The Alspa ACI-2 is an integrated CP/M system. The chassis houses one 8” full height floppy drive (the ACI-1) or two half-height drives (making it an ACI-2).
While the machine at first appears to be an external drive box, there’s a single-board Z80 computer mounted below the disk drive(s) that provides for a full, integrated CP/M system.
The ACI-2 single-board computer includes a 4 MHz Z80, 64K of dynamic RAM, boot ROM, a double density floppy controller, three 8251A serial ports, and options for a parallel port, battery-backed RTC, and Corvus hard disk interface.
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system,
please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
I believe I have an ACI-1, but with a single half-height drive. It was sold as a turn-key telephone management system, so the labels on the front were applied by that vendor. However, there is an Alspa logo on the back. The last time I tried powering on this system, I couldn''t get anything displayed on the terminal, but I was using a laptop connected via a usb-serial adapter and that may have been an issue. To verify that the adapter worked, I was able to connect a modem and I was able to issue AT commands. Taking DTE/DCE considerations into mind, I still wasn''t able to get the display to work. Previously (i.e., years earlier) I was able to start the system, but the POST indicated bad RAM. Since the RAM was surface mounted, I was going to junk the system and at that time the documentation was discarded. Long story short... any idea where I can get hardware documention for this system? TIA.
Wednesday 28th September 2022
Allan Ayres (Canada)
NAME
ACI-1 / 2
MANUFACTURER
Alspa Computer
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1981
CPU
Zilgo Z80
SPEED
4 MHz
RAM
64 Kb
ROM
boot ROM
TEXT MODES
80 x 25
GRAPHIC MODES
None
COLORS
Monochrome display
SOUND
Beeper ?
I/O PORTS
3 x 8251A serial ports, parallel port (optional), Corvus hard disk interface (optional)
BUILT IN MEDIA
one 8'' full height floppy disk (ACI-1) or two 8'' half-height floppy disks (ACI-2)
