Lost Computers - The Acorn Archimedes

[filth]

Originally Posted by RetroMan

The so called game Virus was released on the Archie and renamed to Zarch

Fail. You have it backwards; Virus (1988) is an x86 port of Zarch (1987) from RISC OS, which is the original game! The effects in Zarch were more impressive than their equivalents in Virus, because the Acorn machines of the time had better capabilities to render the ingame 3D effects (lighting, shadows) than Wintel machines.

There are a lot of other inconsistencies and misconceptions in Archimedes/Acorn-related threads on this board, but I suppose it's only an Amiga board, so you can't be expected to know the details...

At least you are correct in your notes that ArcElite is *the* best version of Elite out there!

[filth]

Originally Posted by Charlie

Newer Archie: RiscPC & clones (RiscOS 3.6->6) Will do the above, though some older games will need patching. It's also still a 'useful' computer.

Slightly misleading (since anything above RO 3.7 is really in a different class from anything below it). I'm going to nitpick now... first off, RiscPC and above weren't "Archies" at all, since the Acorn Archimedes range ended with the A5000. The RiscPC and the (misleadingly-named) A7000 were also the last Acorn-branded machines to be produced. Although the A7000 was more or less a RiscPC clone, it didn't have DEBI slots but it did have a floating-point calculator, but was otherwise quite similar. Later hardware diverged more; the R7500 is probably the closest to the RiscPC in that sense, while the Iyonix (XScale) and the A9Home (S3C2440) are much further diverged. I believe the Iyonix is the only RISC OS machine to have had a PCI bus and the ability to take PC graphics cards.

The latest machine, based around the Beagleboard SoC and RISC OS Open, is utterly unlike anything else. It's probably worth pointing out that RISC OS was developed by Acorn Computers Ltd (now dissolved) until the end of the 3.x line; RO4 was developed by RISCOS Ltd, while RO5 was developed by competitors Castle Technology Ltd. RO6 was developed by ROL in parallel with CTL's RO5 and isn't a true sequel, despite the version number. There's a whole lot of bloody infighting between these factions (and famous legal disputes over the code) but to cut a long story short, this is why you can't find free, legally-distributable ROM images of any RISC OS version. The links on the RPCEmuSpoon site of course point to pirate copies.

As a final note, especially for anyone wanting to pick up a cheap, second-hand Acorn from eBay: you can install RO 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 (in ROM), 4.02 (ROM or softload) and 4.39 (softload) on a RiscPC, but nothing higher. RO 3.7 is the minimum requirement for a StrongARM processor. You need an Iyonix or A9Home for RO5 or better.

[Tom Walker]

Originally Posted by filth

Slightly misleading (since anything above RO 3.7 is really in a different class from anything below it).

With the exception of the A9Home and Iyonix, any machine running ROS above 3.5 is either a RiscPC or register compatible with a RiscPC.

I'm going to nitpick now... first off, RiscPC and above weren't "Archies" at all, since the Acorn Archimedes range ended with the A5000.

If you want to nitpick, the A540 was the last Archimedes... A30x0, A4000 and A5000 were never called Archimedes machines by Acorn.

Although the A7000 was more or less a RiscPC clone, it didn't have DEBI slots but it did have a floating-point calculator, but was otherwise quite similar.

A7000 had no floating point hardware. A7000+ did however. And there was almost no software that used it. Did the slot in the A7000 not support DMA transfers?

I believe the Iyonix is the only RISC OS machine to have had a PCI bus and the ability to take PC graphics cards.

Omega has PCI slots also I think. Though I'm not sure if they ever worked.

[arpz]

I'd like to share a little of my experience with the Acorn. Like most of the people in school in the UK alive in the 80's and early 90's the Acorn was the machine I grew up on in school. Ours were mostly 3010's iirc, quite distinctive machines with the green function keys and floppy switch.

They were all networked, unfortunately I don't recall which method but I'd assume it was BNC. A small group of us had a play around with this functionality by 'developing' a series of scripts and BASIC programs which would allow us to login to a single persons user area and leave each other mails and things. There were a few other features but I've forgotten the details, I do remember us taking it quite seriously, making up labelled disks proudly announcing the latest version or whatever.

There was something interesting about all the 3010's in our school, they all had the F12 key disabled by removing the membrane underneath so the key would always be depressed slightly (with nothing to hold it up underneath). The reason behind this was because the F12 key gave access to a kind of console. Actually, it was well known within the school that you could push down the key really hard and still access it. This console would shift the entire RISC OS screen up by a characters height and the prompt (again iirc) was a black '*' on a white background. You could type stuff in here and presumably they attempted to disable it to stop people messing around too much. All of this was actually negated, because you could put all that same stuff in a command file (unsure on what it's actual name was, but essentially like a batch file) which wasn't restricted at all.

