Retro Computers - Acorn Archimedes - Retro Computer

Acorn Archimedes
A true 'arch' de Triomphe!

In 1987 Acorn released a machine with a non-scientific sounding name, the Archimedes.
It was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer based on their own 32-bit ARM RISC CPU.

The name is also commonly used to describe computers which were based on the same architecture, even where Acorn did not include 'Archimedes' in the official name. Many versions of the Archimedes were released over the next couple of years.

This retro computer was one of the most powerful home computers available during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Comparable to the one invented by Gus Gorman in Superman III.

Its' main central processing unit was faster than the 68000 microprocessors found in the more popular 16 bit Commodore Amiga and Atari ST machines ofthat era.

So Acorns latest machine, bouyed by the popularity of the BBC Micro and Master, managed to win a significant market share in the education markets of the UK, Ireland and Australia. Many students and pupils in these countries during the early 90s were exposed to an Archimedes or an A-series computer.Many students at that time had the opportunity to use the machine to learn BASIC, Fortran, Pascal, LISP and even C.

Despite having the technical edge over other machines, (the 8-Bit market while still being stong, was on the wane by this point) the Archimedes only ever met with moderate success beyond the education sector. It did have some popularity in niche markets including professional work such as radio, medical and railway station management and also music publishing.

Another reason why schools chose the Acorn Archimedes over the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST was that students may have taken games into school from their Amiga or ST games collection and would have distracted them from their school work. They got that one right eh?

The machine itself looked more like a PC and less like a home micro, which may have put off many potential buyers. The price of one was also astumbling block for many people, the first incarnation of the archimedes with 512KB of RAM retailed at an incredible £899. You're talking Rockerfeller territory here, especially in 1987.

Computer games were also few and far between on the machine, although Zarch developed by David Braben really showcased the machines capabilities, and gave many teenagers fantasies of patch-work three dimensional rolling landscapes. A BBC emulator was also available for it to load up those classic games from the BBC micro, but was still not enough as games players could access a vast and growing library for the cheaper priced Amiga and ST.

Despite having a superior OS to it's 16-bit counterparts, and sporting eight channel sound it never managed to compete as a home machine. By the early 1990s, the UK educational market began to turn away from the Archimedes, and began to veer towards Apple Macintosh computers or IBM compatible PCs. Perhaps if it had been cheaper and more computer games had been developed for it then who knows?

These machines began to eclipse the Archimedes in multimedia capabilities, which signalled the beginning of the end for the archimedes, and indeed Acorn (which was to break up in 1998 - a real shame).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Those guys at Acorn really did innovate during the 1980's.

Raise your glasses, doff your caps and raise a toast to Acorn and their achievments! A fine retro computer.

We recommend trying to pick up one of these machines.
Look at computers for sale online or even locally.

If you don't want to get hold of the real hardware then try and download an emulator and
download those classic games. Alternatively you could try and play them online.

COMPUTER NAME: Archimedes
MANUFACTURER: Acorn Computer
MACHINE TYPE: Home Computer - but never gained a strong foothold in this sector
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
RELEASE YEAR: 1987
END OF PRODUCTION: 1989
BUILT IN LANGUAGE(S): BBC BASIC V
KEYBOARD: Complete 102 keys full-stroke keyboard with PC/AT layout
CPU: ARM-2 32 bit RISC (ARM-3 in the A500 series)
SPEED: 4/8 mHz
CO-PROCESSOR: IOC (I/O), MEMC (memory), VIDC (Video and Sound)
RAM: 512 KB (up to 16 MB could be installed)
ROM: 512 KB
TEXT MODES: 132 chars x 32 lines maximum
GRAPHIC MODES: 21 screen modes, including: 640x480 (256 colours), 640 x 512 (256 colours), 800x600 (16 colours), 896x352 (256 colours), 1280x960 (monochrome)
COLORS: 256 maximum
SOUND: 8 voices (very impressive)
I/O PORTS: Top Notch. Centronics, RS423, Video composite, RGB, Econet (network 250 KBits). Optional 4 expansion slots (podule slots), the 400/500 series came with 4 slots.
BUILT IN MEDIA: 800 KB 3.5'' floppy drive, 3.5'' disk-drive, from 20 to 53 MB
OS: ARTHUR (and RISC OS later)
POWER SUPPLY: Built-in switching power supply unit
PERIPHERALS: Various expansion cards
PRICE: A300: from £899 to £1200 - A400: up to £3150, depending on the monitor supplied. Feel free to collapse in awe

