For all Acorn Archimedes Fans

[Arnuphis]

IF you had an Acorn Archimedes/Risc-PC back in the day or if you are curious about RiscOS there is a brand new Kickstarter campaign here.

 

 

https://riscoscloverleaf.com/

 

 

Of course you can just get a Raspberry Pi and get stuck in yourself but it's nice to see an active campaign going and I hope it's a success.

Edited November 18, 2020 by Arnuphis

[Hwlngmad]

On 11/18/2020 at 10:31 AM, Arnuphis said:

IF you had an Acorn Archimedes/Risc-PC back in the day or if you are curious about RiscOS there is a brand new Kickstarter campaign here.

 

 

https://riscoscloverleaf.com/

 

 

Of course you can just get a Raspberry Pi and get stuck in yourself but it's nice to see an active campaign going and I hope it's a success.

Looks like a very interesting project.  While it is not something that necessarily interests me, I do wish them luck as it does look pretty neat.

[Arnuphis]

The timing is amusing. Especially since the tech world is going nuts over Apple moving to ARM and how amazing it is. Hardly innovative when Acorn had an ARM desktop in 1987 and a laptop in 1992. But that is Apple's reality distortion for you.

 

RiscOS is a great little OS. Blindingly fast, even on an original Raspberry Pi. It just needs some modern refinements like Wi-FI, Modern Browser and something like Libre Office to really make it shine. I am hoping this campaign brings that closer to a reality.

 

 It kind of reminds me of the modern "Amiga" machines with their OS4 and the similar issues they face. However, unlike the Amiga you don't have to spend $1500+ on a machine with RiscOS. Just buy a Pi for under $100 and off you go. I would recommend RiscOS Direct if you decide to try it. It is set up to be easier out of the box for a new user.

[Zap1982]

On 11/21/2020 at 9:50 PM, Arnuphis said:

The timing is amusing. Especially since the tech world is going nuts over Apple moving to ARM and how amazing it is. Hardly innovative when Acorn had an ARM desktop in 1987 and a laptop in 1992. But that is Apple's reality distortion for you.

 

RiscOS is a great little OS. Blindingly fast, even on an original Raspberry Pi. It just needs some modern refinements like Wi-FI, Modern Browser and something like Libre Office to really make it shine. I am hoping this campaign brings that closer to a reality.

 

 It kind of reminds me of the modern "Amiga" machines with their OS4 and the similar issues they face. However, unlike the Amiga you don't have to spend $1500+ on a machine with RiscOS. Just buy a Pi for under $100 and off you go. I would recommend RiscOS Direct if you decide to try it. It is set up to be easier out of the box for a new user.

I wish someone would make an Acorn / BBC "mini" - don't know what form it would take exactly but if one looked hard enough there was some great games on there. A ton of trash and shovelware sure but a mini release could blast the C64 mini built in library far out the ocean.

[Hwlngmad]

On 2/5/2021 at 1:56 PM, Zap1982 said:

I wish someone would make an Acorn / BBC "mini" - don't know what form it would take exactly but if one looked hard enough there was some great games on there. A ton of trash and shovelware sure but a mini release could blast the C64 mini built in library far out the ocean.

A mini BBC mini would be cool.  However, I suspect that it would be a bit of a hard sell outside of the UK. 

[Zap1982]

12 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

A mini BBC mini would be cool.  However, I suspect that it would be a bit of a hard sell outside of the UK. 

Suppose Brand recognition would be an issue. I think calling it "BBC" (if you would want that) would present issues in itself too.

 

Jeez.. Acorn really is confined to the history books aren't they! And said books never got a digital release either!

[phoenixdownita]

2 hours ago, Zap1982 said:

Suppose Brand recognition would be an issue. I think calling it "BBC" (if you would want that) would present issues in itself too.

 

Jeez.. Acorn really is confined to the history books aren't they! And said books never got a digital release either!

Is it? The ARM cpu was their doing so maybe BBC/Electron/Master are not too popular with the retro crowd (are they?) and Archimedes itself was more of a showpiece for the Acorn Risc Machine and too expensive for its time but calling footnote the company that created one of the most popular cpus on the planet is .... a little wrong.

[+x=usr(1536)]

6 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

Is it? The ARM cpu was their doing so maybe BBC/Electron/Master are not too popular with the retro crowd (are they?) and Archimedes itself was more of a showpiece for the Acorn Risc Machine and too expensive for its time but calling footnote the company that created one of the most popular cpus on the planet is .... a little wrong.

