Acorn archimedes

The first models, the 300 series and 400 series, were released in June 1987. Both series came with the Arthur operating system, the BBC BASIC programming language, and the BBC Micro machine emulator. All models had 8-bit stereo sound and could display 256 colors on the screen. The first models, A305, A310, A410 and A440, differed in memory size. These models were followed by a number of others, with minor changes and improvements. The 540 model appeared in September 1990 and had an accelerated SCSI .

Work has begun on the operating system to replace Arthur. It was originally called Arthur 2, but was later renamed to RISC OS 2.00. New computers were already supplied with this system, for previous models with the Arthur OS, the possibility of a paid upgrade to RISC OS appeared, which was carried out by replacing the ROM chip. In May 1989, the new Acorn A3000 was launched to replace the 300 Series (the 400 series was still in production).

The A3000 used an 8 MHz ARM2 processor and had 1 MB of RAM. This model was delivered in the form of a monoblock, the system unit was integrated with the keyboard. This approach allowed saving space on the desktop, but there was a problem with the Acorn monitor, now it was impossible to connect to the new model without a special adapter: the new model had only one internal expansion slot, which was different from the previous model, although it was very similar electrically.

In 1991, the A5000 was launched, with the new ARM3 at 25 MHz, 2 or 4 MB of RAM and a 40 or 80 MB hard disk, in a more convenient horizontal case with a height of 2 U (430 x 340 x 100 mm). The graphics have been improved, the screen resolution has increased to 800x600. This was the first model in the Archimedes series in which High Density became the standard floppy drive. The drive supported reading a variety of formats, including DOS and Atari drives. In subsequent releases of the A5000 model, the processor frequency increased to 33 MHz, memory up to 8 MB, a 120 MB hard disk was installed. The A5000 was running RISC OS 3.

• Bbc
• Micro
• Acorn A7000