RISCy Business - The Acorn RiscPC - ARM in a desktop
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- čas přidán 29. 03. 2018
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● Description
The Acorn Risc PC is the culmination of much experience and development at Acorn. It's also the last of their desktop computers. Find out why with me in the cave today.
● Music
♪ Monique - Geoff Driver - / geoffdriver
Clean Break - Destiny & Time
Orange Octopus - Unicorn Heads
Cosmic Love - Bruno E.
Sunrise Drive - South London Hifi
Jude Illa - Joe Bagale
Rounds - William Rosati
Burnin Up - Stunt Racer 2000 game music Acorn Archimedes - Věda a technologie
Thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed exploring the RiscPC. I am sourcing a non StrongArm host cpu to try with my 3.x ROMs and see if that helps compatability. As always you can support The Cave via Patreon: www.patreon.com/RetroManCave
Or the RMC shop www.etsy.com/shop/TheRetroMancave
Have the 3.5 ROMs laying around...
For the shop, would you consider t shirts? I like the designs but I have enough mugs.
Fantastic in depth review of a perhaps under rated machine.. and probably ahead of its time to some degree, I never even knew it existed.
Keep up the great work, congrats on the reaching 35k subscribers
If i recall, there is an official RISC OS build for the Raspberry Pi (and not some emulated linux build either). It's been interesting playing with the OS...
Really enjoying your youtube channel. So professionally put together! Earned a subscriber.
Was an avid RiscOS user until Acorn’s demise. The one thing I still really miss today was the ability to keep menus open after clicking an item, by using the right mouse button. So many applications demand multiple menu clicks to carry out an operation - and reopening the menu is a real pain. This applies to both Mac and Windows - in this respect, both still being beaten by a quirky, ROM-based OS from the 1990s.
Well said! I too miss that feature. It's amazing that Mac and Windows haven't caught up with the RISC OS WIMP features I grew up with.
The Amiga allowed for multiple selections in one menu as well, something I loved.
“Never clean another man’s mouseball”
That is a RMC T-Shirt I would buy.
"Nobody wants to clean another mans mouseball. That's a special kind of torture." This channel has infinite wisdoms
Great machines. Networks of these RISC PC’s kept many of the BBC’s TV news operations on air. From the launch of News24 to at least the closure of TV Centre in 2013. They ran software by Omnibus Systems and controlled video servers, tape carts and vision mixers for automated transmission. Rack mount machines were available in 3u. And they came back in seconds rather than minutes if they needed a reboot.
The Education department used 3 or 4 slice RISC pc’s in the late 90’s to do basic offline video editing. They had a capture card and Jazz drive. They were horrible.
There’s a thriving community of RISC OS enthusiasts and a big meet in Wakefield in April called the RISC OS Show which is worth a visit.
Horrible how?
I'm 35 so was the perfect target age for Acorn products at school. From BBC Micro through all the Archimedes to StrongARM RiscPC at school leaving age.
It really can't be understated how important ARM is. It's the most prevelant architecture on the planet. You wouldn't have iPhones or Android phones or tablets or Raspberry Pi or smart TVs or smart cars without it.
I work for a major software and hardware company and we're evaluating ARM servers with 128 cores and 256 GB of RAM.
Long live ARM!
Same here. Loved the schools Archimedes machines with Zarch and Lemmings.
Of course the modern ARM Architecture v7 and v8 processors have evolved to look a lot more like x86 (they're more CISC now, and have integrated piles of modern CPU features that were firmly established in the x86 world) - but the v4 architecture was pretty brilliant. One of the platforms I learned to program with was the Gameboy Advance - which is ARMv4T (similar to the ARMv4 StrongARM here) and it's a clean architecture that's lot of fun to program for. ARM are certainly doing a lot of things right, and they'll be relevant for quite some time to come no doubt.
sgstair Until Quantum CPUs become affordable in about 200 years lol.
I love the ARM's instruction set architecture. Moving from the 6502 machines, and realizing acorn had solved many of the shortcomings of its day-to-day use was refreshing.
Some things about it are wierd, such as the loading of constants and all the different stack (empty/full) options.
Even racing-drones run ARM processors!
