The Apricot PC was a personal computer produced by Apricot Computers. Released in late 1983, it was Apricot's first computer made for business use. The press received it well, especially for the high resolution of its time 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. CRT green-screen 9" with text mode or graphics. Equipped with two floppy discs and a keyboard with an integrated LCD display. Released in 1983, it achieved success in the United Kingdom. The Apricot Xi was a similar computer released in 1984, with a hard drive instead of a second floppy-drive.
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. 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.
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 portDB-25 connector, monitor connector and power supply with a switch.
Support for two internal 3,5" Sony floppy disk drives
