The Apricot Portable, manufactured by the UK Company ATC in 1984, contained some interesting features for its time. First of all there was the Infra Red Keyboard. This provided a wireless link between the keyboard and the computer. Then there was the speech recognition software. After spending all day getting it working, you were left in the position of 64 commands available in RAM (out of 4096 stored), and then had little RAM to run a program.

The built-in LCD monitor has a resolution of 640 x 200 in graphics mode and 80 chars x 25 lines in text mode, while the external monitor connection could support 640 x 256, showing 8 colours at any one time out of a pallet of 16. Other interface connections included Centronics, RS232 Serial and an Apricot expansion slot. A built-in 720k Floppy Drive was also included.

The price of the comuter was £1965 in November 1984. That is £6,400 in 2020 ($8,300).

Year1984
Make & ModelApricot Portable
Generation4th
CPUIntel 8086
Speed5MHz
RAM & ROM256k RAM, 32k ROM
Power240V 1A
Exhibit No.1347

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