Acorns were amazing machines, the os was more advanced for the time than any other machine. Regular A4000 user here!
I'm not going to lie, as someone from the USA I had zero idea this existed and man this was pretty intense for the day! The concept of the Podules was really forward thinking for the time, and the whole system looks like it was a breeze to take apart and reassemble.
Thanks for watching I'm glad I got to show you something new!
It was, though I always found the NIC was always a bitch to fit because it was so tight to the back of the board if you wanted to fit it without removing the motherboard. One thing that RMC forgot here (or possibly didn't know) was that there were two different PSUs supplied on the Risc PC. The lower power one was only meant for a standard single slice where multi slice machine needed something a bit beefier. And yes, the fans were bloody noisy!
As a Brit, I can relate. I was into computers in the 80s, but never heard of the apple 2 until probably the late 2000s when I saw it mentioned online. I always thought the Mac was apples first computer.
To anyone obsessed with owning a proper desktop-class ARM machine again (like me), there's an option coming this year.
Gigabyte is launching a workstation based on Cavium's new ThunderX2 SoC. Maxed out, the ThunderXStation will have 64-cores, 256-threads (SMT4) and 16-channels of DDR4. It's a freakin' beast.
Edit May 2022: Fun to look back on this comment in a post Apple Silicon world 😁
*swoon* this I have to see
It will be interesting to see desktop arm computers, I would love to try them and try programming for them but for now a raspberry pi will be the closest thing I have.
Er, in a word no. at least not *that outdated hardware*
I'm happy using RiscOS 5 on a Pi Zero as it takes up no desk space. (good enough for me anyway)
There wasn't a wide variety of commercial software for the Acorn machines as I recall.
@@lucasrem1870 I’m not sure what you mean? 😅
3:03 If I remember correctly, Acorn were badly damaged financially by leaks of the systems released immediately before the Risc PC 600, hence the Medusa code name for the Risc PC 600. I worked at one of Acorn's Key Developers in the final stages of the Risc PC 600 development. The Non-Disclosure Agreement for Medusa was considerably longer than my contract with my employer, and the security requirements it imposed were stringent, including not revealing anything about the system to colleagues who had not personally signed the NDA. The pre-release hardware was in an A5000 case, partly because it is what Acorn had to hand and partly because it looked the same as any other A5000 when powered down unless carefully examined. Acorn had a scheme to recase the pre-release Medusas in the final Risc PC 600 casing after the commercial launch of the system.
I've just finished work.
I'm broken, my body aches, my feet are throbbing.
All I want to do is sleep ........
....... however, when I get the notification pop up, I *force* myself to watch your video's as I know I'll enjoy not only the content but the tremendous effort you put in to production & fact finding.
The pleasure is all mine Mr RMC.
Great to see you here as always. I won't be offended if you fall asleep watching 😂
I made it !
I love how the acronym ARM has an acronym in it.
Not many notice that.
Would love to see desktop RISC computing come back into fashion outside of dev boards like the Raspberry Pi
Looking closer at the BSoD you got I think you need a storage driver floppy to boot into NT. What you did get was a missing hard drive. In NT you need to press F1 or F3 during initial boot and supply a driver disk for storage. Then it should boot just fine. I did it a lot when devices like HPT370 IDE raid appeared or much earlier when NT 3.1 didn’t support Matsushita proprietary CD-ROM interface. In that case OS started from 3 disks and then driver floppy to access CD drive.
In high school they had a bunch of these babies in the technical drawing/graphics classroom. That was my first introduction to CAD, they weren't new machines by any stretch of imagination, but we're still far ahead of anything else in terms of both ease of use and features when compared to other platforms at the time and even years later. Cheers from down Under.
Very interesting. There's something very cool about having two CPU architectures running simultaneously in the same box on the same screen.
There were many examples of this in the past way back to people adding Z80 cpus to their minicomputers for compatibility and possibly CP/M use. Macs and Amigas had a host of accelerator cards that had PCs built in as well. A lot of these were usually interfaced through an expansion slot so there were of course some downsides. Having foreign CPUs that can plug right into the mainboard in a CPU slot is pretty interesting though yeah. I don't know who else really did that, but I'm sure there are some examples.
