A gate array is an approach to the design and manufacture of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) using a prefabricated chip with components that are later interconnected into logic devices (e.g. NAND gates , flip-flops , etc.) according to custom order by adding metal interconnect layers in the factory. It was popular during the upheaval in the semiconductor industry in the 1980s, and its usage declined by the end of the 1990s.
158-586: The BBC Master is a home computer released by Acorn Computers in early 1986. It was designed and built for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was the successor to the BBC Micro Model B . The Master 128 remained in production until 1993. The Master series featured several improvements over earlier BBC Micro models. Rather than the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor used by
316-518: A $ 45 million contract to produce the BBC Micro for the US market. During the search for potential financing partners, an Olivetti director had approached Close Brothers, ostensibly as part of Olivetti's strategy of acquiring technologically advanced small companies. After a short period of negotiations, Curry and Hauser signed an agreement with Olivetti on 20 February. With the founders relinquishing control of
474-695: A BBC Micro with a 6502 second processor. It convinced the Acorn engineers that they were on the right track. Before they could go any further, however, they would need more resources. It was time for Wilson to approach Hauser and explain what was afoot. Once the go-ahead had been given, a small team was put together to implement Wilson's model in hardware. Acorn initiated its RISC research project in October 1983, and by 1987 had spent £5 million . VLSI Technology, Inc were chosen as silicon partner, since they already supplied Acorn with ROMs and some custom chips. VLSI produced
632-586: A fruit machine for Ace Coin Equipment (ACE) of Wales . The ACE project was started at office space obtained at 4a Market Hill in Cambridge. Initially, the ACE controller was based on a National Semiconductor SC/MP microprocessor, but soon the switch to a MOS Technology 6502 was made. CPU had financed the development of a SC/MP based microcomputer system using the income from its design-and-build consultancy. This system
790-413: A "100-percent success auto-layout system" with this convenience incurring an increase in silicon area of approximately 25 percent. Other British companies developed products for gate array design and fabrication. Qudos Limited, a spin-off from Cambridge University, offered a chip design product called Quickchip available for VAX and MicroVAX II systems and as a complete $ 11,000 turnkey solution, providing
948-434: A (typically) 200x to 400x scale representation of the process layer. This was then photo-reduced to make a 1x mask. Digitization rather than rubylith cutting was just coming in as the latest technology, but initially, it only removed the rubylith stage; drawings were still manual and then "hand" digitized. PC boards, meanwhile, had moved from custom rubylith to PC tape for interconnects. IMI created to-scale photo enlargements of
1106-505: A 2–4 MHz 6502-based system doing the graphics. Acorn would need a new architecture. Acorn had investigated all of the readily available processors and found them wanting or unavailable to them. After testing all of the available processors and finding them lacking, Acorn decided that it needed a new architecture. Inspired by white papers on the Berkeley RISC project, Acorn seriously considered designing its own processor. A visit to
1264-441: A Master 128. Various third-party suppliers restored some of the removed expansion functionality via the expansion connector, such as support for Electron and Master 128 cartridges and the provision of various BBC Micro expansion connectors. Some suppliers instead chose to adapt existing peripherals to the built-in ports of the machine. For example, Morley Electronics employed the mouse/joystick port to attach their teletext adapter to
1422-756: A ULA chip for the ZX81 , and later used a ULA in the ZX Spectrum . A compatible chip was made in Russia as T34VG1. Acorn Computers used several ULA chips in the BBC Micro , and later a single ULA for the Acorn Electron . Many other manufacturers from the time of the home computer boom period used ULAs in their machines. The IBM PC took over much of the personal computer market, and the sales volumes made full-custom chips more economical. Commodore's Amiga series used gate arrays for
1580-583: A VFS (Videodisc Filing System) ROM added, and formed the basis of the BBC Domesday System . Although normally supplied as part of a Domesday System, with LaserVision player, Domesday videodiscs , monitor and trackerball included, an upgrade kit was also available to turn a normal BBC Master into a Domesday System. The ET (Econet Terminal) system was designed for use in a network and as such had no interfaces except RGB and Composite video , plus an Econet interface module and ANFS fitted as standard (it
