Epic master trolling

So you’re a company making a computer. You have no sensible answers. The journalist covering the “story” mentions this. You decide to reply by saying the journo just made up some rubbish. Said journo was from The Register.
Funniest thing I’ve read in ages, and a great example of “know your product”, “don’t promote what doesn’t exist”, and “don’t blame your incompetence on a reporter”.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/21/atari_interview_in_full/

ROFL

I see from the comments that we are “the rich kids”
I just considered myself careful about what I spent on.

Truly gob-smacking how much money some people throw at vapourware.

I see from the comments that we are “the rich kids”

Well, Beebs were very much more expensive than the other offerings. But then we had a computer with a rich selection of I/O ports, with a proper OS full of vectors and service calls, and such ridiculous expandability that nothing really broke a sweat plugging in a foreign co-processor not to mention local area networking when most people had no idea such things existed.
,
The less expensive alternative offered a bit of firmware that was just about capable of loading software off of tapes, and hardware so dodgy that you tried to hold your breath and not move the entire time.

Truly gob-smacking how much money some people throw at vapourware.

I think it’s more endemic of the amount of bull that people think is real these days. I could point out a certain political landscape as a great example, but even that is trumped by the sheer numbers of people who seem to prefer to believe in a “flat earth” over the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I guess this is what one should expect from an educational system that gives mythology equal status to science…

I was surprised that – the Arc and the follow ups – never fitted a User port as standard.

Some close up pics of the new motherboards would be nice – to see what ports they have available – and where they are placed.

That’s an interesting observation. I wonder if the lack of ports for experimenters was an intentional move towards creating a more business-like machine. I suppose the argument against including them as standard would have been that you could buy a podule with them on if you really needed them.

I second what David said – the Beeb style I/O was available on the biggest podule I’ve ever seen, so those who wanted it could get it. Plus, it helped to keep the profile of the machine cleaner (read: cheaper) as there wasn’t going to be space for all that on the back panel “normally” and unlike the Beeb there was no front side interfacing hiding under the keyboard.

Remember also, that this was the same company that created a “cut down” Archimedes costing around £800ish and then didn’t bother to spend that extra fiver to give it a working serial port…

I know of at least one – who would have liked to do the add-on’s to the User Port shown in the ‘Acorn’ mags.

(without the added expense of a backplane /UserPort podule)

I think it should have been included – it was something that the ’PC’s’ of the day didn’t have.

In the end – it was a case of peeking and poking the Parallel port.

[edit 1]
With ref to the ‘RiscPC’ to save money what about using a Plug in Video card with 4Mb of memory!

[edit 2]
Something someone said about the ‘Arc’ – not being able to get info from ‘Acorn’ about where the Serial port was in memory.

ie to make use of ‘Radio Ham’ extension cards made for ’PC’s’.

not being able to get info from ‘Acorn’ about where the Serial port was in memory.

PRM book 1, around page 150. The chapter called Hardware addresses ?

what about using a Plug in Video card with 4Mb of memory!

One of my criticisms of Phoebe – baked in video controller with baked in memory. Riiiight.

Just fired up !Librarian – ro3-manual – near 1-143

Hmm – have some ro2 paper manual’s around somewhere – don’t know if that info was in them :-)

!Librarian is pretty quick – !PDF seems quite slow – and doen’t go direct to the pages you want :-(

Is there any relationship between the page number at the bottom of the page – and the goto page?

[edit 1]
As a note – came across ‘Run the Risc’ pages – seems Mike Cook – made a ‘User Port’ for single direction Printer port machines.

I was surprised that – the Arc and the follow ups – never fitted a User port as standard.

They didn’t have a 1MHz bus, Tube, Cartridge slots or tape motor relay either.

In many ways the BBC Master was the greatest computer ever made and it’s all been downhill from there.

MODE2:?&360=255:VDU19;0;0;

They didn’t have a 1MHz bus,

Replaced by the podule interface.

Tube,

Replaced by the podule interface (somewhere in the pile of junk on the other desk is a 386SX podule). They got better by the time the RiscPC came around, though that was really only some Aleph1 epicness sticking a 486 on the ARM bus… Never did see a Z80 co pro for the RiscPC… ;-)

Cartridge slots

Arguably out of fashion in the world of floppy discs. The entire “ROM” industry barely made it beyond the 6502 machines.
I remember there was a ROM podule. What was that for, !65Host?

or tape motor relay either.

Nor cassette interface. Obsolete technology. I, for one, would not have wanted to load Impression or Ovation from a tape…

In many ways the BBC Master was the greatest computer ever made

That may well be so.
<nostalgic sigh>

though that was really only some Aleph1 epicness sticking a 486 on the ARM bus…

and a 586 later, but the bus was designed for two processors and not two identical ones IIRC.

Simtec made the Hydra, which you could populate with another four identical processors.