 1987. It was advertised as being much smaller and lighter than the previous portable x86-PCs, however it was still quite large by today's standards. Its street price upon its release was 4999 USD for a model equipped with a 12 MHz Intel 80286, 640 KB RAM, 1.2 MB 5.25" floppy, 20 /40 /60 MB hard disk , and a 10" amber colored gas-plasma display or 5799 USD with the upgraded 40 MB hard disk . There was also an optional ISA Expansion chassis allowed for 2 full length 16-bit ISA add-in cards for 199 USD . Power is supplied using a mains electricity outlet, no battery exists.
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ILLIAC I The ILLIAC I ("Illinois Automatic Computer"), a pioneering computer built in 1952 by the University of Illinois, was the first computer built and owned entirely by a US educational institution.
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DK'Tronics DK'Tronics Ltd (stylised as dk'tronics) was a British software and hardware company active during the 1980s. It primarily made peripherals for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC but also released video games for the Spectrum, Commodore 64, Commodore Vic 20, BBC Micro, Memotech, MSX and Amstrad platforms.
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Plug computer A plug computer is an external device, often configured for use in the home or office as a compact computer. It consists of a high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip processor with several I/O ports (USB ports, ...) and typically runs any of a number of Linux distributions. Most versions do not have provisions for connecting a display and are best suited as for running media server, back-up services, file sharing and remote access functions, thus acting as a bridge between in-home protocols such as Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and Server Message Block (SMB) and cloud based services. There are, however, plug computer offerings that have analog VGA monitor and/or HDMI connectors, which, along with multiple USB ports, permit the use of a display, keyboard, and mouse, thus making them full-fledged, low-power alternatives to desktop and notebook computers.
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PSI Comp 80 In 1979, the British magazine Wireless World published the technical details for a "Scientific Computer". Shortly afterward the British firm Powertran used this design for their implementation, which they called the PSI Comp 80. It was sold in the form of a kit of parts for a cased single-board home computer system.
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IBM Series/1 The IBM Series/1 is a 16-bit minicomputer, introduced in 1976, that in many respects competed with other minicomputers of the time, such as the PDP-11 from Digital Equipment Corporation and similar offerings from Data General and HP. The Series/1 was typically used to control and operate external electro-mechanical components while also allowing for primitive data storage and handling.
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Compaq Portable II The Compaq Portable II was the third product in the Compaq portable series to be brought out by Compaq Computer Corporation. Released in 1986 at a price of US$3499, the Portable II was much improved upon its predecessors. It included an 8 MHz processor, and was lighter and smaller than the Compaq Portable. There were four models of the Compaq Portable II. The basic Model 1 shipped one 5.25" floppy drive and 256kB of RAM. The Model 2 added a second 5.25" floppy drive and sold for $3599. The Model 3 shipped with a 10MB hard disk in addition to one 5.25" floppy drive and 640kB of RAM for $4799 at launch. The Model 4 would upgrade the Model 3 with a 20MB hard drive and sold for $4999. The Compaq Portable II was significantly lighter than its predecessors, the Model 1 weighed just 23.6 pounds compared to the 30.5 pounds the Compaq Portable 286 weighed. Compaq only shipped the system with a small demo disk, MS-DOS 3.1 had to be purchased separately.