Triumph Adler Alphatronic PC
The TA Alphatronic PC is a compact 8- bit office computer from the German manufacturer Triumph-Adler from 1984. Outwardly, it can easily be confused with the 16-bit Alphatronic PC16 from the same company, but it differs in its orange case , which is kept in brown on the PC16. In addition, the key caps of the keyboard on the Alphatronic PC are flat and the six function keys in the top row are also orange.
history
Triumph-Adler had already brought a whole series of computers onto the market for some time under the name Alphatronic , with more or less success. The Alphatronic PC was TA's first compact keyboard calculator. Due to the inadequate sales figures, the company soon concentrated again on its core business with typewriters. The main reason for the poor sales were primarily the old sales channels: At the time, TA only delivered to licensed general agencies with territorial protection. Office machine mechanics had to become computer experts. Not many succeeded in doing this, and only a few were able to sell the devices convincingly. The computer division of TA was more specialized in systems of the middle data technology and was reluctant to deal with the "home computers", which in this branch only viewed with a tired smile. Many of the competitor's devices were much cheaper to buy in any well-stocked department store or by mail order.
The extremely rapid development in this market ensured that many TA computers were already technically obsolete before they were supposed to go into production. Some models therefore did not even leave the development stage. A later attempt to regain a foothold in the market with PCs from the Dario series also failed. The sales of OEM devices from the parent company Olivetti came too late. In addition, the PCs from TA were often identical to those from Olivetti, but much more expensive.
On the other hand, the developers learned from this experience and brought the technology of the TA computer into the screen writing systems of the very successful VS and BSM series. The Alphatronic, however, disappeared from the scene.
TA brought out the Alphatronic PC16 a little later with an Intel 8088 processor and MS-DOS (see main article). But this too was again too expensive and technically obsolete when it came onto the market.
hardware
The TA PC used the Zilog Z80 as CPU . The keyboard with a separate number pad and six function keys was integrated into the housing. With a price of 1495 DM it was competitive and landed in the top five of the German sales statistics. However, it was mainly used as a small office computer, as it had no pixel graphics, only block graphics. Unlike the personal computers P1, P2, P3 and P4, the TA PC was not developed and built by Triumph-Adler itself, but developed and assembled in Japan according to TA specifications.
The TA PC had 64 kB RAM as standard. Of the 32 kB ROM 24 kB for were BASIC - interpreter of Microsoft (Microsoft BASIC ROM V5.11) is required.
Technical specifications
- CPU: Z80 A, 4 MHz
- 64 kB RAM
- 32 kB ROM
- Video outputs for color monitor, monochrome monitor and TV
- 40 × 24/80 × 36 characters in text mode
- 160 × 72 pixels in graphics mode (640 × 288 in 4 × 4 blocks)
- 16 colors
- Tone generator
- Cassette recorder output ( Kansas City Standard )
- Output for 5¼-inch floppy disk drives
- built-in power supply
- Typewriter keyboard with separate numeric and cursor block and six function keys
- ROM slot for games and application programs
- serial interface ( V.24 ) serial RS232c / V24 port for printer or acoustic coupler (note: the use of modems was prohibited by the Deutsche Bundespost at the time )
- parallel interface ( Centronics )
- Bus I / O
- Dimensions (W × D × H): 405 mm × 255 mm × 73 mm
- Weight: 3500 grams
software
The TA PC could work with different operating systems:
- built-in ROM BASIC 5.11 from Microsoft , without access to floppy disks
- Disc-BASIC bootable from floppy disk
- CP / M 2.2 and later 3.0
Thanks to the option of using the CP / M operating system, standard software such as WordStar , dBASE , Turbo-Pascal or Multiplan could also be used.
Armament
There were two different floppy drives that could store 320 kB on the 5¼-inch floppy disks. The first floppy disk drive (F1) contained the controller and was connected directly to the PC with a 50-wire cable. This drive cost around 1800 DM. The second drive (F2) was connected to the first drive and did not have its own controller. Because of the lack of a controller, the second drive was also much cheaper.
Towards the end of production, a third-party provider developed a graphics card that was quite powerful for the time , which was installed between the keyboard and the motherboard and addressed using special commands via a reserved address space in the upper RAM area. In this way you could bypass the 64 kB limit of the Z80 and use an additional 32 kB video memory.