A technical history of Acorn Computers

Someone will be along in a minute to tell you to watch Micro Men, an amusing and fairly accurate BBC dramatization of the Sinclair&#x2F;Acorn rivalry :) but I&#x27;m here to recommend that you watch the Computer History Museum&#x27;s interview with Hermann Hauser the erstwhile director of Acorn - he&#x27;s very charming: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Y0sC3lT313Q" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Y0sC3lT313Q</a><p>I&#x27;m fairly sure they&#x27;ve got one with Chris Curry too, but I can&#x27;t spot it just now.

Ah, the delights of a page that covers 26 years of history and hasn&#x27;t been updated for 21 years<p>I can at least say that in the meantime, RISC OS is still alive and now open, available from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.riscosopen.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.riscosopen.org&#x2F;</a>, and most people will know the ARM company and its architectures went from strength to strength, even if the RISC PC faded away.

My first computer was an Acorn System One. I spent a summer picking fruit at an orchard to pay for it.<p>1k of RAM, 512 bytes of ROM, a seven segment calculator display and hex keyboard.<p>I spent hours hand assembling 6502 code for it. I even created a stack based language for it in an attempt to teach my younger brother how to program.

For me, all this ... computer life stuff ... started with an Acorn Electron around 40 years ago. At first it was just fun, and then I played Elite and it feels like a lot of my future was defined in that experience.

A wonderful snapshot of the 90s web. The entirely unaffected tone, the lack of self-consciousness, the random content, the humor, the joke lists, everything. We&#x27;ve lost a lot.<p>The marginalia search engine is very good at finding this kind of site, btw.

I purchased an Acorn Atom in 1980 (the prebuilt one - a friend opted for the self-assembly and regretted it) and I still remember the thrill of setting it up and turning it on for the first time. It feels like I didn&#x27;t sleep for a week but I suppose I must have.<p>When you entered a line of their BASIC, it would check the line for errors. At one point, I kept getting error XX (I don&#x27;t recall the actual number) and couldn&#x27;t see the error in my code. Eventually figured out it meant I was out of RAM. There was only 2K and I think the 6502 took some and the screen too so there was only about 500 bytes left over. What a joy it was after I saved up for the 6K upgrade.<p>And then there was the local computer club presentation that ruined any chance of a public speaking career.... :)

A good read!<p>I like that all the sites linked in the banner, no longer exist! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mcmordie.co.uk&#x2F;public&#x2F;apeople.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mcmordie.co.uk&#x2F;public&#x2F;apeople.shtml</a>

A nice note of recognition of the contribution of the Acorn made BBC Micro model A and B to millions is that the Raspberry Pi Model A and B were named in honour of them.

Our first family computer was an A3000. I&#x27;m still amazed at the boot time on it compared to the PCs we had later (even today). Switch it on, beep and then almost instantly you&#x27;re in a responsive GUI. (The wonders of storing the OS in a ROM I guess).

So much history here for me.<p>One landmark buried in there was the ARM 250 chip based machines.<p>I think they were some of the first system on a chip desktop computers.<p>They lacked the glamour of the Arm 3 based machines launched around the same time but really they were ground breaking.

One small error I&#x27;ve noticed on the Phoebe page, the man who killed Acorn was a guy called Stan Boland not Sam Boland.<p>I leave someone with better knowledge to tell that one but it&#x27;s a pretty sad story.

Great talk about the Archimedes:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Hf67JYkUCHQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Hf67JYkUCHQ</a><p>Really a neat design.

My first computer was an Acorn BBC B Microcomputer. This brings back very fond memories of playing Repton and Elite and having to wait for the tape cassette to load the games.

Some great memories here.<p>Somewhere in my parents attic is my RISC PC 600 and 486 Co-Processor card. Not sure if they also have the A3000 we had before that.

If the page author is reading this: hello Rob!

I started with an Acorn a3020, those machines were just amazing. I got my first PC shortly after running Windows for workgroups 3.11 jeez it felt like a step backwards. If Acorn started in the Silicon Valley, we&#x27;d probably be using them today.