The Acorn Communicator is a discontinued business computer developed by Acorn Computers. Mentioned in the computing press in late 1984 as the C30, previewed in early 1985 with estimated pricing between £500 and £800, in late 1985 with a built-in liquid-crystal display, and subsequently unveiled in a slightly different form, the system sold in very low numbers to companies requiring a computer with a built-in modem.

Orders for the machine were reported in late 1986, with an initial 500 units to be rebadged by Thorn EMI Business Communications for its own customers and approximately 1400 units going to Pickfords Travel for use in its high street stores. As a "smart videotex terminal" remaining at a similar price level in early 1987 with colour monitor included.

Origins

Launched as part of Acorn's range of new products (alongside the Acorn Cambridge Workstation) targeting "new and more specialised market areas" following the decline of the home computer market and the financial crisis that led to Acorn's rescue by Olivetti, the Communicator had its origins in a concept mentioned publicly by co-founder Chris Curry as early as April 1984, envisioning a communications terminal aimed at business users offering a single-device solution for online information access in an elegant package with a small footprint. Acting as a personal computer, desirable features included the ability to run existing business software, offer networking support and connectivity to mainframes, connect to public data services such as Prestel and Telecom Gold mailboxes, and also support services over other cable-based infrastructure (such as cable television infrastructure then being introduced in the United Kingdom). A meeting between Curry and product design consultant David Morgan, who had approached Acorn with an idea for a personal computer, led to a deeper collaboration that would establish the nature of the Communicator's physical characteristics.

Intending for the product to be customised and sold by other vendors, an emphasis was placed on a physical product design that would permit such customisation and offer a degree of modularity. Thus, a "basic keyboard unit" would be central in any eventual product configuration, being augmented by a telephone, display, storage, printer and other peripherals and accessories. Although Morgan had proposed an electroluminescent display within a lid folding shut over the keyboard in an arrangement that would become common with laptop computers, cost and reliability concerns directed the design towards an optional LCD display and the use of a separate monitor. Alongside the industrial design activity, Ram Bannerjee of Acorn's research and development division was directed to find existing Acorn-developed components that would fit in the physical unit to deliver "a smaller, neater, faster, sweeter machine". From August 1984, four engineers and a sales and marketing employee worked from Acorn's original premises to reconcile the functionality requirements of the product with the physical constraints imposed by the product design, eventually requesting only a minor modification to the height of the keyboard and a slight extension of the keyboard "to accommodate another row of function keys". The Communicator was envisaged as being an always-on device, capable of being programmed to access online services at predetermined times, and it was therefore decided not to provide a power switch on the unit itself.

The system uses a 16-bit Western Design Center 65816 chip rather than the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 or variants, which were used by virtually all of Acorn's previous microcomputer products. 128 KB or 512 KB RAM could be fitted, expandable to 1024 KB. For display capabilities, it employs the ULA originally developed for the Electron (reputed to be the largest ULA or gate array ever developed at that time) and supported a monochrome version of Teletext using software emulation for access to services such as Prestel. Full-colour teletext was supported using an additional expansion board.

RGB and composite video outputs were provided as standard interfaces. A 25-character by 8-line LCD (256 x 64 pixels) is described as an option and is depicted in the C series brochure, with a monochrome monitor also offered as an option. and documentation was made available describing its use with the Communicator. Distinct versions of the FileStore E01 base unit and E20 hard disk unit were made for use with the Communicator, these having a different colour but, in the case of the E01 unit, also providing different software. The E01S unit was also usable by the Communicator and could be expanded by the E40S and E60S hard disk units. The system software that bound the packages together was a mixture of BBC Basic and assembly language. The software development team was led by Paul Bond, who led development of the original Acorn MOS, Acorn records suggest that the memory cards employed the Astron format, apparently being evaluated by Acorn who had acquired one of the "100-or-so" development systems for the technology. The system documentation confirms this hardware configuration. (with 2 KB of static RAM presumably employed for page storage). The components chosen and the capabilities provided are broadly similar to the BT Merlin M2105 variant of the Acorn Electron, with an upgraded CPU, the addition of teletext circuitry, the provision for Econet, and the omission of speech synthesis hardware apparently refining the Communicator as a product offering in the same general category.

The Centre for Computing History notes that an example of the machine in their possession does not contain a Ferranti-manufactured ULA, indicating that a Mietec IC with an Acorn part number of 0252,602 could possibly be a ULA from another source. According to archived Acorn product documentation, it is indeed a ULA, although the system documentation refers to it as a video ULA, despite it also providing support for the keyboard and sound generation.

The system documentation notes the presence of 32 KB of video RAM (accessed at 1 MHz), 512 KB or 1 MB of system RAM (accessed at 2 MHz), 32 KB of non-volatile RAM, up to 512 KB of internal ROM, and up to 3.5 MB of ROM accessible via the expansion bus. The modem, asynchronous serial port, Econet port, printer port, and expansion bus connector are noted, along with an IIC bus providing access to a real-time clock and the DTMF dialler. The provided development tools included the TWIN editor, MASM assembler (supporting the 65SC816 instruction set), and the 65TURBO emulator for running the tools and utilities written for 6502-based machines. It having been noted that Acorn would "probably throw the computer away and use the case for something else", incorporating the expansion connector on the right-hand side of the unit,

Although considered to be either a potential successor to the Model B in the BBC Micro range or to be presaging the arrival of a 16-bit BBC "Model C", despite such speculation ultimately proving to be about the Master Compact.

In 1986, Acorn co-founder Chris Curry was reported to have recruited the team responsible for developing the Communicator - 12 employees in all including technical project manager Ram Bannerjee - for his new company, General Information Systems, with one potential application of the machine or a follow-on product suggested as being the online submission of news stories by journalists and other newspaper contributors.

References

  • Acorn Communicator @ The Centre for Computing History
  • The Very Rare Acorn Briefcase Communicator @ The Centre for Computing History