 |
|
 |
|
|
|||
 |
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
    |
|||||||
|
|||||||
 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
|
Introduction |
The Acorn Risc PC |
|
Acorn and RISC OS computers are British built and designed, and run
their own operating system called RISC OS. New RISC OS computers are
available, and there is active development of both new hardware and the
operating system.
Most of the world uses IBM compatible PCs running Microsoft Windows operating systems, and are not aware that Acorn computers exist or are available. Actually, many people don't even know about Apple Macintosh computers, or how they differ from PCs. At one time, there were many competing standards for computer platforms, based on different hardware and running different operating systems and software. Since then, the IBM PC has become the 'industry standard' computer, and Microsoft Windows the 'industry standard' operating system. Most people buy PCs because they need to run the most popular software packages, but for many people, they are not aware that other computer platforms exist, and may be more suitable for their needs. It is a great pity that so many computer platforms have disappeared or become less popular over recent years (for example Amiga and Atari computers), and it is important that consumers should have a choice. Competition between manufacturers is healthy and encourages creatively designed and competitively priced products. Acorn computers, and computers running RISC OS software, offer an alternative to Windows PCs! Due to their excellent design and ease of use, Acorns were used in most schools in the UK until a few years ago, when schools unfortunately began to move over to Windows PCs, considering it important that children should use 'industry standard' computers. Many schools have now realised that PCs are not nearly as suitable for use in the classroom, due to their complexity and the time and money that has to be spent to keep PCs maintained and in good working order. Many schools still use their old Acorns, and some are purchasing new RISC OS computers to be used as an alternative or alongside their PCs. Acorns and RISC OS computers are widely used in the TV industry, partly due to their reliability and suitability for performing certain tasks. For example, the graphics on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire are produced using Acorn technology, and an Acorn computer is used to control the National Lottery machine! There is a significant user base of Acorn and RISC OS computers, who are enthusiastic and passionate about their preferred computer platform. There are many extremely helpful dealers selling new RISC OS computers, software and upgrades for older systems, who provide an excellent quality of service; this contrasts with many suppliers of PC systems! New RISC OS computers are available from developers including Castle, RiscStation and MicroDigital. New hardware is being developed, as is new software and the RISC OS operating system. |
| |
|
Advantages of Acorns and RISC OS
Acorn and RISC OS computers offer the following advantages to users:
RISC OS Introduction RISC OS is an extremely easy to use operating system, offering simple 'drag and drop' functionality, an intuitive user interface and low memory requirements. ROM Based Operating System RISC OS occupies around 4MB ROM, rather than being disc based. This means that RISC OS computers boot up very quickly and the operating system cannot be corrupted by hard disc errors, and never has to be re-installed! As a result, Acorn / RISC OS computers are reliable and require minimum maintenance. Being ROM based, and making efficient use of system RAM rather than relying heavily on hard drive usage for storage of temporary data, RISC OS is a fast and responsive operating system. This means that older Acorn computers are still perfectly capable of running many new applications, in spite of having small hard discs and low amounts of system RAM. This is a major contrast with Windows PCs, which become redundant quickly and need to be replaced or upgraded at regular intervals in order to run the latest software. RISC OS computers can actually be used without a hard drive at all, and the original entry level Archimedes and A3000 computers did not ship with a hard drive as standard. Its elegant ROM based design makes RISC OS suitable for its incorporation into new set-top-boxes and other consumer products that are now coming onto the market. Due to its excellent design, the operating system has not required significant upgrades over the years. When upgrades have become available, the operating system can be upgraded by replacing the ROM chips on the motherboard. This idea may seem unusual to Windows users, for whom re-installing the operating system can be a regular occurrence and is often necessary to keep PCs running efficiently. |
RISC OS Desktop |
|
'Drag and Drop' Interface
Although most modern graphic user interfaces make use of 'drag and drop', in RISC OS it has been particularly well implemented. File icons for bitmaps or graphics files can be dragged from a filer window directly into a document. Also, rather than using cumbersome dialogue boxes to save files to disc, file icons can be dragged from an application window directly into a filer window. This all makes the operating system highly intuitive and easy to use. Icon Bar RISC OS uses an 'icon bar' at the bottom of the screen, which includes icons for disc drives, as well as icons for applications that are loaded. This makes working with files and applications very easy, and appears to have inspired the Taskbar in Windows 95, and the 'Dock' in Mac OS X. |
Anti-aliasing of screen fonts |
|
Anti-aliasing and Screen Appearance
