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NAME  

UK-101

MANUFACTURER  

Compukit

TYPE  

Home Computer

ORIGIN  

United Kingdom

YEAR  

1979

BUILT IN LANGUAGE 

Microsoft Basic

KEYBOARD  

Full strike 50 keys

CPU  

6502

SPEED  

1 MHz

RAM  

4 KB (expandable to 8 KB)

ROM  

8 KB (Microsoft Basic) + 1 KB (Monitor)

TEXT MODES 

16 to 48 chars. x 16 lines

GRAPHIC MODES 

128 graphic characters

COLORS  

Monochrome

SOUND  

None

SIZE / WEIGHT 

I/O PORTS 

Tape recorder (at 300 baud) and printer ports

BUILT IN MEDIA 

None

BUILT IN MEDIA

None

POWER SUPPLY 

External AC transformer. Power regulation on board

PERIPHERALS  

Supports all Ohio Scientific expansions

PRICE  

£249 as a kit

 

Compukit UK-101

The Compukit UK101 microcomputer was a kit clone of the Ohio Scientific Superboard II single-board computer, with a few enhancements for the UK market - notably replacing the 24×24 (add guardband kit to give 32×32) screen display with a more useful 48×16 layout working at UK video frequencies. The video output was black and white with 256 characters generated by a two kilobyte ROM. It had no bit-mapped graphics capability. The video was output through a UHF modulator, designed to connect to a TV set.

It was powered by a 6502 CPU running at 1 MHz, and was equipped with up to 8 kilobytes of RAM using 2114 static RAM chips of 1024×4-bit. An additional memory-mapped 1 KB of RAM was used for the video display. It had the 8K Microsoft BASIC interpreter stored in ROM. In addition to Basic, a 6502 machine code monitor (2Kb) was built into ROM. It allowed programming by entering sequences of 6502 operational codes. Later a two pass assembler was available which allowed the use of assembly language.

The 40 pin expansion socket opened up the world to the UK101. One could attach a dual floppy disk controller (5.25") and a memory expansion card (40K max) to allow faster and reliable save/load of programs/data.

Kits of parts for building the machine were available from Comp Shop Ltd of Station Road, New Barnet (North London).


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