Need 50 slick-looking sheets of letterhead [OT]

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The RPC is nothing like 20 years old. Mid '90s.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Wot I said about the reliability of *some* PCs. They're regarded as disposable items.

[August West]

Well, I had one, and it sat on my desktop.

I shall ask one of the ex-directors of Whitechapel - they all work with me these days - when the get in.

[John Cartmell]

It doesn't help when you confuse the names of things. Acorn's 32-bit RISC computers (desktop for school/home/business) included: Archimedes (various models) A3000, A4000, A5000, A3010, A3020, A4 A7000 A7000+ RiscPC (various models)

The operating system is RISC OS (note the space) and the company that develops the OS is RISCOS Ltd.

If you wish to be pedantic you may put a half-space in the name 'Risc PC' and a full space is allowable.

'RISC PC' does not make sense in the circumstances and is too close to an accepted abbreviation of the RiscPC (RPC) not to be confused with it.

You are also best advised not to refer to the term 'desktop' iro of RISC OS computers (or quibble with those who use the term) unless you are quite certain that you know what you are talking about (!). NB You don't.

And if you bring the discussion post Acorn (the company) you need to be aware that Acorn (the product name) lasted longer than the company and that the latter was broken up into a number of larger companies (this is big finance and pensions that we're talking about so it doesn't need to make sense) some of which are world leaders in their fields.

And post-Acorn (the company) the R7500 is the name of a range of products (the company is RiscStation) and the A9 is the name of a range of computers of which only one (the A9home) is designed for home users even though that is correctly referred to as just the A9 (except where that might cause confusion).

So you have no excuse for getting the details wrong in future. If in doubt do ask; I'll be very willing to correct your mistakes, Steve.

[Steve Firth]

No dumbass, did they ever pay IBM the money they owed them for patent infringement?

Again, actionable libel from you. You really are an unpleasant little individual.

I didn't say I was using a home computer. Are your reading skills that far behind those of the average 12 year old? The issue of home computing is a compelte red herring in the development of RISC computing.

Oh look, actionable libel again. IBM's interest in RISC stemmed from IBMs research into RISC, Acorn's interest in RISC stemmed from IBM's development of RISC, spot the difference?

So your actual knowledge of chip design is what exactly? Since the ARM isn't a real RISC design, Acorn can hardly have developed the first RISC desktop computer, can they?

[John Cartmell]

It's not included in my 'under 12,000GBP' list* so that does tend to rule it out for a mid-80s home machine.

*List published just prior to the Archimedes and showing about 250 different computers on sale in the UK from the Sinclair ZX81 at 40 GBP through the BBC B at 399 GBP and the IBM PCXT at 4,258 GBP to Spectrum (no *not* that Spectrum) at 11,442 GBP.

[August West]

Don't the Berkeley RISC processor (where the RISC name comes from), and the Stanford MIPS processor come into it at all? IBM, and the 801, was the oldest project, but it remained non-public for the longest. After all, the first published RISC microchip paper[0] was Hennessy's, in 1981, wasn't it?

[John Cartmell]

I've always thought that there must be a PhD available for someone to research the reason behind such nasty comments...

Perhaps I could put my criticism in a different way? Why, if you have read the article, is your criticism of it centred on something that isn't mentioned in the article?

[Steve Firth]

I may be getting weak in the braincells, but I thought IBM had published some speculation on RISC in the late 1970s. I can recall RISC being discussed at Manchester around 1978-80 but discussions tended to centre around the CDCs that were in heavy use at M/Cr at the time. Dave probably knows more about this than me, I was mostly medical, having to attend comp.sci lectures as part of my MSc. Dave was more computery stuff than I ever was. Certainly I personally didn't hear of RISC from Acorn first, it was IBM trying to sell the company I was working on RT/PC as a server solution which we declined because it was slower than the AS/400 we had at the time.

Not that it matters much to the issue of Acorn and RISC anyway. IBM called patent infringement on Acorn, and certainly had the track record to back up the claim.

[August West]

Speculation, perhaps, but not papers about real projects; I'm pretty sure that Hennessy's was the first paper on a working, fabricated, all-on-one die, RISC processor. Even the 801 was made from discrete components, unlike the MIPS and the RISC.

Yes, they were still talking about that in the mid 80s, when I was in the CS department. When they weren't banging on about MU5...

He may once have, but can he remember it now?

Nor me.

Wat was the infringement?

[Steve Firth]

IIRC it was a fairly broad one I *think* it was the combination of opcode and constant in one word that IBM were arguing was patented. I've done a quick Google but I can't find any reference to it. It would have been mentioned in either New Scientist or PCW, which was about my only reading matter at the time, and would have been no later than 1992, because by then I'd gone past caring.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Don't be silly. The BBC project started many off that otherwise wouldn't have bothered. Most others at the time were more toys.

[August West]

Started off many what?

[Amanda Angelika]

No I wouldn't be adverse to sending you a copy. I just hunted it out and although the set-up program is 63.4 MBs when decompressed and combined. The original distro came as a multi-part archive of 14 files totalling 62.3MBs most of which apart from the final file are all 4.76MB so I could certainly send each file as an attachment through my Gmail account which allows attachments up to 10MB.

So no problems sending each file as a separate email. So I'll do that if you want. Is your email address OK?

[John Cartmell]

That would be far too broad and would have covered a great deal else from earlier designs.

Whatever it was IBM obviously didn't succeed - and they would certainly like to have a current interest in Acorn/Advanced RISC Machines today! ;-)

[me]

In message , Amanda Angelika writes

I gave up on Word with Star Office 5.0 You can do quite complex things, I don't know how easy it is compared to Quark/In Design but lots of options are there and its rather more competitively priced.

OpenOffice can output to a PDF, although I use Jaws PDF as this seems to have a wider range of options available.

[Alex Buell]

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:38:46 GMT "Amanda Angelika" waved a wand and this message magically appeared:

Yes, there's no trouble with my e-mail address; fire 'em off, please! Much appreciated.

[Alex Buell]

On 27 Apr 2006 10:01:56 +0100 August West waved a wand and this message magically appeared:

It's probably all the dust in it. I tried using a vacuum hoover's nozzle to extract the dust, but got a bit worried about the possibility of static electrickery frying the laptop motherboard.

[Bob Eager]

Nope.

The first models of the RT PC were announced on January 21, 1986 in Announcement Letter 186-006 -- this included the 6150-020, -025 and

-A25, plus the 6151-010. General availability was scheduled for either March 1986 or September 1986, depending on model.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Adults. As a hobby.