Leading ebusiness industry commentators
silicon.com have followed up their popular retrospective of the Speccy with a
large write-up about the Acorn Electron, smaller brother of the BBC Micro.
At around half the price of a full BBC model B [info], the Electron [info], was for many people their first introduction to the delights of Acorn hardware, after seeing (but, in my old school at least, not being allowed to touch) the BBC Micro at school. I know that amongst my collection of RISC OS machines I still have my two original Elks, both in working order after all this time.
The BBC Micro will make an appearance on silicon.com next week.
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Acorn Electron retrospective on silicon.com |
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(13:55 21/1/2002)
Jason Tribbeck (17:08 21/1/2002)
John Hoare (17:33 21/1/2002)
Richard Goodwin (09:21 22/1/2002)
John Hoare (09:48 22/1/2002)
Anonymous (10:51 22/1/2002)
Guest (12:45 22/1/2002)
John Hoare (12:51 22/1/2002)
Richard Goodwin (13:07 22/1/2002)
Guest (15:06 22/1/2002)
Guest (23:15 22/1/2002)
Jason Tribbeck (10:00 23/1/2002)
Jason Tribbeck (10:08 23/1/2002)
Jason Tribbeck (10:09 23/1/2002)
Guest (20:33 23/1/2002)
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John Hoare |
Message #89872, posted at 13:55, 21/1/2002 |
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Never even touched an Electron - I picked up a barely-functioning Atom once though - loved the heatsink :-)
Only old computer I've got working at the moment is a BBC Master. I must start collecting one day... |
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Jason Tribbeck |
Message #89873, posted at 17:08, 21/1/2002, in reply to message #89872 |
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Well, Rich's collection is pretty complete (what is it now?).
However, I disagree that the electron was as powerful as the Beeb - the electron's video update wasn't on alternate clock cycles as the Beeb's, thus giving slower CPU speeds with higher resolution VDUs (sounds familiar?) |
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John Hoare |
Message #89874, posted at 17:33, 21/1/2002, in reply to message #89873 |
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Yep - I meant to write that in my first post. A lot of Electron versions of games had to be very cleverly rewritten to get the speed, didn't they? (Remember the Electron versions of the Repton series, which were not full screen?) |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #89875, posted at 09:21, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89874 |
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The elk was no where near the Beeb in performance and apart from the fact it had a great keyboard with gold connectors it had bugger all in the hardware department as well, I mean you couldn't even print without an add-on. But hey, that's not the point, it was a great little machine to learn on and I remember it with great fondness.
And as for my collection, I lost count ages ago but if you add up all the Acorn hardware and all the NCs (including three or four prototypes) it's probably in the twenties. I mean, someone just gave me a third A5000 a couple of months back and it's just rude to say no! :) |
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John Hoare |
Message #89876, posted at 09:48, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89875 |
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I was going to get in touch with ITC about getting an old A5000 - I'm stuck at home using Windows ME at the moment. RISC OS 3.1 would be far nicer to use for most stuff. :-) |
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Anonymous |
Message #89877, posted at 10:51, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89876 |
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Rich - give me your address and going out times.
Cheers,
"Steve" |
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Guest |
Message #89878, posted at 12:45, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89877 |
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Anyone remember the Slogger RAM board for the Electron? This gave more memory for programs and increased its speed to *almost* that of the Beeb. Does anyone know how it achieved this? Faster RAM perhaps?
For the conspiracy theorists out there, it makes you wonder if Acorn nobbled the performance originally to make its big brother more competitive...
Mike
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John Hoare |
Message #89879, posted at 12:51, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89878 |
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Must have been to make it cheaper, surely. Hence lack of Mode 7, etc. |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #89880, posted at 13:07, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89879 |
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I have the Slogger 64K/Turbo Electron. The toggle switch allows you to go into regular, 64K (32K sideways RAM, most of which was used to get rid of screen memory requirements), and 64K turbo modes. I guess the sideways RAM was responsible for at least some of the speedup... |
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Guest |
Message #89881, posted at 15:06, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89880 |
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Probably the best online summary of Electron internals is at...
http://electrem.emuunlim.com/techinfo.htm
The Electron was indeed missing most of the exotic functionality of the BBC, but it permitted the addition of most of that functionality through the expansion connector (making it more expandable than the BBC according to some commentators).
One notable omission in the expansion options was the 6845 controller that the BBC had for things like hardware scrolling. Since the Electron offered less control over the screen start address, games either had to offer "coarse" scrolling (eg. Frak) or to minimise the scrolling area (and do more in software). |
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Guest |
Message #89882, posted at 23:15, 22/1/2002, in reply to message #89881 |
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Just a quick comment - apologies if it's already been covered.
IIRC, part of the reason the Elk was slower than the Beeb was that the Elk had four-bit wide access to the RAM; it used four 64K-by-1 chips, hence needing two access per byte.
--Martin Penny
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Jason Tribbeck |
Message #89883, posted at 10:00, 23/1/2002, in reply to message #89882 |
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I'm very skeptical about the 4-bit wide RAM access - it would add needless complications to the architecture.
Having looked at a PCB on the web (couldn't find a schematic in this short space of time), I think the RAM chips are ICs 4, 5, 6 and 7, which gives 4 devices.
AFAICR, DRAMs at the time were either 1 or 4 bit, with a 'square' memory configuration.
With 4 devices filling 32K, you get the following options:
64Kx1 devices (making 64Kx4 off). This would be useable, but you'd have to insert extra clock cycles to fetch the nibble.
16Kx4 devices (2 banks). This works - it gives 32K of memory, and also 8-bit wide. The device for this would be the 4416. Unfortunately, I can't see the number on the PCB, so if anyone wants to get a screwdriver out... |
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Jason Tribbeck |
Message #89884, posted at 10:08, 23/1/2002, in reply to message #89883 |
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...However, having peeked at http://www.aceadvanced.org/computers/acorn/electron.htm it does appear as though it was nibbles. This really surprises me, as I would've imagined that the difference in cost between the 4164 and 4416 would've been minimal.
But considering that the electron was made to a budget, in most cases anything goes! |
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Jason Tribbeck |
Message #89885, posted at 10:09, 23/1/2002, in reply to message #89884 |
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...although that web page does say "...some models". |
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Guest |
Message #89886, posted at 20:33, 23/1/2002, in reply to message #89885 |
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;>
--Martin Penny
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