AP4 (The Advanced Plus 4)

"A fully Acorn compatible disc interface that will accept any standard 5.25" or 3.5" disc drive with its own power supply. It runs the 1770 DFS (as fitted in the BBC & Master computers). It keeps PAGE at &E00 and the utilities are in the ROM giving instant access to such as FORMAT and VERIFY commands, full DFS documentation is supplied. There is a spare 16K ROM socket in the interface. Our ADFS ROM can be fitted to give an AP34." - Pres' Catalogue of Electron Products, August 1991

What It Does

The Arcade Soccer is a small 7.5cm x 14.5cm x 1.5cm creme coloured interface which plugs into one of the expansion slots on the ACORN ELECTRON PLUS 1/AP1 or Rombox+ interface.

The AP4 is a DFS E00 interface. Although it does use some of the Acorn Electron's memory locations for its operation, it does not require any of those between &E00 to &1D00. This means many programs can simply be transferred from tape to a DFS disc and work from it. No complicated recoding is necessary. Every single disc in the archive will work on this format and the interface itself can be considered a must have for a complete disc-based games collection.

The AP4 also boasts a spare 16K ROM socket which can be used to upgrade the interface with the ADFS 1.1 chip, making the AP34.

The AP4 can be used with any Acorn disc drive that has its own power supply.

The AP4 came supplied with a DFS Manual.

The AP4 was originally available by mail order from Pres for £71.47. A second hand AP4 will usually sell on eBay for £25-£60.

Downloadable Companions To The AP4

You will find hundreds of discs suitable for use with the AP4 in the archives and can write them to Acorn MD discs with the FDC utility. To load them, you simply hold down SHIFT and tap BREAK.

If you are missing any of the components originally bundled with the interface then you can download them by clicking on the links below:

	ELECTRON DFS E00 FILING SYSTEM USER GUIDE
	Author:	Advanced Computer Products/Pres
	Release Information:	1988: AP4 USER GUIDE, Pres
	No. Of Pages:	60
	File Type:	Microsoft Word Document (Complete)
	Suitable For:	Electron Fitted With AP4/Plus 4 Expansion