The Acorn Network Computer was a

network computer The Network Computer (or NC) was a diskless desktop computer device made by Oracle Corporation from about 1996 to 2000. The devices were designed and manufactured by an alliance, which included Sun Microsystems, IBM, and others. The devices w ...

(a type of

thin client In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as ''network computers'', or in th ...

) designed and manufactured by

Acorn Computers Ltd The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'' and ''Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne i ...

. It was the implementation of the

Network Computer Reference Profile Network Computer Reference Profile (NC reference profile, NCRP) was a specification for a network computer put forward by Oracle Corporation, endorsed by Sun Microsystems, IBM, Apple Computer, and Netscape, and finalized in 1996. NC1 The first v ...

that

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

commissioned Acorn to specify for network computers (for more detail on the history, see Acorn's Network Computer).

Sophie Wilson Sophie Mary Wilson (born Roger Wilson; June 1957) is an English computer scientist, who helped design the BBC Micro and ARM architecture. Wilson first designed a microcomputer during a break from studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. She su ...

of Acorn led the effort. It was launched in August 1996. The

NCOS A non-commissioned officer (NCO) is a military officer who has not pursued a commission. Non-commissioned officers usually earn their position of authority by promotion through the enlisted ranks. (Non-officers, which includes most or all enli ...

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 in ...

used in this first implementation was based on

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 ...

and ran on

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between the ...

hardware. Manufacturing obligations were achieved through a contract with

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...

subsidiary D2D. In 1997, Acorn offered its designs at no cost to licensees of .

Hardware models

Original model

The NetStation was available in two versions, one with a

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

for home use via a

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

, and a version with an

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

card for use in businesses and schools with

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the PC industry within three years. The term can no ...

monitors and an on-site

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

fileserver based on RiscBSD, an early ARM port of

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

. Both versions were upgradable, as the modem and Ethernet cards were replaceable "podules" (Acorn-format Eurocards). The home version was trialled in 1997/98 in conjunction with BT. The and both used the and supported

PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...

NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...

and

SVGA Super VGA (SVGA) is a broad term that covers a wide range of computer display standards that extended IBM's VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the I ...

displays. They had identical specifications. The used a

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 ...

SA-110 200 MHz processor. The ARM7500-based DeskLite was launched in 1998.

StrongARM

Acorn continued to produce ARM-based designs, demonstrating its first

prototype in May 1996, and the 6 months later. This evolved into the CoNCord, launched in late 1997.

New markets

Further designs included the Set-top Box NC (), the , and the .

Later versions

The second generation Network Computer operating system was no longer based on RISC OS, and instead consisted of

1.2.1 code. Later NCs were produced based on the

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 ...

Pentium Pentium is a brand used for a series of x86 architecture-compatible microprocessors produced by Intel. The original Pentium processor from which the brand took its name was first released on March 22, 1993. After that, the Pentium II and Pe ...

architecture.

Usage

The NetStation was planned to ship with a

smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

to enable

internet banking Online banking, also known as internet banking, web banking or home banking, is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a bank or other financial institution to conduct a range of financial transactions through the financial inst ...

References

External links

The Full Acorn Machine List: NC
{{Acorn computers

Network Computer The Network Computer (or NC) was a diskless desktop computer device made by Oracle Corporation from about 1996 to 2000. The devices were designed and manufactured by an alliance, which included Sun Microsystems, IBM, and others. The devices w ...

Network computer (brand)