Acorn RiscPC 600 (OT - only 5 years old)

From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke_at_mch20.sbs.de>
Date: Tue May 11 18:58:05 1999

> Sorry for the post about a machine too young for the list but it is the
> first of its kind in my collection. The chips seem to be from 1994 and the
> RiscOS (v3) splash screen also says 1994.

_*GREAT*_ Find - this machine is like the only surviver of the 80s
and idependant architecture era - own hardwar, own os, own CPU and
designed for a customer market ....

The Archimedes machines from Acorn have been (are!) _very_ popular
in the UK (of course), but also somewhat over here in Germany, France
and the Netherlands. After The decline of the Atari ST, Acorn remaind
as the sole suplyer of non-PC Machines. (check
http://www.atari-computer.de/mjaap/computer/emu_acor.htm
Even the Atari Scene have a lot of sympathies for this neat little
boxes - a rare ocasion in the world of OS vs. OS and Machine vs Machine
flame wars :) (and check
http://www.hi.is/~thj/oldfiles/arc.html
 - you got it - a page from the far north :)

Like in the ol' days, the OS resides completly in ROM.

For the Hardware thing, its an
ARM 3 running at 40 MHz with
200 meg HD,
4 meg DRAM,
1 meg VRAM,
(and possibly a 80486 or Pentium add on)

For the processor there is a usable Book from Addison Wesley
called ARM System Architecture (ISBN: 0-201-40352-8)

check
http://www.apdl.co.uk/index.htm
for software and infos - a great source.
also look at
http://www.apdl.co.uk/phoebe.htm
about new OS releases (Acron has cut their development of hard/software
last year down to nada)

Other sites to check:
http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~schooten/software/Rindex.html
and
http://www.poppyfields.net/acorn/

I don't know if Acorn itself still offers insight:
http://www.acorn.co.uk
But at least ARM should haf tech specs for the CPU
http://www.art.acorn.co.uk

> Does anyone know what processor it has and how fast it is?

It's a RISC CPU, the ARM3 - one of the most interesting (and most
succesfull) RISC concepts (BTW, the Newton uses also members of
the ARM family, and DEC used to codevelop the StrongARM, a _very_
succesfull low power high throughput CPU - now manufactured my INTEL :)

Anyway, you're just lucky !
Gruss
H.

--
Traue keinem Menschen der 5 Tage blutet und immer noch nicht tod ist.
Received on Tue May 11 1999 - 18:58:05 BST

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