The

Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...

ABC 800 series are office versions of the

ABC 80 The ABC 80 (Advanced BASIC Computer 80) is a home computer engineered by the Swedish corporation Dataindustrier AB (DIAB) and manufactured by Luxor in Motala, Sweden in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was introduced on the market in August 1 ...

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

. They featured an enhanced

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

, and more memory: 32 kilobytes RAM and 32 KB ROM was now standard. The

Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be software-compatible with the Intel 8080, offering a compelling altern ...

is clocked at . It featured 40×24 text mode with eight colors (ABC 800 C) or 80×24 text mode monochrome (ABC 800 M). They could also be extended with "high" resolution graphics (240×240

pixels In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the sma ...

at 2 ) using RAM as video memory.

Models

ABC 800

The ABC 800 came in a

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

version with

amber Amber is fossilized tree resin. Examples of it have been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since the Neolithic times, and worked as a gemstone since antiquity."Amber" (2004). In Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Mappen (eds.) ''Encyclopedia ...

text on a

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors Orange (colour), orange and black. In the ...

background with an 80 character wide screen, and a color version with 40 characters. The main board is integrated with the keyboard, much like the

Amiga 500 The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, was the first popular version of the Amiga home computer, "redefining the home computer market and making so-called luxury features such as multitasking and colour a standard long before Microsoft or Apple ...

. However, the ABC computer has a very sturdy metal chassis. Storage is usually two 5.25"

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

units in 160, 320 or 640 KB capacity. External hard disk systems became available later (primarily the ABC 850 with 10 MB). Model numbers 'ABC 800 M' for monochrome and 'ABC 800 C' for color. Luxor advertising asked, "Who needs IBM-compatibility?" However, most computer buyers eventually considered it a requirement. A certain degree of compatibility between the ABC and IBM PC platforms could be achieved with the help of a program called ' W ABC'. The ABC 800 computer was also sold by

Facit Facit (''Facit AB'') was an industrial corporation and manufacturer of office products including furniture. It was based in Åtvidaberg, Sweden, and founded in 1922 as ''AB Åtvidabergs Industrier''. Facit AB, a manufacturer of mechanical calcu ...

under the name Facit DTC.

ABC 802

The ABC 802 is a compact version with 64 KB RAM where 32 KB is used as a RAM disk. The main board is integrated with a 9"

CRT screen A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a ...

and has improved graphics, though no high-resolution graphics. Luxor ABC 802 was a model with a small monochrome screen in yellow phosphor, intended for offices. Here with two 5.25 inch disk drives along the side of the display. The grey-brown color was common for all ABC 800 (and ABC 1600) products and was different from the beige ABC 80.

ABC 806

The ABC 806 is a version with main board, screen (

DA-15 The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smallest connectors used on computer systems. Description, ...

) and keyboard ( DIN-7) as separate units. It has RAM where is used as a RAM disk, as well as more advanced 512×240×16 graphics.

Performance

In order to see how the ABC 800 would compare to other contemporary personal computers, in 1982, the Swedish magazine '' MikroDatorn'' used the Rugg/Feldman benchmarks of eight short BASIC programs (BM1 - BM8) defined by the American Kilobaud Magazine and routinely used by the British magazine

Personal Computer World ''Personal Computer World'' (''PCW'') (February 1978 - June 2009) was the first British computer magazine. Although for at least the last decade it contained a high proportion of Windows PC content (reflecting the state of the IT field), the m ...

for testing new machines. The result was that ABC 800's semi-compiling BASIC interpreter turned out to be faster than most other BASICs used in popular machines, especially when

integer An integer is the number zero (0), a positive natural number (1, 2, 3, ...), or the negation of a positive natural number (−1, −2, −3, ...). The negations or additive inverses of the positive natural numbers are referred to as negative in ...

variables are used, the results for some well known computers were as follows (times in seconds): As seen from the table, the ABC 800 was approximately twice as fast as the IBM PC on

floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some base) multiplied by an integer power of that base. Numbers of this form ...

calculations, except for BM8 where it was only 20% faster. Using

variables Variable may refer to: Computer science * Variable (computer science), a symbolic name associated with a value and whose associated value may be changed Mathematics * Variable (mathematics), a symbol that represents a quantity in a mathemat ...

(only measured for the older

in this test) the numbers would be approximately 2-3 times as low (i.e. speeds 2-3 times as high) as for the

single precision Single-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP32 or float32) is a computer number format, usually occupying 32 bits in computer memory; it represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values by using a floating radix point. A floa ...

results in the table.

ABC 800 character set

ABC 800 character set, as described on the user manual

References

Personal computers Character sets Science and technology in Sweden Computer-related introductions in 1981 {{DEFAULTSORT:Abc 800