The Victor Vi is and attempt to produce a computer that is by its nature compatable with both Sirius/Victor standards and an IBM compatable (although it is not quite an XT). It is a Frankenstein of the computer world. This was obtained by a duel operating system that operated in either "Victor" mode or "PC" mode. Those familiar with the "PlusPC" option will know that this is a very similar setup except as with the Sirius 1 and Victor 9000 it was an retrofit option here it is all in one machine. It is possibe by means of a switch on the disk board to make the machine boot into what operating system you desired. It is possible to boot into the other via a few keystrokes on the key board to acheive this. A really strange booting process it is too. When first powering up the machine a single cursor appears on the monitor followed by a loud beep from the speaker. It then, after a few seconds displays the cursor of your choice denoting the mode you are in. Very strange indeed.

The first thing that strikes you is the angled facia that appears to be a "bolt on" to the basic Sirius/Victor 9000 and in fact it is. The chassis is identical for the Vi as the Sirius/Victor 9000. The power supply is the same as are the electrical connections with an extra connection in the case of a hard disk version to supply the Xebec controllers and hard disk. There is a speaker as in the Sirius/9000.

The important differences are in the mother board and floppy/hard disk boards. On the mother board are a vast array of chips but what is very noticible are the PROM's that hold the specific code to allow the machine to be booted and used in the two modes available to the user. There are six of these PROM's. There were at least two revisions of these over the short lifetime of these machines.

On the rear of the machine are two 25 pin serial ports for communications etc. as well as a Centronics printer port and the usual video port. The keboard socket and reset switch are alongside these ports. the back panel is again identical to the Sirius/9000 machines.

The keyboard has been completely redesigned to accomodate the dual systems and is in fact very similar to the Victor Vicki layout although the Vicki only uses Victor MS-DOS.

The Vi can run PC-compatable programs and Victor programs by operating in two modes Victor (V) and IBM PC (I). It is possible to reboot the system while it is running using three keys on the keyboard (CTRL-ALT-7) It will change the system operating system from that you booted up using. It is also possible to reboot the system using CTRL-ALT-DEl this will reboot into the system you were previously using.

Obviously the need arises to format disks in the differing formats I mode or V mode. Only V mode disks an be read in a Sirius/Victor 9000. In V mode the format will be the same as a Sirius/Victor 9000 and will store 620Kb on single side disks and 1.2 Mbytes on double side disks. In I mode a single side disk will hold 160 Kb (8 sectors) or 180 Kb (9 sectors) and a double side disk will hold 320Kb (8 sectors) and 360Kb (9 sectors). Obviously the Victor mode has the edge on disk storage.

A full set of specifications can be found HERE