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Retro Computers - Acorn BBC Master - Retro Computer

BBC Master
Once but the learner, now the master.

The BBC Master. More serious computing from those boffins that gave us the good old Beeb.

Acorns BBC Model B was a heavyweight computer, and it's superior and modernised sibling was a super heavy weight!

I'm sure when our school took delivery of it's one and only Master (the head machine in the computer room) it was dropped off by a fork lift truck and carried in to the building by a large green bloke wearing ripped purple trousers. But maybe my memory is not all that it was...

Even larger than it's predecessor, it had more memory than most model B's in the shape of 128k. The processor had also been improved, the slightly faster 65SC12 cpu. Sitting above the numberical keypad were two cartridge slots, for using with.... cartridges maufactured by Acorn.

Unfortunately very little software (very few classic games!) was released on this format so the slots ended up handy enough for storing biro's and a slimline calculator.

The sound chip had also been improved, the Model B's three channels had been upgraded to four by use of the Texas Instruments SN76489 sound chip.

The graphics modes available could be utilised to great effect due to the machine having it's own video memory, which had been a limitation of the Model A and Model B.

The master was also backwards compatible, but many user's found that older software (and especially older classic games) would not run on their new mega behemoth, so compatibilty was not 100%.

Several ROM software packages were built into the machine such as View (a word processor), ViewSheet (a spreadsheet), ADFS (Advanced Filing System), a text editor and even terminal utilities. Touches like this made the Master and ideal choice for schools, college and universities.
The Master also came in different versions:

• The standard 128 (named for it's massive 128k of RAM)
• The Master Turbo - this jet powered baby sported duel processor technology, doubling it's speed from 2mhz to 4mhz. An existing master 128 could also be upgraded to match a turbo - once you had hired the A-Team to dismantle the bullet proof casing and install the second processor for you
• The Master AIV (which was an abbreivation for Advanced Interactive Videodisc) was a Master Turbo model which also had a SCSI interface and a video filing system. A monitor and trackerball were also included in the package, making for a very professional setup.

It was also possible to modify a standard Master and turn it into one of these systems by adding all of the extra peripherals to it.

The Master AIV was basically the platform used to run the ominously titled BBC Domesday Project - what a fantastic title though to be thought up during the cold war era. But that is a topic for a different discussion.

The Master was produced right the way through to 1993, which is some achievment considering the foothold the 16-bit machines had taken, and the rise of Apple and PC machines.

Throw a salute to the BBC Master! A fine retro computer.

We recommend trying to pick up one of these machines.
Look at computers for sale online or even locally.

If you don't want to get hold of the real hardware then try and download an emulator and
download those classic games. Alternatively you could try and play them online.

NAME: BBC Master
MANUFACTURER: Acorn Computer
MACHINE TYPE: 8-Bit Home Micro (educational software and classic games)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
RELEASE YEAR: February 1986
END OF PRODUCTION: 1993
BUILT IN LANGUAGE(S): BBC BASIC IV interpreter
KEYBOARD: Full stroke 93 key with numeric keypad and 10 function keys
CPU: 65C102 (which was an evolution of the 6502 cpu)
SPEED: 2 MHz
RAM: 128 KB
ROM: 128 KB (Which was also expandable)
TEXT MODES: 40/80 x 25 lines, 20/40/80 x 32, Teletex mode (40 x 25 x 8 colours)
GRAPHIC MODES: 160/320/640 x 256 dots in 2 to 8 colours
COLORS: 8 among 16
SOUND: 4 chanels, 8 octaves - SN76489 sound generator
SIZE / WEIGHT: 46.7 (W) x 34.5 (D) x 7.5 (H) cm.
I/O PORTS: Top Quality. Tube expansion, BBC High Speed Bus, FDD interface, User interface, RS423 serial, Analog, Econet network, Parallel, tape recorder, TV/RF, RGB & Composite outputs,
BUILT IN MEDIA: Cassette & FDD interfaces
OS: MOS
POWER SUPPLY: Built-in switching power supply unit
PERIPHERALS: External FDD unit, processor card, and lots more
PRICE: £499

