Trivector were an all-English company based in Hitchin, founded on 4th October 1974. Previous machines in the range included the System 80, which used the Intel 8080A.

The dual Z80 machine, with the possibility of using three, also had 64K of RAM. When the computer had three processors, they could be designated Master, Left and Right, this allowed the full use of the maximum 192K of RAM. The processors could also be independent of each other, and have a PROM connected to each, which could be used for running three different processes at once, for example, program control, system, and running of standard software. There is also a hardware floating point processor, with full compliment of mathematical functions.

The machine had many peripherals supported, including dual 5.25-inch floppy drives, a 10MB cartridge disk, paper tape I/O devices, VDUs, printers and teletypes.

The machine runs on Dartmouth Basic, which had commands for accessing the hardware peripherals, so no external software is needed for those.

The Triton 3 was aimed at industry, education and commerce, and was installed in factories and design offices with tasks ranging from structural engineering to pattern design on textiles. The machines were also installed in colleges, to aid in this Trivector supplied a Fortran batch processing system. The machine was also aimed at the research facilities, being central to laboratory processes and experiments.

A Triton 3 was installed at the Department of Medical Oncology of Charing Cross Hospital to assist in administrative tasks, storing patient data and test results, and then produce sticky labels with the patients details and sample number, and then patient data sheets could be produced and passed to the consultant. All very standard now, but quite revolutionary when this machine was new.

The machine could cost below £10,000.

This machine is in line for a major restoration.

Manufacturer: Trivector
Date: C.1980

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH52126. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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