Its pretty normal for PCs to have additional processors with different architectures running at the same time. Your Networks card or Soundcard maybe has an ARM CPU installed to offload funktions/ prevent buffer underruns. Or PowerPC CPUs on RAID Controllers and so on.
It went as far as Windows 98, which can be useful sometimes, and it does no harm to have it in one's RISC PC.
@@zosxavius partly right, but none worked simultaneously, which should be emphasized. There was a 486 DOS card for 68k Apple Mac Quadra, only on CPU at a time, PPC card upgrades, and before that, 6502 Apple II cards for Macs. There was even a Symbolics LISP processors in MacIvory cards for a 68k Quadra. Also no simultaneous CPUs in the Amigas' cards and not in the DEC Rainbow: which was an early micro with Z80 for CP/M and 8088 for DOS (not compatible with IBM's DOS). As far as I know, all micros could have only one type of CPU at work at a time.there were some interesting arangemens with video GPUs, even PCs which had two of the same chips, where one was the CPU, and one did video memory only.
@@squirlmy
There was a Z80 processor for the BBC which was effectively a second headless computer - it communicated with the BBC which handled the screen, keyboard and other IO (and any other 6502 program the user wanted to run and had memory for) whilst the Z80 just ran the CP/M app[lication]
That modular design for both the internals and case is just amazing! Never knew anything about this system, thanks for yet again a very nice video.
I really dig that "slice" design... There's no doubt in my mind that the "Amiga Walker" design, which surfaced out a couple years later was based on this same concept. Remove the top part, stack in expansions, put the top part back on.
Thanks for bringing back happy memories of long ago!
A small point of information: Acorn specified that their operating system should be pronounced 'risk oh-ess' - I winced every time I heard 'risk oss'. But then Acorn were pretty OCD about stuff like that, even specifying a *half space* between 'Risc' and 'PC'.
That expandable slice design is brilliant - so you can have a thin box for a basic PC, and expand it for more power! Why has no other manufacturer embraced this, it's such a good idea!
I remember a few of these at school, even then they were on their way out and demoted to a few technological studies labs if I remember right. Not sure anyone really predicted that a couple of decades later everyone would have an ARM CPU in their pocket.
Thanks for the video, had no idea the case was such a great design.
eggypickle Precisely my experience of them circa 1999/2000! Relegated to the design and tech labs, IT lessons were performed on Windows 95 PCs.
great video chap. I own an A3010 and am familar with the older machines but things get fuzzy with the RiscPC in terms of timeline, OS and Compatibility. you explained it perfectly like always. well done
Modern Vintage Gamer So... RiscOS on OG Xbox coming next?
The slice concept is brilliant.
I have a four-slice RISC PC on my desk, plus some Wintel stuff. The RISC PC can still run rings round them.
I really like learning about old computers that I've never heard about, especially British computers. The only British computers I've heard a lot about prior to this one are the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro.
What an absolute thing of beauty. Like an art house computer.
Me watching this with M1 ARM CPU.
Technology has seen a great leap.
You know your weekend is going to be awesome when you start your Friday with an RMC episode on the highly anticipated RiscPC.
You mention "Chocks Away" and I am suddenly swept back in time to gunning down world war one planes at school's lunchtime computer club! Great game.
It's quite fascinating that the risc pc can actually function also as an ibm pc! Perhaps someone will make a special pci express adaptor to fit a raspberry pi in a pc?
You just took me back to school that was great 👍 I did my GCSE’s in the summer of 95’ all the school pc’s were acorn.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane :-)
That Acorn logo brings nostalgia, we had Risc PC with a colour monitor in my school. (I was 7 at the time)
ARM will make a come back for desktops.. Thanks to the Raspberry Pi Org bringing arm back to the diy masses and eventually the future.
I absolutely love my Pi zero.
Yeah but now it's owned by Nvidia...
Do you work at Apple?
I love that this system uses eurocard connectors for the expansion cards. That's the ultimate hobbyist expandability for that era.
What a really cool computer. Its always fascinating to see the alternatives that were available in other countries. Thank you for the effort you put into this video and sharing it with all of us.
