HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: cs89jmb@brunel.ac.uk (Jason M Banham)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Archimedes Demo *Competition* [Any one interested?]
Date: 5 Oct 92 10:00:43 GMT
Organization: Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL3

smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
: In article <1992Sep24.161051.10322@rdg.dec.com> cadwallader@forty2.enet.dec.com () writes:
: >
: >Anyway, FULL CREDIT to Acorn, the A3010 in Dixons was running a demonstration
: >program that was really impressive (256 cols 640*256 I think), which
: >demonstrated various aspects of the system and the games potential was
: >emphasized strongly. This demo went on for several minutes before looping,
: >looked good! :-)
: >
: 
: Good news. Don't think that all Dixons/Currys stores are like this though.
: I went into one last week & the A3010 was connected to an out-of-focus cheap TV
: set on the opposite side of the stand. The machine had crashed in the desktop,
: and the only disc in sight was the dealer-training disc, which they had
: apparently been trying to put on display to the public. This gave away all
: of Acorn's marketing secrets :=) V.A.L.U.E. eh?
: 
: The A3010 and TV set and training disc were the only Acorn items on display.
: Nowhere did it say how much the machine costs, nor give any details of its
: capabilities or the extra items supplied free with it.
: 
: Hopefully most stores are as good as the one which you describe.
: 
: Simon B.

Well back home in Luton I visited the local Dixons and the only machines they
had on display were PCs and Sega/Nintendo consoles.  Where's the Acorn kit??

I went across from Dixons to Currys and they didn't even have a computer dept
(I think I'm right in saying they are to sell Acorn kit n'est pas?  Well
they're owned by the same people aren't they?)

Still, at least I found the new Watford place - nice and big, I saw the new 
machines and I even saw an A4 (it's true what they say about the ghosting
effect when moving the pointer and windows!) but it's incredibly nice, shame I
don't have that sort of dosh kicking around :-(


It's nice to be back on the net, new term and more articles.

Hello Acorn World!


--

Jayce.

"I may be a shallow guy, but a shallow guy with a great ass!" - Cat, Red Dwarf

Jason "Archangel" Banham                Sequent Computer Systems UK
					Product Support
Internet: aangel@sequent.co.uk
	  cs89jmb@brunel.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Any RISC OS 2.0 ROMs going begging ?
From: julian@bridge.welly.gen.nz (Julian Wright)
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 02:06:37 +1200
Reply-To: wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: USS Enterprise, NCC 1701a

Piete.Brooks@cl.cam.ac.uk (Piete Brooks on swan.cl.cam.ac.uk) writes:

> If anyone is upgrading from RISC OS 2.0 to RISC OS 3* and have any
> unwanted ROMs please email me (pb@cl.cam.ac.uk -- I don't read this
> newsgroup) as I want to upgrade some Arthur machines to the same level
> as some other machines. [ I have been trying to get 2.0 ROMs for ages,
> but they 'sold out' ]

Why not just leapfrog straight into RISC OS 3.10? We know it doesn't
have the major bugs that RISC OS 2.00 had...

    Cheers, Julian.
From: RRNA@CCV.UIA.AC.BE
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: a4
Date: 5 Oct 92 16:36:00 GMT

De Rijk Peter
E-Mail: RRNA@ccv.uia.ac.be
***************************************************************************

I've finally got my A4. Altough it is getting somewhat expensive compared to
some other portables (well actually, the others are getting cheaper fast),
it is well worth it. When I ordered it, I was thinking about mainly using it
with an external keyboard and monitor (in different places). This will not
be nessecary. The display is actually very good. It is even quite readable
from a rather big angle. The keyboard is very nice to. Some keys seem to get
mixed up though. the '"' key produces a '@' and vica versa, and the '\'
produces nothing. If anybody knows how to correct this, please let me know.

You know what a A5000 can do. It is really nice to have this portable.
Things fly (I come from an ARM2). RISCOS 3.1 offers interesting new
features. On the whole, it is an impressive machine. Well done Acorn ( The
'well done' is for the machine, not for the availability, nor for the time
it took to get it)

What I need now is a MIDI interface for it. On my 440 I had a MIDI interface
using the econet port. Could'nt this be used on the A4 as well. A portable
with MIDI could attract some buyers I guess.

