The Victor 9000 (English name: ACT Sirius S1, distributed in the UK by British company Applied Computer Techniques) was designed by Peddle—who had also designed the first Commodore PET—and presented for the first time at the Systems show in Munich, Germany in late 1981. Chuck Peddle used two of his Commodore contacts to set up two subsidiaries in continental Europe. David Deane (France) and Juergen Tepper (Germany) were both ex-Mannesmann Tally whom Chuck had met while negotiating an OEM deal for printers.

The Victor 9000/Sirius S1 ran CP/M-86 and MS-DOS but was not a PC clone. It offered a higher resolution screen as well as 600Ko/1.2Mo floppy drives. The Victor 9000 met with significant success in Europe, as IBM delayed the European launch of its PC for 18 months and that was ample time to establish the Sirius S1 as a bestseller and to build up a commanding lead for a short time. ACT outsold the Sirius/Victor subsidiaries and also led the way in proving that application software was the key to sales. Most sales across Europe went through small system houses rather than computer shops.

The Sirius 1  was released in 1982 and cost US $4,995 (128K RAM)
The CPU was an Intel 8088 @ 5 MHz
The display was 800 x 400 graphics and 80 x 25 text

Our model, the 506, has a single double-side 1.2M bytes per drive 5¼: inch floppy and is complete with monitor, keyboard and protective cover. This was very kindly donated by John Penn-Simkins.

Serial No: M0043370

Manufacturer: Sirius
Date: 1982

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH4951. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.