Such an alien yet so pleasant hardware along with pleasant presentation! 20 minutes went so fast and I am a bit sad there is no more.. Juts love your work, keep it up!
Great video!! 💪🙂👍 I used to own a BBC Micro B and Archimedes 3010. Both are fantastic machines. I spend many hours playing and programming on both of the machines.
I like the slice thing.
That is a pretty powerful machine for the time. Also, allowing dedicated VRAM was a nice touch.
I love that GUI, with the subtle marble patterns.
This PC was the stock computer in my Australian high school as well.
Very informative video. Looking forward to seeing more on this machine.
Love the channel! Thank you for producing this great content!
This popped into my feed, watched it, loved it! The way you have everything working - you're the real MVP :)
And then I see you commented on my A4000 video! Perfect circle!
Circle jerk over XD
Excellent presentation of this machine. Loved the video.
This "Slice" thing is GENIUS!
This dug up very old memories! we had them in my juniour school in the 90s
7:22 Proper knolling! Adam Savage would be proud :) Awesome little machine, thanks for sharing!
Knolling. Good word thank you!
My school had one these in early 90s along with some of the older Archimedes and BBC Micros, lovely machines. Today, I get my retro Acorn RISC fix using some wonderful emulation software running on Windows and by simulating it using the MiSTer core which feels very much like the real hardware as I remember it
The multi-CPU idea is really neat, especially considering that those CPUs can be of different architectures. That way, you can run both x86 and ARM software natively without any emulation at all.
Something no consumer PC today can replicate.
Thanks for the great video! As an American, I never got to see any of the Acorn machines though I was always curious about them. They sure seem like great machines!
That's a whole lot of genius right there, my mind blown by the fact you could plug in a 486 to this risc machine. It's awesomely modular.
My jaw is dropping lower and lower as I watch the video...
So many more questions after watching this. I bet it can run A3010 compatible games with a compatible guest CPU :) I do wonder how RAM is assigned to/ divided between the cpus. And if the video buffer is just a passthrough of the mounted cpus cards? And what about adding slices, are these just empty shells to mount drives in?
Slices are just empty shells to add devices as well as more podules. To add more podules you would also need to upgrade the 2x podule riser card. I have seen 4x risers on ebay. This would handle a 2 slice machine. Podules you can get include SCSI and IDE controllers (the built in IDE controller is really slow), video capture cards, MIDI cards. These machines tended to be used a lot by the BBC and if you remember the kids saturday morning TV shows that had phone in games, well they were running on one of these. Along with all the CGI used in the National Lottery at the time.
Yes, Microsoft destroyed so many beautiful companies and competitors.
What a great system! I had no idea they were so versatile! 😀 now I want one to mess around with... That pi thing looked pretty cool. If you get it working you should make another video.
Brilliant Neil really enjoyed this video thanks for sharing
very nice video, incredible machine, wasn't aware of the existence of RiscPC, thank you very much
gonna make a correction to my previous comment: i just bought myself a brand spanking new (well, refurbished) riscpc just because of this video.
in other news: you've also got a new patron.
eftalan26 well that has made my day thank you! And welcome to the club 🖒☺
I had an opportunity to move to a RICpc back in the day, but I switched to an Apple Macintosh. I've been Mac ever since, but I definately emulate RISCos for nostalgia.
lovely modularity and multi arch!
A very impressive machine and case. The Texas Instruments 486 SXL-40 I believe is a Cyrix designed CPU. It was a popular upgrade for 386 users in the 1990's.
That is a pretty cool system, never had my hands on one of them. Will be interesting to see more of it in the future. :)
That is so interesting with how you can have different CPU architectures
Wasn't the only one, the Amiga had the same feature. The only (and big) advantage of the Acorn is that you can use them simultaniously. On the Amiga you can only run 1 architecture at a time. If you use the PC and want to switch back to 68000 Amiga, you have to reset the machine.
Most current Intel Macs have two different CPU
Thanks for the tour of this classic. Watched the first 5 minutes then subscribed.
Thanks Scott it's great to have you here!