Peter

P.S. I thought comp.sys.acorn.advocacy was ment for flame wars.

Disclaimer: I don't think my departement has any opinion in these matters,
so I surely don't represent them. And my opinion, is ... just my opinion

***************************************************************************
anything you say, can and will be used against you in a flame war 
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: dm@cl.cam.ac.uk (Derek McAuley)
Subject: Re: Oh no ! More .....
Reply-To: dm@cl.cam.ac.uk (Derek McAuley)
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 06:29:35 GMT

Three pieces of information (as I have no desire to enter into a regurgitation
of the ARM assembler v. C debate):

The modification to support the ARM6 instructions and new procedure call
standard in GCC took about a week. I cannot speak for the Norcroft compiler,
other than to say that as ARM Ltd sell ARM6 development systems, my
guess is the
work has also been done there.

In the ARM600 et al, asignificant spped improvement is obtained by the use of a
write buffer which is used even when running in 26 bit mode, similarly the
ability to build a system with synchronized internal (FCLK) and external clocks
(MCLK) saves the cost (and probability of failuire) of synchronization -- again
nothing to do with the discusion of 26 v 32 bit processor mode.

Finally, although perhaps a somewhat perverse thing to do, on an ARM600 it is
possible to use the new MMU to address 32 bits of physical memory even while
running the processor in 26 bit mode! We do this in our DAN processor node
(ARM600 with 256K second level write back cache) where the large physical
address space makes some things simpler, but we wish to maintain some code
compatability in our operating system which is also required to run on ARM3
and ARM2 systems.

Mac.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: jmarten@cix.compulink.co.uk (Jonathan Marten)
Subject: Re: DrawPlus (was PostScript printing) 
Reply-To: jmarten@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 08:02:53 +0000

Martin Glanvill (mcg@waikato.ac.nz) writes:
 
  mc> While we're on this subject, could the dude who created !Draw_Plus,
  mc> do a  revised version compatable with Junior vs 1.17? The problem is
  mc> that the document fonts aren't declared properly (if you import a
  mc> Draw_plus file into Junior 1.17); viz the *whole* font directory is 
  mc> dumped *UNLESS* one imports !Draw_plus file through to !Draw and
  mc> then into  !Junior. 
 
I know it does this, although I don't see it would cause any problems with 
Junior.  Early versions of DrawPlus had to do things this way due to a bug 
in Risc_OSLib which meant I couldn't dynamically manage the font table as 
required.  However, this has now been fixed.  Get version 2.20 from your 
usual source:  this fixes this problem and adds all the other RO3 features.
 
  mc>  [quoted stuff about PDriver_DeclareFont deleted]
 
I did try to implement "friendly" font downloading with an earlier version 
of RO3.  However, this didn't seem to work (i.e. it crashed the machine!) 
and there were also *two* conflicting descriptions, in the Acorn 
documentation, of how the SWI worked!  So this facility was abandoned, and I 
never got around to looking at it again.  Maybe sometime...
 
-- JJM --   Using ReaderS with thread following
            Gather up your blues, get out of the way
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: stigo@ifi.uio.no (Stig Arne Olsen)
Subject: Re: Acorn Share Price
Organization: Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 13:05:39 GMT
Originator: stigo@holmenkollen.ifi.uio.no


In article <1992Sep27.161957.11348@cs.nott.ac.uk>, smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
> 
> The quoted price of Acorn shares has soared this year, from only 6 pence
> to over 40 pence.
> 
> Nobody seems to have given a sensible explanation for this in public. Whenever
> I have asked questions about this, I've either been given blank looks, or else
> been told that the reasons are confidential at present.
> 
> Anyone care to suggest reasons for the share price increase? It certainly
> isn't because of Acorn's latest range of new machines (although they are good).
> 
> Simon B.

Isn't these guys also producing the chip that is to be used in the
new hand-held computer from Apple (Newton or something)? Correct me
if I'm wrong, but if so it could lead to a bit of interest in their
shares....

