A technical history of Acorn Computers

[dcminter]

Someone will be along in a minute to tell you to watch Micro Men, an amusing and fairly accurate BBC dramatization of the Sinclair/Acorn rivalry :) but I'm here to recommend that you watch the Computer History Museum's interview with Hermann Hauser the erstwhile director of Acorn - he's very charming: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0sC3lT313Q

I'm fairly sure they've got one with Chris Curry too, but I can't spot it just now.

[amiga386]

It would appear you can watch Chris Curry and Hermann Hauser watch Micro Men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaonVYOTSsk -- and then have a post-viewing chat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4I2ktcWdJM

"I saw the first five minutes and had to run away, because I couldn't bear to see myself portrayed by Martin Freeman" -- Chris Curry

[xyzzy3000]

It's an entertaining watch, although a fair bit of dramatic licence is taken when depicting various anecdotes that would be well-known to readers of The Micro User and similar magazines of the time.

[amiga386]

Ah, the delights of a page that covers 26 years of history and hasn't been updated for 21 years

I can at least say that in the meantime, RISC OS is still alive and now open, available from https://www.riscosopen.org/, and most people will know the ARM company and its architectures went from strength to strength, even if the RISC PC faded away.

[dcminter]

Some time when I have some spare time I must fish out a Pi and try it out - I was deeply envious of the Archimedes owner I knew back in the day!

[tonyedgecombe]

My first computer was an Acorn System One. I spent a summer picking fruit at an orchard to pay for it.

1k of RAM, 512 bytes of ROM, a seven segment calculator display and hex keyboard.

I spent hours hand assembling 6502 code for it. I even created a stack based language for it in an attempt to teach my younger brother how to program.

[xyzzy3000]

For anyone interested in the very early Acorn era, there are some replica boards available here, from System 1 all the way up to System 5:

https://theoddys.com/acorn/replica_boards/replica_boards.htm...

[jefc1111]

For me, all this ... computer life stuff ... started with an Acorn Electron around 40 years ago. At first it was just fun, and then I played Elite and it feels like a lot of my future was defined in that experience.

[aardvark179]

That’s how I started as well. Much nicer to program than the spectrum, and taught me about parsing in the worst way when I discovered my text adventure couldn’t have a variable called torch because it was. Parsed as to rch.

[simonjgreen]

Ditto. Electron and Elite with a voltmace joystick that (memory may be hazy) had like 20 buttons on it was mind blowing to child me.

[tolien]

Same, and now I'm still playing Elite but just with slightly better graphics :-D

[geye1234]

A wonderful snapshot of the 90s web. The entirely unaffected tone, the lack of self-consciousness, the random content, the humor, the joke lists, everything. We've lost a lot.

The marginalia search engine is very good at finding this kind of site, btw.

[callumprentice]

I purchased an Acorn Atom in 1980 (the prebuilt one - a friend opted for the self-assembly and regretted it) and I still remember the thrill of setting it up and turning it on for the first time. It feels like I didn't sleep for a week but I suppose I must have.

When you entered a line of their BASIC, it would check the line for errors. At one point, I kept getting error XX (I don't recall the actual number) and couldn't see the error in my code. Eventually figured out it meant I was out of RAM. There was only 2K and I think the 6502 took some and the screen too so there was only about 500 bytes left over. What a joy it was after I saved up for the 6K upgrade.

And then there was the local computer club presentation that ruined any chance of a public speaking career.... :)

[andrehacker]

O man, good times. I remember soldering RAM chips "piggyback" style, then upgrading to 64K of RAM, and adding 8 special-purpose ROMs (from utilities to a spreadsheet program). I even installed a color video board— all of this inside the Acorn Atom itself (which was a keyboard-style computer, similar to the C64).

The Atom also brought together a community of hardware and software enthusiasts through Atom Computer Clubs. These clubs were doing amazing things, including the development of Z80 co-processors and even running CP/M. While Acorn moved on from the Atom to the BBC Microcomputer, the clubs kept the Atom alive well beyond its prime.

It’s fascinating to look back and realize that the same team behind the Atom went on to create the ARM processor, which, interestingly, shares a striking similarity in its instruction set with the 6502.

