10 Amazing Acorn Archimedes Facts

In this video we look at 10 tantalising titbits of trivia surround the advanced 32-bit Acorn Archimedes computer.

Video Links:

#acornarchimedes #bbcmicro #retrogaming

[Tommi-C]

I remember how they thought the original ARM CPU was broken because it was measuring that it was using no power at all.

[KingOfHighFives]

I grew up with BBC Micros in primary school and I was instantly hooked to computers. Later in high school we had Archimedes. My mother also worked in the education system and became very fond of the systems too. I remember going to the Wakefield Acorn shows annually back in the 90s and became a huge fanboy of Acorn. I had an A4000 and a flatbed scanner that I used to create artwork for my Punk band back in the late 90s.
The machines were incredible! I have such fond memories of those times. Ended up with an Atari ST and then PCs after that, but was always saddened by the demise of Acorn. I remember witnessing the unveiling of the RiscPC2 (Pheobe) which was incredible for the time. Still want one!

[KillaBitz]

I had a A3010 as a kid and loved it. I got a paper round so i could get Zip Drive for the parallel port.
I redesigned every sprite and texture of the UI by hand in paint to try and match the marble effect of the Risc PC's.
On boot I had to load the driver for the ZIP drive and all the UI retextures. 1 disk was enough for me. 100mb held every bit of software i could muster with space left over.
I upgraded it to 2mb.

[MitchQuadrupleTree]

Being an American, it's endlessly fascinating to learn about the microcomputer boom in the UK, since I didn't get to experience it myself. Especially so when one of those computers I never even heard of growing up turns out to have had such a tremendous impact on all the tech we use today. Thank you for all the great videos!

[bsdrago]

I live in Brazil and we didn't have access to this computer. I thought it was incredible! Great video!

[endofthelinejoel]

Well done. Good overview of the computer.

Still my favourite computer and operating system. There was a desktop environment on Linux called ROX-desktop that was heavily based on RiscOS. But sadly not supported anymore.

And Mad Professor Mariarty deserves a remaster!

[davidmylchreest]

We had one Archimedes in our high school. It was in the Technical Drawing class. On the last day of term we would all play E-Type on it.

[Fuzzytubby]

I had an A3010, I paid for it with a tax rebate I got from my first real job. I eventually upgraded it with 4MB of RAM (Yes there was a third party option for that), a 30MB internal HDD that cost a load of money and an official Acorn monitor. My Amiga owning friends were rather jealous of how fast it ran, but I never admitted that they would have had more games for their machine.

4th Dimension software wrote some amazing games for it, I loved Chocks away. I also had Arc Elite, it took me about 3 years to get the Elite rating.

Fantastic and affordable machine.

I have a Risc PC (With a StrongARM CPU and Pentium 133) that still works and a Pi running the modern ROL RISC OS.

[beagsx]

I bagged an Archimedes A1200 from a car boot sale a while back for £10. It came bundled with a monitor amongst other things. Works absolutely great!

[grinbrothers]

I miss chunky keyboards in general but the Acorn Archimedes is a joy of design. So big and smooth; green eye-catching keys. I've been looking forward to learning more about this range of British computers as they are often overlooked, despite their persistence on the market.

1:39 - Was Learning Curve an official name or just using a term here? As a follow-up to BBC Micro, Learning Curve works pretty well as a name for a computer (sounds cool whilst still having that educational ring to it).

3:01 - The ARM chip being around since 1986/7 and still being utilised today is insane to think about.

5:38 - I believe I'd heard of the crossover between Sinclair and the Jaguar but never knew there was experience from the Acorn Archimedes there as well. Also, liking the vary on-screen; colourful and smooth visuals delight.

9:03 - Do enjoy the emphasis on a British company with this approach.

10:52 - Cool to hear about the branding and backwards compatibility of the BBC. Gosh though, is it normal to have five different models of the same system at launch though?

13:37 - Again, love the A3000 design. I see the prior point about the other models looking PC like; I've likely confused them with DOS PCs myself before. The A3000 though is unmistakable though.