1738-453: A Western Digital 1772 chip (a faster version of the widely used 1770), though it is possible to load a 1770 DFS ROM into sideways RAM, or to insert a ROM or EPROM containing it. The keyboard on the Compact was the first to move away from using the traditional "sprung-key" keyswitch design used by the rest of the BBC Micro family. Instead, it used a rubber-plastic moulding membrane. An input method
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#17328518198341896-493: A business machine looked like a good idea to Acorn. A development programme was started to create a business computer using Acorn's existing technology: the BBC Micro mainboard, the Tube and second processors to give CP/M , MS-DOS and Unix ( Xenix ) workstations. This Acorn Business Computer (ABC) plan required a number of second processors to be made to work with the BBC Micro platform. In developing these, Acorn had to implement
2054-476: A close relationship with Torch Computers in the early 1980s, Acorn sought to acquire Torch in 1984 with the intention of making Torch "effectively the business arm" of Acorn, despite a lack of clarity about competing product lines and uncertainty about the future of Acorn's still-unreleased business machine within any rationalised product range, although this acquisition was never completed, with Torch having pulled out as Acorn's situation deteriorated. At around
2212-408: A colour monitor (equivalent to €1,205 and €1,568 respectively in 2020, adjusted for inflation). Several of the inputs were directly wired to specific registers in order to allow the hardware to do some of the heavy lifting. For example, the light-pen input would directly halt a counter which was started by the start of the vertical sweep of each display refresh, making calculation of where the lightpen
2370-675: A complete circuit on the same or later metal layers. The creation of a circuit with a specified function is accomplished by adding this final layer or layers of metal interconnects to the chip late in the manufacturing process, allowing the function of the chip to be customized as desired. These layers are analogous to the copper layers of a printed circuit board . The earliest gate arrays comprised bipolar transistors , usually configured as high-performance transistor–transistor logic , emitter-coupled logic , or current-mode logic logic configurations. CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor ) gate arrays were later developed and came to dominate
2528-465: A different solution using three alkaline batteries fitted next to the power supply. The Master series consisted of several different models, all of which apart from the Master Compact were variants of the same basic design. This was the "foundation of the new BBC range" when launched. The 128 in the name referred to its 128 KB of RAM , though it also featured 128 KB ROM . A disc interface
2686-742: A disappointing summer season in 1984, Acorn had evidently focused on making up for lost sales over the Christmas season, with the Electron being a particular focus. However, a refusal to discount the BBC Micro also appeared to inhibit sales of that machine, with some dealers expressing dissatisfaction to the point of considering abandoning the range altogether. With rumours of another, potentially cheaper, machine coming from Acorn, dealers eventually started to discount heavily after Christmas. For instance, high street retailer Rumbelows sought to clear unsold Christmas stocks of around 1500 machines priced at £299, offering
2844-488: A discount of around £100, also bundling them with a cassette recorder and software. The rumoured machine turned out to be the BBC Model B+ which was a relatively conservative upgrade and more, not less, expensive than the machine it replaced. It was speculated that the perception of a more competitive machine soon to be launched might well have kept potential purchasers away from the products that Acorn needed to sell. Acorn
3002-424: A drawn-out and expensive process that proved futile: all of the expansion devices that were intended to be sold with the BBC Micro had to be tested and radiation emissions had to be reduced. It was claimed that Acorn spent £10 million on its US operation without this localised variant of the BBC Micro establishing a significant market share. The machine, however, did make an appearance in the school of Supergirl in
3160-477: A failure to consider local market conditions and preferences, with "complex technical efforts" having been made to make the machine compatible with US television standards when local market information would have indicated that "US home computer users expect to use a dedicated personal computer monitor". Consequently, obtaining Federal approval for the BBC Micro in order to expand into the United States proved to be
