--- title: Sirius Computer Victor 9000 / Sirius 1 categories: - Computers types: - Professional Computer origins: - U.S.A. years: - '1982' cpus: - Intel 8086 params: name: Victor 9000 / Sirius 1 image: /media/museum/photos/sirius_victor-s1_1.jpg company: /companies/sirius-computer company_name: Sirius Computer specs: - label: NAME value: Victor 9000 / Sirius 1 - label: MANUFACTURER value: Sirius Computer - label: TYPE value: Professional Computer - label: ORIGIN value: U.S.A. - label: YEAR value: '1982' - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE value: None - label: KEYBOARD value: Full-stroke keyboard with function keys, editing keypad and separated numeric keypad. 94 keys - label: CPU value: Intel 8086 - label: SPEED value: 4.77 MHz - label: RAM value: 128 Kb (up to 896 Kb) - label: ROM value: 16 Kb - label: TEXT MODES value: 80 x 25, 132 x 50 (matrix of 9 x 12 or 10 x 16) - label: GRAPHIC MODES value: 800 x 400 dots - label: COLORS value: monochrome - label: SOUND value: built-in speaker - label: SIZE / WEIGHT value: '38(W) x 33(D) x 18(h) cm. Weight: 14 Kg (including two F.D. drives)' - label: I/O PORTS value: Parallel / IEEE-488, two RS232 / V24 ports, four expansion slots - label: BUILT IN MEDIA value: |- Two 5.25'' disk-drives, 612 kb each (or 1,2 Mb each as an option)\ Optional 10,6 Mb hard-disk - label: OS value: CP/M 86, MS-DOS - label: POWER SUPPLY value: PSU built-in - label: PRICE value: |- 4421 (France, april 1983) - £2754 (U.K., 1983)\ 10 MB hard disk and controler: $4495\ 128 KB memory board $800\ 384 KB memory board $2500 tabs: - photos - adverts - hardware - software - links - docs forum_thread: 220 photos: - title: ORIGINAL DESIGN subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_system_1.jpg - title: HD VERSION subtitle: '' text: In this version, a 20 MB hard-disk replaced the second F.D. drive. image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_hdversion_1.jpg - title: SYSTEM & H.D. UNIT subtitle: '' text: Victor 900 system with the 20 MB external Hard-disk unit. image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_systemplus5_1.jpg - title: SYSTEM OPENED subtitle: '' text: Complete system with F.D.Drives management card (horizontally) and expansion memory and H.D. cards. image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_system_2.jpg - title: MOTHERBOARD subtitle: '' text: |- No specialized components on this very reliable board but lots of I/O chips from MOS (65xx series), Motorola (68xx series) and Intel.\ This board worked for 17 years without any breakdown, and is still running. **(1)** 16 x 4864 chips holding 128 KB or RAM\ **(2)** Floppy disc and Hard disk cards connectors\ **(3)** BIOS ROM\ **(4)** Intel 8088 microprocessor. Here a Nec version\ **(5)** 4 x 16-bit expansion board slots\ **(6)** Switching power supply image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_motherboard_1.jpg - title: MOTHERBOARD CLOSE-UP subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_mb_closeup_1.jpg - title: F.D. CONTROLLER BOARD subtitle: '' text: The controller board is like a computer inside the computer. It uses an Intel 8048 processor **(1)** featuring internal RAM, ROM and I/O management, external ROM program **(2)** and three MOS 6522 I/O chips **(3)**. image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_fdboard_1.jpg - title: REAR CONNECTORS subtitle: '' text: |- **(1)** Keyboard connector\ **(2)** Reset switch\ **(3)** Light-pen connectors (1 for the display, 1 for the light-pen)\ **(4)** Light-pen external battery housing\ **(5)** Parallel Centronics printer connector\ **(6)** Display connector (Power and video signals)\ **(7)** Serial port 1\ **(8)** Serial port 2\ **(9)** Mains power plug, fuse and On/Off switch. image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_back_1.jpg - title: THE BOX subtitle: '' text: Only one box holded the full system, computer + monitor + keyboard + manuals and software. image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_box_1.jpg - title: DUST COVER subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/photos/victor_9000_dustcover_1.jpg adverts: - title: FIRST VICTOR ADVERT (1982) subtitle: '' text: |- with the original Victor design. Advert said: The Victor 9000. It's a desktop system computer designed to be a "cut above" the rest... image: /media/museum/pubs/victor_9000_pub_1.jpg - title: 'VICTOR AD #2 (1982)' subtitle: '' text: |- In this advert, the