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Retro Computers - Acorn Electron - Retro Computer

Acorn Electron
Not quite an elec-tion winner.

The Acorn Electron was an 8-bit Micro manufactured by Acorn and released in 1983. It was basically a budget version of the Beeb, or 'The poor man's Beeb' as it was known down our way.

Realising that the BBC Model B could not really compete with the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 due to the high price, Acorn decided to manufacture a budget Model B to compete against those machines. They were hoping to compete in the same price bracket and to hopefully grab a corner of the computer games market.

Acorn did not manage to meet the demand of the new system, and the majority of purchasers decided to go with either Sinclair or CBM's micro's rather than wait around for Electrons to become available.

By the turn of 1984, Acorn really ramped up production of the machine and attempted to meet public demand. Sadly, interest by this point had fallen quicker than UK house prices, and it had to gracefully admit defeat against the rolling juggernauts of the ZX Spectrum and C64 - now the premier machines for arcade gaming and text adventures.

Many Electrons never even made it into the shops, who knows what happened to the stockpiles? (Perhaps they are stored in a large warehouse somewhere being studied by top men, Top Men...)

Compared to it's daddy (The BBC Micro), the Electron was quite basic with only one expansion port to play around with. Fortunately, Acorn quickly released the Plus 1 expansion offering two ROM cartridge slots, a parallel / centronics interface and a joystick connector for those all important arcade games.

The built in Acorn Electron BASIC was largely derived from the famous BBC BASIC, and was equally impressive with innovative features such as the ability to define real procedures with DEF PROC and ENDPROC, and it too included the handling of error events. There was even an OLD statement which would recover a program erased by NEW. A complete assembler language was also stored in the 32K ROM. Impressive. Most impressive.

The graphics capabilities were also very good for a computer in this category. A text mode of up to 80 columns and a high resolution of up to 640 x 256 pixels with 2 colors was available. The custom ULA developed especially for the Electron handled the video display, the sound, and also the I/O communications. Features such as this were the real meat and potatoes of the Electron.

The sound generator inside the machine was pretty good, but not as good as the BBC's. It was capable of one channel output, but three channel sound could be mapped to it and output through the speaker, giving a rough approximation to true three channel sound. Not quite as good as the AY sound chip but not bad overall.

The mechanical keyboard was overall very good, and very responsive. BASIC statements were printed on most of the keys, allowing users to type them in one go (a la Speccy).

A small amber LED placed on the left part of the keyboard indicated if you were in lowercase or uppercase mode, which did look rather cool. Despite being more powerful in many areas than (Dare I say it?) the ZX Spectrum (better keyboard, better sound, better built in BASIC) the Electron did not go on to sell well and suffered from a lack of certain software. The 32KB of memory was also stumbling block.

The machine itself was better looking than the BBC, and did not need a hydraulic lift to move it around whenever you re-arranged your room. The beige coloured box and keys coupled with the grid pattern and Acorn logo across the top of the box had a certain visual appeal. It was certainly less serious looking than the Beeb.

Another decent machine from Acorn Computers that deserves a cursory nod at least. With better marketing it could have been great as a home computer and games machine. Still - a fine retro computer.

We recommend trying to pick up one of these machines.
Look at computers for sale online or even locally.

If you don't want to get hold of the real hardware then try and download an emulator and
download those classic games. Alternatively you could try and play them online.

