Microprofessor II (MPF II), introduced in 1982, was Multitech's (later renamed

Acer Acer may refer to: * ''Acer'' (plant), the genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples * Acer Inc., a computer company in Taiwan ** Acer Laboratories Incorporated, a subsidiary company of Acer, Inc., that designs and manufactures integrate ...

) second branded computer product and also one of the earliest

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-mold ...

clones. It does not look like most other computers. The case of the MPF II was a slab with a small

chiclet keyboard A chiclet keyboard or island-style keyboard is a computer keyboard with keys that form an array of small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like erasers or "Chiclets", a brand of chewing gum manufactured in the ...

on its lower part. In 1983, the Multiprofessor II retailed in the UK for £269.00 including VAT. One key feature of the MPF II was its Chinese BASIC, a version of

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...

-localized

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

based on

Applesoft BASIC Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with the Apple II series of computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the origina ...

. There was also a version sold in Europe, Northern America,

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

, and Australia that did not have Chinese localization.

Differences to Apple II

The MPF II was not totally compatible with the

. The MPF II did not have Apple II's text mode. All the text was drawn on the screen by software rather than generated by hardware. It was the only cost-effective way to generate Chinese text on the screen at a time when a hardware-based Chinese character generator could cost hundreds of U.S. dollars. Like Apple II, MPF II had two graphics buffers. However, the second buffer was at address A000H while with Apple II it was at 4000H. The keyboard input was mapped to a different address than the Apple II making impossible to play Apple's games on the MPF II. MPF-II keyboard interface was very simple and consisted of an 8-bit output port and an input port that was directly connected to the keyboard matrix. The Apple joystick interface was not there, and instead, the joystick appeared as a keyboard with arrow keys and two other buttons. The external slot interface was also not compatible with the Apple II and could not use any standard interface cards including the Disk II controller.

Technical information

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

MOS Technology 6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small te ...

*Clock rate: 1

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one h ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch ...

: 64 KB (including 16KB RAM mapped at the same address as the ROM) *

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 * ...

: 16 KB (12 KB of which is a

interpreter) *Text modes: 40×24 (using graphics mode) *Graphics modes: 280×192 *Colours: 8 colours *Sound: 1 channel of 1-bit sound *Connectors: Keyboard, Printer, Expansion port, cassette recorded input and output, Composite and

TV-out The term TV-out is commonly used to label the connector of equipment providing an analog video signal acceptable for a television AV input. TV-out is different from AV-out in that it only provides video, no audio. Types of signals and their resp ...

*Optional

peripheral A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by th ...

s: 55 key full-size keyboard,

Floppy A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent 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 w ...

disc drive,

Thermal A thermal column (or thermal) is a rising mass of buoyant air, a convective current in the atmosphere, that transfers heat energy vertically. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of Earth's surface from solar radiation, and are an example ...

and

Dot-matrix A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and printers. The system is al ...

printers,

Joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

*Power supply: External PSU, 5,12 V

External links

MPF II
at the Old Computer Museum {{Acer Inc. Acer Inc. computers Early microcomputers Home computers Apple II clones

Differences to Apple II

Technical information

See also

External links