Apple unveiled M1 PRO and M1 MAX and just made PCs architecture retro'?

Acorn had been badly stung by its failed attempt to market the BBC Micro in the US, and it wasn’t going to try again. In terms of big “what if?” questions, what if Hermann Hauser hadn’t rebuffed Bill Gates’s attempts to sell DOS as an operating system for the BBC? If Microsoft was selling stuff to Acorn (as opposed to them being an outright competitor) might history have placed out differently? (Of course, in that scenario, RISC OS would probably never had existed.)

Knowing that every computer geek of the late 1980s and late 1990s that were at the local area Amiga, Atari, Apple II, and Macintosh user clubs and were aware of the Archimedes and later RiscPC wanted one, I think Acorn could have done well in marketing the platform more over here.

Every computer geek in Germany also had heard of the Archimedes and later the Risc PC, too. You still find those people today in the Retro scene, fondly remembering Zarch and the legendary speed of the RISC (without having ever seen one). And Acorn had a good presence in Germany (most of the time), had the OS translated and the manuals too.

However, as it turned out, enthusiasts dreaming of advanced computers without enough money to buy them don’t help making money.

Starting perhaps in 1995, Acorns were so vastly underpowered and overpriced compared to the PC competition, all those Atari ST and Amiga users had no interest in pouring even more cash into yet another niche machine/OS. If Acorn would have been able to sell the first Archimedes models for the price of an Amiga 500 or Atari ST 1040, it might have been different. But I don’t think this was a possible scenario in any way.

@ DavidS

Over here the ARM based systems were the ticket into RISC Computing in a very powerful way. The abilities of the Acorn ARM machines were known and wanted after, those lucky enough to get to the stores when the few Acorn systems per year came in grabbed them up.

Just an historical reference here, nothing more:

In April 1989 Intel introduced the 486DX (the first of the DX series). It was capable of reaching 20 MIPS.
In the same year Acorn introduced the model A3000 which was capable of 4.82 MIPS.

That year is when things started to change for Acorn, just 1 year and 10 months after launching the very first Archimedes (June 1987). It took a little more to become apparent, but April 1989 was the “technological beginning of the end”.

On top of that, there was already an on-going weird “political” re-asset, with Olivetti being purchased by AT&T which forced them to focus only on PCs. It’s well known that the Acorn BBC Master Compact was commercialised by Olivetti as PC 128S, (please note the PC in the name…) and, for the record, even the Thomson MO6 was commercialised with the brand PC 128 and via a subsidiary company called Olivetti Prodest. Probably in a desperate attempt to sell the unsold stock from both Acorn and Thomson without AT&T noticing what was really going on.

I don’t think that, in such a landscape, Acorn would have had enough time/resources to launch the Archimedes all over EU and also face the North American market. less than 2 years from the launch of the first model in the UK, for a company the size of Acorn, were simply not enough to deal with the EU market and prepare for the NA market and also release new CPU and Computer models that were competitive enough.

Stuart and others here can probably tell more about the continuous rush that the RISC OS team had to release things.

Oh, and during these ~2 years, Intel also released the 386 which wasn’t yet competitive with an Archimedes (especially in terms of perf/usd), but that surely shortened the original gap that was the incredible performance of an Archie compared to all the available 8086, 80186 and 80286.

And, as the final hit, the beginning of PC production in countries where labour work was way cheaper than in the US/EU.

So, IMHO, Acorn, most likely, did well to avoid trying to pursue also the North American market and focused on what they could actually deliver.

Only my 0.5c

but April 1989 was the “technological beginning of the end”.

Oh, god, the early ‘90s were insane. Processors and machines were damn near obsolete by the time they came to market, thats how fast the processors were changing.
The only thing that helped keep some sort of control was that these cutting edge machines were shockingly expensive. Sure, a 486DX would crunch numbers faster than a RISC OS machine, but they cost as much as a car (and about twice what an Archimedes cost). The A3000 compared price wise to a rather more modest 386 box. But it was much less interesting as Windows wasn’t yet a thing that anybody took seriously. It wasn’t until ’92 when Windows 3.1 arrived that everything changed and PCs were where it was at.

I think one of the main things that helped propel the PC was the idea of longevity. Not that your box wouldn’t age, but the concept of the PC was “a box built to a spec that could run this software”. It was a vast change from before when a computer manufacturer created their own machines and the firmware/OS that ran on them. I think it’s pretty much only Apple that follow this pattern these days, but then they’re a special case.

I think one of the main things that helped propel the PC was the idea of longevity. Not that your box wouldn’t age, but the concept of the PC was “a box built to a spec that could run this software”. It was a vast change from before when a computer manufacturer created their own machines and the firmware/OS that ran on them. I think it’s pretty much only Apple that follow this pattern these days, but then they’re a special case.

