The CST Thor series of

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

s are

Sinclair QL The Sinclair QL (for ''Quantum Leap'') is a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as an upper-end counterpart to the ZX Spectrum. The QL was aimed at the serious home user and professional and executive users markets from small ...

-compatible systems designed and produced by

Cambridge Systems Technology Cambridge Systems Technology (CST) was a company formed in the early 1980s by ex-Torch Computers engineers David Oliver and Martin Baines, to produce peripherals for the BBC Micro, and later, with Graham Priestley, Sinclair QL microcomputers. Pr ...

during the late 1980s.

Thor PC

The original Thor PC (also called Thor 1, sometimes also retrospectively referred to as the Thor 8), was launched in 1986, as a logical progression of CST's QL peripheral business after production of the Sinclair QL was halted. The remaining stock of QL parts were purchased from

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, and the standard QL motherboard (including a 7.5 MHz Motorola 68008 CPU and 128

KiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

) was augmented with a CST-designed expansion board providing 512 KiB of additional RAM, extra

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

s, a non-volatile real-time clock, floppy disk, SCSI,

Centronics Centronics Data Computer Corporation was an American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name, the Centronics connector. History Foundations Centronics began as a division ...

parallel,

IBM PC/AT The IBM Personal Computer/AT (model 5170, abbreviated as IBM AT or PC/AT) was released in 1984 as the fourth model in the IBM Personal Computer line, following the IBM PC/XT and its IBM Portable PC variant. It was designed around the Intel 80 ...

-style keyboard and mouse interfaces enclosed in a low-profile metal desktop case with a built-in power supply. Mass storage options consisted of one (Thor 1F) or two (Thor 2F) 3.5-inch floppy drives or one floppy drive and one 20 MB

Rodime Rodime was an electronics company specialising in hard disks, based in Glenrothes, Scotland. It was founded in 1979 by several Scottish and American former employees of Burroughs Corporation and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1986, bec ...

RO652 SCSI hard disk (Thor 2WF). The ROMs contained Eidersoft's ICE

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

and some QDOS extensions. Also, supplied with the Thor was a specially-commissioned version of the Psion Xchange application software suite (an enhanced edition of the Psion applications bundled with the QL). Prices for the Thor PC ranged from £599 to £1399, excluding monitor, mouse and VAT. An upgrade service for existing QLs was also available.

Thor 20/21

The Thor 20 and Thor 21 are variants of the Thor PC, launched in April 1987 and fitted with a

68020 The Motorola 68020 ("''sixty-eight-oh-twenty''", "''sixty-eight-oh-two-oh''" or "''six-eight-oh-two-oh''") is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. A lower-cost version was also made available, known as the 68EC020. In keepin ...

processor on a

daughterboard In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus s ...

in place of the original CPU. The new processor runs at 12.5 MHz, a 16.67 MHz option also being offered at higher cost. The Thor 21 is also fitted with the 68881 floating-point co-processor, running at the same speed as the CPU. Performance is better than the Thor 1, but handicapped by the use of 8-bit memory in the base system. The Thor 20 and 21 were shipped with a 68020 macro

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and linker, plus

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processor documentation. They were intended as a vehicle for the development of software for a projected enhanced 68020-based model, later shelved. The Thor 20 and 21 were expensive (a 12.5 MHz Thor 21 costing around twice as much as a Thor 1F) and were mainly placed on loan to the software development community.

Thor XVI

The Thor XVI was developed in collaboration with the Danish company DanSoft and was announced at the ''

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'' Show in September 1987. Unlike the previous models, the Thor XVI's hardware is of a completely new design, based around an 8 MHz

68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Secto ...

processor plus a 2 MHz 68B02 co-processor for audio and I/O processing. 512 KiB of RAM is included as standard (expandable to 2 MiB, later 6.5 MiB). The video hardware provides QL-compatible video modes as well as a new 16-colour mode. Floppy disk, SCSI, Centronics, dual S5/8

serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...

s, PC/AT keyboard, mouse, QL expansion bus and QLAN network interfaces are provided. Mass storage options are similar to the previous Thors, plus 40 MB hard disk and diskless network workstation configurations. The Thor XVI is housed in a case similar to that of the Thor PC. The Thor XVI includes in ROM a QDOS-compatible

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

derived from QDOS 1.13, called ''Argos''. Like its predecessors, the XVI is bundled with Xchange. Production started in early 1988. Prices were slightly higher than the Thor PC. Later in 1988, a joint CST/DanSoft marketing operation, Thor International, was formed in Denmark in an attempt to increase sales to the European market. The Thor XVI hardware was revised slightly and production was moved to

Brüel & Kjær Brüel & Kjær (Sound and Vibration Measurement A/S) was a Danish multinational engineering and electronics company headquartered in Nærum, near Copenhagen. It was the largest producer in the world of equipment for acoustic and vibrational mea ...

in Denmark. Plans were also made to build Thor machines under license in Russia, but this came to nothing. The following year, Thor International (and CST) collapsed amid acrimony and legal action over the disputed transfer of assets from the UK by the partners.

References

External links

Binary Dinosaurs page about the CST Thor

Sinclair QL Hardware FAQ

Sinclair QL Computer Wiki

* ttp://www.simon.mooli.org.uk/QL/ThorXVI.html CST Thor XVI review {{Sinclair computers and clones Computer-related introductions in 1986 68000-based home computers Personal computers Sinclair QL clones