Recently I found this old machine dumped in a skip. Taking a guess it was probably thrown out after a house clearance from a deceased elderly person where it's probably been laying in a box for over 15 years. It's an Apricot Xen-i 386/45 Model No: SX345 manufactured by the Apricot Computers on Feb 1989. The specs from what I can see from a brief overview are an Intel 80386-16 (16MHz), 512KB or 1MB of RAM, 46MB HDD and a 720KB 3.5 floppy. Here's some pictures:
I have searched online for information on these machines and there is very little available so was wondering if anyone here has any experience with these or knows anything about them? They appear to have been high end workstations that were targeted at businesses. I'm trying to find a manual for it should any even exist but for this specific model I can't find any info anywhere, not a single reference for the model "SX345". Unfortunately this one does not have the keyboard, mouse or phone attachment that I believe it once came with. It's possible it was in the skip I found it in but at the time I wouldn't have even known about it or even tried looking. There was nothing else relating to it in the spot I found it in so I'm going to assume it wasn't or was unfortunately buried under multiple feet of rubbish.
I have powered it on it half expecting it to trip the power or go up in smoke but it booted fine, LEDs light up, HDD spinning and only beeping due to an error. It's most likely just the battery but without knowing what the beep sequence means I can't diagnose properly. When I get the time I'm going to de-solder the battery and replace it then try again. I also don't have a display to hook up to it and will have to look into that later.
It's also surprising clean for something over 30 years old, the inside is almost immaculate with only a thin layer of industrial dirt with minor corrosion on the metal chassis. The case is pretty battered with cracks in multiple places and the battery surprisingly is still outputting 0.02V after all this time.
I have searched online for information on these machines and there is very little available so was wondering if anyone here has any experience with these or knows anything about them? They appear to have been high end workstations that were targeted at businesses. I'm trying to find a manual for it should any even exist but for this specific model I can't find any info anywhere, not a single reference for the model "SX345". Unfortunately this one does not have the keyboard, mouse or phone attachment that I believe it once came with. It's possible it was in the skip I found it in but at the time I wouldn't have even known about it or even tried looking. There was nothing else relating to it in the spot I found it in so I'm going to assume it wasn't or was unfortunately buried under multiple feet of rubbish.
I have powered it on it half expecting it to trip the power or go up in smoke but it booted fine, LEDs light up, HDD spinning and only beeping due to an error. It's most likely just the battery but without knowing what the beep sequence means I can't diagnose properly. When I get the time I'm going to de-solder the battery and replace it then try again. I also don't have a display to hook up to it and will have to look into that later.
It's also surprising clean for something over 30 years old, the inside is almost immaculate with only a thin layer of industrial dirt with minor corrosion on the metal chassis. The case is pretty battered with cracks in multiple places and the battery surprisingly is still outputting 0.02V after all this time.
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