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gic array ula 15 the operating system rom locations 0xfc00 0xffff contain the details of some members of the electron s design team these differing somewhat from those listed in the corresponding message in the bbc model b rom 16 c 1983 acorn computers ltd thanks are due to the following contributors to the development of the electron among others too numerous to mention bob austin astec harry barman paul bond allen boothroyd ben bridgewater cambridge john cox chris curry 6502 designers jeremy dion tim dobson joe dunn ferranti steve furber david gale andrew gordon martyn gilbert lawrence hardwick hermann hauser john herbert hitachi andy hopper paul jephcot brian jones chris jordan computer laboratory tony mann peter miller trevor morris steve parsons robin pain glyn phillips brian robertson peter robinson david seal kim spence jones graham tebby jon thackray topexpress chris turner hugo tyson john umney alex van someren geoff vincent adrian warner robin williamson roger wilson additionally the last bytes of both the basic rom and the plus 3 interface s adfs v1 0 rom include the word roger thought to be a reference to roger wilson 17 the case was designed by industrial designer allen boothroyd of cambridge product design release edit reports during the second half of 1982 indicated a potential december release 18 with curry providing qualified confirmation of such plans together with an accurate depiction of the machine s form and capabilities noting that the massive ula would be the dominant factor in any pre christmas release 19 as the end of the year approached the machine itself was pictured in press reports 20 with the ula not ready for main production however the launch of the electron was to be delayed until the spring 21 by june 1983 with the planned march release having passed the launch of the electron had been rescheduled for the acorn user exhibition in august 1983 22 and the machine was indeed launched at the event the company expected to ship the electron before christmas and sell 100 000 by february 1984 15 the price at launch 199 remained unchanged from that stated in an announcement earlier in the year with the machine s nickname within acorn the elk also being reported publicly for perhaps the first time 2 reviews were generally favourable starting with positive impressions based on the physical design of the computer with one reviewer noting the electron is beautifully designed and built quite a shock compared to the bbc its designer case will look great on the coffee table praise was also forthcoming for the electron s keyboard which was regarded as being better than most of its low cost peers with only the vic 20 being comparable 23 in one review the keyboard was even regarded as better than the one in the bbc micro 24 the provision of rapid basic keyword entry though the combination of the func key with various letter keys was also welcomed as a helpful aid to prevent typing errors by most users while touch typists were still able to type out the keywords in full 24 reviewers also welcomed the machine s excellent graphics compared to its rivals noting that the graphics are much more flexible and the maximum resolution is many times that of the spectrum s the provision of screen modes supporting 80 columns of readable text and graphics resolutions of 640 256 was described as unrivalled by every machine up to the bbc model b itself although the absence of a teletext mode was considered regrettable although valued for its low memory usage characteristics in the bbc micro 25 one reviewer considered the absence of a software simulation of a teletext screen to be a lazy omission even if it would have to be awfully slow and take up piles of memory 23 while its speed was acceptable compared to its immediate competition the electron was however rather slower than the bbc micro with one review noting that games designed for the bbc micro ran at less than half the speed with very significant effects on their appeal 26 the reduced performance can be attributed to the use of a 4 bit wide memory system instead of the 8 bit wide memory system of the bbc micro to reduce cost due to needing two accesses to the memory instead of one to fetch each byte along with contention with the video hardware also needing access reading or writing ram was much slower than on the bbc micro 27 26 reviewers were also disappointed by the single channel sound noting that bbc style music and its imitations of various musical instruments would not be possible the latter due to the inability of the sound system to vary the amplitude of sounds 24 despite some uncertainty about acorn s target demographic for the electron some noted the potential for the machine in education given its robustness 24 but also given its price noting that the high price of bbc model b machines seemed rarely justified by their actual practical applications in schools the introduction of the electron was seen as potentially leading to competition between acorn s different models within the schools market rather than creating a broader audience for them although the potential for more computers in schools giving more hands on experience for students was welcomed 26 nevertheless reviewers anticipated that the electron would sell well at the lower end of the market with projected sales of 100 000 units by christmas 1983 28 helped by the electron s software compatibility with the bbc micro and the already established reputation of its predecessor 24 with parents potentially being convinced of the electron s educational value some reviewers foresaw a conflict between parents and discerning children the latter merely wanting to play games and preferring models with sound and graphics capabilities more appropriate for gaming 26 although acorn had based its expansion into the united states on the bbc micro the company did have plans to introduce the electron at a later time 29 30 with chris curry having indicated a very heavy push overseas involving both the bbc micro and electron 4 a model for the us market was described in an official book the acorn guide to the electron 31 but this model was never produced 32 the electron was distributed in various other markets and was reviewed by home computing publications in countries such as norway 33 west germany 34 and new zealand 35 production and volume delivery edit production difficulties at astec in malaysia delayed the machine s introduction forcing acorn to look to other manufacturers such as ab electronics in wales and wongs in hong kong an original equipment manufacturer making over 30 million circuit boards a year along with power supplies and plastic housings for companies such as ibm xerox atari and apple including units made for acorn for the bbc micro 36 by october 1983 acorn had received orders for more than 150 000 units but had production targets of only 25 000 a month before christmas meaning that the existing backlog would take more than six months to fulfil demand for the electron was high but only two of wh smith s london branches had inventory 37 with production yet to reach full capacity at astec acorn conceded that only 60 000 units would be sold before christmas 38 additional manufacturing for the electron had been anticipated to commence as early as the end of november 1983 in hong kong 37 and in january 1984 in wales 38 the latter slipping to april 1984 but increasing the production rate to up to 40 000 units a