ACT Apricot

Year: 1984
Operating system: Something Apricot-specific, nearly IBM-compatible.
Processor: Intel 8086.
Clock speed: 4.77 MHz.
RAM: 256 kB.
Hard disk: None (standard), here 10 MB.
External storage: 1x 3.5" 315 kB, two drives possible.
Monitor: Monochrome 9".
Extras:
Peculiarities:
Still looking for:
Donated by: Hr. Deys.

Is this an IBM compatible, a portable or a weirdo? It boots from ROM into something MS-DOS-like, but my own pc nearly crashes when it tries to read the Apricot's diskettes. It won't boot from an MS-DOS system disk and I can't find a bios to force it to boot from diskette. There's supposed to be 32 kB of boot ROM, but all in all this machine reports a whopping 896 kB of ROM. Also it boasts a 10 MB 'Winchester' disk, although I am not familiar enough with the machine to access it. Worse, none of my sources, such as the sites mentioned below, and the manual itself, apparently consider a hard drive to be a possibility.
It has a handle for carrying it around, but the monitor has to be carries separately (it has something handle-like of its own), which is hardly practical.

Sites:
Donovan Marshall's Computer Collection.