website/content/museum/act-qi-300.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
ACT QI-300	Computers	Professional Computer	United Kingdom	1988	Intel 80386SX	name image company company_name specs tabs links comments oc_id source QI-300 /media/museum/photos/apricot_qi300_system_s1.jpg /companies/act ACT label value NAME QI-300 label value MANUFACTURER ACT label value TYPE Professional Computer label value ORIGIN United Kingdom label value YEAR 1988 label value END OF PRODUCTION Late 1989 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE None label value KEYBOARD IBM AT standard layout label value CPU Intel 80386SX label value SPEED 16 MHz label value CO-PROCESSOR Socket for a 80387SX math coprocessor label value RAM 1Mb to 5Mb label value ROM Unknown label value TEXT MODES 40 or 80 columns x 25 lines label value GRAPHIC MODES on-board VGA label value SOUND Built-in speaker label value SIZE / WEIGHT Unknown label value I/O PORTS On-board ethernet, serial & parallel ports label value BUILT IN MEDIA 3.5'' FDD, 30 to 50 MB RLL hard disk drive label value OS MS-DOS and Windows 3 label value POWER SUPPLY Built-in power supply unit label value PERIPHERALS 4 x 16-bit MCA expansion slots label value PRICE £3,200 (QI-600) links title url text Apricot PC list http://www.osemidlands.co.uk/support/insight/insight/en/products/timeline/timeline.htm Full list of Apricots PC compatible products (From the Xen-i onwards) author date text Andy W. (UK) Wednesday 11th February 2009 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 date text Brian (UK) Thursday 19th June 2008 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 date text Antti Rytsola (Finland) Tuesday 27th November 2007 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 date text Deacon Mckay (UK) Wednesday 13rd September 2006 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. 995 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20221128005132/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=995 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)

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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.

We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.