Absolutely agree with this, it was the “true value” of PCs back then, and, as I mentioned many times, even if MS-DOS release X couldn’t run a program, put MS-DOS release Y in the floppy and boot from there.

Nothing we used to use had that advantage, AmigaOS was vastly in ROM, Atari TOS the same, RISC OS too, old micros too.

It wasn’t until ’92 when Windows 3.1 arrived that everything changed and PCs were where it was at.

I agree on this too, with Windows 3.1 it was truly the end for other platforms, most Amiga models still on sales were slower and had less graphic power than a VGA card and less audio features than a Sounblaster. The RiscPC had the infamous bandwidth limitation that couldn’t compete even with the cheapest PCI bus. Atari Falcon (which I own) was just a bit faster than an Amiga 1200, but no way near the gaming capabilities PCs have gained at that point.

[deleted for the sake of decorum, but done with this…]

You complete […]

Hey, all, let’s calm that down a bit. Some of what David’s saying seems on the mark to me, some is an opinion and there’s no harm in expressing that and, yeah, there may be some historical facts we might disagree with but there’s NEVER EVER any need to resort to what look like personal attacks.

It’s possible that the post was intended in a kind of “joking around at the pub, tongue in cheek” tone of voice, but the problem with plain text forums is that this gets lost, and the result can seem pretty harsh.

Please refrain from attacking people personally, no matter how much you might not agree with what they’re saying. We’ve never had to worry about moderation or “toxic” discourse too much on these forums in the past because members of the RISC OS community here, both regulars or new, have been enthusiastic and positive contributors that try to support each other even in disagreement. I’d hate to see that change.

Thanks.

Now, I’m sure that things are better these days

I wouldn’t be so sure. I tried Ubuntu on a relatively modern PC, and choosing Shut Down would make it reboot. I tried Elementary on another PC and crashed it within five minutes (by having the gall to try opening YouTube).

I wouldn’t be so sure. I tried Ubuntu on a relatively modern PC, and choosing Shut Down would make it reboot. I tried Elementary on another PC and crashed it within five minutes (by having the gall to try opening YouTube).

Very true, the Linux Desktop is still not a “stable thing”, I would add also that there are laptops that spit it out during installation and/or first boot.

To enjoy Linux as a desktop one really has to buy hardware that officially supports it, like System/76, Slimbook etc. and also (possibly) stick to the recommended distro. Without some experience it can be painful.

I am a Linux fan and it saddens me to have to admit it, but the Linux Desktop is not there yet, at least not as a general user needs it to be :(

To enjoy Linux as a desktop one really has to buy hardware that officially supports it, like System/76, Slimbook etc.

Even that can be difficult. Elementary had some good reviews so I wondered whether it was an issue with hardware compatibility. I did a search for a hardware compatibility list which yielded a Stack Overflow post saying that there’s no Elementary HCL, but that since it’s based on Arch Linux you can use Arch’s HCL instead. This was followed by a comment from someone else saying that it’s Debian, not Arch.

Meanwhile the official website says practically nothing. I have a suspicion that the built-in Intel GPU may have been a better choice than the NVidia card (the problem was a blank screen when trying to play a video), but there’s no documentation explaining this so it’s just a hunch.

It seems that Qualcomm are producing a rival chip. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/qualcomm-ceo-we-can-beat-apple-because-we-poached-talent-from-them/ Unlike Apple (who wherever possible insist on everything being a package deal) it will likely be separately available, making a general purpose high performance ARM PC a real possibility. It’s possible that Microsoft and Google will do likewise, but as with Apple, the chips will likely be tied to their respective companies.

It looks like Acorn’s descendents are winning on the hardware front. Now to do the same for the software…

@ Andrew Hodgkinson

but there’s NEVER EVER any need to resort to what look like personal attacks.

Thanks a lot for stating this, very much appreciate someone else standing for it. thx

@ Charlotte

It seems that Qualcomm are producing a rival chip. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/07/qualcomm-ceo-we-can-beat-apple-because-we-poached-talent-from-them/

Yup and the comments made from Broadcom CEO are very interesting actually:

“Qualcomm will attempt to design its own system-on-a-chip (SoC) for laptops without working with ARM”

What is going to happen on the Qualcomm side, now that they have Nuvia, is going to be extremely interesting. The issue has (MAYBE) been started from the NVidia acquisition of ARM? Something that is making ARM less appealing for Qualcomm and others by the day.

NVidia is doing all they can to reassure ARM Partners, but the reality is NVidia needs a CPU to continue their dominance on the market, because Unified Memory is now their worst enemy. Someone may argue that NVidia is so powerful that unified memory would not touch them, but we have just seen how AMD has crippled Intel in the last 3 years.

