The A9home was a niche small-form-factor desktop computer running RISC OS Adjust32. It was officially unveiled at the 2005 Wakefield Show, and is the second commercial ARM-based RISC OS computer to run a

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

version of RISC OS. When the

Iyonix PC The Iyonix PC was an Acorn-clone personal computer sold by Castle Technology and Iyonix Ltd between 2002 and 2008. According to news site ''Slashdot'', it was the first personal computer to use Intel's XScale processor. It ran . History ...

was withdrawn from sale, the A9home remained the only hardware to be manufactured specifically for the marketplace.

Details

The A9home was smaller than the

Mac Mini Mac Mini (stylized as Mac mini) is a small form factor (desktop and motherboard), small form factor desktop computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. , it is positioned between the consumer all-in-one iMac (Intel-based), iMac and the profes ...

and housed in cobalt-blue aluminium casing, measuring × × in size. The machine runs on a

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

ARM9 processor, has 128 MB

SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random-access memory (synchronous dynamic RAM or SDRAM) is any DRAM where the operation of its external pin interface is coordinated by an externally supplied clock signal. DRAM integrated circuits (ICs) produced from the ...

of main memory and VRAM and houses an internal

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

of . On the front, it features two ports, a

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...

and a

headphones Headphones are a pair of small loudspeaker drivers worn on or around the head over a user's ears. They are electroacoustic transducers, which convert an electrical signal to a corresponding sound. Headphones let a single user listen to an au ...

socket. On the rear, it has two ports, two

PS/2 The Personal System/2 or PS/2 is IBM's second generation of personal computers. Released in 1987, it officially replaced the IBM PC, XT, AT, and PC Convertible in IBM's lineup. Many of the PS/2's innovations, such as the 16550 UART (serial po ...

ports, 10/100 BaseT network port, a

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such a ...

serial port and a power connection socket. Like the Mac mini, it is powered by an external

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(, ). Furthermore, it has a power/reset switch, a status/health indicator and a drive activity indicator LED. The A9home is not designed to be internally expanded. The A9home could use a program called

Aemulor In computing, Aemulor is an emulator of the earlier addressing-mode ARM microprocessors. It runs on ARM processors under addressing-mode versions of . It was written by Adrian Lees and released in 2003. An enhanced version is available under the ...

to emulate older

26-bit In computer architecture, 26-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 26 bits wide, and thus can represent unsigned values up to 67,108,863. Two examples of computer processors that featured 26-bit memory addressing ...

applications. This was originally developed for Castle's Iyonix PC. In April 2006, Advantage Six Ltd announced that they were focussing on connectivity in the run-up to that year's Wakefield Show. At the show, they demonstrated integrated

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

. Although the A9home was officially released for purchase by

end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrat ...

s, its custom version of remained unfinished. ,

RISCOS Ltd RISCOS Ltd. (also referred to as ROL) was a limited company engaged in computer software and IT consulting. It licensed the rights to continue the development of and to distribute it for desktop machines (as an upgrade or for new machines) from ...

closed after failing to release any information in 2012 about when or if the OS will become

feature complete A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

History

In 2004, RISCOS Ltd privately began work on a version of RISC OS that supported 32-bit addressing modes found on later ARM architectures, RISC OS Adjust (Adjust 32), which is compatible with current ARM processors and designed for both embedded and desktop forms. The first, and so far only, machine to make use of the 32-bit version of the OS is the Advantage6 A9home. It was released in May 2006 after a 12-month Beta testing process, although the current build of Adjust 32, namely RISC OS 4.42, is a prerelease and no final version of the OS has yet been released. It was intended to be the first in a series of machines, with others running

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

. Both 26- and 32-bit builds of new RISC OS 4 releases can now be compiled from the same

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

, but will have to be modified to run on each individual machine supported, as the OS has no HAL at present. Instead it has a hardware-abstracted kernel, which allows specific code to be substituted for each platform supported.

Other configurations

The A9home was the retail version of the A9, for OEM customers was the A9 also available in a half-width single

rack unit A rack unit (abbreviated U or RU) is a unit of measure defined as . It is most frequently used as a measurement of the overall height of 19-inch and 23-inch rack frames, as well as the height of equipment that mounts in these frames, whereby th ...

(1U) rack mountable ruggedised case, "A9RM" and as a wall/bulkhead-mountable unit with integral TFT touchscreen, GPS and GSM/GPRS, "A9Loc". These were marketed from about 2004 through 2009.

References

External links

About The A9home

Advantage six reveal A9Home to the press

News article on the A9home

A9home specification brochure
{{RISC OS RISC OS ARM-based home computers