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Acorn Electron
The Acorn Electron (nicknamed the Elk inside Acorn and beyond) was a lower-cost alternative to the BBC Micro educational/ home computer, also developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, to provide many of the features of that more expensive machine at a price more competitive with that of the ZX Spectrum. It had 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM included BBC BASIC II together with the operating system. Announced in 1982 for a possible release the same year, it was eventually introduced on 25 August 1983 priced at £199. The Electron was able to save and load programs onto audio cassette via a supplied cable that connected it to any standard tape recorder that had the correct sockets. It was capable of bitmapped graphics, and could use either a television set, a colour ( RGB) monitor or a monochrome monitor as its display. Several expansions were made available to provide many of the capabilities omitted from the BBC Micro. Acorn introduced a general-purpose expansion unit, the Plus 1, of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
8-bit Computing
In computer architecture, 8-bit integers or other data units are those that are 8 bits wide (1 octet). Also, 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on registers or data buses of that size. Memory addresses (and thus address buses) for 8-bit CPUs are generally larger than 8-bit, usually 16-bit. 8-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 8-bit microprocessors. The term '8-bit' is also applied to the character sets that could be used on computers with 8-bit bytes, the best known being various forms of extended ASCII, including the ISO/IEC 8859 series of national character sets especially Latin 1 for English and Western European languages. The IBM System/360 introduced byte-addressable memory with 8-bit bytes, as opposed to bit-addressable or decimal digit-addressable or word-addressable memory, although its general-purpose registers were 32 bits wide, and addresses were contained in the lower 24 bits o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acorn User
''Acorn User'' magazine was founded by Acorn Computers in 1982, contract-published by Addison-Wesley, to coincide with the launch of the BBC Micro. It covered the range of Acorn home computers, the BBC Micro and Atom at first and later the Electron, Archimedes and Risc PC. History The first issue was dated July/August 1982. From the April 1984 issue, the magazine came under the control of Redwood Publishing, a company recently founded by Michael Potter (a former publisher at Haymarket Publishing), Christopher Ward (a former editor of the '' Daily Express'' and a non-executive director of Acorn) and Chris Curry (one of the founders of Acorn). In 1989, the name changed to ''BBC Acorn User'', reflecting the fact that the commercial arm of the BBC, BBC Enterprises, took control of Redwood to expand its publishing activities. The magazine lost the BBC branding when it was sold to Europress, publisher of rival title '' Acorn Computing'', coinciding with its January 1994 issue. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uncommitted Logic Array
A gate array is an approach to the design and manufacture of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) using a prefabricated chip with components that are later interconnected into logic devices (e.g. NAND gates, flip-flops, etc.) according to a custom order by adding metal interconnect layers in the factory. It was popular during upheaval in semiconductor industry in 80s and its usage declined by end of 90s. Similar technologies have also been employed to design and manufacture analog, analog-digital, and structured arrays, but, in general, these are not called gate arrays. Gate arrays have also been known as ''uncommitted logic arrays'' (''ULAs''), which also offered linear circuit functions, and ''semi-custom chips''. History Development Gate arrays had several concurrent development paths. Ferranti in the UK pioneered commercializing bipolar ULA technology, offering circuits of "100 to 10,000 gates and above" by 1983. The company's early lead in semi-custom chips ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Curry
Christopher Curry (born 28 January 1946 in Cambridge) is the co-founder of Acorn Computers, with Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper. He became a millionaire as a result of Acorn's success. In his early career days, he worked at Pye, Royal Radar Establishment and W.R. Grace Laboratories. Then, in April 1966 he joined Sinclair Radionics where he worked for 13 years. He was involved with their hifi products and their Sinclair C5 electric vehicle. In 1972, he helped Sinclair Radionics to launch its first electronic calculator, the Sinclair Executive. He set up Cambridge Processor Unit Ltd. (CPU) in December 1978. Their first product was the Acorn Microcomputer (later called the System 1). In 1983, he co-founded Redwood Publishing with Michael Potter and Christopher Ward and they bought the ''Acorn User'' title. In 1985, he founded General Information Systems Ltd (GIS) and remains the director. In 2012, he announced his latest project for GIS, Care with Canary. Early li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Hauser
