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What have I done?

Received an Acorn Archimedes 410/1 on Monday. It has all the ram banks filled(4megs), Risc OS 3.x ROMs, a MJE Micro ARM3 Booster CPU as well as an IDE podule along with a 170meg IDE hdd. These had an ST506 hdd interface built in to the mobo , use a DD 3.5" fdd and shipped with Risc OS 2.0. The wasn't fitted to the 410/1 as standard though from what I can gather. Early models have a Synch on Green issue when hooked up to vga monitors. The machine fires up, but I need to a aquire an RGB to VGA adapter to see whats going on via a monitor as I don't have a suitable RGB monitor. No fdd activity but the fitted hdd made all the correct noises. Best of all there was no POPS! or BANGS!

I'm in the process of cleaning around the battery holder and going over the mobo. The plan is to get a network podule for it and fit a bigger hard drive to fit all the stuff from the Qube site I linked to above. The IDE podule has the option of either a 40 pin (one internal as well as an external IDE connector) or 44 pin IDE drive which is handy.

Edit- Managed to get a speaker tone, so a step in the right direction.
 
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I've been sent an Acorn A4000, with Mk1 keyboard, Mk2 mouse and network podule. Looks like the hdd is flacky though. Not a big deal as my intention is to fit a CF card anyway due to it's skinny form factor anyway. Having the OS in ROM is certainly handy. LCD didn't like it but video is fine on the IBM branded 19" Trinitron screen.

The blurry pics below gives you an idea of how slim it is compared to my DECpc which itself is a slimline form factor. I'm on the hunt for a manual vga switcher (not a full blown KVM) to switch between the A4000 and DECpc.

Got motivated to move a lot of stuff back out into the garage so I'm not tripping over it.

Edit: got a VGA switcher arranged.
 

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Digging around in the shed I found a 9 pin to 15 pin vga cable I used with my very first 28 dot pitch 14" vga monitor. I hooked it up to the 410/1 monitor output and the monitor lead then turned on the 410/1 holding the 3(monitor type 3-vga) and the expected desktop with red tinge emerged. Oh goodie!!!

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Now I know it works in all it's RiscOS goodness. The vga switcher works a treat too. Switching between OS/2 and RiscOS in seconds.

The sync on green issue fix- http://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Modifying-an-Archimedes-A4101-to-use-a-VGA-monitor/

Found out the the fdd ribbon cable was fitted incorrectly. Now it reads 720k disks ok. The hdd(another Conner drive) is deemed bad and makes a couple of loud clunks when the OS tries to access it. No biggy as having the os in rom means it's perfectly functional as is.

In it's modded state initial impressions are it's at almost if not as fast the A4000.

I've also got another A4000 coming as well as a mic, another RiscPC x86 card, spare A4000 psus and other bits n bobs. I've gotten a nice selection of spares now.
 
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It's interesting just comparing RiscOS/Acorn kit with it's contemporaries. Being primarily from a x86 (286 up) background it's quite a refreshing change.

Mind you I find all platforms and their development interesting in their own right, even Apple ;)
 
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Yeah, it's an interesting system - the rPi port is quite nice, and much more suited to the hardware than the Linux distros I've seen.

There used to be so much variety in the OS world...
 
For a GUI based OS it is very light on resources. Of course there's a price to pay as with any system. A command prompt is available which is handy for trouble shooting. Some of Acorns design decisions seem to make sense and others, well... Same goes for a few desktop platforms/systems from other manufacturers.

Upgrades and add-ons for various Acorns are quite interesting and varied. Never understood why ps/2 mice weren't introduced to the RiscPCs though.

There was as version of Debian Linux and Net BSD ported to the Acorn RiscPCs. I received a couple of cds with them on. Not really interested in trying them out though. I'm happy just running Linux on my P200mmx-linuxshot.jpg
 
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Turned out there was a mobo issue with the first A4000 and the chap I bought it from was kind enough to send a replacement one as well a known good hdd just to be sure.

15 minutes and the original was swapped out, the machine powered up and running. Easiest mobo/hdd swap I've ever done.

The flakey board will be returned to be part of another project
 
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The A3000 turned up yesterday. It's in pretty good shape. Had to reset onstartup pressing R to get that familiar startup tone and managed to get a good enough picture, although green, using a 9 pin to 15 pin cable hooked up the a monitor swapper. Has 1 meg of ram, and RiscOS 3.11 roms on it. Was kind of hoping maybe 2 was there but that's fine. 3.11 is the most compatible with a lot of older software and with a BBC emulator the world is my oyster. Has Econet on board. Has two expansion option a mini podule inside and an external full length podule connector.