3318-564: A fast-moving industry became hyper-competitive. The many new entrants to the market drove gate array prices down to the marginal costs of the silicon manufacturers. Fabless companies such as LSI Logic and CDI survived on selling design services and computer time rather than on production revenues. As of the early 21st century, the gate array market was a remnant of its former self, driven by the FPGA conversions done for cost or performance reasons. IMI moved out of gate arrays into mixed-signal circuits and
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#17328518198343476-615: A follow-up to an ITV documentary , The Mighty Micro , in which Dr Christopher Evans from the UK National Physical Laboratory predicted the coming microcomputer revolution . It was a very influential documentary—so much so that questions were asked in Parliament . As a result of these questions, the Department of Industry (DoI) became interested in the programme, as did BBC Enterprises , which saw an opportunity to sell
3634-654: A larger case with a second drive. The System 5 was largely similar to the System 4, but included a newer 2 MHz version of the 6502 . Development of the Sinclair ZX80 started at Science of Cambridge in May 1979. Learning of this probably prompted Curry to conceive the Atom project to target the consumer market. Curry and another designer, Nick Toop, worked from Curry's home in the Fens on
3792-534: A limited number of writes, making the EEPROMs "a consumable, like a battery" requiring "replacement at intervals". Hence, it had no built-in real-time clock facility, although the time could be fetched via Econet where available, being applied to ADFS file timestamps. As a result of this, the *TIME and TIME$ commands returned dummy values. Only the ADFS Version 2 filing system was supplied as standard, running via
3950-551: A machine to go with the series. BBC Engineering was instructed to draw up an objective specification for a computer to accompany the series. Eventually, under some pressure from the DoI to choose a British system, the BBC chose the NewBrain from Newbury Laboratories. This selection revealed the extent of the pressure brought to bear on the supposedly independent BBC's computer literacy project—Newbury
4108-442: A market capitalisation of about £135 million. CPU founders Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry's stakes in the new company were worth £64m and £51m, respectively. Ten per cent of the equity was placed on the market, with the money raised from the flotation "mainly" directed towards establishing US and German subsidiaries (the flotation raising around £13.4 million ), although some was directed towards research and product development. By
4266-492: A new multi-tasking OS, four internal ROM sockets, and shipped with a software suite based on View and ViewSheet. It also had an attached telephone, communications software and auto-answer/auto-dial modem. However, with Acorn's finances having sustained the development cost of the Archimedes, and with the custom systems division having contributed substantially to the company's losses in 1987, a change in strategy took effect towards
4424-471: A number of computers during the 1980s with associated software that were highly popular in the domestic market, and they have been historically influential in the development of computer technology like processors . The company's Acorn Electron , released in 1983, and the later Acorn Archimedes , were highly popular in Britain, while Acorn's BBC Micro computer dominated the educational computer market during
4582-470: A number of other major British technology companies. IBM developed proprietary bipolar master slices that it used in mainframe manufacturing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but never commercialized them externally. Fairchild Semiconductor also flirted briefly in the late 1960s with bipolar arrays diode–transistor logic and transistor-transistor logic called Micromosaic and Polycell. CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor ) technology opened
4740-537: A numeric keypad alongside the familiar keyboard, and the Master 128 and its variants incorporated two cartridge slots behind the keypad, these employing sockets that provided a superset of the Acorn Electron Plus 1 cartridge interface capabilities, supporting the use of physically compatible Electron cartridges, but also supporting enhanced electrical characteristics for some of the cartridge connector pins. Although
4898-406: A product line competitive to IMI and, shortly thereafter, a 5-micron silicon gate single-layer product line with densities of up to 1,200 gates. A couple of years later, CDI followed up with "channel-less" gate arrays that reduced the row blockages caused by a more complex silicon underlayer that pre-wired the individual transistor connections to locations needed for common logic functions, simplifying