Hermann Maria Hauser, KBE, FRS, FREng, FInstP, CPhys (born 1948) is an Austrian-born entrepreneur, venture capitalist and inventor who is primarily associated with the Cambridge technology community in England. Education and early life When Hauser was 16 he went to the United Kingdom to learn English at a language school in Cambridge. After a master's degree in Physics from Vienna University, he returned to King's College, Cambridge to do a PhD in Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. Career Hauser is probably best known for his part in setting up Acorn Computers with Chris Curry in 1978. When Olivetti took control of Acorn in 1985 he became vice-president for research at Olivetti, in charge of laboratories in the US and Europe. In 1986, Hauser co-founded the Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL) in Cambridge with Andy Hopper, who became the laboratory's director. Hauser's role in Acorn was portrayed by Edward Baker-Duly in the BBC drama '' Micro Men''. In 1988, Hauser le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hard Reset Acorn Electron
Hard may refer to: * Hardness, resistance of physical materials to deformation or fracture * Hard water, water with high mineral content Arts and entertainment * ''Hard'' (TV series), a French TV series * Hard (band), a Hungarian hard rock supergroup * Hard (music festival), in the U.S. * ''Hard'' (EP), Goodbye Mr Mackenzie, 1993 * ''Hard'' (Brainpower album), 2008 * ''Hard'' (Gang of Four album), 1983 * ''Hard'' (Jagged Edge album), 2003 * "Hard" (song), a 2009 song by Rihanna * "Hard", a song by Royce da 5'9" from the 2016 album ''Layers'' * "Hard", a song by Why Don't We from the 2018 album ''8 Letters'' * ''Hard'', a 2017 EP from the band The Neighbourhood *"Hard", a song by Sophie from the 2015 compilation album ''Product'' Places * Hard, Austria * Hard (Zürich), Switzerland Other uses * Hard (surname) * Nickname of Masaki Sumitani ( HardGay / HardoGay ) * Hard (nautical), a beach or slope convenient for hauling out vessels * Hard (video game player), Anthony Barkho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many List of islands of the United Kingdom, smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monochrome Monitor
A monochrome monitor is a type of computer monitor in which computer text and images are displayed in varying tones of only one color, as opposed to a color monitor that can display text and images in multiple colors. They were very common in the early days of computing, from the 1960s through the 1980s, before color monitors became widely commercially available. They are still widely used in applications such as computerized cash register systems, owing to the age of many registers. Green screen was the common name for a monochrome monitor using a green "P1" phosphor screen; the term is often misused to refer to any block mode display terminal, regardless of color, e.g., IBM 3279, 3290. Abundant in the early-to-mid-1980s, they succeeded Teletype terminals and preceded color CRTs and later LCDs as the predominant visual output device for computers. CRT Design The most common technology for monochrome monitors was the CRT, although, e.g., plasma displays, were also used. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tape Recorder
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present-day form, it records a fluctuating signal by moving the tape across a tape head that polarizes the magnetic domains in the tape in proportion to the audio signal. Tape-recording devices include the reel-to-reel tape deck and the cassette deck, which uses a cassette for storage. The use of magnetic tape for sound recording originated around 1930 in Germany as paper tape with oxide lacquered to it. Prior to the development of magnetic tape, magnetic wire recorders had successfully demonstrated the concept of magnetic recording, but they never offered audio quality comparable to the other recording and broadcast standards of the time. This German invention was the start of a long string of innovations that have led to present-day magneti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compact Audio Cassette
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips in 1963, Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (''Musicassette''), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed - for example the Microcassette - the generic term ''cassette tape'' is normally always used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. Its uses have ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers; the Compact Cassette technology was originally designed for dictation machines, but improvements in fidelity led to it supplanting the stereo 8-track cartridge an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC BASIC
BBC BASIC is a version of the BASIC programming language released in 1981 as the native programming language for the BBC Micro home/personal computer, providing a standardized language for a UK computer literacy project of the BBC. It was written mainly by Sophie Wilson. BBC BASIC, based on the older Atom BASIC for the Acorn Atom, extended contemporary microcomputer BASICs with named DEF PROC/DEF FN procedures and functions, REPEAT UNTIL loops, and IF THEN ELSE structures inspired by COMAL. The interpreter also included statements for controlling the BBC Micro's four-channel sound output and its low-/high-resolution eight-mode graphics display. Due to a number of optimizations, BBC BASIC ran programs much faster than Microsoft BASIC running on similar machines. The optimizations included using multiple linked lists for variable lookup rather than a single long list, pre-defining the location of integer variables, and having separate integer maths routines. Speed was furthe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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