UK Computers 1978 to 1989



Enterprise 64/128

The Enterprise was also known during development under a number of names including Elan and Flan before choosing Enterprise. There were two models, a 64 and a 128, each depicting the amount of memory available. The computer was all British though commissioned by a company in Kong Kong. The Enterprise was not unlike the Amstrad CPC464 with a number of bright colours adopted on the keys. The keyboard was a similar membrane type with proper key tops but was quite good to type on. It tried to follow the BBC Model B in offering lots of output possibilities including monitor, serial and parallel ports, joysticks and rom cartridge and a full bus interface. Sadly, some of these were simply edge connectors and lacked the quality of the BBC Micro. BASIC was loaded from a ROM making the computer very flexible in that other languages could easily be added. The version of BASIC written for the Enterprise was very comprehensive. Like others above, the system come with graphics and sound chips which took the strain off the internal processor and were far better than offered by cheaper computers such as the Spectrum.

The Enterprise had one main failing which resulted in its failure. Like many others, they preannounced the system far ahead of any availability. It was first seen in the press in Sep 1983 but was not advertised until April 1984 but none were delivered until 1985. This procedure was fairly widespread in those days. This is one of the other computers still to be obtained for my collection.