This site was born out of a need of some kind of support for the ACT Sirius 1. There are many pages on the WWW that illustrate the Sirius 1 and have limited information but not all are 100% correct. This site aims to provide accurate information on many aspects of the Act Sirius 1 and offer simple support. User groups for the Act Sirius 1 are now gone (in the UK at least) but there are still some numbers of these machines about. The whole idea of this site is to keep these micro's from becoming extinct. If you know of another user group please supply contact details.
The story starts many years ago when I purchased my first Act Sirius 1 to do work related to my building and maintainence business. It could do everything I wanted it to do very well and produced good output to a Juki daisy wheel printer. The software I used was 'Silicon Office' by XXXXXXXXXX. I became disabled with severe back problems and was forced to give up work. The Sirius sat in my office doing nothing as I had no interest in it, my business gone. Boredom set in so my attention turned to the Sirius and the disks and manuals that came with it. It was a completly new world with jargon and seemly incomprehensible lines of commands.
It was a real journey into DOS and CP/M-86 (the more cryptic of the two systems). As time went by I learnt how to use both DOS fairly well and created silly little Autoexec.bat files to 'automate' disk startups. Progressed onto the graphics toolkit and programmers toolkit making my own startup banners etc.
I began looking for software and hardware to expand my knowledge. I also found a few Sirius Users and gained quite a few friends. I purchased a couple of large collections of Sirius software and hardwear from an ex-Sirius Computer Consultant and a small 'business'. That really gave my collection a push foward. Swapping software was also another way of gaining more to add to the collection. My Sirius friends were pleased to gain as well. I was donated many machines as well as software but I think the best addition came from a avid Sirius user whose collection spanned the entire era of the Sirius and held a collection of utilities, programs, manuals, letters and mountains of other Sirius related documents unsurpassed. Some of which will find its way onto the site.
By now the Sirius collection had grown to a size that took some believing. There are about 12 Sirius floppy machines, Two hard drive machines, boxes of parts including keyboards, motherboards, monitors, memory cards, just about every manual printed, and piles of miscellaneous bits. There is also a huge number of disks with so much software that even today I have not been able to catalogue it all. There are also many add-ons such as external hard drives, two PlusPC sets, clock cards and CP/-M80 cards to name but a few items.
As a side line I have also collected examples of generics and to date there are two working Victor Vicki's (luggable tabletop computers), and a (sick) Victor Vi. I also have several other Victor machines up to a 286. There is also a modest collection of ACT Apricots.
What is the point of having all this to gloat over. Share it would be a good idea so the Sirius Information Exchange User Group was born, SIEUG for short. The web site was started a couple of years ago but over the last few months (2002) it has grown into what it is today. The biggest change is the title, it is now the ACT Sirius 1 User Group (UK) to reflect our location in the world and, of course, the great machine itself.
Although I have several PC's I still enjoy using the Sirius and scour the 'web' using the likes of E-Bay and Google looking for items to add to the collection. Several people have generously donated machines to the collection ensuring their future. Magazines are also looked through such as Micro Computer Mart. Items are becoming harder to find. In April 2002 I obtained a couple of Sirius memory boards from the USA and two early Victor V286P laptops from the UK and Germany.
I will continue to collect as long as items appear and if I can afford it. The Sirius is a great machine from a computer innovative era and although consigned to the annals of history will still give enjoyment to the few that still own one.