[roywashere]

I bought an Atom second-hand, it was my first 'own' computer. My father first had a TRS-80 model III and then an IBM clone XT. So the Atom was definitely less capable, but it was my own. I read all the accompanying manuals front to back and I read the computer magazines that came with it and this is how I learned English. I was 9 years old at that point. It came with schematics and of course I opened the case. I could not get the thing to load or save data on my dad's tape recorder. And it was only so much fun trying to type in a program from a listing which I could not save, especially taking into account my limited typing skills at the time and the fact that I had to do this while the Atom was attached to the TV in the living room. Still, it was a worth wile and forming experience and surely worth my pocket money.

Later on in life, end of 90s, I was re-wiring the building of my students union, with a friend. Many amps main board, 380 volts, 40 circuits or so, kind of big install. We had to create plans and supply them to get approval from the city or the utility company or the architect or such. For this we used the Archimedes of some guy that helped us. At this point the Archimedes definitely was dead as a platform, Windows 98 was just out. But it was still possible to use it to create drawings and schematics and quite capable.

[ochrist]

I purchased an Acorn Atom from a guy, who assembled one himself. He also helped me upgrade to 12K RAM. Later I got a couple of joysticks, a dot matrix printer and a colour/color card.

It was great, but I soon got hold of a second hand BBC B a couple of years later, and then I was sold.

I eventually got an Archimedes 440 that I used for many years.

[sammyteee]

A good read!

I like that all the sites linked in the banner, no longer exist! https://www.mcmordie.co.uk/public/apeople.shtml

[II2II]

There are plenty of links on other pages that lead to functional websites of various vintages (the keyword being vintage). Just go to https://www.mcmordie.co.uk/ and start exploring.

[xyzzy3000]

I particularly liked the tiling background, which may well have been created using Texture Garden https://texturegarden.com/ by Tim Tyler (of Repton fame, for the BBC Micro fans)

[simonjgreen]

A nice note of recognition of the contribution of the Acorn made BBC Micro model A and B to millions is that the Raspberry Pi Model A and B were named in honour of them.

[xyzzy3000]

I suspect that the Pi 400 kit is a nod to the Archimedes 400 series, but I haven't seen anything to confirm this.

[owlbite]

Our first family computer was an A3000. I'm still amazed at the boot time on it compared to the PCs we had later (even today). Switch it on, beep and then almost instantly you're in a responsive GUI. (The wonders of storing the OS in a ROM I guess).

[Lio]

So much history here for me.

One landmark buried in there was the ARM 250 chip based machines.

I think they were some of the first system on a chip desktop computers.

They lacked the glamour of the Arm 3 based machines launched around the same time but really they were ground breaking.

[xyzzy3000]

I think it was possibly the first to go into a desktop computer.

ARM250 datasheet here: https://home.marutan.net/arcemdocs/ARM250.pdf

For Acorn, this chip really helped to bring costs down for the A30x0/A4000 machines - the Electron of the Archimedes era. The RiscPC equivalent was the A7000/A7000+ with the ARM7500/ARM7500FE, the FE being novel for the inclusion of the FPU which ARMs had traditionally not included.

[Lio]

One small error I've noticed on the Phoebe page, the man who killed Acorn was a guy called Stan Boland not Sam Boland.

I leave someone with better knowledge to tell that one but it's a pretty sad story.

[panick21_]

Great talk about the Archimedes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf67JYkUCHQ

Really a neat design.

[junto]

My first computer was an Acorn BBC B Microcomputer. This brings back very fond memories of playing Repton and Elite and having to wait for the tape cassette to load the games.

[xyzzy3000]

Both Ian Bell (Elite) and Tim Tyler (Repton) have fascinating websites of their own. Elite is there for download alongside a treasure trove of historical information, and Tim has a successor to Repton, 'Rockz', which expands on a lot of the concepts in interesting ways.

https://timtyler.org/

http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/index.htm

[westi]

Some great memories here.

Somewhere in my parents attic is my RISC PC 600 and 486 Co-Processor card. Not sure if they also have the A3000 we had before that.

[xyzzy3000]

If possible, get the batteries removed from the motherboards - the leaks cause immense damage.

Rechargeable AA batteries in a battery holder are a sensible replacement.

If the hard drive has packed in then a SD to IDE/PATA adapter is available.

[simonjgreen]

My secondary school was full of these in the computer labs. Great bits of kit :) The dual boot between architectures blew my mind at the time, and frankly is still pretty extraordinary. And unlike most boxes of the time, they even looked good!

[draazon]

If the page author is reading this: hello Rob!

[johnflan]

I started with an Acorn a3020, those machines were just amazing. I got my first PC shortly after running Windows for workgroups 3.11 jeez it felt like a step backwards. If Acorn started in the Silicon Valley, we'd probably be using them today.