Hermann Hauser and Christopher Curry outside King's College in Cambridge (c.1980).


The Acorn BBC Micro, released in 1984. Over 1 million of these were sold throught the mid 1980's, mainly to UK schools.


The Acorn Archimedes, released in 1987. It ran the very first version of RISC OS, as well as being the first computer to use the ARM RISC chip. When it was first released it was one of the fastest microcomputers in the world, faster than many contemporary mini and mainframe computers.


The Acorn A5000, released in 1992. This is the computer that you most likely remember at school if you're about my age or a bit older. It ran RISC OS 3.1 on an ARM 3 processor.


The Acorn RiscPC, released in april 1994. The RiscPC was fitted with a special expansion slot that allowed the attachment of a daughter board with an Intel or compatible CPU. This in turn allowed the Windows OS and associated software to run in a window on the RISC OS desktop. This can be seen in the left picture, with the Windows 3.1 startup screen. (This website was created on one of these).


The Acorn Phoebe. Acorn was due to release the much-hyped Phoebe computer in 1998. Unfortunately Acorn pulled out of the desktop computer market literally weeks before its launch. Only a few prototypes were made, and the case could come in various colours. It ran RISC OS 3.8 (later released as RISC OS 4 by RISCOS Ltd in 1999).


The Castle Iyonix, released in december 2002. This computer was released by Castle Technology Ltd, who now own RISC OS, to provide a modern, more powerful replacement for the ageing RiscPC, which was still in production by Castle up until 2003. The Iyonix is still available to buy, with many different case designs. It runs RISC OS 5, on a 600Mhz ARM designed Intel XScale chip.


The A9home, released by Advantage 6 Ltd, a third party RISC OS hardware developer, in 2005. It runs RISC OS 4.42 on a 400MHz ARM 9 chip. Its the little blue box by the way.

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