COMPUTER NAME: Electron
MANUFACTURER: Acorn Computers
MACHINE TYPE: Home 8-Bit micro (with some classic games)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
RELEASE YEAR: July 1983
END OF PRODUCTION: 1985?
BUILT IN LANGUAGE(S): Acorn Electron Basic + 6502 assembler
KEYBOARD: QWERTY full-stroke keyboard (56 keys), basic statements accessible through keys and 10 function keys (0...9 keys + FUNC)
CPU: MOS 6502A
SPEED: 1 MHz
CO-PROCESSOR: custom ULA
RAM: 32 KB
ROM: 32 KB
TEXT MODES: 20 x 32, 40 x 25, 40 x 32, 80 x 25, 80 x 32
GRAPHIC MODES: 160 x 256 (4 or 16 colors), 320 x 256 (2 or 4 colors), 640 x 256 (2 colors)
COLORS: 8 colors + 8 flashing versions of the same colours
SOUND: 1 channel of sound + 1 channel of white sound, 7 octaves. Three virtual sound channels mapped to the single available physical channel
SIZE / WEIGHT: 16 x 34 x 6.5 cm
I/O PORTS: Expansion port, Tape-recorder connector (1200 baud), aerial TV connector (RF modulator), RGB video output
POWER SUPPLY: External PSU, 18v
PRICE: £199 (UK- August 1983)

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Retro Computers - Acorn BBC Micro - Retro Computer

BBC Micro
British Broadcasting Computing.

Ahhh the BBC, effectively known as the BBC micro. Acorns chunky 8-bit heavyweight computer carved out a unique niche for itself during the 80's.

Back in the early 80's, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) launched what was known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project, which was launched after ITV had shown a documentary series called 'The Mighty Micro'.

This was compelling viewing for the likes of us computer whizz-kids at the time. In the programme Dr Christopher Evans from the National Physical Laboratory predicted the coming computer revolution and its impact on industry, the economy, and even people's lifestyle within the United Kingdom.

This prompted the corporation into action and they decided to base a project on a microcomputer capable of performing various tasks which could then be demonstrated on their 1981 TV series called The Computer Programme. The list of topics included graphics, sound and music, Teletext, controlling external hardware and even artificial intelligence! Truly revolutionary back then.

To go ahead with this the BBC decided to badge a micro computer and drew up plans for what was at the time, an ambitious specification and asked for takers.

Sir Clive Sinclair held discussions with the BBC over the matter, and offered the NewBrain micro to them, but the lovable 'Uncle Clive' and his bid were rejected. The BBC also made appointments to see several other British computer manufacturers of the era such as the Dragon and Acorn.

The Acorn team had already been working on an upgrade to their existing Atom microcomputer. Known as the Proton, the new machine had better graphics and a faster CPU (The 2 MHz MOS Technology 6502).

The machine was only in prototype form at the time, but the Acorn team which was mainly made up of students (including Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson) worked all hours to get a working Proton together to show to the BBC. The Dragon's flame was extinguished, and the mighty Acorn was, erm picked. On demonstration the Acorn Proton actually exceeded the expectations set by the BBC, and was subsequently snapped up. An 8-bit legend had been born.

Now renamed as the BBC Microcomputer, it was unleashed into the marketplace late 1981. It came in various models over the next four years, the A, the B (which were released at much the same time) and finally the B+.

The machine became very popular in educational circles, with many schools from Lands End to John O'Groats using them as teaching tools. Despite being the equal (and in many ways superior) to the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, it never had the same level of cool as those two machines.

Perhaps part due to the name and part due to the fact that your school most likely had them, they almost had an image of 'serious computing' - for learning, for programming, wordprocessing and little else. You didn't want a school computer at home in your bedroom did you? On top of all of this, they were expensive when compared to other home computers of the era - the average cost was a wallet busting £399.

Despite this, the Beeb as it effectionately became known, had an impressive range of software titles, including games (the range of computer games really built up over the years).