16:13 - There's certainly a distinctive look to the old laptops of the day.

21:28 - Compared to Sinclair or Commodore, Acorn managed to last a heck of a time competing in the computer market. Strange then that the Acorn series of computers, be it the Electron or Archimedies, tend to get discussed so little compared to them then. A lot of the games shown off in this video were ones I never knew had Archimedies versions.

[eto]

I remember the Archimedes very well. It always felt like the "dream computer" to me - but at a closer look there was always a deal breaker for me (being still in school then).

The A310 was much too expensive as a home computer. Then the A3000 appeared and first I thought "that's it" but then it could only be upgraded to 2MB (officially), had no joystick ports and required a pretty expensive monitor (at least that was what I was told), so in the end it was still much too expensive - and too rare. I finally went for the Atari STe which I could upgrade to 4MB easily.

The A3010 in 1992 seemed also interesting - but again a limitation of 2MB for RAM. 2MB in 1992. That was a surprise. I was already slightly limited by the 4MB of the ST - so it was a no go for me and anything bigger was again much too expensive. (I know that later there were upgrades to at least 4MB but that was not known to me while I was interested in the A3000 or A3010)

Not sure about the other countries in Europe but at least in Germany an even bigger problem was the availability of hard and software - and information. Even in the Munich area there was only a single dealer who offered the Archimedes 310 and A3000. And I am not sure they really had a lot of knowledge. You had to go to their basement to get a look at it. When the A3010 came out I tried to find it but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Anyway - I still love to read about the Archimedes or watch a video - and it probably was the dream computer I always imagined - at least if you lived in the UK.

[homelate]

I remember seeing decommissioned RiscPC’s at a Television network I worked for. Years later, I got one myself. Interesting machines I must say. I really like the PC-compatibility compared to other platforms like Amiga.

[dreamcaster]

We had some of these at school and used to play Xenon 2, Cannon Fodder and Sensible Soccer on them. The Amiga and ST ports were really good, but never played any original games on it.

[retrojoe]

As an italian, I've never heard of these machines back in the day. Here it was all about C64 and A500 home computers. Very interesting video for my taste, the Archimedes has a very nice design. I really like the notebook especially.

[davdbone]

As a teen loosing his pocket money in the 80s, unable to afford an Amiga, knowing the BBC micro, then hearing about the Archimedes, wow, look at the price, "it's bound to be amazing!", 30+ years later due to various factors the cheque book is connected to the reality 😅

[kenwheeler]

Seems like a very capable system throughout it's lifespan.

[espfusion]

Archimedes is a real mixed bag. On the one hand its CPU design was in a lot of ways phenomenal for 1987. On the other hand its video capabilities were pretty meh.

[freddiejohnson]

We had an IT teacher who had stacks of clearly copied pirated games for the Acorn Archimedes for when we finished all our work for the lesson. He would also let a certain select group of us come in the classroom on breaks because he would talk to us about gaming stuff and other stuff around computers and consoles. He sadly left in my final year and when they replaced the computers with windows 95 ones. Me and my friends always have such good memories of that time because of him though.

[mistie]

It's a common mistake but the A3000 was not the same as the A3010/A3020. The A3000 was far closer to the earlier machines including the ARM 2 processor (which was upgradable to the ARM 3 but could be a pain due to the processor mount method) while the A3010 and A3020 shared a similar motherboard with the A4000 but were equipped with different peripherals and were the earliest versions of the SoC in the ARM range, namely the ARM 250 which combined all the discrete support chips and the processor on a single piece of silicon, a process that is still very much in use to this day.

The A3010 was a games centred machine with the green keys and other decorative bits and pieces while the A3020 was fitted with networking and so forth, had red keys like the A3000 and was marketed for schools. The A4000 used the same motherboard but was a three box solution in the same way as the earlier A300/A400 Archimedes though the box resembled a half height version of the later A5000 which was based around the same motherboard as the sole Acorn RISC OS laptop, the A4 (therefore not quite as rare as you might think!)