-- 
Stig A. Olsen  |  stigo@ifi.uio.no  |  "Ja til EF"
From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:25:20 +1200
Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: My Arc.

Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower) writes:

> They did say "generally accepted".
> 
> Also, how well do you think these two packages could be adapted to
> take into acount the features of the newer ARM chips?  How will they
> cope with using the 32 bit address mode?  Not to mention some of the
> newer instructions that could well speed up or enable new features.

   About as easily as C can be. Remember for C to take advantage of these
new features the compiler has to be updated to cope with them. Somebody out
there has to sweat blood to make it possible. The difference is that the
application writer does the sweating rather then the compiler writer. It is
a moot point as to which is better which will lead back to the old argument
of C vs the world again.

> Also, how easily can they incorporate compliance to new features of
> the operating system?

   As easily as C. Indeed I would argue it is *easier* in assembler to
interface cleanly with the OS. Especially in ARM code where relocatability
and interfacing with the OS has been made very easy. No need for the
'hackiness' of C where quite often clumsy veneers are layered over the SWI
interfaces to code.

> These are just some of the motivations for using "C" for "'Serious
> applications of any complexity' on the Arc".

   And they apply equaly well to any language you care to name on the Arc.
Can we *please* not have another 'C is better - is not! - is so! - is
not!...' style arguements on the Acorn hierachy again?

    Philip

--
Philip R. Banks  Syntax: mail < banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz >            @@@@@/|
                                                                        @@@@/#|
The Trojan Signature Virus :-                                           @@@/##|
Hi there! I am an anti signature virus utility. Copy me into your       @@/---|
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: pete@eo11.eoc.com (Peter Cockerell)
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
Organization: EO, Inc.
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 23:13:20 GMT


In this thread about ease of using C vs assembler when OS interfaces
change, someone (Banksie I think) pointed out that C library calls to
RISC OS are a clumsy veneer on top of the ARM interfaces. Isn't this
simply because RISC OS is one of the only operating systems known to
humanity designed for a modern 32-bit processor which specifies its
interfaces in terms of an underlying machine architecture (ie ARM
registers, including the flags!) instead of some slightly higher-level
abstract interface?  Actually, that's not strictly fair; it's actually
defined in terms of the underlying 6502 register interface (R0=A, R1=YX
etc). Tee hee.

Pete

(And yes, there was a PCS they COULD have used for RISC OS a long time
before ARM chips were even extant [the Arx Modula-2 one] so they can't
use the excuse that there were no HL languages available to design the
OS interface around.)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower)
Subject: Re: Yes, more .....
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 21:12:40 GMT

In article <2nQyb9j025n@bridge.welly.gen.nz> wright_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:
>I could cite something about how Acorn DTP was quick to the market and
>just as quickly dropped when Impression turned up, but then somebody
>could probably accuse me of taking sides. :-)

I suspect that John would agree, that Acorn DTP, would have faded,
regardless of the language it was written in.


Most of the arguments relating to the use of "C", relate more to
management issues of software development, than to the market
directly.

The only time the language would be of concern to me, in buying a
product, is if I had to make a strategic corporate decision on
software that had to take into account a long time span and possible
need to have it on multiple platforms.  The latter because a large
corporation may not want to be tied to one machine architecture.  Also
if my company was in a postion to both need and to be able to require
specific "enhancements" - then speed and quality of changes would be a
factor.  Mostly this would favour a high level language over an
assembler, even ARM code (I'm prepared to say I believe ARM code is
the best machine language instruction set of the 6+ I've looked at).
However, I know of several specic areas were I *would* probably prefer
ARM code.


Gavin
-- 
Tomorrow's Society                              | flower_g@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
    Depends on                                   ----------------------------
Today's Children  - help us raise them properly! 
*******  These comments have no known correlation with dept. policy!  *******
From: dseal@armltd.co.uk (David Seal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Share Price
Date: 29 Sep 92 11:13:16 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: A.R.M. Ltd, Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambs, UK

In article <Bv9LpG.xC@ibmpcug.co.uk> gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:

>If they still had anything to gain by sales of ARM chips, I'd infer they've
>found a big buyer.  But i thought they'd sold off that bit of the family
>jewels.

