The Acorn Business Computer (ABC) was a series of microcomputers announced at the end of 1983 by the British company Acorn Computers. The series of eight computers was aimed at the business, research and further education markets. However, the ABC range was cancelled before any of the models were shipped to customers. The ABC 210 was subsequently relaunched as the Acorn Cambridge Workstation, sold in modest numbers to academic and scientific users.

The ABC range was developed by Acorn essentially as a repackaged BBC Micro, expanded to 64 kB RAM, to which was added (in some models) a second processor and extra memory to complement the Micro's 6502. The electronics and disk drives were integrated into the monitor housing, with a separate keyboard.

The Zilog Z80, Intel 80286 and National Semiconductor 32016 were all used as second processors in the various models. Two of the eight models produced, the Personal Assistant and the Terminal, had no second processor.

This example in our collection is the ABC 110, which is a CP/M system with the BBC Micro Z80 second processor packaged inside the ABC case, and has a single 5¼-inch floppy disc drive, a 10MB hard disk, and colour screen.

Manufacturer: Acorn
Date: 1983

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH44254. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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