This website is an archived copy of "Chris's Acorns", now hosted by The Centre for Computing History as part of The Chris Whytehead collection.
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Acorn System Computers

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Introduction

The Acorn System 5 is a disc-based computer mounted in a card cage. The card cage can hold 10 cards and 2 floppy disc drives.

Manuals and documents

Here is the Acorn System 5 Handbook . Note that pages 13 & 14 are missing from the section on the 6502 CPU card.

System 5

I acquired from Richard Stagg this System 5 in 2008. It is an ex-school Econet server. The computer has:

The Acorn System keyboard  plugs into the 2MHZ 6502A card.
 
I don't have any software for the System 5.

Here are some pictures:

Acorn System 5 front

 Acorn System 5 (front)

The 2 floppy discs are on the right and the cards on the left. From the left they are - 2MHz 6502A card with connector for keyboard, 80 x 25 VDU interface with BNC connector, 2 x 32K DRAM cards, Econet card and the fdc car is at the right connected to the disc drives.

Acorn System 5 with cards removed

 Acorn System 5 with card removed.

This shows the card cage and the 10 slot backplane. The ribbon cable links the fdc and disc drives.

Acorn System 5 with drives removed

 Acorn System 5 with disc drives removed

Acorn System 5 right

 Acorn System 5 right side

Acorn System 5 back

Acorn System 5 (back) 

Acorn System 5 bottom

 Acorn System 5 (bottom)