Acorn Archimedes

Acorn Archimedes computers were standard school issue in the early 90s and replaced the aging BBC computers that had served the previous generation.

The Archimedes was the very first RISC-based personal computer and was technically a very advanced machine. Unfortunately the Acorn Archimedes series never proved commercially successful and disappeared from most schools to make way for the popular Intel PCs.

Comments




I still have an Acorn 3010 and from time to time run it to transfer resources at present on floppies (ADFS 1.6M), into stuff that can be read on Windows XP.
Tony Newman16-Jun-2007, 05:31:35 PM

I bought this machine when fisrt at university. I programmed it to show 3d charts of two dimensional functions. I really enjoyed it. I also used it to calculate and show fractals, pixel by pixel. I still got it and I am curious if it would work when plugged.
manos protonotarios14-Jun-2007, 10:01:10 PM

I remember this geek kid in the library at my school, oneday he showed me how to make a program where i could click the mouse on a box on the screen and it would beep. since that day i have been a geek and now programme every computer lanaguage going.
Mr C27-May-2007, 06:47:42 PM

Borrowed a brand new Archimedes from school to finish my course work off and spent the entire time playing chocks away!!
Simon R.13-May-2007, 07:09:06 PM

I remember once finding out how to set a system password on the machines, so I set it to be the name of another kid in my class who was mean to me. Shortly after discovering this, I managed to copy a directory into itself, something RISC OS didn't seem to prohibit. The Acorn broke horribly, and they called in the professionals who restored the system and uncovered the password I'd set... The other kid got the blame for it all!
Dave Arter03-Feb-2007, 07:19:59 PM

My Dad was the Head of IT at my school in Solihull. Luckily he was a popular teacher, so I didn't get much stick from other kids! Because I was"connected" my friends and I would be allowed to stay in at lunchtimes and after school and use the machines, and during school holidays my dad would bring the A5000 back home with him! I'm getting all nostalgic thinking about it, even though I'd probably hate to use one now! the idea of 2mb of RAM and an 80MB Hard drive seemed EXTRAORDINARY at the time! Mind you, i was impressed when the school bought a 486 PC with Windows 3.1 on it!
James02-Feb-2007, 03:14:31 PM

My secondary school had a few rooms of these by the time I left. Were much easier to use than a PC on Windows 3.1, though lack of a hard drive was a problem. I still have a disk or 2 of stuff from school, we were allowed to used them at dinnertimes, & my best friend had one, which should have been for his Dad's business work, but we spent most of the time playing games on it. My Aunt had one about 10 years ago, it might still be in her attic.
Richard Davies29-Dec-2006, 11:06:25 PM

I used to remember using the A300 or 400 series (one of the two, it wasn't the ones where it was built into the keyboard) when I was 4 or 5 at school. That was back in 1990, and it ran on RISC OS2. I remember that if I behaved, I the teachers let play Pac-Mania at break-time!!! But I also did some work on it, a bit of typing and using Paint (or was it Paintbrush). Ah good times. It was better than a PC with Windows 95!
Matthew Forth29-Dec-2006, 08:28:47 PM

It is a pity that the Archimedes never took off. Although not as powerful as the 386 or 486 PCs about at the time (as I recall), the 'Archie' was fast, slick, capable and able to compete with the PCs. Sadly, underdevelopment and Acorn's stubbornness in keeping prices high meant that such a wonderful computer was unable to trounce even the Amiga, a point not passed-by by the spectators.
Michael Braisher13-Nov-2006, 03:00:58 PM

Home to the best version of Elite. Chocks Away and Holed Out were good fun, too!
Nige07-Nov-2006, 01:20:33 PM

I used an Acorn Risc machine running BSD 4.3 Unix while I was at Hatfield Poly. It was much faster than the Sun 68030 workstations of the day. Acorn lent it to us to test. It was flawless, and very fast. It used to store files in compressed form, as the CPU was so much faster than the hard drive back then.
John Wild13-Oct-2006, 09:44:06 AM

I loved the archimedes series a great technology breakthrough in personal computers we would not be where we are today in computer technology if it was not for the invention of that processor, I remember using one as a child at home ..a310, A3000, A5000 is what we owned..as well as in school although i used it mainly for playing games instead of school work because the graphics were so great. Lander rules!!
Simon Hardwick14-Jul-2006, 11:00:08 AM

Great machines!! main market was schools and the education system but it was a primary home computer also. I still to this day use riscos and currently own a Up-to-date riscps (StrongARM 287Mhz T, RiscOS 4.39 Adjust, CDRW, 64MB EDO Ram, UniPos{usb, fast ide, fast ethernet}) http://www.drobe.co.uk for todays news
HydroUK30-Dec-2005, 03:01:26 AM

It was a great machine, which I used to write my first game which was reviewed. Getting a RiscPC later, I then wrote a link list module, which was accepted by an Acorn magazine (and for which I got around ?30 - a bit late, but I did get it).
Nicholas Kingsley29-Apr-2005, 12:06:47 PM

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