Great architecture indeed, and nice video (as usual standard of yours)! Cheers, M
Cheers Mark! 1st April tomorrow...standards may slip for the day ☺
My school in Australia had the bbc micro as well, was one of the first computers I used.
My dad still has a BBC Model A+, A5000 and his RiscPC, originally a 610 upgraded with a StrongARM card and PC card. He also had an original Archimedes A310 but can't remember what happened to that. I had a SA RPC at uni but sold it at some point :) I did like that the BBC BASIC module sat in the cache of a SA so it ran nearly as fast as it did compiled.
Wow, what a great little machine!
Friend of mine at University had a RISC PC and I remember being obscenely jealous of it. As you saw the PC card wasn't particularly powerful but it was a real PC. For a few years, Acorn machines easily beat their PC counterparts in terms of speed and functionality and I'm grateful I got to live through it. Nowadays I run RISC OS on one of my Raspberry Pis and I don't think I've had any compatibility issues with my favourite games of that era.
As an 80s/90/s schoolchild the Archimedes line holds a special place in my heart (as does the BBc micro) ...love the UI of those machines ..could you cover the Archimedes computers sometime?
I'd love to. I'm keeping my eye out for quite a few Acorns as I'd like to cover the Acorn story as a whole some time as well as individual machines and game reviews. I think the first emulator I ever saw was a ZX Spectrum on an Archi and it left quite an impression
Thank you Sir!!!
i absolutely love the look of the case. very nice and i wish that modern machines could have a case like that as im a sucker for semicircles.
What an amazing machine! I had never hear of it until now. And darn those SX processors not having a co-processor, i've seen my share of "No co-processor installed" prompts. The good old days. Great seeing Dune 2 again!
Another fascinating video, thanks.
I thought Acorn was over when the other 8-bit models edged it out of the competition but when my friends played on my Electron they were strangely jealous of on account of some of the graphics and whatnot as they were used to ghetto graphics from the Spectrum but the budget specs hindered it but I still played with it until the early 90's.
I remember seeing the newer Acorn machines and RISC stuck with me all thru the years and I kept reading all the info and maybe Acorn eventually did win in the end and all because of the ARM CPU's in nearly every device in needs of some power these days.
No, Acorn left the 8-bit market behind when the 16-bit market was starting up but couldn't find a processor that they liked. The eventual idea was that Acorn decided to design their own processor based on 32-bit architecture and using the RISC design architecture. The first chip was used in a BBC Micro Second Processor system to design the eventual processor that would power their first ARM systems, the Archimedes range.
The rest is much as RMC tells it except the story of how Acorn was broken up. The Phoebe/Risc PC 2 was about a week away from being released when the people funding the company at that point led by Stan Boland decided that the Phoebe wasn't up to the task and cancelled it, shutting the workstation division down in the process. It became somewhat obvious in the days that passed that these vultures were only after what they could get out of ARM, splitting up the rest and selling it on, hence all the references to Pace everywhere on the RISC OS system where once Acorn would have been.
One of Acorns' dealers, Castle, took on the manufacturing of the Risc PC for a few years after that alongside a tarted up version of the A7000 known as the A7000+ and a number of peripheral cards until they finished their own project, the Iyonix. But that's another story!
Great video, the RiscPC is something I rarely hear about, as it's often overshadowed by its earlier Acorn siblings.
On the topic of secondary CPUs in a machine, back when the market was full of different architectures, those were common among many different machines to offer cross compatibility. As early as Z80 boards for PETs and Apple II's to run CP/M, Apple II cards with x86 CPUs to offer IBM XT compatibility, to Macintoshes having Apple IIe boards with complete Apple IIe's on a chip for backwards compatibility and of course x86 PC cards like for this RiscPC, x86 PC addon cards were also available on the Amiga with a big variety to choose from, some even offering 16-bit PC/AT compatible ISA slots to use PC hardware and still were a thing in the early 2000's for things like Sun SPARC workstations to offer x86 compatibility by just popping in a PCI card. Amigas even had PowerPC accelerators that made it possible to use the native 68k CPU and the PowerPC CPU at the same time, unlike the Macintosh on which you could only pick to use one at a time.