RISC OS has always offered 'anti-aliased' screen fonts to provide a high quality appearance to text on the screen. Anti-aliasing smooths the edges of screen fonts by using various shades of grey pixels to make up the shape of each character, and this allows the fonts that appear on screen to closely resemble the appearance of printed text. Screen fonts on PCs and Macs often appear jagged, and it is only in recent versions of Windows and Mac OS that an attempt has been made to anti-alias text, usually only for text over a certain font size. The advantages of anti-aliasing in RISC OS are especially apparent when viewing text in low resolution screen modes, or when viewing page layouts in desktop publishing applications. RISC OS also allows windows to be dynamically moved and resized, such that the window contents are displayed during moving and resizing, rather than simply an outline of the window; this feature has only recently been introduced into Windows and Mac OS. Also, in RISC OS, the order of windows on the screen is controllable, such that a window can be moved, resized or typed in without necessarily bringing it to the front of the screen. All these features make RISC OS particularly pleasurable to use. Three Buttoned Mouse Operation RISC OS computers have three button mice, which form an important part of how software is used. The middle mouse button brings up a context-sensitive menu, depending on which part of the screen is clicked on. This makes it unnecessary to have menu bars within applications, as used in Windows and Mac OS, and makes it quick to find a command specific to the task being undertaken (Microsoft have since implemented their own version of context sensitive menus, using the right PC mouse button). The third button on Acorn mice, called 'Adjust', provides further control over windows and icons; for example, it can be used to add or remove icons for a selection of files in a filer window, similar to Shift-clicking in Windows. File System RISC OS has a highly efficient filesystem. Due to the relatively small size of files on Acorn / RISC OS computers and the way they are stored, plus the fact that RISC OS does not rely heavily on the hard drive for storing temporary files and swapping data to and from RAM, hard discs never need to be de-fragmented and are less susceptible to errors than on Windows systems. Hardware ARM Chips The Archimedes was the first consumer computer to use RISC chips, which run faster, and more efficiently per clock cycle than CISC chips, such as Intel's Pentium, used in IBM compatible computers. Acorn developed a RISC chip called the 'ARM' (originally standing for Acorn RISC Machine, and later changed to Advanced RISC Machine). ARM chips have since evolved, and due to their efficient design and low power requirements, are now used in many mobile phones and digital set-top-boxes for digital TV and internet access. The current range of RISC OS computers use StrongARM chips running between 200MHz - 300MHz, although new ARM chips are promised in the near future that will run at 600MHz and faster. It is important to realise that the performance of RISC chips such as the ARM, compared to CISC chips such as Intel Pentium processors cannot be compared in terms of the clock speed of the chips; due to the complex design of modern CISC chips such as the Pentium, they do not run as efficiently as RISC chips. Apple Macintosh computers now use RISC chips (the PowerPC range, designed by Motorola and IBM), as they too have seen the advantages that RISC chips offer. Another advantage of RISC chips such as the ARM, is that they run cool, and do not require heatsinks or cooling fans like Intel Pentium and Celeron chips. Also, due to their low power consumption, RISC chips are particularly suitable for laptop computers, and allow longer battery life. A new Acorn laptop, from RiscStation, is promised soon. Expansion Acorn / RISC OS computers are renowned for their upgradability. New Acorn / RISC OS machines make use of industry standard memory modules, hard discs and CD ROM drives. SCSI cards, CD writers, network cards, MIDI cards and a variety of other upgrades are available. With suitable driver software, many new printers, scanners and digital cameras can be used with Acorn / RISC OS computers. Some computer technologies such as USB and Firewire have not yet been introduced into RISC OS machines, and care has to be taken when choosing printers and scanners to ensure that suitable driver software is available. Expansion cards for Acorns mostly come in 'podule' form, which are compatible with older as well as the latest range of RISC OS computers. Applications Over the years, there have been some very impressive applications produced for the Acorn, including desktop publishing, drawing and music software. Impression desktop publishing software (from Computer Concepts), originally released in the early 90's, is particularly powerful and easy to use and allows the production of professionally produced and printed documents. Although Impression is no longer being developed, Ovation Pro (from David Pilling) offers a more modern alternative, and allows very powerful control over resizing and rotating of imported images and controlling the flow of text around images and text frames. |
Artworks |
|
ArtWorks (from Computer Concepts) is a very powerful and easy to
use vector drawing package that set new standards when it was released in the
early 90's; it offered anti-aliasing of all lines, shapes and text, plus
graduated fills, blends and other powerful tools, and it made competitive
products on the PC and Macintosh appear amateurish in comparison. Computer
Concepts later set up a new company called Xara, and developed ArtWorks into
Xara Studio for the PC. The package was later marketed by Corel as
CorelXara, although Xara once again have control of the software, and
have developed it into XaraX. A new vector drawing package called
Vantage (from Cerilica) will
shortly become available on the Acorn (currently available as a beta
release), and this is said to set new standards for drawing applications,
particularly in its handling of colour and print output facilities for
graphic designers.
