![]() It was attached to separate memory, video and I/O controllers, all designed by Acorn. It contained 27 32-bit registers and could handle 44 instructions, the majority of which excuted in a single clock cycle. Here, though, the illusion was maintained, all thanks to the power of the ARM. You just can't do this stuff on an 8088, and it's doubtful on a 68000: the hefty calculations of landscape perspective and particle motion for each scene need to be performed in less than the screen refresh period or the illusion collapses." Graphics "Nothing," he wrote, "could better illustrate the way a quantitative jump in processing power can lead to a quantitative step in applications. You flew polygon-built ship over a 3D landscape, complete with real physics and particle effects. The Acorns shipped with a demo game written by David Elite Braben simply called Game 1 – it was also labelled Lander and was the foundation for Braben's Zarch game. The own-brand colour monitor was £200 on top of that, though the monochrome screen was just 50 quid.ĭespite the price, and that fact that it didn't become available until the Autumn of 1987, the A440 proved to be the most popular of the the two, and by early 1988 the A410 began to disappear from Acorn's marketing literature.įrom the Archimedes demo disk: David Braben's Lander. Their Archimedes of choice was quickly revealed to be the A440, a machine that would have set them back a colossal – now, let alone then – £2299. ACORN ARCHIMEDES SERIESThe pricier A400 series were pushed at businesses and technical organisations. The A300 series was pitched at home users – essentially as direct replacements for, respectively, the BBC Micro and 1986's BBC Master the two A300 models had "British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System" stamped on the keyboard, along with the familiar owl logo. There was room for two Podules on the A300 series. You also had to add, of course, the hard drive. ![]() ![]() Upgrading the A305 or A310 to A410 level was a matter of adding in a "Podule" backplane circuit board, which contained the hard drive controller. The A410 had 1MB of memory too, but the A440 had a (then) whopping 4MB and came with a 20MB hard drive as well as the 800KB 3.5in floppy drive – which also supported 640KB discs for BBC Master compatibility – found on the other three models. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |