The Acorn Electron is basically a cut-down version of the Acorn BBC-B with which it is partly compatible. After the success of the BBC, Acorn and founder Chris Cury wanted a product to compete with "under £200" computers and especially with the Sinclair Spectrum, its main threat. But sadly, Acorn failed to meet the demand for the new system, mainly because of production problems related to the large custom ULA at the heart of the Electron.
The next year (1984), Acorn decided to anticipate all these problems and focused on producing the Electron in vast numbers. But unfortunately, public demand and enthusiasm were on the wane, and despite an extensive £4-million advertising campaign, a third of the Electrons that were built never made it to the shelves, leaving behind large stockpiles of components that had been paid for but were never used.
Compared to the BBC and its flexible connectivity, the Electron was quite basic with only one expansion port to play around with. Fortunately, Acorn quickly released the Plus 1 expansion offering two ROM cartridge slots, a parallel / centronics interface and a joystick connector.
The built-in Acorn Electron BASIC, largely derived from the famous BBC BASIC, was impressive with innovative features such as the ability to define real procedures with DEF PROC and ENDPROC, or the handling of error events (in 1983 !). There was even an OLD statement which would recover a program erased by NEW. A complete assembler language was also stored in the 32K ROM.
The graphics capabilities were also quite impressive for a computer of this category. Text mode of up to 80 columns and a high resolution of up to 640 x 256 pixels with 2 colors. The custom ULA developed especially for the Electron handled the video display, sound and I/O communications! This was the real heart of the Electron.
The mechanical keyboard was very good. BASIC statements were printed on most of the keys, allowing users to type them in one go. A small amber LED placed on the left part of the keyboard indicated if you were in lowercase or uppercase mode.
Despite being more powerful than the ZX Spectrum, the Electron didn't sell well and suffered from a lack of certain software.
i loved my lil electron, i still have it up in loft at mums and used it about a year ago, since then im using an emulator to relive old days of the classic games.
i find it amazing that even now - acorn technology is still in use - i only just found out that most mobiles use what is essentially an acorn chip -
brilliant computer - right gear - just a little bit too late
i did get a spectrum eventually and i hated it - if i could get hold of a BEEB id use that too
Friday 25th June 2010
kev smith (northampton UK)
Many older PC video cards like my Hauppage Brand card can be set to NTSC, PAL and SECAM analog standards as well as being switchable to the appropriate Channel / Frequency table. Having a monitor with a refresh rate of at least 50 Hz will also be a BIG help. If it hooked into a common TV set (UK or USA), you SHOULD be able to hook it to a decent, if not older, video card.
Monday 12th April 2010
A. Trent Phillips (United States)
I loved my little Electron. I learned to program on it, played loads of games Elite!!, Repton, too many to mention. It was a great little computer with a really nice keyboard, much easier to use than the Spectrum rubber keys. I sometimes think about buying another one now but maybe the memories are best left alone. (Power sockets and bricks were a problem though.)
160 x 256 (4 or 16 colors), 320 x 256 (2 or 4 colors), 640 x 256 (2 colors)
COLORS
8 colors + 8 flashing versions of the same colors
SOUND
1 channel of sound + 1 channel of white sound, 7 octaves. In fact 3 virtual sound channels mapped to the single available physical channel. Built-in speaker
SIZE / WEIGHT
16 x 34 x 6.5 cm
I/O PORTS
Expansion port, Tape-recorder connector (1200 baud), aerial TV connector (RF modulator), RGB video output
POWER SUPPLY
External PSU, 18v
PRICE
£199 (UK, august 83) 2950 fr (France, february 84)
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