A Very British Computer

I’ve continued to work on my ‘biography’ ¹ and have recently put up a
page covering 1995-7. I’m now working on 1998-2000 when many things
changed. However I’m raising this here for the following reason:

The era I’m now working on covers when Acorn ran into the ‘Phoebe
buffers’ and things changed abruptly (at least as seen from outside).
During this period – before and after – I often talked with Dave Walker and
others, and decided to collect info with the plan to write a book about the
topic. Hence I have a number of emails from Acorn people of the era about
what happened. I also had a long conversation with Dave and others at that
year’s Scottish Show . I recorded this onto a couple of audio cassettes.

However due to other events which changed the planned course of my life
(which I’ll explain in the ‘biog’ pages to come) the book never got
written. So I’m wondering if it would be wise and useful for me to hand on
copies of the emails and a digitial transfer of the cassettes to someone
else who can either keep them safe or persue actually making use of the
info. A snag being that this may mean re-contacting people about some
details which were, erm, ‘frankly and bluntly given’ by Dave and others. (I
did go on exchanging emails for some time, but lost contact with everyone
involved many years ago.) Maybe a suitable computing museum could archive
the info?

Advice/suggestions about this would therefore be welcome.

(1) For anyone interested, the main page for this is at
http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/ups_and_downs.html
the 1995-7 era is covered by
http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/history/sa_1995-7/AVeryBusyTime.html
but note that some technical details on it may require reading earlier
pages to really understand! The photos are nice, though. (I can say that
because I didn’t take them. :-) )

Slight update on this. I’ve found the recording I made of Dave Walker and some others at the Glasow “Scottish” Acorn Show in Nov 1998. About three hours long, over two C90 cassettes. I have made a digital transfer and plan to send a copy to the Center for Computing History.

If anyone knows how it might be possible for me to re-contact Dave about this, please let me know. As things stand the recording will be kept for ‘archival’ purposes, but it would be good to release it – in part or in whole – as it covers a lot of ground. The last contact details I have for Dave Walker were when he was at Sun. (Note for younger readers, not the UK newspaper. (sic)).

He can be found on LinkedIn:

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dave-walker-5b4194

Thanks, but…

Main snag is that I don’t use linked-din, farcebook, etc, and object to ‘walled gardens’ or companies that hoover / control personal data. So I’d welcome someone who is happy with them and uses them letting him know about what I’m doing, etc.

Another snag is that I did find some Dave Walker links like this when using DuckDuckGo, but found that there was more than one ‘Dave Walker’ and ‘Acorn’ combination, the others being Americans and a totally different type of company to the UK’s Acorn Computers.

That does look like the right one though, Jim. He lists his time at Acorn in developer support, then on to Sun etc. I don’t use linkedin either, though!

I’ll send him a message for you…

Thanks! :-) If he wants to email me, please note that if he has remembered my email addresses from the 1990s they no longer work. (I used to use demon at home and had a Uni address. Both now ended.)

But an email to the address at the bottom of

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

or

http://ukhhsoc.torrens.org/upload.html

will get to me.

Aside: Here linkedin pages come up blank or without any real details. Is this a NetSurf limitation (scripting off)? Would FF have shown me the details or some contact info without my joining linkedin?

I’ve now sent a copy of the interview recordings to the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge. But I’ve not heard anything from Dave, so as things stand assume they/I should regard the content as for ‘archive/study’ not for more open access, just in case this is what Dave would prefer. :-/

Shame as some of it is very interesting in painting a picture of what life was like inside the company. Even ‘pantomime’ gets a mention… :-)