Acorn Archimedes


The Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and proprietary operating system RISC OS. The first model was introduced in 1987, and systems in the Archimedes family were sold until the mid-1990s.
ARM's RISC design, a 32-bit CPU, running at 8 MHz, was stated as achieving 4.5+ MIPS, which provided a significant upgrade from 8-bit home computers, such as Acorn's previous machines. Claims of being the fastest micro in the world and running at 18 MIPS were also made during tests.
The first models were named "BBC Archimedes", yet the name "Acorn Archimedes" is commonly used to describe any of Acorn's contemporary designs based on the same architecture.

Description and history

Early models

The Acorn Archimedes was the first RISC-based home computer. The first models were released in June 1987, as the 300 and 400 series. The 400 series included four expansion slots and an ST-506 controller for an internal hard drive. Both models included the Arthur operating system, BBC BASIC programming language, and an emulator for Acorn's earlier BBC Micro, and were mounted in two-part cases with a small central unit, monitor on top, and a separate keyboard and three-button mouse. All models featured eight-channel 8-bit stereo sound and were capable of displaying 256 colours on screen.
Three models were initially released with different amounts of memory, the A305, A310 and A440. These were soon replaced with the A410/1, the A420/1 and A440/1 which featured an upgraded MEMC1a. The A540, which supported up to 16MiB of RAM and included higher speed SCSI and provision for connecting Genlock devices, was unveiled in September 1990. The 300 and 400 were followed by a number of machines with minor changes and upgrades:

A3000 and A5000

Work began on a successor to the Arthur operating system. Initially named Arthur 2, it was renamed to RISC OS 2. New computers were shipped with it pre-installed. A number of new machines were introduced along with RISC OS 2 and in May 1989, the 300 series was phased out in favour of the new Acorn A3000. Earlier models which shipped with Arthur could be upgraded to RISC OS 2 by replacing the ROM chips containing the operating system.
The A3000 used an 8 MHz ARM2 and was supplied with of RAM. Unlike the previous models, the A3000 came in a single-part case similar to the BBC Micro, Amiga 500 and Atari ST computers, with the keyboard integrated in the base unit. This kind of housing consumes a lot of desktop space, a problem that Acorn tried to overcome by offering a monitor stand that attached to the base unit. The new model sported only a single internal expansion slot, which was physically different from that of the earlier models, although electronically similar. An external connector could interface to existing expansion cards, although they really needed to be housed in an external case joined to the main unit.
A300 series, A400 series, R140 and A3000 machines had the VIDC1a video chip, which provided a wide variety of screen resolutions, such as those provided officially by the operating system:
while the chip could be made to run others, such as:
where the palette range was 4096 colours and the VIDC1a had 16 hardware palette registers. This meant that in screen modes with sixteen colours or fewer, the colours could be mapped to any of the 4096 available. However, in 256 colour modes, 4 bits of the colour data were hardware derived and could not be adjusted. The net result was 256 colours, but only 16 of them could be assigned as desired, covering a range of the 4096 available colours. It also had no horizontal sync interrupt, meaning that it was difficult to display additional colours by changing the palette for each scan line, but not impossible, thanks to the 2 MHz IOC timer 1. Many demos managed to display 4096 colour on screen or more with dithering It had also one hardware sprite, with 32 pixels width and unlimited height, where each pixel is coded on two bits: value 0 is for transparency, and the three others are freely chosen from the 4096 colour palette.
In 1991, the A5000 was launched. It featured the new 25 MHz ARM3 processor, 2 or 4 MB of RAM, either a 40 MB or an 80 MB hard drive and a more conventional pizza box-style two-part case. Its enhanced video capabilities allowed the A5000 to comfortably display VGA resolutions of up to 800×600 pixels. It was the first Archimedes to feature a High Density capable floppy disc drive as standard. This natively supported various formats including DOS and Atari discs; RISC OS' own ADFS floppy format had a relatively large capacity of 800 KB for "double" density or 1600 KB for high density. A later version of the A5000 featured a 33 MHz ARM3, 4 or 8 MB of RAM, an 80 or 120 MB hard drive.
The A5000 initially ran the new 3.0 version of RISC OS, although several bugs were identified; most were shipped with RISC OS 3.10 or 3.11. As before, earlier machines were capable of being upgraded to the new RISC OS 3, though some needed to have an additional daughterboard installed first. Earlier models could also benefit from the video performance of the A5000 via a third party upgrade.

