The Acorn Communicator was never released.

The Acorn Communicator is a business computer developed by Acorn Computers in 1985. The system sold in very low numbers to companies requiring a computer with a built-in modem. As a dedicated Prestel terminal with built-in word processing and spreadsheet capabilities, the Communicator found a niche market amongst travel agents in the UK and Italy, who used Prestel (and similar networks) as probably the earliest online booking service. Image File history File links AcornComunicator. ... Image File history File links AcornComunicator. ... Acorn Computers Ltd. ... A modem (a portmanteau word constructed from modulator and demodulator) is a device that modulates a carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. ... Prestel, the brand name for the British General Post Offices Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system launched in 1979. ... Prestel, the brand name for the British General Post Offices Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system launched in 1979. ...

The machine used the Ferranti-manufactured "Aberdeen" gate array developed for the Electron, which was the largest ULA ever developed at that time. One of the Manchu clans. ...

The system used a 16-bit Western Design Center 65816 chip rather than the 8-bit MOS Technology 6502, which was used by all of Acorn's previous offerings. The communicator boasted 512kb of memory, which was expandable to 1024kb. In computer science, 16-bit is an adjective used to describe integers that are at most two bytes wide, or to describe CPU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. ... If you were looking for the Western Digital Corporation, see Western Digital. ... The W65816 (also: 65C816), a 16-bit microprocessor developed by the Western Design Center (WDC), is an expanded and compatible successor to the venerable MOS Technology 6502. ... 8-bit refers to the number of bits used in the data bus of a computer. ... MOS Technology, Inc. ... The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by MOS Technology in 1975. ... The abbreviation KB can refer to: Kilobyte (kB), equal to 1,000 bytes, or Kibibyte (KiB), equal to 1,024 bytes. ...

The Communicator contained a full office software suite, including View (word processor), ViewSheet (spreadsheet), and a fully-featured Prestel terminal, plus (of course) Econet and many of the interfaces found on the BBC series of computers. The system software that bound the packages together was a mixture of BBC Basic and assembler. The software development team was led by Paul Bond, a keen pilot who would occasionally fly team members in his Cessna when things were quiet. ViewSheet was a spreadsheet program produced in the 1980s by Acorn Computers for use with their series of microcomputers. ... Prestel, the brand name for the British General Post Offices Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system launched in 1979. ... Econet is an abbreviation of Economy Network. ... BBC BASIC was developed in 1981 as a native programming language for the MOS Technology 6502 based Acorn BBC Micro home/personal computer, mainly by Roger Wilson. ... An assembler is a computer program for translating assembly language — essentially, a mnemonic representation of machine language — into object code. ...

First versions of the Communicator were monochrome-only; later (but before first customer delivery), a daughter-board provided full colour.

External links

• Archive of page dedicated to the Communicator