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5056-594: A proprietary local area network had been installed at Market Hill. It was decided to include this, the Econet , in the Atom, and at its launch at a computer show in March 1980, eight networked Atoms were demonstrated with functions that allowed files to be shared, screens to be remotely viewed and keyboards to be remotely slaved. After the Atom had been released into the market, Acorn contemplated building modern 16-bit processors to replace
5214-420: A relatively low-cost Ethernet interface card utilising Intel's 82586 network controller chip. Torus later released a network management solution called Tapestry, based on Icon and marketed by IBM for its own networking technologies. Torus also released support for the use of Novell's Advanced Netware product on its own networking hardware. The company eventually entered receivership in 1990 with Acorn reporting
5372-448: A school, and the choice of 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -inch discs using the ADFS format was regarded as conducive to "handling many small files" and "distinguishing between different topics or users on the same disc". Amongst the bundled software, Acorn's adoption of Logotron's Logo implementation was seen as particularly welcome. In an effort to increase sales of the Compact to education, Acorn reduced
5530-592: A second processor, if fitted. Priced at around £45, it was noted that since the copyright message in the ROM was dated 1988 and the manual dated October 1989, such an upgrade might have been more widely adopted by users (and the relocatable ROM feature adopted by software producers) had it been released earlier, with the Master Compact ROM having already benefited from some of the featured improvements, such as direct entry of "foreign characters" or "top-bit-set characters" from
5688-647: A standard for an educational microcomputer system analogous to the MSX computing architecture and to the established IBM PC compatible architecture. Deliberations continued into 1986, with Acorn proposing its own ARM processor architecture as the basis for the initiative, whereas Thomson had proposed the Motorola 68000. Expectations that Olivetti would actively market Acorn's machines in Europe were, however, frustrated by Olivetti's own assessment of Acorn's products as "too expensive" and
5846-417: A suite of tools broadly similar to those of Ferranti's products including automatic layout, routing, rule checking and simulation functionality for the design of gate arrays. Qudos employed electron beam lithography, etching designs onto Ferranti ULA devices that formed the physical basis of these custom chips. Typical prototype production costs were stated as £100 per chip. Quickchip was subsequently ported to
6004-473: A variety of enhancements. The improved version of BBC Basic was named Basic 4, fixing bugs in the earlier Basic 2 and introducing enhancements and new functionality such as a TIME$ variable yielding the current date and time in a concise but human-readable format. The inclusion of a real-time clock to keep the date and time was a notable built-in feature of the Master 128 and derived models, together with 50 bytes of battery-backed CMOS RAM to retain details of
6162-722: A version of the Master Compact in Italy under the Olivetti Prodest brand, subsequently announcing the model as the PC 128 S aimed at the home and small business markets. Unlike the Compact, the PC 128 S was bundled with a mouse, the Nidd Valley Digimouse. In the UK the Digimouse was sold with Clares' Artroom, an illustration package, later being made available to purchase on its own. Clares' Artroom
6320-714: A £242,000 loss associated with the investment. Such were the ambitions of Acorn's management that a joint venture company was established in Hong Kong under the name Optical Information Systems , apparently engaging in the development of "digital, optical technology for computer data storage". Involving a Hong Kong turntable manufacturer, Better Sound Reproduction Ltd., Acorn were to set up a research and development facility in Palo Alto, California, US to bring "compact laser disk drives designed as floppy disk drive replacements" to market within 18 months. In February 1985, speculation about
6478-410: Is determined by estimates such as those derived from Rent's rule or by experiments with existing designs. The main drawbacks of gate arrays are their somewhat lower density and performance compared with other approaches to ASIC design. However, this style is often a viable approach for low production volumes. Gate arrays were used widely in the home computers in the early to mid 1980s, including in
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6636-490: Is sometimes referred to as the "British Apple " and has been compared to Fairchild Semiconductor for being a catalyst for start-ups. On 25 July 1961, Clive Sinclair founded Sinclair Radionics to develop and sell electronic devices such as calculators . The failure of the Black Watch wristwatch and the calculator market's move from LEDs to LCDs led to financial problems, and Sinclair approached government body
