Jupiter Ace
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| Type | Home computer |
|---|---|
| Release date | 1982 |
| Introductory price | £89.95 (today $286.28) |
| Discontinued | 1984 |
| Operating system | ACE Forth |
| CPU | Z80 @ 3.25 MHz |
| Memory | 1 kB (maximum 49 kB) |
The Jupiter Ace was a British home computer of the early 1980s. It was produced by the company Jupiter Cantab which was set up for the purpose. The Ace differed from other microcomputers of the time in that it used Forth instead of the more popular BASIC. After Jupiter Cantab ceased trading, the brand was acquired by Boldfield Computing Ltd in 1984, before eventually being sold to Andrews UK Limited in 2015 (the company owned by Paul Andrews, who also conceived the Sinclair Spectrum ZX Vega games console).
The Jupiter Ace was the first of its class to use a very fast structured language, free of spaghetti code, without the need to be loaded or even bought. The language was also the first (and only) adapted to use a cassette tape recorder (without the disk/tape drives of highly priced systems).
The down side of the language was its argument passing managed by the programmer. Additionally, not being a promoted language and the needing to later add a RAM Extension Pack, would be arguments against its offer of both power and professional programming delivered in a cheap computer.
Jupiter Cantab was formed by Richard Altwasser and Steven Vickers. Both had been on the design team for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum: Altwasser did some work on the development of the ZX-81 and in the design of the hardware of the Spectrum. Vickers adapted and expanded the 4K ZX-80 ROM to the 8K ZX-81 ROM and wrote most of the ROM for the Spectrum.
The Jupiter Ace was named after the early British computer, the ACE. The name was chosen to emphasize the "firsts" of using FORTH environment. This, in contrast to previous introductory computers was its most distinctive characteristic, Forth being already considered well adapted to microcomputers (with small memory and relatively low-performance processors).
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