Another 'killer app' to begin its life for Acorn RISC OS computers was Sibelius, a very sophisticated music application, which is now also available for the PC and Macintosh. Sibelius offers musicians a very powerful means of composing and writing musical scores, both by attaching a MIDI keyboard, as well as by editing musical scores on screen. Sibelius is highly regarded in the music industry, and has been used for composing various film scores. Sibelius is so good that, when it was only available for RISC OS, musicians would buy an Acorn computer especially to run the application. One of the features of RISC OS applications is their low memory requirements, as well as the small amount of disc space that they require. For example, EasiWriter from Icon Technology, a powerful word processor that reads and writes Microsoft Word files, fits on a single floppy disc and can be run in less than 2MB of RAM. A range of internet software is available and being developed for RISC OS, including powerful email clients and Javascript enabled web browsers, such as Oregano from Castle and WebsterXL from RComp. There is plenty of freeware and shareware software available for RISC OS, much of it of a high quality. The authors are often keen to receive feedback, and often incorporate features requested by users into subsequent releases of the software. Community The Acorn / RISC OS community is known for its helpful and friendly dealers, who are keen to assist in providing the most appropriate hardware solutions and upgrades to Acorn / RISC OS users, whilst providing a friendly and efficient service. This contrasts with many PC suppliers, and makes ownership of Acorn / RISC OS kit a more pleasurable experience! If users encounter problems with Acorn / RISC OS products, or discover bugs in software, it is often possible to contact the manufacturer or software author directly, who are usually happy to quickly resolve the problem. Users of Acorn / RISC OS computers are enthusiastic and passionate about their chosen computer platform, partly because of their love of RISC OS, but also because of their loathing of PCs and all things Microsoft! Acorn users are often willing to provide helpful and friendly advice to fellow users. There are clubs and user groups for Acorn users, as well as on-line mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups for a range of Acorn / RISC OS topics. A number of Acorn magazines and publications are available, including the long running Acorn User, the excellent Archive magazine, Acorn Publisher, as well as a number of CD based magazines. |
|
|
|
A Brief History
|
The BBC Micro Computer. 1981 |
|
Acorn started life in the early 80's, and produced the very successful
BBC Microcomputer, which was used in the majority of schools in the UK. For
its time, the BBC range was highly advanced, offering good quality graphics,
a powerful in-built sound system, as well as the BBC BASIC programming
language and an assembler in ROM. A huge range of software became available
for the BBC, including many educational programs and a large number of
entertaining games. Considering the BBC B had only 32K of RAM, programmers
managed to write amazingly complex and fast programs, usually by programming
in highly efficient assembly language to create machine code programs. The
BBC model B was replaced by the BBC Master range in the mid 80's and,
although the Master had 128K of RAM, it was beginning to show its age and
Acorn needed to design and manufacture a completely new computer design to
allow them to continue to succeed in the highly competitive computer market.
|
The Archimedes 400/1 series. 1988 
The BBC Acorn 3000 series. 1989 |
|
In 1987, Acorn introduced the Archimedes range of computers, which
were considered by many to be the most advanced consumer desktop computer
available at the time. One of the reasons for the Archimedes' great design
was that Acorn designed both the hardware, including the processor and
graphics chip, as well as the operating system, RISC OS. Both the hardware
and operating system design were highly innovative, and resulted in a range
of fast, easy to use and reliable computers, which were superior to the PCs
of the time and, many would say, even the Apple Macintosh. Using a RISC
processor and a ROM based operating system allowed powerful programs to run
very quickly, using very little RAM.
