The Enterprise is a Zilog Z80 based computer, announced in 1983, but not commercially available until 1985, due to a series of delays. It was marketed by Enterprise Computers and manufactured by British Intelligent Software. It was never commercially successful.

The keyboard is unusual because it contains a joystick (replacing normal cursor keys), as well as having programmable key functions. The keyboard design was by Geoff Hollington and Nick Oakley, who used the red, dark grey, green and blue design to differ the machine from office equipment and appeal to the lower end of the market.

It has two variants; the Enterprise 64 and the Enterprise 128 (which is also in our collection), the numbers referring to the KB of RAM contained in the computer. The computer was renamed multiple times during its manufacture, and was also known as Samurai, Oscar and Elan.

It is a very thin machine for its time, and could edit BASIC, as well as other programming languages. However, the BASIC code was not built into the ROM, but the interpreter was supplied through a 16KB ROM cartridge. It had a 4MHz Z80 CPU and 32KB of internal ROM. The Enterprise computers also contained two ASIC chips to take the strain off of the central processor, and are named 'Nick' and 'Dave' after their manufacturers; 'Nick' handling the graphics and 'Dave' handling the sound and memory paging.

Manufacturer: British Intelligent Software
Date: 1985

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH71181. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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