Yes and no. The rights to the ARM/VIDC/MEMC/etc chips were transferred to
ARM Ltd when the company was set up as a joint venture with Apple and VLSI
Technology Inc in late 1990. So ARM Ltd now gets the royalties on sales of
the chips.

But ARM Ltd is owned by the three companies that set it up (6/13 each by
Acorn and Apple, and 1/13 by VLSI). This means that if ARM Ltd do well,
Acorn, Apple and VLSI all profit, possibly because their shares in ARM Ltd
are worth more, possibly because they get a dividend on their shares.

So Acorn still have a financial interest in sales of the ARM chips - it's
just not as direct or as large an interest as it was originally.

David Seal
dseal@armltd.co.uk

All opinions are mine only...
From: dseal@armltd.co.uk (David Seal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Share Price
Date: 30 Sep 92 11:25:13 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: A.R.M. Ltd, Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambs, UK

In article <19021@acorn.co.uk> DWallin@acorn.co.uk (Dick Wallin) writes:

>In article <7465@armltd.uucp> dseal@armltd.co.uk (David Seal) writes:
>>So Acorn still have a financial interest in sales of the ARM chips - it's
>>just not as direct or as large an interest as it was originally.
>
>It certainly isn't as direct, but it is much larger than it would have been
>if Acorn had retained the full rights. This is because without ARM Ltd being
>independent, Apple wouldn't have been interested (if I've read the press
>releases correctly!)                                    
>
>6/13 of a big pie (sic) is lots more than 13/13 of a little one!

True enough. What I meant was that their interest in sales figures isn't as
large - i.e. sales have to be about 13/6 times as large for them to be
equally interested financially.

David Seal
dseal@armltd.co.uk

All opinions are mine only...
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: Steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk (Steve Loft)
ReplyTo: Steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk
Subject: Arc Demos
Distribution: world
X-Mailer: cppnews $Revision: 1.18 $
Organization: home
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 09:14:37 +0000

A friend of mine is a member of a computer club, and they are having an
'open day' shortly.  He would like a demo to run on his
A440/1+ARM3 (N.B. +RISC OS 3.10, although I suppose he could put the old
ROMs back in if necessary) to put the many Amigas which will be there to
shame.  What do people suggest?  Note that I will discount any votes
from authors for their own demos! :-)

Suggestions by mail, please, and I'll summarise the result of the vote
(assuming I get any!)

Steve
|  Steve Loft                                  steve@klaatu.demon.co.uk   |
|  Doncaster,                                                             |
|  South Yorks.                                                           |
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
Subject: Re: Yes, more .....
Organization: (DESY, Hamburg, Germany)
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 14:06:50 GMT

I'd like to add a couple of (hopefully non-inflammatory) comments to the
ongoing debate. Firstly, many of the pro-C remarks have been from people who
write PD code in their spare time, and who prefer to write in C. However,
John's original point was about CC, and here the question is, what is the best
commercial decision. CC's programmers might personally have enjoyed writing
Impression more in C, but they don't get the choice! I think Impression
demonstrates that it is *possible* to write commercial quality software in
assembler, and since CC continue to prefer assembler they evidently see it as a
good choice.

  Also, there are clearly *huge* commercial advantages in having code which can
run on 1Mb, ARM2 machines. Code size, in particular, is very important - e.g.
DeskEdit is a very nice editor, but it uses something like 260K, which makes it
very hard to use on a 1Mb machine. Even with the shared C library, C programs
come out big.

  Secondly, much has been made of the optimising abilities of compilers. For
established architectures (VAX, IBM 370) there are indeed very good compilers
which have had man-centuries of effort put into them and which can beat all but
the best assembler programmers. Now, one of the original motivations for RISC
processors was that the regular instruction set would make it easier to write
optimisers. *However*, my impression is that compilers for all the RISC
machines are really still in their infancy; they are often buggy, and the
optimisation is not yet that good. Does anyone have any concrete knowledge of
how good the Norcroft optimiser is, relative to hand-coding? My uneducated
guess would be more than a factor of two in both size and speed between them.

