Luxor ABC 80 (Boxed)

L’ABC 80, da Advanced BASIC Computer for the 1980s, fu un home computer progettato dalla azienda svedese Dataindustrier AB e prodotto dalla Luxor con sede a Motala in Svezia. Fu messo in commercio nell’agosto del 1978.

L’ABC 80 era basato sul microprocessore Zilog Z80 operante alla frequenza di 3 MHz ed era dotato di 16 kB di memoria RAM, espandibile a 32 KB, e di 16 KB di memoria ROM. Come linguaggio di programmazione era presente un interprete BASIC.

Era dotato di un registratore a cassette per la memorizzazione di programmi e dati, ma poteva essere espanso aggiungendo sia un floppy disk drive che altre periferiche. Per la visualizzazione delle immagini era utilizzato un monitor CRT in bianco e nero, realizzato anch’esso da Luxor, capace di 40×24 caratteri. I suoni erano prodotti tramite il chip SN76477 prodotto dalla Texas Instruments, e c’era anche la possibilità di connettere più computer tra di loro grazie ad una rete denominata ABC NET.

L’ABC 80 riscosse un buon successo: nei 2 anni in cui fu in commercio ne furono venduti più di 10.000 esemplari e, con il successore ABC 800, dominò per 6 anni il mercato svedese degli home computer. Entrambi i computer furono adottati anche nelle scuole per insegnare l’informatica agli studenti.

L’ABC 80 fu anche prodotto, come BRG ABC-80 su licenza dalla Budapesti Rádiótechnikai Gyár (BRG) in Ungheria. Aveva la stessa tastiera ma il case era in metallo anziché in materiale plastico.

 Gallery:

… e le scatole

Software

source: wikipedia

  1. Thomas Michanek
    29 January 2018 a 12:53 | #1

    I want to point out that, despite its less than fancy looks, the ABC80 was a high quality home computer. The internal design and electronics were very well made, with lots of expansion capabilities. The BASIC interpreter is probably one of the best and fastest in the world at the time – it was 5-10 times faster than Apple ][, TRS-80 and all its competitors, including Microsoft BASIC on an IBM PC. The challenge was to make graphic games with the limited resolution of 80×72!
    The ABC computers are still alive today (2018), for instance there’s a small expansion card that allows you to read and write files to a microSD card instead of using cassettes or floppy disks.
    /Thomas Michanek, Swedish ABC80 hacker :-)

  2. Niko Wessman
    8 February 2018 a 22:24 | #2

    Hi. I have an ABC80 for which I would be very interested to acquire a microSD card reader. Can you help, where to get one?

    Regards, Niko

  3. 12 February 2018 a 22:31 | #3

    @Niko Wessman

    Hi Niko,

    I don’t know, really exist for the ABC?

  4. Thomas Michanek
    12 March 2018 a 17:40 | #4

    @Niko Wessman
    Send an email to Anders Jansson , one of the developers. I’m not sure if he has any more cards left, or if he’s willing to ship outside Sweden.
    You can also check out the manual at:
    https://www.abc.se/home/m8894/ABCbus/ABCbus_06/ABCbus_06_manual.pdf

  5. BuCkBoy
    6 December 2023 a 19:20 | #5

    This was the first computer on which I wrote my first (basic) program. I was 12 or 13 years old.
    It was a Swedish licence Hungarian made computer.
    My best remember there was a Hungarian languaged horse racing game and We enjoyed it at the christmas in the middle of 80s.
    This is the Hungarian chassis of ABC 80:
    https://www.retropages.hu/Gepek/ABC80/ABC-80.JPG

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