Although the the A3000 is the oldest of the all-in-one Acorn Risc machines it is the easiest to mod I one has the time and inclination from what I can gather. Some useful tips in restoring one- http://www.waitingforfriday.com/index.php/Restoring_an_Acorn_A3000_computer
 
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Just cycling the RiscPCs through power for 12 hours or so to see whats playing nice and what isn't. If left off and the batteries not charged for a long period of time the cmos/rtc goes hey wire and just boots to the Supervisor prompt on start up. You can press Reset-R or Reset-Delete to get to the desktop ok but on a straight reset it's back to the Supervisor prompt. The only real solution to the problem if voltages feeding the chip and battery charging are ok is to replace this chip. Not an uncommon problem at all and well documented. The only system I have that does this so I guess I'm lucky. Worst case I can use the components, x86 card, ram, fdd, hdd, psu, roms in another.

One system was throwing disc 4 errors but has settled down after a couple of power cycles. I suspect the hdd is getting a tired. I'll get it a workout over the weekend.

One of the RiscPC600s that I aquired my intention from the outset was to tickle it up a bit. As mentioned earlier it's now sporting a 8 gig drive with UniBoot3 loaded. A later version of !Form played nice with this one but wasn't happy with all the other drives around similar size. To use this size drive yuo need to run "*configure ADFSBuffers 0" or there will be disk corruption with the earlier Acorn disk file scheme. It's has now 3.6 roms which plays nicer with ide cdroms as opposed to the original RiscOS 3.5 roms. 3.6 roms also support the ARM710 card. I'll post progress on that as time permits. It may well end up with the StrongArm and RiscOS 4.06 on it.

Found another nice web site with a breakdown of Acorn Risc kit- http://www.mad-web.org/Pages/Data/Acorn_Howto/Risc_PC/Hardware
His Arch link- http://www.mad-web.org/Pages/Data/Hardware/OldPC/Acorn/

Petty I didn't discover his pages earlier. They're straight to the point.

Nice to see riscos.com is public again with a new look too http://www.riscos.com/
 
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Got hold of a suitable cdrom and fitted a TI486SXL-40 card. Loaded the PC software(v1.93). Got Dos installed along with the acorn cdrom and mouse driver. Also managed to get Geoworks Ensemble on it after a bit of a trial.

For some reason after installing/uncompressing around 2-4megs of files from installation disks for the PC software would throw a wobbly complaining a critical Dos error and that the C drive was write protected. The former happened a number of times trying a full install of PC Dos 6.3, DR Dos 6 and MS Dos 6.21. Even had RiscOS toss a "Core file in use error" one time and reset the system. This has never happened on an x86 box installing the same software or the trial I did ealier in thread. But to be fair Acorn did a pretty good job of allowing the x86 card share it's hardware.
 

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Found a later version (3.03)of the PC emulation software and upgraded. May have sorted to above issue or maybe just installing the software full screen would have stopped that behavior. Anyway, now I have Windows 3.1, GeoWorks 2.0 and Geoworks Ensemble 1.2 running fine and dandy.

Curious enough the later PC software, though obviously more refined, throws an error when trying to load the Acorn cdrom driver, possibly because it's expecting a later processor card. Other than cdrom access things seem ok with it.

I've set the early one up as my default emulator on the desktop for the time being because eveything seems to be 'just working" ;)
 

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Tested a later card and no change in behavior.

One other piece of weirdness I noticed tonight was the earlier PCx86 card software doesn't sync with the machines date. Like a cmos battery on the real Macoy losing it's settings. Time is ok though. Whereas the later of the software versions is ok. Not a biggy, just adding an the DATE entry in the autoexec.bat and input from me tidies that up.

Turns out I have aquired 4 versions of the PC card software and it's interesting seeing the progress made.

I might give FancyBoot a shot to see what that has to offer on the RiscOS desktop front then try and set up on my modest network and try one of the web browsers out.
 
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Got around to pulling the cover off the A3000 today and inspected the battery. What a mess, with rust on one side and underneath the cell. Pulled it off and did the usual clean up of components around it. Tracks are still intact. Let things dry then cleaned out all the dust bunnies. Still boots ok. Turns out a PO had added a 2 meg ram ram card and done another mod I've yet to identify on the thing.
 
I was having issue with one of the A4000s. After a bit of trial and error and a lot of rtfm I tracked it down to one of the zip 1 meg ram modules. Selecting only 2 megs via the jumpers between the the 1 and 2 positioned zip modules was needed and making some config settings. The issues I was having where ramdom lockups with screen corruption at times. Disk access got pretty random as well. What had me worried for a bit was there was no start up beep nor could I reset the roms by holding the R or Del keys on start up.

Anyhow tis all good how. Learnt a fare bit in the process. You can set them up to start up in BASIC, Supervisor prompt or graphical desktop. Next up will be one of the two problematic RiscPCs.

Fun times.
 
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Indeed you're having a fun time :)

It brings to my mind that my A3010 needs some care, the battery must be dying now and until now I haven't been able to disassemble the machine to reach it. IIRC there're some videos in Youtube teaching the process.
Also I need to install an HCCS expansion system, no idea if the card works and I don't have any software related or needed; so it'll be also a fun time for me :)
 
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