Certainly not the best looking of machines, the off-white case and black keyboard gained nil-points from the style police, and the machine itselfwas a hefty beast - I used to use one of these things to prop open the doors to Major Flying Ace Sir Lawrence Bartle Frerre's aircraft hangar.

It had a decent sound chip with three channels and a range of seven octaves which could be output through a built in speaker.The model A had 16k or Ram, the Model B sported 32k or RAM, and the Model B+ released in 1985 sported a whopping 64k of RAM. In it's later life there were even B+ models with a humoungous 128k of RAM.

The model B would probably have gained more popularity if it had had more RAM than it's not quite sufficient 32k.

It was possible to change text modes and graphics modes and the machine also had 16 colours to play with, so on this front it was in line with many other computers of the era. In one aspect is was certainly ahead of it's time - the built in BASIC language was very impressive.

It was possible to create code procedures with BBC Basic using PROC and ENDPROC, case statements were available and even error handling functions were also built in. All of this back in 1981 on a home micro!

Typing code listing was easy enough on the 64 key QWERTY typewriter style keyboard, which also had ten function keys and cursor keys, and was nicely responsive to your commands. There were plenty of peripherals to be had - if you could afford them: disk drives, tape recorders printers and so on.

All in all, the Beeb enjoyed a good lifespan right through the decade as both an educational and home computer, due it's excellent built in BASIC, it's range of peripherals and it's ruggedness.. It was superceded by the BBC master in 1986, but many model B's were still being put to good use in schools in the early 1990's.

All hail the mighty beige and black monolith! A fine retro computer.

We recommend trying to pick up one of these machines.
Look at computers for sale online or even locally.

If you don't want to get hold of the real hardware then try and download an emulator and
download those classic games. Alternatively you could try and play them online.

MANUFACTURER: Acorn Computers
MACHINE TYPE: 8-bit Home Micro (educational machine and classic games)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
RELEASE YEAR: 1981
END OF PRODUCTION: Unknown
BUILT IN LANGUAGE(S): BBC Basic
KEYBOARD: Full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, 64 keys, 10 function keys, arrow keys
CPU: MOS 6502
SPEED: 1.8 MHz
RAM: Model 1 (or A) : 16 kbModel B : 32 kbModel B+ : 64 kb ROM: 32 kb
TEXT MODES: 80 x 32/25 (2 colors) / 40 x 32/25 (2 or 4 colors) / 20 x 32 (16 colors) / 40 x 25 (Teletext display)
GRAPHIC MODES: 640 x 256 (2 colors) / 320 x 256 (4 colors) / 160 x 256 (16 colors) COLORS 16 (8 colors + flashing option)
SOUND: 3 channels plus 1 noise channel over 7 octaves
SIZE / WEIGHT: 1 Tonne ;-) 41 (W) x 34.5 (D) x 6.5 (H) cm / 3700 g (or was it 1 ton?)
I/O PORTS: Superb. UHF TV out, BNC video out, RGB vide out, RS423, Cassette, Analogue In (DB15), Econet port, TUBE interface, 1Mhz BUS, User port, Printer port, Disk-drive connector
POWER SUPPLY: Built-in switching PSU
PERIPHERALS: Controler card for 1 to 4 5''1/4 F.D. drives, Floppy disk unit 5''1/4 250 Ko. Numerical cassette recorder 100 Ko, Second 6502 microprocessor with card
PRICE: (Model A £299) (Model B £399) (UK 1983)

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Retro Computers - Acorn Atom - Retro Computer

Acorn Atom
The mighty Atom.

The Acorn Atom was the ancestor to the BBC series of computers manufactured by, you guessed it, Acorn.They seemed to like to name their machines with scientific names (Atom, Electron) - if they were still going today would be have the Acorn Proton? Or Nucleus? Anyway, like the ZX80 and ZX81 (which were both soon to follow) it was sold in kit form or ready-assembled versions (at an extra cost).