AMD have their own GPUs and they are getting better and better.

Intel is doing a lot of investment on GPU developments. They also introduced BIG.little cores, does that rings a bell? Of course Intel is going after Apple’s architecture, we will have Intel based laptop that, indeed, will work similarly to M1 laptops, but will Nvidia have a place there?

So, I am really looking forward to how the “new order” will take place. I am pretty sure ARM will survive it, they are masters of “high tech survival” techniques, and I am pretty sure that all that noise about AI/ML is part of the grand ARM survival scheme and get loads of money for things like TinyML and edge AI.

And then there is that “little thing” called RISC-V, will it emerge? Is Qualcomm going to use that or stick to ARM ISA for their next wonder-cpu for the laptop market?

We’ll see, but indeed it feels again exciting as it was back in the 90s XD

If you know of a single geek/hobbyist computer user that used windows before 2000 I would be surprised.

Erm…all of those I know?

When PCs became generic products from your friendly box shifter next door, they sold in vast numbers. The buyers came from all over the place – hobbyists, nerds, geeks, gamers, humble users. My mother had her first PC in 1992, a 386DX40 with Windows 3.0, and it outperformed my A3000 in nearly every aspect with the exception of Windows 3.0 being a horrible UI, despite being a lot cheaper. Starting in 1994, when 486DX2/66 and RAM became cheap enough, the geeks and hobbyists usually used OS/2 Warp, which was technically so far ahead of RISC OS that it became difficult for me to make a case for the Risc PC as the A3000 replacement. Without the promise of the cheap-and-powerful-enough PC card, I would have bought a PC instead.

A game playing friend of mine bought his first PC in 1993, upgrading from his C64 after many years of service. Instead of the more natural Amiga upgrade, it was clear that the PC was the way to go, unifying both the gaming aspect as well as running the software needed for University. My mother’s PC was used for Modula 2 programming because no RISC OS compiler was available.

The true computer nerds I met at University starting from 1992 were all either already using PCs (some of them running already the very early Linux versions), or on the way to the PC no matter if they had an Atari ST or an Amiga before. The PCs were cheaper and more powerful and had an interesting choice of OSes – Windows 3.1 for the “common software”, Linux or BSD for the geeks and nerds, OS/2 for the professionals, DOS+DesqView for the BBS operators that could not afford hardware powerful enough for OS/2. There was only one exception – he had a rather expensive NeXT to develop some very specific software. And me with my A3000 :-)

When modems became a thing at the beginning of the 90s, it became clear that whatever new trend in computing would develop, you’d need a PC to be amongst the first. No matter if Fidonet or Z-Netz or MausNet or Usenet, dial-in BBSes or a bit later the Internet in pre-WWW times, the PC guys always had the cool software. I even wrote my own Terminal emulation for RISC OS because the commercial software, despite severely under-featured compared to Telix or Telemate or Terminate or ZOC, was just too expensive. When LANs became a thing, the same story again – cheap hardware for the PCs, free software along with it, and both expensive hardware and expensive software in RISC OS world. Even ISDN dial-up was vastly more expensive for RISC OS users.

A lot of the guys I know from the US tell me the same story, so I really don’t know in which part of the US you were at that time to get those very special impressions.

@ Steffen Huber

ditto. I share pretty much the same experience you had. My OS of choice on my PC was OS/2 and then got replaced by Linux.

I used Windows only for “commissioned works” an Italian-ism for “creating software on demand” (usually directly on customers computers and using compiler suites provided by them). This until Win 2000, with Win 2000 I started to have a dedicated Windows machine, it was stable enough for me and OS/2 was fading away at that point.

Linux was for my own desire to learn more about operating systems design and coding, there was pretty much no one in my area requesting works on Linux until ~2000/2002, but the only commissions I received on Linux back then were like Internet Caffe wanting to use Linux to reduce their licensing costs and avoid kids messing around with their systems or Companies wanting to run Linux as an email server or DNS server, to reduce licensing costs.

Hey, all, let’s calm that down a bit. Some of what David’s saying seems on the mark to me, some is an opinion and there’s no harm in expressing that and, yeah, there may be some historical facts we might disagree with but there’s NEVER EVER any need to resort to what look like personal attacks.

I can agree with the last clause (there’s NEVER EVER any need to resort to what look like personal attacks) but I have to stick my oar in on the general situation.

DavidS is a problem for this forum. Good contributors (I don’t know whether I’m one or not, but I’m very sure about some others) are leaving because of his alleged contributions. If you want to take that as an attack, so be it.

That’s all I have to say on the subject. Goodbye.

DavidS is a problem for this forum. Good contributors (I don’t know whether I’m one or not, but I’m very sure about some others) are leaving because of his alleged contributions. If you want to take that as an attack, so be it.

