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.
The first company I worked for was 'Orchard Computers', because they sold Apple, Acorn and Apricot.
Around 1993-4
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.
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.
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 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.
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 :)
me too! In the pc business from 1981!, Apricots were great bits of kit. The GRIDs were good but very expensive at the time.
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.
Today I recommend Star Labs, another underrated brand that ships machines with coreboot.
No not really. They were pants. :)
Erm, that page just gives me activitystream json?
Seems like it fixed itself.