6794-514: The 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -inch disk format ( 5 + 1 ⁄ 4 -inch was the standard for the Master and earlier BBC Micro ). The machines were built by Rank Xerox in Hertfordshire . Ultimately, the Compact was discontinued in 1989 with "over eighty thousand Compacts and Olivetti's Prodest version" having been sold, with Acorn shifting its focus to the Master 128 as "its core 8-bit machine". Olivetti were named as being interested in releasing
6952-637: The ARM . Acorn's development of their RISC OS operating system required around 200 OS development staff at its peak. Acorn C/C++ was released commercially by Acorn, for developers to use to compile their own applications. Having become a publicly traded company in 1983 during the home computer boom, Acorn's commercial performance in 1984 proved to be consequential. Many home computer manufacturers struggled to maintain customer enthusiasm, some offering unconvincing follow-up products that failed to appeal to buyers. The more successful manufacturers, like Amstrad, emphasised
7110-532: The Acorn Cambridge Workstation , with a low-end version for the BBC Micro , and to the Acorn Archimedes . Indirect competition arose with the development of the field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Xilinx was founded in 1984, and its first products were much like early gate arrays, slow and expensive, fit only for some niche markets. However, Moore's Law quickly made them a force and, by
7268-583: The Cambridge Ring networking system Hopper had worked on for his PhD , but it was soon decided to bring him into CPU as a director because he could promote CPU's interests at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory . CPU purchased Orbis, and Hopper's Orbis shares were exchanged for shares in CPU Ltd. CPU's role gradually changed as its Acorn brand grew, and soon CPU was simply the holding company and Acorn
7426-478: The Computer Conservation Society organised an event at London's Science Museum to mark the legacy of the BBC Micro. A number of the BBC Micro's principal creators were present, and Sophie Wilson recounted to the BBC how Hermann Hauser tricked her and Steve Furber to agree to create the physical prototype in less than five days. Also in 2008 a number of former staff organised a reunion event to mark
7584-473: The Model B , Master series models used the slightly improved 65C12 . Fabricated using CMOS technology, the 65C12 used less power than the 6502 and offered somewhat better performance, reportedly "almost as fast" as the original 3 MHz 6502 second processor for the BBC Micro. The systems had 128 KB of dynamic RAM as standard, alleviating the shortage of available RAM which had previously discouraged use of
7742-558: The National Enterprise Board (NEB) for help. After losing control of the company to the NEB, Sinclair encouraged Chris Curry to leave Radionics and get Science of Cambridge (SoC—an early name for Sinclair Research ) up and running. In June 1978, SoC launched a microcomputer kit, the MK14 , that Curry wanted to develop further, but Sinclair could not be persuaded so Curry resigned. During
7900-513: The Western Design Center in the US, where the 6502 was being updated by what was effectively a single-person company, showed Acorn engineers Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson they did not need massive resources and state-of-the-art research and development facilities. Sophie Wilson set about developing the instruction set, writing a simulation of the processor in BBC BASIC that ran on
8058-747: The ZX Spectrum . Curry conceived of the Electron as Acorn's sub-£200 competitor. In many ways a cut-down BBC Micro, it used one Acorn-designed uncommitted logic array (ULA) to reproduce most of the functionality. But problems in producing the ULAs led to short supply, and the Electron, although launched in August 1983, was not on the market in sufficient numbers to capitalise on the 1983 Christmas sales period. Acorn resolved to avoid this problem in 1984 and negotiated new production contracts. Acorn became more known for its BBC Micro model B than for its other products. In 2008,
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#17328518198348216-502: The 16 KB banks, with Acorn having announced a "ROM licencing scheme" to authorise the use of the company's ROM-based software in RAM. However, a version of BASIC known as BAS128, previously released for the BBC Model B+ 128, was provided on disk and was able to use the full 64 KB of sideways RAM as workspace, thus expanding the memory available to BASIC considerably. Other Acorn languages did not support this arrangement, however. Although
8374-480: The 1970s. However, by 1982, as many as 30 companies had started to compete with Ferranti, reducing the company's market share to around 30 percent. Ferranti's "major competitors" were other British companies such as Marconi and Plessey, both of which had licensed technology from another British company, Micro Circuit Engineering. A contemporary initiative, UK5000, also sought to produce a CMOS gate array with "5,000 usable gates", with involvement from British Telecom and