Victor 9000 features was compared with those of four competitor computers: IBM PC, Xerox 820, Apple III and TRS-80 Model II. Victor features was definitely higher than all of the desktop computers of the time, including the IBM PC. image: /media/museum/pubs/victor_9000_pub_2.jpg - title: 'VICTOR AD #3 (1982)' subtitle: '' text: In this advert, Victor tried to convince future IBM PC buyers that the Victor 9000 hardware technology was much more advanced than that of its competitor. image: /media/museum/pubs/victor_9000_pub_3.jpg - title: VICTOR TECHNOLOGIES CREATION subtitle: '' text: |- January 1983 Advert said: The conbination of Victor Business Products and Sirius Systems Technology Inc. creates a new company designed to meet the most demanding needs of the modern business office...\ ... The result is Victor Technologies Inc., a company idally suited to dramatically impact today's international computer marketplace. The Chairman of the board of the new Victor Technologies in Fred Sullivan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kiddle, Inc., a diversified $3 billion company. The financial support of this giant conglomerate will help focus Victor's goal of becoming one of the three leading computer companies in the world.\ President and Chief Executive Officer of the new company is Chuck Peddle. Acknowledged as the "father" of the personal computer concept, Peddle introduced this useful and very affordable third generation micro-computer in the European market with startling results.. image: /media/museum/pubs/victor_9000_pub_4.jpg - title: 'VICTOR AD #4 (1983)' subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/pubs/victor_9000_pub_5.jpg - title: FRENCH ADVERT#1 (1982) subtitle: '' text: |- "Computing: an era comes to the end" "The Sirius era begins" image: /media/museum/pubs/sirius_s1_pub-elephant_2.jpg - title: FRENCH ADVERT#2 (1982) subtitle: '' text: |- "Here comes Sirius 1 : the micro-computer which has an elephant memory"\ ...\ "A new era for computing" image: /media/museum/pubs/sirius_s1_pub-elephant.jpg - title: FRENCH LEAFLET COVER subtitle: '' text: |- One found the same leaflet in various countries, translated in many languages. Title was: 'Sirius 1, the professional computer to the power of 16' image: /media/museum/pubs/victor_9000_frenchleaflet_1.jpg - title: FRENCH AD (DEC.1983) subtitle: '' text: This is an advert for Victornet, the net for Victor computers, based on Omninet. image: /media/museum/pubs/sirius_victor_pub_victornet.jpg hardware: - title: DUAL RAM CARDS subtitle: '' text: Dual 128 KB RAM memory cards to be inserted in two of the four expansion slots. image: /media/museum/hardware/victor_9000_dualramcards_1.jpg - title: PLUS 5 EXTERNAL HARD-DISK UNIT subtitle: '' text: Plus 5 external Hard-disk unit was made in England by **Plus 5 Engineering Limited**. A 5, 10, 20, 30 or 40 MB H.D. drive could be installed in the case. This unit is a 20 MB version using a **Rodime** 5" full height disk drive. image: /media/museum/hardware/victor_9000_plus5unit_1.jpg - title: PLUS 5 CONTROLER CARD subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/hardware/victor_9000_plus5controller_1.jpg - title: THE CARD ITSELF subtitle: '' text: The card is equiped with 64 KB. Video input/output are composite. It can digitalize the video source into a 256 x 255 px picture with 64 levels of grey. Acquisition time is 20ms. image: /media/museum/hardware/victor_s1_card-dgs2-mid_1.jpg - title: FRENCH ADVERT subtitle: december 1983 text: The card cost 9800 FF (France, dec. 1983) image: /media/museum/hardware/victor_s1_card-dgs2-mid_pub_1.png screenshots: - title: BOOT SCREEN subtitle: '' text: '' image: /media/museum/software/victor9000_boot_ss.jpg - title: UCSD P.SYSTEM subtitle: '' text: The UCSD p-System operating system ran programs whose object code was pseudocode for an idealized 16-bit processor. It was transfered to 16-bit systems in the early 80's image: /media/museum/software/victor_9000_ucsd_1.jpg links: - title: ACT Sirius 1 User Group (UK) url: http://www.actsirius1.co.uk/ text: help and support to get the most out of your ACT Sirius 1 / Victor 9000 system docs: - title: TECHNICAL REFERENCE MANUAL url: http://www.siriususergroup.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pages/dl.htm cover: /media/museum/docs/couvs/vide.gif text: |- [**TECHNICAL REFERENCE MANUAL**](http://www.siriususergroup.