The Victor 9000 (1982)

This particular computer, unlike most of my computer specific posts, is not one that I currently own or have ever owned or even seen in person. However, it is somewhat interesting for a PC clone. The Victor 9000 is a rebadged Sirius 1 with the primary difference being that the Victor 9000 was marketed to businesses.

_{Victor 9000}

In terms of hardware, the Victor 9000 really wasn't anything special. It consisted of a 5MHz Intel 8088 processor, 2 5.25" floppy drives, and 128K RAM. It was more or less equivalent to an original IBM PC. It was capable of running MS-DOS and CP/M-86 and there were some software packages that were available specifically for the Victor 9000 including VictorWriter and VictorCalc. The Victor 9000 was considered to be superior to the IBM PC and in fact the Sirius 1 was the best selling 16-bit business computer in Europe for a time. Some thought that the XT was released as a response to the hard disk system of the Victor 9000.

_{Sirius 1}

However, what makes the Sirius 1 / Victor 9000 interesting to me is the fact that Chuck Peddle designed it. Chuck Peddle also designed the MOS 6502 processor which was used in a variety of 8-bit computers including the Apple II, Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 (as the 6510) among others. He also designed the Commodore PET. After leaving Commodore in 1980, Chuck Peddle founded Sirius which later changed its name to Victor after merging with another company. While the Victor 9000 was capable of running MS-DOS, it was not PC compatible and used disks of a different format. At the end of the day, this lack of PC compatibility doomed it.

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