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.
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I have a acorn electron computer in my spare room in a box with games etc was wondering if it''s worth anything I have had the computer for the past 30+ years
Sunday 12th April 2015
Julie Moualhi (Thetford Norfolk UK)
I only now got some Electron Emulators, but in old days did I have an Texas Instrument TI994A. And a Lambda 8300, then a Commodore 64. But I sold them after a while, I am very interested in programming Basic.
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)
