This article is about the computer manufacturer. For the similarly-named fictional company, see Sirius Cybernetics Corp.

Sirius Systems Technology was a personal computer manufacturer in Scotts Valley, California. It was founded in 1980 by Chuck Peddle and Chris Fish, formerly of MOS Technology and capitalized by Walter Kidde Inc. In late 1982 Sirius acquired Victor Business Systems (known for its calculators and cash registers) from Kidde and changed its name to Victor Technologies. It made the Victor/Sirius series of personal computers. The company made a public stock offering in the first half of 1983, but went into Chapter 11 protection before the end of 1984. The company's assets were acquired by Datatronic AB, a Swedish software company headed by Mats Gabrielsson. The latter signed a distribution deal with Kyocera, who began to supply PC clones to Victor.

The Victor 9000 (distributed in the UK by British company Applied Computer Techniques^[1] as the ACT Sirius 1, and in Australia by Barson Computers as the Sirius 1) 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 1 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 1 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.

One striking difference between the Victor 9000 and other machines on the market at the time was the fact that the disc spun at different speeds according to where the data was stored. This led to much faster disc access speeds which was an important factor at the time This allowed the floppy disks to hold a great deal more data than others at the time due to constant bit-density recording (620K/1.2MB versus 360K). The Victor 9000's 800x400 resolution screen, 896K RAM, programmable keyboard and character set were also far ahead of the competition but the sigle largest thing that the Victor 9000 had going for it was the largest software library, by far, of any similar computer of the day.

The Victor 9000 was also distributed in the UK under that name by DRG Business Machines in Weston super-Mare, who dealt with Victor Technologies in the US direct. It was not a particularly successful venture as ACT had already established a brand name and a loyal dealer base. The dealer and press launch was held in London and it was believed that several loyal ACT dealers tried to disrupt this launch. (source PR account manager for DRG Business machines )

[edit] References

• Old-Computers.com - Victor 9000 / Sirius 1 page
• Sirius 1 / Victor 9000 SpecificationPDF (109 KiB)
• Victor Victorious: The Victor 9000 ComputerPDF (215 KiB)