How to emulate an Acorn Electron
The BBC Micro, made by Acorn Computers, may have been its most famous machine, but for most 1980s home users the price tag was just a little too high. A budget alternative was needed to compete against the Spectrum. In August 1983 the Acorn Electron was introduced to the world, with 32KB of RAM and a Synertek SY6502A CPU clocked at 2MHz, specifications similar to the BBC Micro Model B. The Acorn Electron was a successful machine, selling around 200,000 units over its lifetime, but it never really put up much of a challenge. But to many devoted fans the Acorn Electron was their route into computing.
The BBC Micro dominated the 1980s education, semi-professional and hobby markets. This author remembers being introduced to the “Beeb” by their father’s friend who was an electronics engineer. But the price of the BBC Micro meant that they had to “make do” with a Commodore 64 instead.
The Acorn Electron was unofficially announced in 1982, by Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser responding to a question in an issue of . The question asked was if the ZX Spectrum was hurting sales of the BBC Micro. Hauser’s response was that the company was already working on a new machine, saying that, “Later this year Acorn will release a new computer, priced under £200
