Lost Computers - The Acorn Archimedes

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by trixster

Yes.

I think "bitness" is a messed up concept

[Bruce Abbott]

I think Acorn messed up calling the ARM2 and ARM3 '26bit' processors. By all standard definitions they are 32 bit - 32 bit data bus, 32 bit registers, 32 bit ALU, 32 bit instructions. Only the program counter and address bus are 26 bit. No other CPU had its 'bitness' determined by the size of its address bus.

[Karlos]

I dunno, they all do now. We reserve 64-bit to describe machines capable of dealing with flat memory models beyond 32-bit and there were "32-bit" processors that could happily perform operations on 64-bit values.

The problem arises because we try to sum up a CPU in a single number, but arithmetic operand size and total addressable memory space aren't the same thing.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I think "bitness" is a messed up concept

It should have died with 'Do the math' by Atari

[spannernick]

Did you know... that the Acorn Archimedes still lives, its ARM now - `Advanced RISC Machines` or its original name `Acorn RISC Machines`, it name was change in 2002 by Apple because they put money in the new company and didn't like there competitors name on the new company so ARM changed it to `Advanced`, now it powers all mobile phones and mini consoles, even the Amiga uses it now...

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by spannernick

Did you know... that the Acorn Archimedes still lives, its ARM now - `Advanced RISC Machines` or its original name `Acorn RISC Machines`, it name was change in 2002 by Apple because they put money in the new company and didn't like there competitors name on the new company so ARM changed it to `Advanced`, now it powers all mobile phones and mini consoles, even the Amiga uses it now...

Oh yeah... no. The Archimedes was a lot more than just a CPU.

Production stopped in the mid 90's, which is a good thing IMO. It means my A3000 with 8MHz ARM250, 4MB RAM and 40MB 2.5" hard drive isn't hopelessly outdated compared to later models.

Now if I could just think of a good reason to turn it on...

[Megalomaniac]

The CPU philosophy was the Archimedes' big lasting influence, even if it might have held the machine back at the time as it will have been a totally new challenge to program for - experience of making games for the C64 or Spectrum, or Amiga, or even BBC, won't've been much use.

What's the best emulation solution to really check the Archie out, and what's the best place to get the game files for it?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

my A3000 with 8MHz ARM250, 4MB RAM and 40MB 2.5" hard drive isn't hopelessly outdated compared to later models

There are no A3000's with an ARM250. Must be an A3010 & A3020

[Karlos]

I always liked the Archimedes. I never owned one.

[Coagulus]

Raspberry PI 4 running RiscOS gives very good Archimedes feels. I use Arculator for pc. Back in the day I helped write a version of ProTracker for the Archimedes. I ripped the GFX on my Amiga using an Action Replay 3 and then kept deliberately writing music using commands that didn't work until the coders fixed them!

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by alexh

There are no A3000's with an ARM250. Must be an A3010 & A3020

No it's an A3000, I was just confused about the nomenclature.

According to Wikipedia the A3000 has an 'ARM2' CPU, and the A3010 has an ARM2/ARM250. Confusingly however, according to this page the ARM250 is based on the same architecture as ARM3, but with integrated graphics and I/O.

Unfortunately Wikipedia doesn't provide a DMIPS/MHz figure for ARM250. If it's higher than ARM2 then the A3000 will probably be even more hopeless at running Doom than I thought.

[chb]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

No it's an A3000, I was just confused about the nomenclature.

According to Wikipedia the A3000 has an 'ARM2' CPU, and the A3010 has an ARM2/ARM250. Confusingly however, according to this page the ARM250 is based on the same architecture as ARM3, but with integrated graphics and I/O.

Unfortunately Wikipedia doesn't provide a DMIPS/MHz figure for ARM250. If it's higher than ARM2 then the A3000 will probably be even more hopeless at running Doom than I thought.

AFAIK the ARM2 and ARM250 have pretty much the same performance per MHz. The ARM3 has AFAIK the same architecture as the ARM250, but adds 4kB of cache to allow higher clock speeds. From my understanding it should have the same performance per MHz as its cacheless siblings when memory is not the bottleneck, so I find the claim on the Wikipedia page that it achieves more DMIPS/MHz a bit dubious.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Confusingly however, according to this page the ARM250 is based on the same architecture as ARM3

Yes the ARM250 is the same architecture/instruction set but without the cache. It contains effectively an ARM2 with the SWP and SWPB instructions added.

I feel acorn shot them selves in the foot because they never made an SoC with an ARM3. So when it came out you could upgrade A3xx & A4xx & A3000 but not the newer A3010/A3020

[HomeLate]

I bought an A3010 in December last year and it got really beaten up by the postal services. It took some time to restore it in its formal glory but it's now up and running.

Out of all Acorn's I own (which is only three), this one I like the best. But it took some time to find an 'easy' way to get games on the platform. It has a CF-IDE podule and I use a parallel zip-drive to copy software. Last week I managed to get Cannon Fodder running:




The learning curve is higher, but once you get things running, it's a pretty neat system.