month 39 ultimately manufacturing in malaysia ceased with the anticipated but unspecified number of units having been produced 40 this having been originally reported as 100 000 units 41 acorn s marketing manager tom hohenberg admitted in early 1984 that a lot of the trouble stemmed from the ula in getting production to the desired levels 42 but that such difficulties had been resolved although acorn faced an order backlog of almost a quarter of a million units 43 as the company increased production during 1984 however the british home computer market greatly weakened hohenberg later noted that after the 1983 christmas season electron deliveries had increased to meet a demand that was no longer there with the market having completely dried up 44 39 acorn s christmas 1984 sales were greatly below expectations and by march 1985 the company had reduced the electron s price to 129 45 with the company s unsuccessful expansion into the united states abandoned 32 acorn s financial situation had deteriorated sufficiently to prompt olivetti to rescue the company by taking a 49 30 ownership stake 46 renewed efforts were made to sell the machine bundling it with acorn s own expansions and software such as one package adding the plus 1 expansion joysticks and a rom cartridge game to the base machine for a total price of 219 47 acorn committed to supporting the machine until the end of 1986 continuing to supply it as the merlin m2105 to british telecom as part of the healthnet communications system with small scale manufacturing continuing while existing stocks were being run down 10 by autumn retailers appeared eager to discount the computer with prices in stores as low as 100 reportedly less than the distributor prices of the summer months 48 as the christmas season approached dixons retail acquired the remaining electron inventory to sell bundled with a cassette recorder and software at a retail price of 99 95 49 this deal from the perspective of a year later apparently played a significant part in helping to reduce acorn s unsold inventory from a value of 18 million to around 7 9 million and in combination with streamlining corporate activities and reducing overheads had helped to reduce acorn s losses from over 20 million to less than 3 million 50 the deal effectively brought to an end acorn s interest in the electron and the lower cost end of the home computing market but empowered third party suppliers whose inventiveness and initiative was noted as being in contrast with acorn s lack of interest in the product and the false promises made to its users 51 however acorn subsequently released the master compact a model in the master series of microcomputers with fewer bbc micro style ports and a similar expansion connector to that used by the electron with the home audience specifically in mind 52 indeed prior to its release the master compact had been perceived as the successor to the electron 53 superficial similarities between the compact and acorn communicator together with technical similarities between the electron particularly when expanded in the form of the merlin m2105 and the communicator may also have driven rumours of an updated electron model 9 a more substantial emphasis on the home music and hobby sectors came with the appointment of a dedicated marketing manager in 1989 following the launch of the bbc a3000 in the acorn archimedes range 54 hardware edit much of the core functionality of the bbc micro the video and memory controller cassette input output timers and sound generation was replicated using a single customised ula chip designed by acorn in conjunction with ferranti albeit with only one sound channel instead of three and one noise channel and without the character based teletext mode 7 14 1 the keyboard includes a form of quick keyword input similar to that used on the sinclair zx spectrum through use of the func key in combination with other keys labelled with basic keywords however unlike the spectrum this method of rapid keyword entry is optional and keywords can be entered manually if preferred 55 the edge connector on the rear of the electron exposes all address and data bus lines from the cpu including the upper eight bits of the address bus in contrast to the limited selection available via the bbc micro s expansion ports 56 with the one megahertz bus as the principal mechanism for general purpose expansion on the bbc micro only providing the lower eight bits of the address bus 57 in addition various control signals provided by the cpu and ula are exposed via the electron s expansion connector 58 the ula mediates access to 32 kb of addressable ram using four 4164 drams 64 k 1 bit sharing the ram between the cpu and the video signal generation or screen refresh performed by the ula itself two accesses have to be made to the ram to get each byte albeit with a single ras delivering a maximum transfer rate to or from ram of one byte per 2 mhz cycle 59 in generating the video signal the ula is able to take advantage of this 2 mhz bandwidth when producing the picture for the high bandwidth screen modes 27 26 due to signalling constraints the cpu can only access ram at 1 mhz even when it is not competing with the video system 59 7 when the ula is consuming all of the ram bandwidth during the active portion of a display line the cpu is unable to access the ram the electron uses the synertek variant of the 6502 processor as that allowed the clock to be stopped for this 40 microsecond period 59 7 in other modes the cpu and video accesses are interleaved with each accessor acquiring bytes at 1 mhz 59 7 in contrast the bbc micro employs one or two sets of eight 16 kilobit devices with the ram running at twice the speed 4 mhz of the cpu 2 mhz allowing the video system screen refresh and cpu memory accesses to be interleaved with each accessor able to transfer bytes at 2 mhz the ram access limitations imposed by the electron s ula therefore reduce the effective cpu speed by as much as a factor of four relative to the bbc micro in the more demanding display modes and as much as a factor of two otherwise byte transfers from rom occur at 2 mhz however 59 7 for issue 1 4 motherboards the ula had an issue similar to those experienced by other socketed cpus over time the thermal heating and cooling could cause the ula to rise slightly out of its socket just enough to cause the machine to hang or freeze and for other issues to occur preventing the start up of the machine in some cases causing the initial beep or tone to sound continuously this was despite a metal cover and a locking bar mechanism designed to prevent this from occurring pushing down on the metal cover to reseat the ula was normally sufficient to rectify these issues citation needed 60 61 62 63 issue 5 citation needed and 6 boards utilized a different ula type this being known as the aberdeen ula as opposed to the earlier ferranti ula which was mounted on a board that was directly soldered to the main board with the chip being covered by epoxy resin insulating material this arrangement dispensed with the 68 pin socket and this new type of ula was expected to be less prone to failure 64 65 this type of ula was also used on the german release of the electron mainboard which is designated by the marking german electron issue 1 on the mainboard rather than just electron as for the uk model 66 technical specifications edit acorn alf03 data recorder the hardware specification according to official documentation 67 combined...