8-Bit Software

Pictures of a U.S. Issue 1 BBC converted back to UK. Hover over the thumbnail for a minute for brief info

Acorn's Cambridge Workstation is the only model from the ABC (Acorn Business Computer) line first shown/marketed in 1984 to have actually been produced. Essentially the ABC 210 with 4Mb (+64K) RAM and a 20Mb HD in the colour monitor case, it arguably had less marketing than the ABCs. Nearly all that were sold (and it's hard to know how many were produced) went to Universities, mine originally came from Edinburgh University.
The ACW is really nothing more than a well-equipped BBC B+ with 32016 (or 'Cambridge', or 'Acorn Scientific') co-processor all in one box. Opening the case (two over centre catches on rear and an evil clipped on front panel that has snapped on mine) reveals very little, the monitor electronics (Microvitec CUB, of course) dominate. However, industrial design wins through, and the electronics are revealed in three very short stages:

• Undo each side panel clip - 2 per side - and lift the sides up. They should hinge over and support themselves, though they detached on mine. It may be that some additional screws are missing.
• Undo the two rear clips.
• Lift the monitor cage, being careful to not catch any of the cables.

And there you have it - the Acorn Cambridge Workstation - a rarely seen beast - crudely explained! If anyone reading has parts, manuals or software for this (or the 32016), or more solid information on options, numbers produced etc, please email me at abc210@dmc12.demon.co.uk

Electron (Turbo) with Slogger Board fitted. Note the switch on the side to switch from 32K to 64K. Thanks to Bri Thackeray for providing the Electron for the photos.

Thanks to Paras Sidapara for this info: The turbo design originated from Acorn themselves; Slogger just made it reality!Normal programs will see overlayed "turbo" RAM running at 2MHz, but a custom sub-OS ROM permits the electron OS to access the real (original) RAM for the screen display. Apparently Acorn struck some deal with slogger to dispose of their last electron stocks (slogger then bumped them up with these boards)

An Electron as produced by British Telecom.

Photos and info supplied by Jason Daniels & Steve Fisher of jayedan Ltd. (ebay user id = jayedan) and are Copyright 2002 jayedan Ltd

Information on the system is a little thin on the ground but, as far as I can tell, this computer was manufactured by Acorn for BT Merlin as a smart telecoms terminal for small businesses. Strictly speaking it seems to be a stock (I think) Electron with a rather large expansion module attached to it's rear expansion port. However, the unit was supplied complete (computer and expansion) and not just as an Electron upgrade (the box proves this beyond a doubt). So the whole thing can be legitimately considered as an Electron variant rather than just an upgraded Electron. Also, the Electron computer has some additional graphics on the case - there is a BT Merlin address sticker on the underside and, as can be seen in the picture, this particular system was used by Interflora as it has a stuck-on function guide for the function keys that make up the top row of the keyboard.

The Expansion unit is a large flat box made from identical cream-coloured plastic as the computer. It contains a large circuit board (which fills the entire box area). There is a speaker inside the box that connects to the circuit board. Presumably this is the output for the hardware speech-synthesizer. The speech synthesizer looks like it uses a couple of Texas Instrument chips. There are a series of ROM chips down one side of the board which I assume contain the operating system, application and control firmware for the modem, speech synth and interfaces. There is also a battery on the board (for a real-time clock maybe?) which will need to be replaced. There is a cable with a standard BT phone connector that emerges from the rear of the box. Also at the rear of the unit (as can be seen in the photo) are two ports - I am not 100% sure what they are but I am pretty certain that the left one is some sort of disk-drive interface and the right one is a printer interface.

Thanks to Richard Hall for this info. Dotted lines where I cut bits out:

......Its a Master 128 ET (Econet Terminal).......... they really are terminals ie all the non essential insides have been left out, even the CMOS battery I presume because it uses the Econet clock. ........... So the Master ET is a cutdown 128 with Econet board, The Master Turbo has the 65c102 pre installed and is basically a "full" master. But what about the Master Scientific? how big was that 32016 board? the only ones Ive seen are fitted into an old BBC-b Style co-pro box, did the master 128 version fit inside?