ABC80
Encyclopedia
The ABC 80 was a home computer
engineered by the Swedish corporation Dataindustrier AB
(DIAB) and manufactured by Luxor
in Motala
, Sweden
in the late 1970s (first model August 1978) and early 1980s. It was based on the Zilog Z80
running at and had RAM, expandable to , and ROM
containing a fast semi-compiling BASIC interpreter
.
ABC 80 normally used a dedicated (included) tape recorder for program and data storage, but could also be expanded to handle disk drives (and many other peripherals). Some sound effects could be produced by a Texas Instruments SN76477
sound chip which was connected to an 8-bit output port, but there was no way to control the chip's features in any detail, so sound was limited to 96 fixed sounds. The monitor
was a black and white TV set
modified for the purpose (an obvious choice since Luxor also made TVs). The computer had excellent I/O response times, something that was discovered when trying to upgrade to Personal computer. The solution was to use a microcontroller
that communicated with a PC. The main unit had a reset button
as well.
ABC 80 was also manufactured on license as BRG ABC80 by Budapesti Rádiótechnikai Gyár in Hungary
. It used the same keyboard, but the case was metal instead of plastic.
, and grasped a majority share of the rising personal computer market thanks to its office software in Swedish
. Although the fans would defend the by referring to its good BASIC and usable extension bus, it couldn't defend the home market against the gaming computers with color graphics and better sound that arrived in the early 80s like the Commodore 64
, even though a new cheaper version was released that could use an ordinary TV
instead of the dedicated video-monitor.
Luxor
held on to its office market for a couple of years longer with the ABC 800 series, which had more memory and a 'high-resolution' graphics. In 1985 Luxor
also tried to compete in the office market against the IBM PC
with its ill-fated ABC 1600
and ABC 9000 series UNIX
computers, but failed.
See also: Compis
and routinely used by the British magazine Personal Computer World
for testing new machines. The result was that ABC 80's semi-compiling BASIC
interpreter turned out to be faster than most other BASICs used in popular machines, especially when integer
variables are used, the results for some well known computers were as follows (times in seconds):
As seen from the table, the ABC 80 were up to as fast as the IBM PC using integers and up to as fast using floating point
calculations. However, due to a sub-optimal exponentiation
algorithm
, the ABC 80 was slow on BM8 (which was fixed in the ABC 800). Compared to the cheap Sinclair ZX81
, the ABC 80 was actually as fast on the simple loop of BM1 (with the ZX81 running in fast mode, i.e. without a continuous TV-picture).
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
engineered by the Swedish corporation Dataindustrier AB
Dataindustrier AB
Dataindustrier AB or DIAB was a Swedish computer engineering and manufacturing firm, founded in 1970 by Lars Karlsson and active in the 1970s through 1990s. The company's first product was a board-based computer centered around a specific bus named Data Board 4680. This unit was used for automatic...
(DIAB) and manufactured by Luxor
Luxor AB
Luxor was a Swedish home electronics and computer manufacturer located in Motala, acquired by Nokia in 1985.Originally a manufacturer of tape recorders, radios, television sets, stereo systems, and other home electronics, it launched its first home computer, the ABC 80 in 1978...
in Motala
Motala
Motala is a locality and the seat of Motala Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden with 29,798 inhabitants in 2005. It is the third largest city of Östergötland, following Linköping and Norrköping...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
in the late 1970s (first model August 1978) and early 1980s. It was based on the Zilog Z80
Zilog Z80
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
running at and had RAM, expandable to , and ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
containing a fast semi-compiling BASIC interpreter
Interpreter (computing)
In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...
.
ABC 80 normally used a dedicated (included) tape recorder for program and data storage, but could also be expanded to handle disk drives (and many other peripherals). Some sound effects could be produced by a Texas Instruments SN76477
Texas Instruments SN76477
SN76477 "complex sound generator" was a sound chip produced by Texas Instruments . The chip came to market in 1978, and TI production of the part ceased some time ago. More recently, a 100% compatible version, identified as ICS76477, has been listed as 'in stock' by at least one US-based component...
sound chip which was connected to an 8-bit output port, but there was no way to control the chip's features in any detail, so sound was limited to 96 fixed sounds. The monitor
Computer display
A monitor or display is an electronic visual display for computers. The monitor comprises the display device, circuitry, and an enclosure...
was a black and white TV set
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
modified for the purpose (an obvious choice since Luxor also made TVs). The computer had excellent I/O response times, something that was discovered when trying to upgrade to Personal computer. The solution was to use a microcontroller
Microcontroller
A microcontroller is a small computer on a single integrated circuit containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals. Program memory in the form of NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip, as well as a typically small amount of RAM...
that communicated with a PC. The main unit had a reset button
Reset button
In electronics and technology, a reset button is a button that can reset a device. On video game consoles, the reset button restarts the game, losing the player's unsaved progress. On personal computersOn IBM mainframes reset neither clears memory nor initiates an IPL., the reset button clears the...
as well.
ABC 80 was also manufactured on license as BRG ABC80 by Budapesti Rádiótechnikai Gyár in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
. It used the same keyboard, but the case was metal instead of plastic.
Popularity
The was a huge hit in SwedenSweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, and grasped a majority share of the rising personal computer market thanks to its office software in Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
. Although the fans would defend the by referring to its good BASIC and usable extension bus, it couldn't defend the home market against the gaming computers with color graphics and better sound that arrived in the early 80s like the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, even though a new cheaper version was released that could use an ordinary TV
Television set
A television set is a device that combines a tuner, display, and speakers for the purpose of viewing television. Television sets became a popular consumer product after the Second World War, using vacuum tubes and cathode ray tube displays...
instead of the dedicated video-monitor.
