The Phoebe 2100 (or ) was to be

Acorn Computers Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the United Kingdom, UK, including the Acorn Electron and the Acorn Archi ...

' successor to the

RiscPC The Risc PC is Acorn Computers's RISC OS/ Acorn RISC Machine computer, launched on 15 April 1994, which superseded the Acorn Archimedes. The Acorn PC card and software allows PC compatible software to be run. Like the Archimedes, the Risc PC co ...

, slated for release in late 1998. However, in September 1998, Acorn cancelled the project as part of a restructuring of the company.

Specification

:233

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

StrongARM The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in 1997 from DEC's o ...

SA110 Revision S CPU. Support for multiple CPUs on daughter cards available, but multiple CPU support was not available in

RISC OS RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archim ...

:64 MHz

front-side bus A front-side bus (FSB) is a computer communication interface (bus) that was often used in Intel-chip-based computers during the 1990s and 2000s. The EV6 bus served the same function for competing AMD CPUs. Both typically carry data between the ...

:up to 512 MiB of

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 ...

:IOMD2 I/O Controller ::

PLX Technology PLX Technology was a manufacturer of integrated circuits focused on PCI Express and ethernet technologies. On August 12, 2014, Broadcom Inc. (formerly Avago Technologies), acquired the company. History The company was founded in 1986 by Mike S ...

PCI bridge PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Pro ...

PCI9080 :::4 PCI slots (33MHz) ::PC Style Joystick/Game Port ::3 Acorn Podule expansion sockets ::SMC37672 SuperIO chip supporting: :::PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse :::Two

EIDE Parallel ATA (PATA), originally , also known as IDE, is a standard interface designed for IBM PC-compatible computers. It was first developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 for compatible hard drives and CD or DVD drives. The connection ...

channels supporting up to four devices (6.4 GB unit supplied) :::Two

serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...

s :::Parallel Port :::Single Floppy drive :VIDC20 Revision R

video controller A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...

supporting: ::4 MiB of EDO

VRAM Video random access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. This is often different technology than other computer memory, to facilitate b ...

running at 200 MHz : NLX form factor Tower case with a custom yellow front panel (by the designers of

Iomega Iomega (later LenovoEMC) produced external, portable, and networked data storage products. Established in the 1980s in Roy, Utah, United States, Iomega sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks, including the Zip drive floppy d ...

zip drive The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 ...

) : Slot loading

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

drive :5.25"

drive bay A drive bay is a standard-sized area for adding hardware to a computer. Most drive bays are fixed to the inside of a case, but some can be removed. Over the years since the introduction of the IBM PC, it and its compatibles have had many form f ...

s :230 W

PSU PSU may refer to: Organizations Military *Police Support Unit, a paramilitary wing of the Zimbabwe Republic Police *Port Security Unit, a U.S. Coast Guard expeditionary force protection unit Political parties * Parti Socialiste Unifié (disambig ...

unit. Processors running at 300 MHz were being sampled by Acorn in September 1998, with 360 MHz versions also expected.

Development

In November 1996, the design of what was to become Phoebe 2100 was started. The design took into account a number of perceived weaknesses of the

design, a slow memory architecture, limited I/O capability, limited expansion, and not adhering to industry standards. To overcome these weakness a number of design objectives were created: harness the full potential of the

CPU, support multiple processors, add support for PCI expansion, offer the best possible graphics, run existing RISC OS applications, and provide enhanced RISC OS functionality. An additional design objective of reusing the same case as the

was dropped due to power supply requirements and electrical interference problems. To provide for these new capabilities Acorn had to design two new support chips for the system; * VIDC20R, a new revision of the VIDC20 video chip used in the

. Using a shrink of the process to 0.6 μm, a 100% performance increase was gained. Due to this being logically the same chip as the previous generation there would be no issues with software compatibility. * IOMD2, the new IO chip had to support multiple processors, included message passing and multiple bus mastering, and was manufactured using a 0.35 μm process. Throughout development and prototyping the IOMD2 were developed on a large

FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...

. During 1997 and 1998, Acorn regularly took prototype and mock-up hardware to various Acorn computer shows, including Acorn World October 1997,Dave Walker - Acorn Developer News 12/11/97
Acorn World Aftermath, Clan Beta CDs, Phoebe, Tons of Other Stuff Wakefield Acorn Spring Show May 1998 and the Acorn Southeast Show June 1998. By May 1998, Acorn started to offer their 'Registered Developer' scheme members the chance to pre-order a pre-launch prototype for testing and development, these were offered at a £950 (excl.

VAT A value-added tax (VAT), known in some countries as a goods and services tax (GST), is a type of tax that is assessed incrementally. It is levied on the price of a product or service at each stage of production, distribution, or sale to the en ...