8532-483: The 1980s. Acorn also developed the reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architecture set in 1985 and an operating system , RISC OS , for the hardware. The company also designed the ARM architecture; this part of the business was spun-off as Advanced RISC Machines under a joint venture with Apple and VLSI in 1990, now known as Arm Holdings , which is dominant in the mobile phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) microprocessor market today. Acorn in
8690-453: The 1984 film Supergirl: The Movie . Acorn also made or attempted various acquisitions. The Computer Education in Schools division of ICL was acquired by Acorn in late 1983 "reportedly for less than £100,000", transferring a staff of six to Acorn's Maidenhead office to form Acorn's Educational Services division and to provide "the core of education support development within Acorn". Having had
8848-654: The 1990s released the Risc PC line and the Acorn Network Computer , and also had a stint in the set-top box and educational markets. However, financial troubles led to the company closing down its workstation division in September 1998, effectively halting its home computer business and cancelling development of RISC OS and the Phoebe computer. The company was acquired and largely dismantled in early 1999. In retrospect, Acorn
9006-480: The 1990s, identifying the market as the largest in Europe whose technically sophisticated computer retailers were looking for opportunities to sell higher-margin products than IBM PC compatibles, with a large enthusiast community amongst existing and potential customers. Efforts were made to establish a local marketing presence and to offer localised versions of Acorn's products. Despite optimistic projections of success, and with Acorn having initially invested £700,000 in
9164-543: The 30th anniversary of the company's formation. The BBC Micro sold well—so much so that Acorn's profits rose from £3000 in 1979 to £8.6 million in July 1983. In September 1983, CPU shares were liquidated and Acorn was floated on the Unlisted Securities Market as Acorn Computer Group plc , with Acorn Computers Ltd. as the microcomputer division. With a minimum tender price of 120p, the group came into existence with
9322-421: The 6522 VIA and 6845 CRTC were retained in the Master series, much of the discrete logic of earlier models was consolidated into CMOS gate array chips to perform tasks such as handling the keyboard, input/output and some display functions. This left an impression of the inside of the Master 128 being "another world" compared to the original BBC Micro, featuring fewer but larger chips. In terms of expansion ports,
9480-563: The ABC range, was developed and later sold in 1985 as the Cambridge Workstation (using the Panos operating system). Advertising for this machine in 1986 included an illustration of an office worker using the workstation. The advert claimed mainframe power at a price of £3,480 (excluding VAT). The main text of the advertisement referred to available mainframe languages, communication capabilities and
9638-533: The Acorn founders with less than 15% ownership of the company. Meanwhile, the financial difficulties had reduced the number of employees at Acorn from a peak of 480 to around 270. With Brian Long appointed as managing director, Acorn were set to move forward with a new OEM-focused computer named the Communicator and the Cambridge Workstation , whose launch had been delayed until the end of July 1985 due to
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#17328518198349796-567: The Atom. After a great deal of discussion, Hauser suggested a compromise—an improved 6502-based machine with far greater expansion capabilities: the Proton. Acorn's technical staff had not wanted to do the Atom and they now saw the Proton as their opportunity to "do it right". One of the developments proposed for the Proton was the Tube , a proprietary interface allowing a second processor to be added. This compromise would make for an affordable 6502 machine for
9954-453: The BBC's plans, the BBC allowed other manufacturers to submit their proposals. Hauser quickly drafted in Steve Furber (who had been working for Acorn on a voluntary basis since the ACE fruit machine project) and Sophie Wilson to help complete a revised version of the Proton which met the BBC's specifications. BBC visited Acorn and were given a demonstration of the Proton. Shortly afterwards,
10112-664: The British Department of Education and Science (DES) had begun the Microelectronics Education Programme to introduce microprocessing concepts and educational materials. In 1981, through to 1986, the DoI allocated funding to assist UK local education authorities to supply their schools with a range of computers, the BBC Micro being one of the most popular. Schools were offered 50% of the cost of computers, providing they chose one of three models: BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum or Research Machines 380Z . In parallel,
