In 1986 the Acorn Business Computer range was long gone, and Olivetti -
Acorn's new owners, having been forced to increase their stake from 49
to 80 per cent of the firm - were concentrating on making Acorn more
profitable. The case for the 65C816-based Communicator was retained and
given a basic box, housing a PSU and disk drive, to make a standard-looking 3-box computer system based around the BBC Master architecture.
Also marketed in Europe as the Olivetti Prodest PC 128 S (S for Sistema), the Master compact differed from other computers in a number of annoying ways. Most confusing was the decision to keep the computer in the keyboard, with suitable reductions in available interfaces and features such as the real-time clock - making the Master Compact rather like a grown up Electron (however, home marketing would unfortunately not be attempted - it would have been considerably more successful). The 'CPU' was connected via a large ribbon cable and a jack plug. The monitor connected to the 'keyboard'. It was, to be blunt, a mess.
However, the system did introduce the 3.5" drive as a standard to the 8-bit BBC range and featured all the usual Master enhancements plus a mouse/joystick port. As a school computer - the traditional market - it differed just enough to make it relatively unpopular, lacking the user and 1MHz bus ports used by many educational devices, and being (by nature of its smaller case) somewhat easier to steal and damage. The Compact was discontinued very early on, the introduction of the A305 Archimedes offering a similar 'format' of machine, but with all the benefits associated with Acorn - expandability, speed, and reliability. The original one-box Master 128 continued to sell until 1993...
Olivetti were to get their own back for the Compact - Acorn sold a
branded version of the Olivetti M19 'PC Compatible', a rather dated 8088-based machine.
The Olivetti Prodest 128 can be seen in the kid's film 'Treasure Island in Space' - an Italian production, most likely. The computer is recognizable by its blue and white display.
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Info, texts and picture by Richard Kilpatrick
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Marc from Australia, that''s a sin even the pope couldn''t absolve you of!
Sunday 29th October 2017
Marianne (UK)
As many Australians know, these machines plus the original beebs were prolific in Australian public and private (mainly Catholic) primary and high schools.
And thus I have a confession to make. I helped load hundreds of these and the beebs into skips for recycling (destination unknown) in about 1994-5 as schools transitioned to Macs or X86 clones.
At that time I had gone from C6 to Amiga and then to a 386 and didn''t see to keep one of these around (even though I was kinda fond of them having used them as a student myself). All that I kept was an Archimedes, which were briefly adopted in some places.
Sorry, aficionados!
Sunday 1st March 2015
Marc (Australia)
Sparkey, when it''s Sparky
Don''t tell others how to spell when you can''t spell deserve right!
Who knows what someone will sell these systems for.
Friday 26th July 2013
EA
NAME
BBC Master Compact
MANUFACTURER
Acorn Computer
TYPE
Home Computer
ORIGIN
United Kingdom
YEAR
September 1986
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
BBC Basic
KEYBOARD
Full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, 10 function keys, arrow keys, numeric keypad
CPU
MOS 65C02
SPEED
1.8 MHz
RAM
128 Kb
ROM
64 Kb + Sideways expansion
TEXT MODES
80 x 32/25 (2 colors) / 40 x 32/25 (2 or 4 colors) / 20 x 32 (16 colors) / 40 x 25 (Teletext display)
GRAPHIC MODES
640 x 256 (2 colors) / 320 x 256 (4 colors) / 160 x 256 (16 colors)
COLORS
16 (8 colors + flashing option)
SOUND
3 channels, 7 octaves
I/O PORTS
BNC video out, RGB video out, RS232 (optional), Econet port (optional), Printer port (36-pin Centronics), Disk-drive connector (Centronics), expansion edge connector
POWER SUPPLY
PSU Built in to base.
PERIPHERALS
Expansion units were produced, apparently. Came with 3.5'' 600K disk drive as standard.
