The CST Thor series of

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s are

Sinclair QL The Sinclair QL (for ''Quantum Leap'') is a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as an upper-end counterpart to the ZX Spectrum. The QL was the last desktop microcomputer from Sinclair Research aimed at the serious home use ...

-compatible systems designed and produced by Cambridge Systems Technology during the late 1980s.

Thor PC

The original Thor PC (also called Thor 1, sometimes also retrospectively referred to as the Thor 8), was launched in 1986, as a logical progression of CST's QL peripheral business after production of the Sinclair QL was halted. The remaining stock of QL parts were purchased from

Sinclair Sinclair may refer to: Places * Lake Sinclair, near Milledgeville, Georgia * Mount Sinclair, Canada * Sinclair, Iowa * Sinclair, West Virginia * Sinclair, Wyoming * Sinclair Mills, British Columbia * Sinclair Township, Minnesota * Sincl ...

, and the standard QL

motherboard A motherboard, also called a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see #Nomenclature, "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It ho ...

(including a 7.5 MHz

Motorola 68008 The Motorola 68008 is an 8/32-bit microprocessor introduced by Motorola in 1982. It is a version of 1979's Motorola 68000 with an 8-bit external computer bus, data bus, as well as a smaller address bus. The 68008 was available with 20 or 22 a ...

CPU and 128

KiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

) was augmented with a CST-designed expansion board providing 512 KiB of additional RAM, extra

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

s, a non-volatile real-time clock,

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 ...

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

Centronics Centronics Data Computer Corporation was an American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name, the Centronics connector. History Foundations Centronics began as a divisio ...

parallel,

IBM PC/AT The IBM Personal Computer AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 8028 ...

-style keyboard and

mouse A mouse (: mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus'' ...

interfaces enclosed in a low-profile metal desktop case with a built-in power supply. Mass storage options consisted of one (Thor 1F) or two (Thor 2F) 3.5-inch floppy drives or one floppy drive and one 20 MB

Rodime Rodime was an electronics company specialising in hard disks, based in Glenrothes, Scotland. It was founded in 1979 by several Scottish and American former employees of Burroughs Corporation and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1986, bec ...

RO652 SCSI

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

(Thor 2WF). The ROMs contained Eidersoft's ICE

GUI Gui or GUI may refer to: People Surname * Gui (surname), an ancient Chinese surname, ''xing'' * Bernard Gui (1261 or 1262–1331), inquisitor of the Dominican Order * Luigi Gui (1914–2010), Italian politician * Gui Minhai (born 1964), Ch ...

and some QDOS extensions. Also, supplied with the Thor was a specially-commissioned version of the Psion Xchange application software suite (an enhanced edition of the Psion applications bundled with the QL). Prices for the Thor PC ranged from £599 to £1399, excluding monitor, mouse and

VAT A value-added tax (VAT or goods and services tax (GST), general consumption tax (GCT)) is a consumption tax that is levied on the value added at each stage of a product's production and distribution. VAT is similar to, and is often compared wi ...

. An upgrade service for existing QLs was also available.

Thor 20/21

The Thor 20 and Thor 21 are variants of the Thor PC, launched in April 1987 and fitted with a

68020 The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keeping with naming practices common to Motorola designs, the 68020 is usually referred to as t ...

processor on a

daughterboard In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus sl ...

in place of the original CPU. The new processor runs at 12.5 MHz, a 16.67 MHz option also being offered at higher cost. The Thor 21 is also fitted with the

68881 The Motorola 68881 and Motorola 68882 are floating-point units (FPUs) used in some computer systems in conjunction with Motorola's 32-bit 68020 or 68030 microprocessors. These coprocessors are external chips, designed before floating point math be ...

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

co-processor, running at the same speed as the CPU. Performance is better than the Thor 1, but handicapped by the use of 8-bit memory in the base system. The Thor 20 and 21 were shipped with a 68020 macro assembler and linker, plus

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

processor documentation. They were intended as a vehicle for the development of software for a projected enhanced 68020-based model, later shelved. The Thor 20 and 21 were expensive (a 12.5 MHz Thor 21 costing around twice as much as a Thor 1F) and were mainly placed on loan to the

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

community.

Thor XVI

The Thor XVI was developed in collaboration with the Danish company DanSoft and was announced at the ''

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 ...

'' Show in September 1987. Unlike the previous models, the Thor XVI's hardware is of a completely new design, based around an 8 MHz

68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

processor plus a 2 MHz 68B02 co-processor for audio and I/O processing. 512 KiB of RAM is included as standard (expandable to 2

MiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

, later 6.5 MiB). The video hardware provides QL-compatible video modes as well as a new 16-colour mode. Floppy disk, SCSI, Centronics, dual S5/8

serial port A serial port is a serial communication Interface (computing), interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in Pa ...

s, PC/AT keyboard, mouse, QL expansion bus and QLAN network interfaces are provided. Mass storage options are similar to the previous Thors, plus 40 MB hard disk and diskless network workstation configurations. The Thor XVI is housed in a case similar to that of the Thor PC. The Thor XVI includes in ROM a QDOS-compatible

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

derived from QDOS 1.13, called ''Argos''. Like its predecessors, the XVI is bundled with Xchange. Production started in early 1988. Prices were slightly higher than the Thor PC. Later in 1988, a joint CST/DanSoft marketing operation, Thor International, was formed in Denmark in an attempt to increase sales to the European market. The Thor XVI hardware was revised slightly and production was moved to

Brüel & Kjær Brüel & Kjær (Sound and Vibration Measurement A/S) is a Danish multinational engineering and electronics company headquartered in Nærum, near Copenhagen. It was the largest Record producer, producer in the world of equipment for Acoustics, ac ...

in Denmark. Plans were also made to build Thor machines under license in Russia, but this came to nothing. The following year, Thor International (and CST) collapsed amid acrimony and legal action over the disputed transfer of assets from the UK by the partners.

References

External links

Binary Dinosaurs page about the CST Thor

Sinclair QL Hardware FAQ

Sinclair QL Computer Wiki

* ttp://www.simon.mooli.org.uk/QL/ThorXVI.html CST Thor XVI review {{Sinclair computers and clones Computer-related introductions in 1986 68000-based home computers Personal computers Sinclair QL clones