Pretty much anything made by Acorn in the 8-bit or Archimedes days is going to have most of the interest in it coming from the UK - the machines just weren't terribly significant outside of Britain.

 

ARM is undoubtedly one of the most significant processor architectures to date, but the Acorn name in connection to it means very little today.  The company was gone by the late '90s, just in time to miss the start of ARM's ascendancy in the marketplace, and ARM has become as generic a term as Xerox or Coke.

 

That's not to say that the company wasn't significant, but given Acorn's near-exclusiveness to the UK market and their twenty-plus year absence from being in any market at all, the company really has become a footnote.  Unfortunate, but not terribly surprising.

[Zap1982]

1 hour ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Pretty much anything made by Acorn in the 8-bit or Archimedes days is going to have most of the interest in it coming from the UK - the machines just weren't terribly significant outside of Britain.

 

ARM is undoubtedly one of the most significant processor architectures to date, but the Acorn name in connection to it means very little today.  The company was gone by the late '90s, just in time to miss the start of ARM's ascendancy in the marketplace, and ARM has become as generic a term as Xerox or Coke.

 

That's not to say that the company wasn't significant, but given Acorn's near-exclusiveness to the UK market and their twenty-plus year absence from being in any market at all, the company really has become a footnote.  Unfortunate, but not terribly surprising.

This is the thing. Everyone even remotely techie knows what ARM is but no idea what those three letters originally stood for. I don't think Sophie Wilson's wallet quite compares to Bill Gates.

 

I live in the UK and apart from one school teacher I met in secondary, I have never met anyone with an Acorn neither to date have I met anyone who even knows about it. 

 

Who remembers this? I keep forgetting about it hidden away down the side of the unit! I had plans once until I learnt you can't really fit anything in it properly without modification of either the base or motherboard...

 

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

3 hours ago, Zap1982 said:

I live in the UK and apart from one school teacher I met in secondary, I have never met anyone with an Acorn neither to date have I met anyone who even knows about it.

 

My university had a couple of labs that were dedicated to the Archimedes, and I worked the helpdesk when those machines were current.  One of the running jokes in Computing Services was that Archimedes users would never experience the raft of problems that PC users did because people actually used the PCs.

 

A shame, too, because there were some really good things about the Archimedes.  They just didn't have a good slot to fall into, however.

 

3 hours ago, Zap1982 said:

Who remembers this? I keep forgetting about it hidden away down the side of the unit! I had plans once until I learnt you can't really fit anything in it properly without modification of either the base or motherboard...

 

Never saw one of those in person, and I think yours may be the first one I've seen in a setting outside of adverts.

[Zap1982]

4 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

 

My university had a couple of labs that were dedicated to the Archimedes, and I worked the helpdesk when those machines were current.  One of the running jokes in Computing Services was that Archimedes users would never experience the raft of problems that PC users did because people actually used the PCs.

 

A shame, too, because there were some really good things about the Archimedes.  They just didn't have a good slot to fall into, however.

 

 

Never saw one of those in person, and I think yours may be the first one I've seen in a setting outside of adverts.

In both Primary and Secondary we had the BBC Master. My Secondary was very outdated to others in the area. We only got PCs in Year 11 (1999) with Windows 3.1 (hand me downs from another school) there were some kids who had never used a mouse at this point, I had a huge head start only having Acorns at home. I have always thought ot a real shame so few were exposed to them back in the day. 

 

Ive read many forums over the years were a few former employees have described Acorn as a company that never really knew what it was or what it was trying to be. They were just sort of "there" floating along. I also think they were very complacent with what they had. They were basically world class innovators in the industry with the mentality of a market stall owner - as long as selling the apples and oranges paid the ground rent then it's all good at Acorn HQ.

 

They also remained totally silent when a couple of magazines (I think EasyPC was one) printed non factual information about them "copying" various aspects of their OS from the likes of Apple and Microsoft, crediting them the "first" at various things when they were not. Any normal company would say something but Acorn were happy with the fact that the electric bill was paid.

 

Now, in 2021, I am unsure what anyone would use RiscOS for. Don't get me wrong, if it has come on leaps and can do things like internet and has out the box Microsoft package compatibility then it would get my money over another laptop that barely runs. But if it can't then it's a hard sell.

 

On the Phoebe case, I have seen a few images on the odd site and am curious as to how many are out there. Many have been heavily modified to accommodate whatever system the owner has put in. Some even repainted. The only thing I have noticed is there was two different designs briefly available. Mine is the "final" and there was also a "prototype" which had a grey "Phoebe" name in a plain font and a different type of power button.