Acorn System Catalogue
The Acorn System Catalogue is a sales brochure from Acorn Computers Ltd describing the System 5 and the Acorn Bus Eurocard range. It is undated. The hosted PDF has 20 scanned pages with an OCR text layer, and it covers printed pages 8 to 27 only.
What is in the scan
[edit | edit source]Each printed page describes one product, with a photograph above the text.
| Printed page | Product | Printed page | Product |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Acorn System 5 | 18 | Cassette interface card |
| 9 | Prestel terminal (a System 3 with a modem) | 19 | Laboratory interface |
| 10 | Microcontroller | 20 | Teletext VDU interface |
| 11 | 6502 CPU | 21 | 80 × 25 VDU interface |
| 12 | 6809 CPU | 22 | Daisy-wheel printer interface |
| 13 | Keyboard | 23 | Analogue interface |
| 14 | 32K dynamic RAM | 24 | Disk module |
| 15 | 8K static memory | 25 | Disk controller |
| 16 | CMOS RAM | 26 | PROM programmer |
| 17 | Versatile interface | 27 | RGB PAL encoder / UHF modulator |
What it is useful for
[edit | edit source]The catalogue lists which Acorn Eurocards existed and what each was for, which helps when identifying an unlabelled card. Several details are hard to find elsewhere:
- The System 5 is described as a 4U, 19-inch card frame with seven Eurocard slots, one or two mini-floppy drives giving 100 to 800 KB depending on the drive type, and a switch-mode power supply Eurocard giving 5 and 12 V, with two of them in two-drive systems. The 6502 CPU, disk controller and 32K DRAM cards are standard, with an 80 × 25 or 40 × 25 Teletext VDU card, and "2 MHz 6502 versions of System 5 will be available soon" (p. 8). The Acorn System 5 Handbook of March 1983 describes a ten-slot rack with a single AC9231 supply and a 6502A board instead.
- The microcontroller card, with a crystal clock fitted, becomes the 6502 CPU of the Systems 1, 2, 3 and 4, and the separate 6502 CPU card is designed for the Systems 2, 3 and 4 with their 8- or 14-slot backplanes (pp. 10–11).
- The cassette interface card is the upper Eurocard of the Acorn System 1 without its keypad and display, as used in the System 2; it can also be added to the Systems 3, 4 and 5 (p. 18).
- The PROM programmer needs +12 V for 74S571 PROMs and +26 V for EPROMs. Its board is longer than a standard Eurocard so that its two low-insertion-force sockets reach the front of the system (p. 26).
- The RGB PAL encoder / UHF modulator was designed by Acorn for manufacture by Astec International. It outputs on UHF channel 36, its sound sub-carrier can be tuned to 5.5 or 6.0 MHz, and it runs from a single 5 V supply. The catalogue states that Acorn's separate UHF PAL colour board for the Acorn Atom is not interchangeable with it (p. 27).
What this document does not contain
[edit | edit source]- Printed pages 1 to 7 are missing. The surviving pages have no entries for the System 1 to System 4 machines, although the card entries mention them, and the System 5 entry refers to a software section that is not in the scan.
- No parts lists, component values, circuit diagrams or designators.
- No prices.
- Nothing on fault-finding or servicing.
Pages that cite this document
[edit | edit source]- Acorn System 5: the earlier seven-slot System 5 configuration
- Acorn System 5 Handbook: the card range not covered by the handbook
- Acorn System 2, Acorn System 2 Capacitor Replacement Guide; Acorn System 3 and its maintenance, troubleshooting and capacitor guides; Acorn System 4 and its maintenance, troubleshooting and capacitor guides; Acorn System 1 Technical Manual: card descriptions
Download: Acorn System Catalogue.pdf