In 1989, Acorn produced the 'BBC A3000', the last Acorn computer produced with the 'BBC' name and logo on the case. The case of the A3000 incorporated both the motherboard / hardware components as well as the keyboard, in order to keep costs down. The A3000 was aimed partly at the schools market as a replacement for the BBC Micro and Master range. In 1991, the Archimedes range was replaced with the Acorn A5000, which featured a new version of the RISC OS operating system (RISC OS3) as well as a faster processor, the ARM3. Due to its high performance, Acorn were able to produce a PC emulator in software, in order that users could run DOS based business applications as well as their Acorn software. Acorn sold a version of the A5000 called the 'Learning Curve', which proved to be extremely successful with home users and even businesses. This was a successful time for Acorn, who could offer consumers a great range of competitively priced hardware, for which a good range of new and sophisticated software packages and games were available. |
RISC PC. 1994 |
|
The Archimedes range of computers was replaced in 1994 with the Acorn
RISC PC, which was highly innovative, fast and upgradable. The RISC PC, which
is still available in newer and faster versions, featured two processor slots
on the motherboard, one of them for an ARM chip, and the other for a 486
processor for running DOS or Windows. Being able to run RISC OS applications
alongside Windows applications provided users with the best of both worlds
and, at the time, offered an affordable alternative to buying a second
computer to run PC applications. The modular case of the RISC PC is also
innovative, as it allows extra 'slices' to be added to the system for fitting
extra hardware such as hard discs and expansion cards.
In 1996, Acorn launched the 200MHz StrongARM upgrade for the RISC PC (the previous ARM610 ran at 35MHz), which offered significant speed improvements and extended the life of the RISC PC range. The StrongARM was co-designed by US company Digital, who were subsequently bought by Intel, manufacturers of the x86 and Pentium range of processors for PCs. Intel have continued development of StrongARM, and a new version is promised, called XScale, which will initially run at 600MHz. The current range of StrongARM processors are used in various palmtop computers / PDAs, running a variety of operating systems including Windows CE and Psion's EPOC. In the late 90's, the IBM PC was firmly establishing itself as the industry standard computer platform, and Windows 95 as the industry standard operating system. This was making it increasingly difficult for manufacturers such as Acorn to continue to succeed in the highly competitive market place. Having a relatively small user base, compared to the Windows PC, it became difficult for Acorn to fund expensive development costs as well as marketing their range of computers, and they began to rely more on doing development work for various hardware manufacturers, for whom ARM processors and the RISC OS operating system offered various benefits. |
Phoebe 2100 - the replacement for the RISC PC that Acorn cancelled at the eleventh hour |
|
In 1998, Acorn announced the launch of a replacement to the RISC PC,
named 'Phoebe', which was promised to be extremely fast and powerful, and
make use of the latest industry standard components. Unfortunately, the
production of Phoebe was cancelled at the eleventh hour, and the Acorn
Workstation division closed. Many considered that Phoebe had been announced
prematurely, causing a drop in sales of the RISC PC and A7000 range, as users
put off buying a new system until Phoebe became available. Acorn then changed
direction, and renamed themselves 'e14', concentrating instead on their
development work. Since then, there have been further developments and
buy-outs, and much of the Acorn technology is now owned by Pace, who develop
digital set-top-boxes for internet access, as well as supplying solutions to
a variety of hardware manufacturers. Some ex-Acorn employees now work for
Pace.
|
|
|
Following the collapse of Acorn, a number of developers managed to
acquire the rights to continue to sell and develop RISC OS computers. RISC OS Ltd was set up to finish development
of RISC OS 4, which Acorn had intended to be fitted in Phoebe computers. RISC
OS 4 is now available as an upgrade for owners of older machines, and is
fitted to all new RISC OS computers. New versions are being actively
developed for the future. Meanwhile, Castle, RiscStation and MicroDigital have introduced a range
of new RISC OS computers and are continuing further development. Various
upgrades have recently become available for the RISC PC, including 'Kinetic'
from Castle, a StrongARM processor
upgrade card that incorporates fast PC memory. Also recently introduced is
the viewfinder card from Windfall
Engineering, an expansion card that incorporates an AGP graphics card, to
offer higher resolution screen modes than the standard Acorn graphics chip.
Newer, faster RISC OS computers are promised for the near future, making use
of the new XScale ARM chip (StrongARM2) from Intel.
Summary This document outlines many of the features and benefits of Acorn and RISC OS computers. There are alternatives to the PC and Macintosh, and RISC OS machines are an example of great British technology, which deserves to be more widely used and promoted! |
|
||
 |