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pages/dl.htm)written by Sirius/Victor Technologies  compiled/archived by Sirius User Group\  type of document : ZIP\  size : 151 KB\  source : [Act Sirius 1 User Group (UK)](http://www.actsirius1.co.uk/) oc_id: 210 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230604050628/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=210 date: '2023-06-04' --- The Victor 9000 / Sirius S1 was conceived by Chuck Peddle who also designed the first Commodore PETs. This machine was quite innovative and superior in many points to the original IBM PC. It met a certain success in Europe as the IBM PC was not yet available there, whereas the Sirius S1 (european name of the Victor 9000) was. ACT sold a lot of these systems in UK, and their first "homemade" computer, the Apricot PC, borrowed a lot to the Sirius S1. The mechanical keyboard is very complete and has its own 8035 cpu. The 12'' monochrome monitor is equiped with an anti-relflection filter and can be adjusted horizontaly and verticaly. Contrast and luminosity are controlled directly from the keyboard. The computer can display text ranging from 80 x 25 to 132 x 50. But the best feature is the high resolution reaching 800 x 400 pixels! The Victor 9000 is equiped with a Codec which can sample and replay sounds in telephone quality. There are two V24 / RS232 ports and one parallel connector which can also be used as an IEEE-488 interface (to connect measurement instruments for example). There is also an optional light-pen, which is in fact a touch pen using resistive mesh on the CRT. The two 5.25" disk-drives are single-sided and offer 600 kb each. But double-sided models were available as an option and offered 1.2 Mb each.\ The Victor 9000 was perhaps best known for how it was able to achieve such high density on it's floppy disks. It used variable speed disk drives; there were 9 different speeds used. As the drive head moved outward the speed would increase. It was really neat to hear the speed change as the drive head moved. The Victor 9000 could run with MS-DOS or CP/M 86. Many languages were available: Basic 86, C-Basic, Cobol, CIS-Cobol, Pascal, Fortran, PL1, PLM, etc.; as well as some software: Wordstar, Spellstar, Mailmerge, Multiplan, etc. From **Byte magazine** (11/82):\ Victor came to the computers competition much better prepared than most new entrants of the time.\ First of all, Victor was a subsidiary of Kidde Inc., a three billion dollar conglomerate.\ Second, Victor had experience in designing and manufacturing microprocessor-based electronic products. The company had been making calculators for 60 years.\ Third, Victor had a great deal of experience in dealing with business people and the needs of contemporary office.\ Fourth, The Victor 9000 distribution was supported by a network of 50 branch offices in the U.S.A.\ Fifth and perhaps most important, the chief designer of Victor's machine is not a novice but Chuck Peddle, a founder of the microcomputer industry who knows how to bring maximum performance to the market at an affordable price. **Andreas Tauscher** reports:\ There is an additional user-port inside (this port is a complete 6522) the Computer. The disk drive has its own CPU, and was available as SS 360kB and later SS720kB and DS 1440kB! It used not a fixed RPM Speed, the Disk is separated in three zones with differnt speeds - Sound verry funny :) **Grant MacDonald** reports:\ The variable speeds on the floppy drive were very distinctive and when I was at college there was a program available called "Drive Music" that accessed different sectors of the floppy to play tunes. We got into trouble for using it on the college machines.\ On boot up it used the sound hardware to say (in an American voice) something like: "I am the ACT Sirrius One, the number one choice in business computers." **Michael Gillespie** reports:\ Andreas Tauscher is incorrect in his posting regarding disk capacity...the technical information listing is correct. Chuck achieved very high capacity diskettes through the use of constant bit-density. He did this on the Victor/Sirius machine through variable speed drives but he had done it before on the Commodore products through variable clock rates.\ I was the first and largest Victor dealer in Canada and also created multiuser Concurrent SP/M and multiuser Concurrent DOS for these machines. We introduced these products in London England the very day Victor went into chapter 11 !@#$%^&\*