) a significant discount on the public price of £1500 (ex VAT) revealed in June. On 15 September 1998, the first Phoebe 2100 motherboards with silicon (rather than FPGA) based IOMD2 chips were powered up. They successfully ran at the full

speed of 64 MHz, and the improved performance of the video chip was also seen; however, various bugs in the sound DMA were reported and general system instability was noted. As such, no shippable prototypes were yet available to send to the 'Registered Developers'. Two days later, on 17 September 1998, the development of Phoebe 2100 was cancelled. Development was expected to cost £2.1 million.

Operating system

During the years following the release of the

, Acorn had discussed using an alternative to

as their next operating system, using

TAOS Taos or TAOS may refer to: Places * Taos, Missouri, a city in Cole County, Missouri, United States * Taos County, New Mexico, United States ** Taos, New Mexico, a city, the county seat of Taos County, New Mexico *** Taos art colony, an art colo ...

or writing their own

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

-based operating system

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

. However, for the launch of Phoebe 2100 an enhanced version of

would be developed, called RISC OS 4 (codenamed 'Ursula'). RISC OS wouldn't support the multiple processor daughter cards that had been included in the Phoebe 2100 hardware specification. RISC OS 4 had to support the new hardware of Phoebe 2100 which wasn't present in Acorn's earlier machines; * PCI expansion slots * Support for multiple serial ports * The PC style

game port The game port is a device port that was found on IBM PC compatible and other computer systems throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It was the traditional connector for joystick input, and occasionally MIDI devices, until made obsolete by USB in the ...

, supporting joystick and MIDI In addition several new features were to be added to the core of RISC OS; * A better file system, increasing the number of items in directory from 77 to approx 88,000 and increasing the max length of a filename from 10 characters to 255 * A plugin based system configuration utility. * A new screensaver API * An enhanced window manager * An updated interactive help application * A redesigned set of icons To prepare developers for the changes to the OS, Acorn released to its 'Registered Developer' program RISC OS 3.80, designed to load on Acorn's previous generation

and A7000 computers. This would enable developers to test that their software would be compatible with Phoebe 2100, provided it didn't require any of the new hardware features. RISC OS 3.80 was limited, it only ran on ARM6 and ARM7 RiscPCs and not

( ARMv4) based ones. Testing of hardware compatibility would have to wait until an initial run of 100 or so pre-production machines was made available to Registered Developers.

Code names

The Phoebe 2100 project used a series of names inspired by characters from the TV series '

Friends ''Friends'' is an American television sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa ...

' as

code names A code name, call sign or cryptonym is a code word or name used, sometimes clandestinely, to refer to another name, word, project, or person. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage. They may also be used in industrial c ...

for the components. * Phoebe – the machine itself, name carried over to launch title Phoebe 2100 * Ursula – the operating system, RISC OS 4, that it was to run *

Chandler Chandler or The Chandler may refer to: * Chandler (occupation), originally head of the medieval household office responsible for candles, now a person who makes or sells candles * Ship chandler, a dealer in supplies or equipment for ships Arts ...

– the IOMD2 chip *

Rachel Rachel () was a Biblical figure, the favorite of Jacob's two wives, and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. Rachel's father was Laban. Her older sister was Leah, Jacob's first wife. Her aun ...

– processor card * Monica – PCI bridge

Cancellation

On 17 September 1998, Acorn finished a review of its business and decided to close the 'Workstation Division', the department developing Phoebe 2100, and all work stopped. Acorn Computers' CEO

Stan Boland Stan Boland is a British entrepreneur in the information technology sector. Biography Boland studied physics at the University of Cambridge. He cited Hermann Hauser, Andy Hopper, and Robin Saxby as influences on his career.

Aftermath

In the aftermath of the cancellation of Phoebe 2100 and Acorn Computers' change in direction from general computing to set-top box development and DSP silicon designElement 14 - Acorn and Element 14 - Questions and Answers.
/ref> there were several attempts to resurrect some or all of the Phoebe 2100 hardware or RISC OS 4 development. Of these, the only successful group was the Steering Group who, after initially being interested in releasing the Phoebe 2100, realised it would be financially prohibitive and set about creating a new company

RISCOS Ltd RISCOS Ltd. (also referred to as ROL) was a Private company limited by guarantee, 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 ...

. In March 1999, RISCOS Ltd negotiated a licence with Element 14, the recently renamed Acorn Computers, and set about finishing the development of RISC OS 4. In July 1999 RISCOS Ltd launched RISC OS 4 to the public. It supported Acorn's

and A7000/+ machines. In addition, after the cancellation, excess stock of the Phoebe 2100 yellow NLX case was sold by CTA Direct, sometimes including an NLX-compatible PC. The only known working Phoebe 2100 is held in the collection of

The Centre for Computing History The Centre for Computing History is a museum in Cambridge, England, established to create a permanent public exhibition telling the story of the Information Age. Overview The museum acts as a repository for vintage computers and related artefac ...

in Cambridge, England.

References

{{Acorn computers Acorn Computers RISC OS ARM-based home computers