The Acorn Business Computer (ABC) was produced from 1984 by the British company Acorn Computers. The series of eight computers was aimed at the business, research and further education markets.
The system was developed by Acorn essentially as a repackaged BBC Micro with a second processor to complement the Micro's 6502. The Zilog Z80, Intel 80286 and National Semiconductor 32016 were all used as second processors in the various models. Two of the eight models produced, the Personal Assistant (PA) and the Terminal, had no second processor. Despite having a ROM-based operating system, most of the users ran different operating systems. The ABC 100 and 110 were usually ran with CP/M, the 200 and 210 were mostly run with Xenix, and the 300 and 310 usually ran with either MS-DOS, CP/M-86, or PC-DOS.
Range and specifications
Model PA
- 64 KB RAM
- 6502 processor running at
Model Terminal
- 64 KB RAM.
- No file system by default.
- 6502 processor running at 2 MHz
- 32 KB of operating system in ROM with a VT100 emulator.
Model 100
- 64 KB RAM.
- Disc Filing System by default.
- Z80 processor. (6502 processor acting as host for parasite Z80)
Model 110
Model 200
Model 210/Cambridge Workstation
- 4 MB of RAM
- 32016 parasite with a 6502 host.
- 10 MB HDD
Model 300
- 1024 KB RAM memory.
- Disc Filing System by default.
- 80286 processor. (6502 processor acting as host for parasite 80286)
Although the Model 300 hand a 32 KB embedded operating system, mosr people used CP/M-86, MS-DOS, or PC-DOS instead as those systems were more popular at the time.
List of Acorn Computers microcomputers |
| Computers: Microcomputer System • Atom • BBC Micro (aka Proton) • Electron • Communicator • Business Computer • BBC Master • Archimedes range • Risc PC · Network Computer • Set-Top Box • Phoebe Operating systems: Acorn MOS • Panos · Arthur • ARX • RISC iX • RISC OS |
