This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the ACT Apricot Portable computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

I''m very interested in acquiring the beautiful Apricot PCs, manuals, after market books, etc., and peripherals. Means a lot to me and I will treat them all like fragile crystals of pure joy. Ping me at carlsplumer AT gmail DOT com if you want to chat about your Apricot stuff. Cheers!

I have an old manual for the apricot portable if anyone wants it . crick@ozemail.com.au

My dad worked at apricot from the early 80’s until there demise, and I’ve inherited many portable apricots also many prototypes of most models endless amounts.
I’m looking to move them on to an enthusiast that will appreciate them
Thanks Matt

Hello,

I''''m looking for the original Apricot mic for my act portable, if someone has one to sell please contact me.

Got the portable, in special case, mouse, manuals, discs etc. complete.
Want an offer or what have you?
Roy

Got the portable, in special case, mouse, manuals, discs etc. complete.
Want an offer or what have you?
Roy

Got the portable, in special case, mouse, manuals, discs etc. complete.
Want an offer or what have you?
Roy

The Portable/FP was only ever available with an 8086 and strangely will not support the NEC V20 as a $-in speed upgrade. The systems originally selling with only 256kb of ram had the black finish and the better 512kb systems came in white. You also can not repopulate the system board (512kb units came with half their banks filled) with an additional 512kb of ram, thus maxing the machine out, and get the memory to immediately be detected by the BIOS. The service manual also does not state how exactly you get around this, so that nibble of info might be lost to time.
The floppy drive (Sony OA-D32W) is a twin head drive unlike the OA-D32V and thus works with double-sided diskettes.
The only truly awful design issues with the system was the glossy plastic over the LCD which makes for a near mirror finish (and incredible glare) and the absolutely dreadful IBM text mode emulation which all Apricots had up until the XEN 386.

Didn''t the apricot portable use a 80186 cpu?

I still have mine and its in working order. It was a wonderfull machine and I learnt word processing and spread sheets on it. It was well ahead of its time and has to be one of the best of its time.

The specs on this page say it''s a 8086 processor. Mine has a Z80 processor. Also the Sony diskette drive was blocked. The grease used in those days turns into solid glue after so many years. Had to use solvent to make the thing move again. In the text at the top it says single sided 720k and in the specs at the bottom it says 720k double sided. It is 720k and 720k is always double sided as far as I know. To (dis)assemble the unit is a bit of a where to start and where to finish puzzle. Unfortunately have not been able to get it to work so far. No display and the diskette drive just starts the motors (spinning and head movement) and never stops. Any suggestions?

This machine, released over 25 years ago, was very early on several new tecnologies$ LCD display, GUI, infrared connection and speech recognition. SuperWriter and Supercalc both worked very well. And, of course, I''ve still got mine, in perfect condition!

I also bought an Apricot portable from Dixons, although the Voice Recognition was almost useless the fact it came with SuperCalc 5 rescued it from being a complete waste. Although Apricot hardware was not 100% PC compatible it gave me a cheap (£500) PC when I wanted to move from ZX81's and Atari 400's and see what the real world was like.

I remember I quite liked the infra-red keyboard and it came with a fibre optic "light pipe" in case the sun was on the sensor or objects got in the way. Later I got hold of some PC emulatin software which allowed me to run Procomm on it and it became quite a usefull tool.

This computer is bizarre, fantastic, odd & brilliant all at the same time. Way ahead of its time, in more sense than one - and check that case design! I would love to own one of these one day, however the chances of that are highly remote :-(

I bought a second hand Apricot portable around 1985 or 1986 and wrote lots of articles on it. The screen was not very good, but the voice recognition and wireless keyboard were way ahead of its time. Sadly, I traded the unit in for an IBM compatible pc with more memory and a CRT screen, so I don't have it anymore. Haven't seen one since, except for on this excellent site.

Apricot Portable is the most beautifull portable PC I've ever seen. Way ahead of it's time in the mid 80's