Excalibur 64 - MAME machine

Computer published 40 years ago:

Excalibur 64 © 1984 BGR Computers.

TECHNICAL
12K ROM
32K RAM ON BOARD
FULL SIZE 60-KEY KEYBOARD
8 COLOURS
2 OCTAVE AUDIO OUTPUT

TRIVIA
It was advertised as the first colour "DIY KIT" computer in Australia.

The CP/M Excalibur 64 was created in the very early Eighties by BGR Computers P/L as a home built DIY Z80A CPU Computer KIT of parts and PCB with a comprehensive Construction Manual. Ground breaking as first with 64Kb RAM and MSDOS OS replacing initial first gen C/PM OS. MSDOS source bought from B. Gates and found faulty but debugged by Australian engineers and all customers supplied with updated ROM after initial delays. This did cause some angst with staff and customers but unfortunately was unavoidable and eventually resolved.

It was sold across Australia from Electronics Magazine advertisements and offered with a Return IF Too Hard to build and BGR would build it for an extra $99 and post back to you. The product itself like most high tech items has an interesting story in its conception and marketing as well as the technical details of this ground breaking innovation at the time before the IBM PC was released a few years later.

The Blue Excalibur was the cover of the Construction Manual for building the Excalibur 64. The artwork was done by Stephen at GASP a St. Kilda Graphics Art house. The manual was over 50 double side A4 Pages and included all information on the construction and schematic diagrams explaining the operation.

The BLOCK Image is a part of the original pre-production Excalibur 64 Construction Manual. If there is serious interest I may add the complete pages later on. BGR sold less than a thousand of these kits across Australia so probably not many survived the IBM PC onslaught of the mid Eighties although the enthusiastic Excalibur 64 User Group did survive for many years after the IBM PC appearance.

BGR did go on to manufacture a fully redesigned and built system in a factory in Melbourne northern suburbs for business use. Shortly after commencing construction, a break in by thieves who cleaned out the entire stock of electronic components for the next year brought on the complete collapse of the company. Unfortunately there was no insurance to cover that eventuality.

CONTRIBUTE
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