Luxor
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...
held on to its office market for a couple of years longer with the ABC 800 series, which had more memory and a 'high-resolution' graphics. In 1985 Luxor
Luxor
Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. The population numbers 487,896 , with an area of approximately . As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", as the ruins of the temple...
also tried to compete in the office market against the IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
with its ill-fated ABC 1600
ABC 1600
ABC 1600 was a personal computer from Luxor that was introduced in 1985. The model was built around the Motorola 68008 processor, had of memory and used the operating system ABCenix, a Unix-like system developed from DNIX....
and ABC 9000 series UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
computers, but failed.
See also: Compis
Compis
Compis , Scandis was a computer system designed and sold to schools beginning 1984. Since it was intended for educational use, it received the name Compis, which is short for COMPuter In School. The name can also be interpreted as a pun on the Scandinavian word kompis, meaning friend or pal...
Performance
In order to see how the ABC 80 would compare to other contemporary personal computers, in 1982, the Swedish magazine Mikrodatorn performed a "benchmark" test using eight short BASIC programs (referred to as BM1~BM8) defined by the American Kilobaud MagazineKilobaud Microcomputing
Kilobaud Microcomputing was a magazine dedicated to the computer homebrew hobbyists from the end of the 1970s until the beginning of the 1980s.-How kilobaud started:...
and routinely used by the British magazine Personal Computer World
Personal Computer World
Personal Computer World was a long-running British Computer magazine.Although for at least the last decade it contained a high proportion of Windows PC content , the magazine's title was not intended as a specific reference to this...
for testing new machines. The result was that ABC 80's semi-compiling BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
interpreter turned out to be faster than most other BASICs used in popular machines, especially when integer
Integer
The integers are formed by the natural numbers together with the negatives of the non-zero natural numbers .They are known as Positive and Negative Integers respectively...
variables are used, the results for some well known computers were as follows (times in seconds):
| Computer | CPU Central processing unit The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in... |
[MHz Hertz The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications.... ] |
BM1 | BM2 | BM3 | BM4 | BM5 | BM6 | BM7 | BM8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ABC 80 Integer | Z80 Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes... |
3 | 0.3 | 1.1 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3.6 | 5.8 | 9.3 | 6.5 |
| ABC 80 Floating point | 1.0 | 2.1 | 11.0 | 11.0 | 12.5 | 17.5 | 24.0 | 13.0 | ||
| IBM PC | 8088 Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 microprocessor was a variant of the Intel 8086 and was introduced on July 1, 1979. It had an 8-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers and the one megabyte address range were unchanged, however... |
4.77 | 1.5 | 5.2 | 12.1 | 12.6 | 13.6 | 23.5 | 37.4 | 3.5 |
| Apple III Apple III The Apple III is a business-oriented personal computer produced and released by Apple Computer that was intended as the successor to the Apple II series, but largely considered a failure in the market. Development work on the Apple III started in late 1978 under the guidance of Dr. Wendell Sander... |
S6502 Synertek Synertek, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1973. The initial founding group consisted of Bob Schreiner , Dan Floyd, Zvi Grinfas, Jack Balletto, and Gunnar Wetlesen. The manufacturing technology was MOS/LSI... |
2 | 1.7 | 7.2 | 13.5 | 14.5 | 16.0 | 27.0 | 42.5 | 7.5 |
| VIC-20 Commodore VIC-20 The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET... |
6502 MOS Technology 6502 The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of... |
0.98 | 1.4 | 8.3 | 15.5 | 17.1 | 18.3 | 27.2 | 42.7 | 9.9 |
| ZX81 Sinclair ZX81 The ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public... in "fast mode" |
Z80 Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes... |
3.25 | 4.5 | 6.9 | 16.4 | 15.8 | 18.6 | 49.7 | 68.5 | 22.9 |
As seen from the table, the ABC 80 were up to as fast as the IBM PC using integers and up to as fast using floating point
Floating point
In computing, floating point describes a method of representing real numbers in a way that can support a wide range of values. Numbers are, in general, represented approximately to a fixed number of significant digits and scaled using an exponent. The base for the scaling is normally 2, 10 or 16...
calculations. However, due to a sub-optimal exponentiation
Exponentiation
Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as an, involving two numbers, the base a and the exponent n...
algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
, the ABC 80 was slow on BM8 (which was fixed in the ABC 800). Compared to the cheap Sinclair ZX81
Sinclair ZX81
The ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public...
, the ABC 80 was actually as fast on the simple loop of BM1 (with the ZX81 running in fast mode, i.e. without a continuous TV-picture).
Sound
- SineSineIn mathematics, the sine function is a function of an angle. In a right triangle, sine gives the ratio of the length of the side opposite to an angle to the length of the hypotenuse.Sine is usually listed first amongst the trigonometric functions....
, noiseNoiseIn common use, the word noise means any unwanted sound. In both analog and digital electronics, noise is random unwanted perturbation to a wanted signal; it is called noise as a generalisation of the acoustic noise heard when listening to a weak radio transmission with significant electrical noise...
, square waveSquare waveA square wave is a kind of non-sinusoidal waveform, most typically encountered in electronics and signal processing. An ideal square wave alternates regularly and instantaneously between two levels...
. And mixingElectronic mixerAn electronic mixer is a device that combines two or more electrical or electronic signals into one or two composite output signals. There are two basic circuits that both use the term mixer, but they are very different types of circuits: additive mixers and multiplying mixers...
these. - Quick decay, sine overlay, high or low tone, pulse tone control, on and off.