It takes a special eye to see a junkyard car and envision it as your latest hotrod. The guys at RMC found what they termed a “disgusting” Acorn Electron and decided to restore it to its former glory. The Electron was a budget version of the BBC micro with a 6502 running at 2 MHz when executing code from ROM and 1 MHz when it hit the RAM. Apparently, at least some of the bus was operating at 4 bits instead of 8. Go figure.
The 1982 machine was meant to head off the Sinclair ZX and was set to sell for about £200. However, the machine didn’t catch on like the Sinclair and undersold it by around 20 times with a paltry quarter of a million units.
Powering the machine up showed white raster on a monitor, so it wasn’t running but it wasn’t dead either. The computer had a type of programmable logic chip known as a ULA that replaced lots of interface logic and the guys knew that many common problems wind up being a dirty socket for that chip. When you see the package it is in, you won’t be surprised.
After a good scrub of both the socket and the IC, they were rewarded with a Basic prompt. So electrically, the restoration wasn’t too much of a challenge. Cosmetically, though, there was a lot of work to do and that affords us some great shots of the computer’s internals.
They did replace a few components as long as they had it open. The case stayed a bit yellowed, but at least it was cleaner and by the end of the 20-something minute long video, you can se ..
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