Apricot Computers: An underrated British brand | Hacker News Reader

Apricot Computers: An underrated British brand

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93 pointsgiuliomagnifico39 comments

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One of my first roles in the early 90s was on a UK government project.

They used Apricot desktops, talking to IBM mainframes running COBOL. The desktops ran OS2.

The project also had Unix machines made by British Telecom and Apple Macs for word processing.

Looking back, it’s amazing how diverse the computing environment was.

> Glenrothes, Scotland

For non-UK readers, Glenrothes is a giant electronics manufacturing hub, much like Shenzen. It benefits from excellent road and rail links to financial centres like Freuchie and has world class sea and air port facilities. 97.8% of European advanced electronics are built within 500 leagues of Glenrothes.

Any interesting computer museums in the vicinity? So much history must leave some marks.

Not in Glenrothes Metropolitan District itself, but in the wider conurbation there are some great ones. The 'museum to worldclass advantage that we gave away in fealty' is my personal favourite

I ask because there is a nice, if tiny, one in Galway, where DEC (and Apple, IIRC) used to have some manufacturing operations. These artefacts tend to linger in people’s attics for a long time.

They also have a shit shopping centre and a big Asda, so really they’ve got everything

Not only that. But they have...three Greggs boulangers

500 leagues is 480,000 rods for anyone who was confused.

Snorted with laughter at this one. We should call it ShenGlen.

I do have a lot of affection for Apricot. My dad bought me a 486 from them in the early 90s, and the tinkering I did on that thing set me on the path to my career in technology. I now work for a somewhat larger fruit-named company.

Having grown up in Fife, I have less affection for Glenrothes. It does have pretty efficient roundabouts, though.

The first company I worked for was 'Orchard Computers', because they sold Apple, Acorn and Apricot.

Around 1993-4

Used them at my Dad's PCB manufacturing business in South Wales for standard accounts and payroll, then went on to develop production control software for the company with my cousin: still have a pile of 3.5" floppies with Pascal code on them somewhere. Happy days!

At one time we actually ended up manufacturing PCBs to go into various Apricot machines: I vaguely recall the odd little LCD display ("microscreen") on some of the keyboards: did it have printed carbon pads for the membrane keyboard?

As far as we were concerned, they were great machines.

I have an Apricot with the little LCD display on the keyboard. Six membrane keys just under the LCD and each of those keys has an LED in the bottom left corner.

I love the gorgeous keycaps of their portable.

The ACT Sirius 1 (Victor 9000) was amazing for its time.

The other Apricot PCs were great, but so many of their machines were sidelined because they were only DOS-compatible and not generally IBM PC-compatible, and so could only run certain software.

The first 486 reviewed by BYTE magazine was an Apricot. It was a pretty nice machine compared to the Dells you see advertised just inside the front cover. https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/198909_Byte_Magazine_Vol_1...

Elonex were another UK-based PC brand that manufactured their own 386/486 boards for their systems in the early 90s.

And subsequently was AFAIR the only UK builder of x86 NexTStations. Black PCs, basically.

There's a review from PCW of the Apricot F10 in the 1985/09 issue [1]

1: https://pcw.oobergeek.net/magazines/PCW-1985-09.pdf

I recall announcements in 1984 that Apricot were building a m68k machine. I was very excited at the time. I never heard if it ever really happened though.

used to sell the Apricots back in the days. The PCs from Apricot and Grid stood out in terms of design, from the rest of beige uglies.

Were they actually available to purchase? Seems like supply of these and others was usually a bit spotty.

Yes, I had the Apricot Xen in the shop. If I remember correctly, they were not 100% PC compatible, and did not exactly sell well. Neither did the Grids. But both were great conversation starters.

The Grid Compass series (especially the II models with the big screen) looked like it came from the future. Stunning in its era. Wouldn't mind seeing a reboot.

Yes, they were stunning. looked like a prop from bladerunner.

Actually were a prop in Aliens :)

damn, did not know that. will have to view Alien tonight on Plex to spot this.

In Aliens (the second episode), the automatic cannons are controlled by a pair of Grid Compass.

Also the Data General One (poor screen aside).

The EL display one was nice, but the GRID ones were on a different level. They still look modern.

Other than would be perfectly at home in a modern office is the QL. Put two SDCard slot where the micro drives were and four USB-C ports in the back (6, one for power, one for the first monitor, four for expansion) and it’ll still look cool. With a decent CPU (and a delete key) could be a daily driver.

Yes, the QL was another very clean modern design. Too bad the MicroDrives were an utter disaster and the sales tanked because of that

I think the Spectrum-like graphics and overall speed were what killed it. The 68008 was painfully slow compared to the 68000.

Maybe someone could make a QL Next ;-) Or just a wireless keyboard with the same shape as the QL.

me too! In the pc business from 1981!, Apricots were great bits of kit. The GRIDs were good but very expensive at the time.

I wonder if any of the Apricot-era software is still going? If the services side became ACT, which was bought by Misys, Misys bought by Vista Equity and merged with Canada’s D+H to form Finastra - still a going concern in software for financial services. Or any former Apricot employees still at Finastra?

I saw some of their machines in person for the first time at the Centre for Computing History, in Cambridge.

If you find yourself in the UK, it’s totally worth a visit (and Cambridge itself is a gorgeous little city).

No not really. They were pants. :)

Today I recommend Star Labs, another underrated brand that ships machines with coreboot.

Apricot bet software would get recompiled for their hardware like on CP/M, but by 1984 "runs DOS" quietly meant "bit-for-bit clones the IBM BIOS." Being cleaner architecturally stopped mattering once the reference platform became the thing you had to copy exactly. Shame, because the soft-key LCD strip on the keyboard was a genuinely good idea.

Erm, that page just gives me activitystream json?

Seems like it fixed itself.

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