The great advantage of the Atom compared to its competitors (The TRS-80 & Commodore PET), was its high resolution display capabilities (256 x 192 was achievable) which was quite unusual way back in the bell-bottomed and hanglider collar ridden era of 1979. Especially for the price (Kit form: £120 ready assembled: £170).

The built in BASIC did have some limitations, such as only being able to use integer variables. An optional 4K ROM could be added to the machine and gave the programmer the ability to use floating point numbers, trigonometric functions to convert degrees/radians and also to draw graphics in color.

Being able to see graphics in colour during the era of disco was truly a sight to behold. More add-ons were also available to enable autonumbering, a faster cassette interface (running at an incredible 1200 bauds), and functions such as INKEY$, MID$, READ, DATA, FILL and so on. There was even a BBC BASIC board available.

Speed, as of other machines during the era was pretty standard at 1Mhz, courtesy of a 6502 processing unit.

A lot of applications were available on sideways ROMs that plugged into the spiffily named "utility ROM socket", such as the "Atom Word Pack ROM" which could be used for word processing or Atom-Calc, which was a 4K ROM spreadsheet. It doesn't sound quite as cool as Excel does it?

A colour card could be connected to the BUS connector, to give the system eight colors, 4 simultaneously at the 64 x 192 resolution or 2 at 128 x 192 for example. Mind you, you needed asbestos gloves if you went anywhere near one of these baby's as they tended to overheat dramatically.

The sound generator was a simple beeper, similar to the beeper that would be installed inside the ZX Spectrum a couple of years down the line. Still, any sound on a home micro at this point in time was a Brucey bonus! It was possible to expand the sound generated by directly accessing the sound I/O port and manipulating it at a certain frequency - the first ever home computer fart was generated this way.

The machine itself does resemble it's later offerings (such as the BBC Micro) in appearance, using a similar colour scheme and style. None of them ever stood out to the eye when sitting on the shelf. What was packed away inside really counted.

A lot of other peripherals were developed for the machine including:

• A 5.25 inch floppy disk drive which was capable of storing 100K of data. This held the DOS in a 3K ROM but actually cost about twice as much as a new Atom. Did they use an integer based program to work out the price?
• A digital-tape recorder, yes that is correct, a DIGITAL TAPE RECORDER!
• A printer interface.
• A network card known as 'EcoNet' which could enable the linking of up to 250 Atoms running at 210 K/Bauds transfer rate. A network without windows! RAM expansions were also available.
  

Whilst it was never a classic games machine, this machine really got the company moving.

Those guys at Acorn were really ahead of their time in many ways eh?

We recommend trying to pick up one of these machines.
Look at computers for sale online or even locally.

If you don't want to get hold of the real hardware then try and download an emulator and download those classic games. Alternatively you could try and play them online.

NAME: ATOM
MANUFACTURER: Acorn Computers
MACHINE TYPE: Home Computer
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
RELEASE YEAR: (1979 production) 1980
END OF PRODUCTION: 1983
BUILT IN LANGUAGE(S): Basic and machine code
KEYBOARD: QWERTY full-stroke keyboard containing 60 keys
CPU: 6502
SPEED: 1 mHz
CO-PROCESSOR: 6847 Video Display Generator, PIA 8255 (keyboard and tape)
RAM: 2 KB (but up to 12 KB was availbale, or 32 KB using an external RAM expansion kit) VRAM 6 KB
ROM: 8 KB (Atom BASIC and COS), up to 16 KB
TEXT MODES: 32 x 24 / 16 x 12
GRAPHICS MODES: 64x64 (4 cols), 64x96 (4 cols), 128x96 (monochrome), 64x192 (4 cols), 128x92
COLORS: 8
SOUND: Built-in beeper
SIZE / WEIGHT: 15'' long x 9.5'' deep x 2.5'' high
I/O PORTS: Tape interface, UHF Modulated TV output, Acorn Bus Extension
POWER SUPPLY: External PSU - 8v 2A
PRICE: Kit form retailed at £120 Ready made retailed at £170 (UK, 1983)

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