All I saw was a personal (now redacted, thankfully) attack on the Aldershot forum which is specifically for off topic ramblings. There is no “on topic” here. Don’t read anything in here if you don’t want that kind of discourse.

That’s all I have to say on the subject. Goodbye.

That’s a shame, because without specific examples it’s difficult to take action.

Speaking personally:

We’re supposed to be grown-ups. Ganging up on someone and attacking them because you don’t like their posts isn’t cool. RISC OS has a lot of people of mostly older age, with varying communication skills, often a bit stuck in their ways! I’m only 46 myself and am rather painfully aware of how much less mentally flexible I seem to be than I once ways. Curmudgeon behaviour comes with the territory – from everyone. Look within, as well as without, for that. The world doesn’t revolve around any one of us, and nobody has to agree with our opinions.

ROOL does not actively moderate this forum because it doesn’t have the manpower, nor a desire to act as karma police. ROOL does however respond to e-mails, as those of you who have, from time to time, contacted ROOL about forum issues will be aware.

Ganging up on someone and attacking them because you don’t like their posts isn’t cool.

I have long, long ago come to the conclusion that not reading something you don’t like, generically speaking, is quite easy.

I came across Mills & Boon paperbacks quite early in my life (I’d pretty much read anything including sauce bottle labels¹) and simply not reading more of them gave more time to read what I did like.

¹ Books were not allowed at the table.

the Aldershot forum which is specifically for off topic ramblings. There is no “on topic” here. Don’t read anything in here if you don’t want that kind of discourse.

Unfortunately, because the forum software isn’t fit for purpose, that’s not really true.

Aldershot posts still appear in Recent Posts, and – as someone who has read the forum for a decade by scanning back through that page to see what’s new – having the relevant stuff lost amongst often two or three pages of one single person’s private blog posts has been becoming a massive problem in terms of finding any motivation to bother keeping up with the non-Aldershot stuff.

The lack of an ability to “block” posters, which is another huge deficiency in the forum software, didn’t help either. I’m aware that there’s a work-around with Sargasso, but as I usually read the forum on either a Linux desktop or an Android phone (often whilst sat on a bus), that’s not much help.

I suspect that, if the forum software actually worked properly, this wouldn’t have blown up in the way that it did. People who didn’t like the forum being used as a private blog would have had the blogger on their block list, wouldn’t have been reading Aldershot, and would have been blissfully unaware of what was going on. Neither was an option, unfortunately.

That said, I’m still not sure that Aldershot is a great idea anyway. Put yourself in the position of a potential newcomer¹, without the in-crowd familiarity. The forum is full of highly polarised, politicised posts about Brexit, Trump and masking up for Covid-19, which interleave the RISC OS-related posts in the Recent Posts list. Do you find it welcoming to ask your question about the OS, or do you run away very quickly? Again, if the Aldershot posts didn’t show up in Recent Posts… but there’s no sign that this is ever going to be fixed, despite requests in the past, so we are where we are.

¹ Humour me, OK? I’m sure we’d like some newcomers.

Unfortunately, because the forum software isn’t fit for purpose, that’s not really true.

Please see https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/2/topics/16871.

That said, I’m still not sure that Aldershot is a great idea anyway.

Please see https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/2/topics/16872.

Thanks for your excellent input Andrew, agree with it all but with one issue:

If you have specific examples of posts where a forum member has been acting in a way you think is unpleasant, unwarranted or generally objectionable, you all know how to contact ROOL

That’s not possible in DavidS’s case because there is nothing unpleasant with any individual posting, it is the sheer number of them, and that many of them are basically the same comments over and over again in multiple threads, often replying to himself. It is effectively spam, making it tedious to read/find the interesting stuff. It gets wearing, and given how long it has been going on I think people have been surprisingly patient by internet standards! Sadly it has finally boiled over in recent days :-(

We’re supposed to be grown-ups. Ganging up on someone and attacking them because you don’t like their posts isn’t cool. RISC OS has a lot of people of mostly older age, with varying communication skills, often a bit stuck in their ways! I’m only 46 myself and am rather painfully aware of how much less mentally flexible I seem to be than I once ways. Curmudgeon behaviour comes with the territory – from everyone. Look within, as well as without, for that. The world doesn’t revolve around any one of us, and nobody has to agree with our opinions.

Well that rant rather misses the point, criticising, in a derogatory way, RISC OS users who protested at the spamming/trolling of the forum .

Most of us want the same thing, a relevant on topic forum.

There is more to this than just the recent spam/troll fest. Forum quality as been in decline for a while raised the issue in June which predates that.

Well that rant rather misses the point, criticising, in a derogatory way, RISC OS users who protested at the spamming/trolling of the forum.

I think Andrew was on point and if nothing else is achieved he has caused us to do a little self-examination.