  Thirdly, there has been much talk of the difficulty of porting code to the
ARM 6xx etc. in 32-bit mode. However, remember that most of RISC OS itself is
written in assembler; given that the current architecture can go up to 16 Mb of
real memory I personally doubt that we will ever see RISC OS, in anything like
its current form, running in 32-bit mode, in which case the question of
porting applications becomes moot.

e----><----p | Stephen Burke           | Internet: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
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 H   H   1   | Germany                 | Phone:    + 49 40 8998 2282
 H   H 11111 | HERA, the world's largest electron microscope!
From: jamesh@castle.ed.ac.uk (James Hammerton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Advertising
Date: 1 Oct 92 11:28:01 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <bmccnnll.717672486@unix1.tcd.ie> bmccnnll@unix1.tcd.ie (Barry McConnell) writes:
>In <1992Sep27.161452.11207@cs.nott.ac.uk> smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
>
>>Wonders will never cease! Acorn has placed adverts in numerous computer
>>magazines recently, but the most amazing I've heard of is a full page
>>advert for the A3010 in a dedicated Amiga magazine (CU Amiga).
>
>Eeek! That's almost as bad as NeXT placing an ad in some Mac magazine
>a few months back... (Very sneaky: the ad talked about Apple's plans
>for the next-generation OS (Pink/Taligent), and what it could do, and made
>it out to be really impressive-sounding, and then finished with the phrase:
>"They have just described a NeXT." :-)
>
>>Simon B.
>
>Barry.

It's about time that Acorn did this... a few years ago the Micro User
started carrying adverts for both the ST and Amiga, and the new Acorn
Computing face it has now carries an advert from a shop selling the Amiga(ie
it has a big picture of the A600 with a red star round the price and all
sort of goodies thrown in). Also for about a year(around the same time
as the MU started doing this) Acorn User carried adverts for the ST
(advertising a bundle with #400 worth of games). I'd have thought Acorn
had enough problems selling their machines without the magazines that
are supposedly Acorn dedicated advertising the competition!


James

-- 
  James Hammerton,2nd year Computer Science at University of Edinburgh
  Email: jamesh@uk.ac.ed.castle   Or: jh@uk.ac.ed.dcs
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Share Price
From: Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower)
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 21:16:28 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.

In article <1992Sep27.161957.11348@cs.nott.ac.uk> smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
>
>The quoted price of Acorn shares has soared this year, from only 6 pence
>to over 40 pence.
>
>Nobody seems to have given a sensible explanation for this in public. Whenever
>I have asked questions about this, I've either been given blank looks, or else
>been told that the reasons are confidential at present.
>
>Does this sound like insider-trading? If so, it is illegal!
>
>Anyone care to suggest reasons for the share price increase? It certainly
>isn't because of Acorn's latest range of new machines (although they are good).
>
>Simon B.

Could be something public that has already been posted in theses
groups, like...

A consortium to develop multimedia language training for Europe has
been given a large contract - and it is being developed on Acorn gear.

Acorn has been given the management role to develope a portable
computer for European schools based on ARM technolegy.... 

etc...

Gavin
-- 
Tomorrow's Society                              | flower_g@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
    Depends on                                   ----------------------------
Today's Children  - help us raise them properly! 
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From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Acorn Advertising
Date: 27 Sep 92 16:14:52 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University

Wonders will never cease! Acorn has placed adverts in numerous computer
magazines recently, but the most amazing I've heard of is a full page
advert for the A3010 in a dedicated Amiga magazine (CU Amiga).

The Acorn TV advert should be making an appearance in the UK in about three
weeks time. Good one Acorn!

Simon B.
From: gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Share Price
Date: 28 Sep 92 01:34:27 GMT
Organization: The IBM PC User Group, UK.

In article <1992Sep27.161957.11348@cs.nott.ac.uk> smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
>Anyone care to suggest reasons for the share price increase? It certainly
>isn't because of Acorn's latest range of new machines (although they are good).

If they still had anything to gain by sales of ARM chips, I'd infer they've
found a big buyer.  But i thought they'd sold off that bit of the family
jewels.  (Which was the last transaction to bump up their share price - a one-
off cash injection to make them look profitable that year)

Buggered if I know.

G
--