Advance 86

The Advance 86 was a microcomputer developed by Advance Technology UK in the United Kingdom, available in two models. The base model, the Model A (or Advance 86A), featuring a system unit and keyboard, was specified and priced to appeal to the home market, relying on cassette-based storage. An upgraded model, the Model B (or Advance 86B), augmented the Model A with an expansion unit providing dual floppy disk drives and was intended to appeal to business users. Through the addition of the expansion unit, the Model A could therefore be upgraded to the Model B. The core system employed the Intel 8086 processor, aiming for a level of compatibility with the IBM PC, and 128 KB of RAM, expandable to 256 RAM in the system unit and to a total of 768 KB utilising the expansion unit.