There were a few 'games' going around on disks at the time, most of them were just BASIC demos really, I remember the names of a few, but I don't know if it's the names the original authors intended since I can't seem to find any information about them online. There was 'string' (and a few variations) which basically just let you move a mouse pointer around with some 'string' following it around. There was another called 'weirdo' which was a bit like one of those pointy bras that span around a bit in some odd colours. As for actual games, the only two I remember are Lander ( [ Show youtube player ]) and the wings-esque Chocks away ( [ Show youtube player ])

There were one or two higher powered machines, I believe a RISC PC and maybe an A4000, these had more colours and backgrounds and things on the OS but I don't remember anything more than that.

If anyone remembers anything about anything I've said I'd love to hear your opinions or elaborations, I enjoyed writing this but wish I could remember more of the specifics

[PaulyQ]

You know, I still haven't been back into the loft to see what Acorn I have since I posted above in 2007... that is six years ago and the machine hasn't been touched. Might be a spiders house now, think I will have to check when I get the xmas tree out in a few weeks time.

[arpz]

Originally Posted by PaulyQ

You know, I still haven't been back into the loft to see what Acorn I have since I posted above in 2007... that is six years ago and the machine hasn't been touched. Might be a spiders house now, think I will have to check when I get the xmas tree out in a few weeks time.

I just found out that there's a far wider library of games available than I was aware of, lots of Amiga ports etc. You should definitely drag it down and see if any of them are any good

[filth]

Originally Posted by arpz

They were all networked, unfortunately I don't recall which method but I'd assume it was BNC.

Quite possibly Econet.

Originally Posted by arpz

the F12 key gave access to a kind of console.

This was called the Supervisor and was a kind of equivalent of Windows' command prompt, sometimes called the star prompt because of the asterisk. F12 activated fullscreen mode (by bumping the desktop up), while Ctrl-F12 would have activated it within a task window on the desktop.

Originally Posted by arpz

All of this was actually negated, because you could put all that same stuff in a command file (unsure on what it's actual name was, but essentially like a batch file) which wasn't restricted at all.

An 'Obey' file.

Originally Posted by arpz

Lander ( [ Show youtube player ]) and the wings-esque Chocks away ( [ Show youtube player ])

Lander was only a demo. The full version was called Zarch, and was later ported to the PC as Virus. It was authored by David Braben, co-author of the famous space trading game Elite. Chocks Away was a classic :-)

Thanks for sharing your memories, and I hope I helped bring out a few more!

[Sektor 83]

We had these in school... the only things I remember from them were Lander and another game called Fervour, which was like a constantly rolling ball on these platforms in space, and you had to avoid the holes in the platform by jumping over them...

[Methanoid]

Arc experts - is there a list of Archimedes exclusives? Stuff not available on Amiga or ST? Would like to have a play with emulators and see if the stuff is any good!?!?!

[s2325]

I think it's something similar to Wings - Shocks Away: http://www.youtube.com/user/Archimed...s?query=shocks Please avoid his anti-Amiga comments, let him be happy in his small world.

[starlord]

question: does anyone know if the CD version of archie games like the "starfighter other worlds" and the "shmup collection" from 4play made it to the TOSEC? I have both CDs and would be interested to contribute should it not be the case...

Also, am I wrong to think that aldebaran is in the tosec?

Over the last year and a half I've aquired a reasonable collection of Acorn related stuff-an A410/1 with ARM3 processor along with ram upgrade, A4000 and a few RiscPCs c/w x86 processor cards as well a few different podules/mini podules and such.

Makes a nice change from the usual x86 stuff I'm familiar with. Looking forward to getting them networked via Uni Boot.

[Astrofra]

Originally Posted by Bloodwych

Decide for yourselves. The Falcon specs are below.

Note, the Blitter ran at 16MHz and the DSP 32MHz.

This chart mentions a central bus in 32bits, but it is widely known that the bus of the Falcon was 16/24bits :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Falcon

Actually, I don't want to start the good old flame war again, because I LOVE every single machine of this era

I just wanted to make the point that, if Commodore made a wrong decision when shipping the A1200 without any 'fast ram', it appears the Atari made the same kind of strategic error.

Both decisions resulted in a 32bits CPU running at half its speed (more or less).

[Baboon]

I've got fond memories of playing on the arc in school... and also playing games on a couple mates machines too. I did an I.t course in 6th form using just arcs and although I lost contact with one mate years ago he went onto write educational software for the bbc and apparently became a millionaire a while ago!

I see arcem got ported to pandora recently... would love to see an android port in the fututre too? ;-)

[trixster]

Thread resurrection!

I've just bought a Falcon. 24 years too late for Atari, but better late then never!

[Locutus]

So why did you post that on a thread about the Archimedes? >;-)

[BarryB]

I've got a RiSC PC600 and a A7000 tucked away at work, think we got rid of the A3000 unfortunately!

[Locutus]

I have a RasPI running RISCOS 5 Open does that count? :-)

[trixster]

Originally Posted by Locutus

So why did you post that on a thread about the Archimedes? >;-)

The first two pages were mostly about Atari

[Nobby_UK]

I've been trying to get an A3010/3020 for years ---
With no luck