The Risc PC is
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 UK, including the Acorn Electron and the Acorn Archimedes. Acorn's ...
's
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 Archi ...
/
Acorn RISC Machine computer, launched on 15 April 1994,
which superseded the
Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes is a family of personal computers designed by Acorn Computers of Cambridge, England. The systems are based on Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and the proprietary operating systems Arthur and RISC OS. The first mode ...
.
The Acorn PC card and software allows
PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
software to be run.
Like the Archimedes, the Risc PC continues the practice of having the RISC OS
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
in a
ROM
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
module. Risc PC augments the ROM-based core OS with a disk-based directory structure containing configuration information, and some applications which had previously been kept in ROM. At the 1996
BETT Educational Computing & Technology Awards, the machine was awarded Gold in the hardware category.
Technical specifications
Use
![Omnibus RiscPC](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Omnibus_RiscPC.jpg)
The Risc PC was used by music composers and scorewriters to run the
Sibelius
Jean Sibelius ( ; ; born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius; 8 December 186520 September 1957) was a Finnish composer of the late Romantic and early-modern periods. He is widely regarded as his country's greatest composer, and his music is often ...
scorewriting software.
Between 1994 and 2008, the Risc PC and
A7000+ were used in television for broadcast automation, programmed by the UK company OmniBus Systems: once considered "the world leader in television station automation" and at one point automating "every national news programme on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom".
The Risc PC, in the form of the OmniBus Workstation, and a customised version of the A7000+ built into a 19-inch rack mount unit, known as the OmniBus Interface Unit, were used to control/automate multiple television broadcast devices from other manufacturers in a way that was unusual at the time. In 2002, OmniBus products were "in constant use worldwide at nearly 100 broadcasters" including the BBC and ITN.
Timeline
* 1994 – Risc PC 600 launched, featuring a 30 MHz ARM610 CPU.
* 1995 – 40 MHz ARM710 CPU upgrade and Risc PC 700 model launched.
* 1996 – 200 MHz StrongARM CPU upgrade released, offering a five-fold increase in raw processing power compared to the ARM7 used in the previous high-end machines.
* 1997 – Acorn launch Acorn J233 StrongARM Risc PC, featuring an uprated 233 MHz model of StrongARM and including Browser and Java software.
* 1998 –
Castle Technology acquire the rights to continue to market and produce the Risc PC during the breakup of Acorn Computers.
* 2000 – In May, Castle Technology reveal the Kinetic Risc PC range which included a faster processor card with onboard memory.
* 2001 – Viewfinder Podule, AGP adapter allows the use of IBM PC clone AGP graphics cards (e.g. a range of ATI Rage and Radeon).
* 2003 – Castle Technology announce the end of production and sale of the Risc PC.
[
]
Risc PC 2
Acorn set about designing the Risc PC 2, later renamed to Phoebe 2100 a design with a 64 MHz front-side bus, PCI slots, and a yellow NLX form-factor case. Slated for release in late 1998, the project was abandoned just before completion, when Acorn's Workstation Division was closed. Only two prototypes were ever built, and one was publicly displayed for historical interest at the RISC OS 2001 show in Berkshire, England. The remaining cases were bought by CTA Direct who sold them off to the public.
After Acorn
In 2003 it was confirmed that no more Risc PCs would be produced.[ However RISC OS computers based on other ARM processors machines have been manufactured by companies since this date.
* Castle Technology – Iyonix PC based on the ]Intel XScale
XScale is a microarchitecture for central processing units initially designed by Intel implementing the ARM architecture (version 5) instruction set. XScale comprises several distinct families: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE (see more below), with some ...
ARM processor and PCI bus
A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...
* Advantage Six
Advantage may refer to:
* Advantage (debate), an argument structure in competitive debate
* Mechanical advantage, in engineering, the ratio of output force to input force on a system
* Advantage of terrain, in military use, a superiority in elev ...
– A9home
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 version of RISC OS. When the Iyoni ...
based on the 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 ...
S3C2440 ARM processor
* RiscStation – R7500 R75 may refer to:
* R75 (South Africa), a road
* R-75 (''Stargate''), a fictional alien race in ''Stargate''
* BMW R75
: ''For the 1970s 750 cc motorcycles see BMW R75/5, BMW R75/6, or BMW R75/7''
The BMW R75 is a World War II-era motorcyc ...
based on the ARM7500-FE processor
Significantly better performance has been reached on the aged Risc PC design by using the newer 203 (and later 236) MHz StrongARM CPU, using third-party video card
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 mo ...
s, overclocking
In computing, overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock rate of a computer to exceed that certified by the manufacturer. Commonly, operating voltage is also increased to maintain a component's operational stability at accelerated sp ...
, and having specially-designed CPU cards with RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
located upon them to sidestep the speed bottleneck of the slow system bus.
Limitations
The 16 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 ...
is usually recognised as being the most significant fault of the computer; and the arrival of the (five times faster) StrongARM
The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM architecture, ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in ...
processor in 1996 meant that the Risc PC had a CPU significantly faster than the computer had been designed for. Acorn had originally expected ARM CPUs to progress from the 30 MHz ARM6 to the 40 MHz ARM7, and then onto the ARM8 cores, which at the time were clocked at around 50–80 MHz. In 2000, Castle released "Kinetic", a new StrongARM processor board with its own onboard memory slots augmenting main memory, reducing the need to negotiate the slow front-side bus for memory accesses.
The podule bus on the Risc PC can achieve a maximum data throughput of approximately 6100 KByte/s. It is 32-bit and Risc PC predecessors have a 16-bit bus. For comparison, the PCI bus
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
* Prov ...
, which was available in systems at the time of the Risc PC's introduction, is over 20 times faster. The transfer of 650 MB would take 2 minutes via podule, compared to 5 seconds via PCI.
See also
* Acorn A7000
The A7000 and A7000+ were Acorn Computers' entry level computers based somewhat on the Risc PC architecture.
Launched in 1995, the A7000 was considered a successor to the A5000, fitting into Acorn's range between the A4000 and Risc PC600, featur ...
References
External links
Acorn's 10-slice ''Rocket Ship'' Risc PC, including pizza oven and kitchen sink
Castle reveal Kinetic Risc PC to the press
{{DEFAULTSORT:Risc Pc
Acorn Computers
RISC OS
ARM-based home computers
Personal computers
Computers designed in the United Kingdom