Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

I have just dusted off my (very) old A310, this was my first big investment in a computer (I paid around £600 for it in 1987), it had an 8MHz 32bit ARM with 512K RAM (it was an A305 originally).
It has had several other upgrades over the years but has been boxed up and untouched since ~2000.
It was very dusty inside and the two 1.5V AA cells had leaked and corroded the battery box but after a good dust blast and clean up it looked good. Sadly it didn't start - the PSU buzzed at switch on - this was traced to a shorted tant. cap in the 12V rail.. So now I am back to the joys of programming in BBC basic with in line ARM code

I always liked the Acorn machines and I will try to get a BBC model B and also get my A5000 running as well....

I have a A3010 I've been meaning to play with - bought it last year and haven't even tried powering it up. Maybe I should give it a go this weekend

Did you buy it in the US? They sold many A3xxx into schools in the UK in the late 80s and early 90s but eventually the PCs won that battle! It the mid 90s nearly every school sold off their A3xxxs so most turning up on ebay have school markings..

I imported it from the UK via eBay. Came with the original box and accessories - doesn't have any school markings that I can see.

I pulled everything out just now - this is what I have:



I also have a few original games on diskette in the back room someplace.

looks in great condition, I'll take some shots of the A310 when I get back from Tokyo...

Sounds fantastic - would like to see it! I've always had an interest in classic systems that weren't released over here, from the Japanese MSX and X68000 systems to popular UK machines by Acorn, Sinclair and Amstrad.

I recently bought a great book entitled " Digital Retro: The Evolution and Design of the Personal Computer ", by Gordan Laing. It's essentially a coffee table book with beautiful photos of a lot of the usual suspects, plus interesting systems I'd not seen before, such as the Nascom 1, Tangerine Microtan 65, Grundy NewBrain, Dragon 32, Jupiter ACE and Oric-1. Well worth checking out.

They was a lot of diversity in the early 80s with home computing. I liked the Jupiter Ace - had Forth as a native language. I had a Science of Cambidge MK14, a ZX81, a Dragon (I think it used a 6809) - I liked the Oric, it was 'Spectrum Sized' but had a better keyboard and really cool sounds...happy days, PCW full of interesting machines every month - now it is just PCs..

I had an A310 while I was at university, excellent machines and amazing what they could do considering the hardware. I upgraded mine with 4Mb RAM, an ARM3 (25mhz!), and a huge 100Mb SCSI HD. Made the Windows 3.1 PCs look really sad.

Still have a RISC PC (last generation Acorn computer) for running the Impression DTP app and some fave games (Archimedes Elite was the best version).


Is that a video digitiser podule Neko? Wonder what it'd make of NTSC TV

It's an i3 EtherLan.

I'm lucky enough to get to program those Atmel ARM9 things in my day job!

I have an SGI system with an ARM processor <though as you mentioned, embedded>. My signature file is a snippet from the syslog entry produced during the initialization of InfiniteReality Graphics.

Don't forget that most cellphones and PDAs are essentially small ARM computers, the Nintendo DS (ARM 9 and ARM 7) and Gameboy Advance (ARM 7) are too - it's not just boring embedded stuff and GPS units with ARMs.

Not sure which of my iPhone (ARM 9) or my RISC PC (200Mhz StrongARM) is the faster The iPhone has more RAM that I do know.

I read that Castle already ceased production of Lyonix computers unfortunately, eMGee. RISC-OS is still being developed, but the two companies at it seem to spend most of the time squabbling over who has the rights to develop the OS.

IYONIX is no longer in production, but there is still A9Home.


My current RISC OS computers:

IYONIX (My main computer)
StrongARM RiscPC 287 MHz + Viewfinder
StrongARM RiscPC 233 MHz
Acorn A4000 (Upgraded to 4 Mb)

Inside the Archimedes.
You can see where the battery leaked (bottom left corner). The unit is fitted with a 25MHz ARM processor, a SCSI card and (not visible) ROM/RAM card.
I also have an Atomwide prototype card and a home made DES in hardware card (built back in 1988 when I was interested in cryptography. I did start on an external floating point hardware card (base on TI 32 bit FP MAC) - I did build a vector card for an ISA slot using a 16x16 => 35 MAC (TRW 1010) and I got a bit carried away - I think I could never get the state machine (in PLDs) to drive the memory and feed the MAC to work properly..

Great picture, thanks! I've had to clean up some leaky batteries in vintage hardware myself over the past year or so - motherboard batteries in my Amiga 2000 and 4000 (no motherboard damage, fortunately) and the 1.5V AA battery box in my Apple III+. The leads on the Apple III's battery box had corroded away due to the acid, so I scrubbed it down and re-soldered everything back together.