British computer manufacturers sometimes go above and beyond and don't make computers, but works of art that act like computers. I'll bet that the ability to use multiple CPUs and even get expansions for the chassis made this _the_ computer to use for servers, government applications, etc. I am just drooling (figuratively) over that computer even though I don't know what I'd do with it.
The slice design is ingenious
Doesn't look like much from the outside, but this has to be one of the coolest computers ever produced.
Actually, that modular case looks very nice. I have a four-slicer on my desk (and some Wintel stuff, and the RISC PC still runs rings round Wintel in many ways).
That's a really clever case design.
We had a bunch of these at school. The reset button on the back was a big flaw as there was nothing we liked to do more in a computer class than press it when the person opposite you was working.
Aaaah, the memories! What a cool machine it was!
I remember my secondary school having a couple RiscPCs, we weren't allowed to use them on account of them not being ancient and broken down enough for us to suffer with, like all the other acorns around the LRC in the school..........
That cpu guest slot is awesome. I hope modern pc have something like that to use in VMs
I've just been given a RISC PC which has two slices and loads of hardware installed. There's am IDE and SCSI podules, the three RAM slots are all populated but no idea how much, Strong ARM CPU card and IBM CPU card and more.
Looking forward to playing with this!
I tried to use one of these things to simulate an antenna using NEC2 back in the 90's. It took over a week to run. The same thing took about 5 hours on an original Pentium computer. That's the difference a built-in maths co-processor makes.
The presentation is your videos is just fantastic
Thank you 🖒
"... a split cache!" - oh no!
I may not understand everything you talk about but your videos are so entertaining i love watching them 😊
A cache is a small short term memory of the CPU. A split cache just means that the cache is divided between instructions and data. This wasn't the case with earlier CPUs, but has been common for many years now.
Wow - so modular and service friendly
"RISC architecture is gonna change everything"
Beautiful machine!
Great video as always.
Amazingly good quality. I am so happy each time I see another video come up. A real reminder of Blighty for me as I’m over in Free China 🇹🇼. Love Acorn products, without them there would be no Acorn Research Machines chips (ARM), made by TSMC in Taiwan 🇹🇼.
when we had these in school , i never new the front flipped down to retrieval a CD-ROM and Floppy lol , as i remember they wasn't fast computers even by 90's standards .. However saying that now my tech knowledge has vastly improved i can appreciate the Acorn PC for what it is ....and that's a clean design and quite innovative, thence they commanding good money on eBay
I had both an electron and a bbc master...did not realise that by this later stage acorn were clearly shipping machines with excellent build quality that were also incredibly modular...this also seems like it was just too advanced for its time...quite impressive.
That castle card ! Nice video thanks !
Real Nice machine and video. Thanks
Nice video! Love the bgm.
There are 32 species of oaks across eastern North America, but squirrels only eat and hoard certain types of ACORNS. Squirrels eat 85 percent of white oak ACORNS shortly after discovery and store about 60 percent of the ACORNS of red oaks.
Red oak ACORNS contain larger amounts of tannins than the white oak ACORNS. Tannin is a bitter-tasting chemical that works to protect the ACORN from insects and other animals. So rather than eat the red oak ACORNS, they store them.
Animal Facts How do they they enjoy the test of PCBs?
What does that have to do with Acorn computers
Matthew L'Herault It's a running thing between Mr. Mancave and myself.
if they dont eat the red ones. . .why do they store them?
dipac alypse They eat them... They just store better than the others.
Ahh I love my Risc PC. It has an ARM 600 processor currently but I intend to upgrade that to either a 700 or strongarm. I have also picked up a few other bits including a 586 processor and a 16 bit sound upgrade module. I have to check if I actually need this module after you mentioned the revision 3 board wont need it. I also have an Electron and an Acorn A3020, the educational version of the 3010.
I typically run Risc OS 5 on my raspberry Pi's too. BBC Basic is still there and has some very good access to the Pi's GPIO pins!
Great to hear that! If you check the sound options in Choices mine has a "16Bit Audio" check box so that may be the indication you need
RISC has risen again.
From memory, you could switch the strongarm cache off, by pressing f12, then typing *configure cache off. That may do what you need.
Well done on the video... I subbed! 👌
What an interesting piece of equipment