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The Jupiter ACE was a British home computer of the 1980s, marketed by a company named Jupiter Cantab and named after the early British computer, the ACE. The company was formed by Richard Altwasser and Steven Vickers, who had been on the design team for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

The Jupiter ACE somewhat resembled a ZX81 in a white case, with black rubber keys like the Spectrum. It displayed output on a television, and programs could be saved and loaded on cassette tape, as was standard at that time. The machine was based on a Zilog Z80 processor clocked at 3.25MHz, and came with 3 kB RAM, expandable to 49 kB. While it had only one video mode, text only, which displayed 24 rows of 32 columns of characters in black and white, it was possible to display graphics, by redefining the 8×8 pixel bitmap of any of the 128 characters. Like the ZX Spectrum, the machine's audio capabilities were restricted to beeps of programmable frequency and duration, output through a small built-in speaker.

Although the hardware, and to some extent the software, of the ACE was similar to the ZX81 and in particular the ZX Spectrum, unlike those machines it used discrete transistor-transistor logic rather than the ULAs of the Sinclair machines. The font of the character set was identical to that of the Spectrum, but again unlike the earlier machines, the display was white on black. Unlike the ZX81, the display was generated by hardware. Like the Spectrum, the keyboard was of the rubber-keyed or 'chiclet' variety, but there was no single-keyword entry. The case and speaker were also very similar, although there was an extra interface for the attachment of a colour graphics board that was never produced.

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Currently playing JUPITER ACE - 1000 YEARS(RADIO EDIT) :: www.profm.nl ::
pro_fm (Pro FM Webradio) Tue, 05 Jan 2010 18:00:08 -0000
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