New range and a laptop

In 1992, a new range was produced, utilising the first ARM system-on-chip: the ARM250 microprocessor, a single-chip design including the functionality of an ARM3 chip without cache, the IOC1, VIDC1a and MEMC1a chips all integrated into one chip. The increase in clock frequency, from 8 MHz to 12 MHz, gave a performance of 7 MIPS. The machines were supplied with RISC OS 3.10 or 3.11. The A30x0 series had a one-piece design, similar to the A3000 but slightly more shallow, while the A4000 looked like a slightly slimmer A5000. The A3010 model was intended to be a home computing machine, featuring a TV modulator and standard 9-pin joystick ports, while the A3020 targeted the home office and educational markets, featuring a built-in 2.5" hard drive and a dedicated network interface socket. Technically, the A4000 was almost identical to the A3020, only differing in hard disk size, though it sported a different appearance. All three ARM250-based machines could be upgraded to 4 MB with plug-in chips and one "mini-podule" slot as used for internal expansion in the A3000.
Also in 1992, Acorn introduced the A4 laptop computer featuring a slower 24 MHz version of the ARM3 processor and a LCD screen capable of displaying a maximum resolution of in 15 levels of grey. However, it did feature a monitor port which offered the same display capabilities as an A5000. A notable omission from the machine was a built-in pointing device, requiring users to navigate with the cursor keys or attach a conventional Acorn three-button mouse.
The A7000, despite its name being reminiscent of the Archimedes naming conventions, was actually more similar to the RiscPC, the line of RISC OS computers that succeeded the Archimedes in 1994. It lacked, however, the DEBI expansion slots and multi-slice case that characterized the RiscPC.

List of models

Also produced, but never sold commercially were:
The Archimedes was one of the most powerful home computers available during the late 1980s and early 1990s; its main CPU was faster than the Motorola 68000 microprocessors found in the more popular Amiga and Atari ST machines. An 68000 had an average performance of roughly for 16-bit workloads and for 32-bit workloads, with peak performance of for simpler 16-bit instructions. The yielded for 32-bit workloads in repeatable benchmark tests.
The computer was exhibited at the 1987 Personal Computer World Show, along with the Amiga, Atari ST, and video game consoles. Commenting on the show, Crash magazine reported that "despite whiz-bang demos of Acorn’s Archimedes" the 8-bit machines were not dead.
The Archimedes won significant market share in the education markets of the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand; the success of the Archimedes in British schools was due partly to its predecessor the BBC Micro and later to the Computers for Schools scheme organised by the Tesco supermarket chain in association with Acorn, and most students and pupils in these countries in the early 1990s were exposed to an Archimedes or A-series computer. The Archimedes range was available in the US and Canada via Olivetti Canada.
By the mid to late 1990s the UK educational market began to turn away from the Archimedes. Apple Macintosh computers or IBM compatible PCs eclipsed the Archimedes in their multimedia capabilities, which led to an erosion of the Archimedes' market share. The Tesco Computers for Schools scheme later changed partnership from Acorn to RM plc and many other computer-related suppliers, which also led to the decrease of the Archimedes' educational market share. Acorn itself had gradually moved its focus away from computers and instead began exploiting the lucrative ARM processor technology as a separate enterprise through the spin off Arm Holdings which it had founded in 1990.

Legacy

Between 1994 and 2008 a model superseding the Archimedes computer, the RiscPC, was also used in television for broadcast automation, programmed by a company named Omnibus Systems Ltd. Original desktop models and custom made 19-inch rack models were used to control/automate multiple television broadcast devices from other manufactures in a way that was very unusual at the time. It was used at several large European television stations including the BBC, NRK, TMF.
Also between 1994 and 2004 the Archimedes and RiscPC models were used for teleprompters at television studios. The hardware was easy to adapt for TV broadcast use and cheaper than other hardware available at the time.