The Full Acorn Machine List - Last updated on the 19th February 1999.

This list represents some several days of work in researching and obtaining all the data contained within. No guarantees are made to it's accuracy but all efforts have been made to be as factual as possible. Many thanks go to all the people who have contributed towards this list, without their help this list would substantially shorter. This list has been frozen as of the 23rd of Novemeber 1998, Acorn recently closed their workstation division and seem unlikely to ever be making further desktop machines. Although I will be tweaking the list to correct existing entries and to add any machines missed up to the time at which the list was frozen.

Finally this list is copyright 1992-1999 to Philip R. Banks but may be freely copied and distributed as long as it is distributed without modification or change. It may be used in other publications/documents as long as credit is given in the article to Philip R. Banks for the use of the list.

There is a diverse range of Acorn machines basically classifiable into two ranges. Older 8 bit machines and the newer 32 bit machines. Each entry in the list is organised, after the textual blurb, in terms of :-

Default memory.
Default filing system(s).
Default processor.
Default RAM speed.
Size of OS when first released.
Approxiamate performance in MIPS.

For a series of models all models are listed in succession after the textual blurb with the first line indicating the model number. Please note all MIPS speeds are estimates, are in terms of the processor's speeds and are not converted to Vax MIPS.

Eight bit Machines

32 bit Machines

Acorn RiscPC series

Picture of an Acorn RiscPC with it's flap shut (61 Kb jpeg). Picture of an Acorn RiscPC with it's flap open (62 Kb jpeg).

This is the next generation and architecture of machines - superceeding, but compatible with, the Archimedes range of machines. All of them feature a highly configurable and modular system that makes a bewildering variety of options available. All are founded on the 'second generation' chipset featuring VIDC20, IOMD and the newer ARM6, and better, cell processors. This new range was launched on the 15th of April 1994 with the RiscPC 600 series of machines.

The new machines feature the processor card option, the concept of which was first shown in the A540 as well as a unique second processor slot allowing the machines to have two processors in the system, at once, of radically different types. Simply by slipping a 486 chip in, on an appropriate board of course, Intel based software can be run on the machine adjacent to native ARM programs. Both processors share the system resources and can be allocated memory and the like to use. Memory managment has been improved with memory paging always being done in 4K pages.

Further more the podule interface has been extended with DMA to and from podules, extended addressing, 32bit data pathways from the IO system as well as a vastly expanded memory map for each podule. Realtime video from the IO system becomes a reality with high speed and data tranfer applications being boosted considerably. These machines are to be the ones to carry Acorn for the next three to six years and look set to do so nicely.

Acorn Diversification

Acorn, around October 1995, restructured itself into seperate companies. Consequently the originating company will be noted by the machine model name, in brackets, from here on down.

Acorn Reunification

As part of an image strengthening procedure Acorn have kept their internal structure of seperate companies but now all of them market under the Acorn name. Consequently I won't be marking which subdivision 'makes' the machine anymore.

Philip R. Banks
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