--- title: ACT QI-300 categories: - Computers types: - Professional Computer origins: - United Kingdom years: - '1988' cpus: - Intel 80386SX params: name: QI-300 image: /media/museum/photos/apricot_qi300_system_s1.jpg company: /companies/act company_name: ACT specs: - label: NAME value: QI-300 - label: MANUFACTURER value: ACT - label: TYPE value: Professional Computer - label: ORIGIN value: United Kingdom - label: YEAR value: '1988' - label: END OF PRODUCTION value: Late 1989 - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE value: None - label: KEYBOARD value: IBM AT standard layout - label: CPU value: Intel 80386SX - label: SPEED value: 16 MHz - label: CO-PROCESSOR value: Socket for a 80387SX math coprocessor - label: RAM value: 1Mb to 5Mb - label: ROM value: Unknown - label: TEXT MODES value: 40 or 80 columns x 25 lines - label: GRAPHIC MODES value: on-board VGA - label: SOUND value: Built-in speaker - label: SIZE / WEIGHT value: Unknown - label: I/O PORTS value: On-board ethernet, serial & parallel ports - label: BUILT IN MEDIA value: 3.5'' FDD, 30 to 50 MB RLL hard disk drive - label: OS value: MS-DOS and Windows 3 - label: POWER SUPPLY value: Built-in power supply unit - label: PERIPHERALS value: 4 x 16-bit MCA expansion slots - label: PRICE value: £3,200 (QI-600) tabs: - links links: - title: Apricot PC list url: http://www.osemidlands.co.uk/support/insight/insight/en/products/timeline/timeline.htm text: Full list of Apricots PC compatible products (From the Xen-i onwards) comments: - author: Andy W. (UK) date: Wednesday 11th February 2009 text: |- We had one of these at home back in late 1988. With its 48MB hard drive and 5MB of RAM it pretty much represented the cutting-edge of desktop PC''s at the time. It cost a bomb, I believe the additional 4MB of RAM cost another thousand pounds or so. In fact I sold it, still working, in around 1995. Ahh, those were the days...... - author: Brian (UK) date: Thursday 19th June 2008 text: This was my first PC, and followed the legendary Amstrad PCW8256 I wrote my PhD thesis on. The hard drive had 40mb capacity and made a soft rattling sound as it booted up. Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. Never forget it. - author: Antti Rytsola (Finland) date: Tuesday 27th November 2007 text: |- I think we had one of these Apricot 386sx-16 at the time. It was the first place I ever saw the strange interface on the backend which later changed my career - 10base-T.\ The inbuilt expansion space was quite unusable due to the microchannel architechture, but we got on expansion box to the side of the thing with three full-sized ISA slots and had a memory card on one of them. - author: Deacon Mckay (UK) date: Wednesday 13rd September 2006 text: i had one of these but it died, it was running windows 3.1 and dos. when i opened it up it had a 100mb HD, i'm not sure if it had been modified. it also had an old co-axal network plug and card. oc_id: 995 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20221128005132/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=995 date: '2022-11-28' --- The QI-300 was the last machine that showed Apricot's unique design style before ACT was bought by Mitsubishi and moved into standard looking boxes. It also had several unique features, including a security system based on an infra-red 'key card' that users had to point at the PC and activate to allow it to boot up. This was also the first PC to offer IBM's MCA expansion bus. The QI-300 was followed by the **Qi 600** (80386DX-25) and the **Qi 900** (80486DX) --- Thanks to **Charles Verrier** for this information. **Christopher Davies** adds:\ I used to maintain these computers many years ago. They were very IBM like inside and sported a 40 MB tape drive on the left hand side. The MCA I am sure was brown in colour. A very smart machine. They seamed very popular in tire replacement places meaning they got very grimy and dirty. **Warlord0** recalls:\ Ooh man glory days. I used to work for an Apricot reseller and put in a lot of Qi and Xen/Xen-S machines. The Qi was revolutionary. It had an MCA card that could be installed to work with an infra-red security card that would encrypt the hard drive! Apricot were light years ahead of their time. Wireless keyboard and mouse, trackballs, calculators in the keyboard. This stuff was brilliant British design. Sadly the buy out by Mitsubishi killed them off. I do remember the motherboards being released to the public being so poor in quality due to their "bleeding edge" design that many upgrades were done by soldering wires between chips post production. But they hold a special place in my heart. Gotta love 'em.
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