10270-486: The Compact. Such adaptations were facilitated by the availability of the User Port signals via pins provided by the joystick port, together with three signals (PB5, PB6 and PB7) provided by the general expansion connector. Acorn reportedly designed the Compact to appeal to home users and to primary education, with the single-plug power connection regarded as more convenient for setting up a machine that might be moved around in
10428-576: The DES continued to fund more materials for the computers, such as software and applied computing projects, plus teacher training. Although the NewBrain was under heavy development by Newbury, it soon became clear that they were not going to be able to produce it—certainly not in time for the literacy programme nor to the BBC's specification. The BBC's programmes, initially scheduled for autumn 1981, were moved back to spring 1982. After Curry and Sinclair found out about
10586-525: The Gary and Gayle custom chips, as their code names may suggest. In an attempt to reduce the costs and increase the accessibility of gate array design and production, Ferranti introduced in 1982 a computer-aided design tool for their uncommitted logic array (ULA) product called ULA Designer. Although costing £46,500 to acquire, this tool promised to deliver reduced costs of around £5,000 per design plus manufacturing costs of £1-2 per chip in high volumes, in contrast to
10744-407: The Master 128 retained all of the standard interfaces of the BBC Micro. One notable addition to the Master 128 was that of an internal modem socket permitting the installation of a modem without occupying the machine's RS423 serial port. An Econet interface could also be fitted internally at a relatively low cost of £49 including VAT. However, the main addition to the Master 128's expansion capabilities
10902-419: The Master series was intended to be compatible with "legally written" software for the older models, there were some problems running older programs, particularly games. Conversely, although few programs were ever targeted specifically at Master series machines (except the Master 512), many later BBC games (and Master versions of earlier classics such as Elite ) included enhanced features which took advantage of
11060-467: The Tube protocols on each processor chosen, in the process finding out, during 1983, that there were no obvious candidates to replace the 6502. Because of many-cycle uninterruptible instructions, for example, the interrupt response times of the Motorola 68000 were too slow to handle the communication protocol that the host 6502-based BBC Micro coped with easily. The National Semiconductor 32016-based model of
11218-426: The UK pioneered commercializing bipolar ULA technology, offering circuits of "100 to 10,000 gates and above" by 1983. The company's early lead in semi-custom chips, with the initial application of a ULA integrated circuit involving a camera from Rollei in 1972, expanding to "practically all European camera manufacturers" as users of the technology, led to the company's dominance in this particular market throughout
11376-528: The ability to run DOS Plus and the GEM graphical user interface. The coprocessor card was introduced at £499 as an upgrade to the Master 128, but its price was subsequently reduced to £399. The competitiveness of the Master 512 was constrained by its compatibility with various DOS applications, with this being limited by "protection and direct use of IBM hardware" by some applications. The additional memory requirements of DOS Plus, when compared to those of PC DOS , and
11534-463: The alternative option of upgrading a BBC Micro using a coprocessor . The machine had shown Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber the value of memory bandwidth. It also showed that an 8 MHz 32016 was completely trounced in performance terms by a 4 MHz 6502. Furthermore, the Apple Lisa had shown the Acorn engineers that they needed to develop a windowing system; this was not going to be easy with
11692-411: The base layers. Using decals of logic gate connections and PC tape to interconnect these gates, custom circuits could be quickly laid out by hand for these relatively small circuits, and photo-reduced using existing technologies. After a falling out with IMI, Robert Lipp went on to start California Devices, Inc. (CDI) in 1978 with two silent partners, Bernie Aronson, and Brian Tighe. CDI quickly developed
11850-404: The bundling of computers with essential peripherals such as monitors and cassette recorders along with value for money. The collapse of the market from the manufacturers' perspective, it was argued, was due to the "neglect of the market by the manufacturers". Market adversity had led to Atari being sold, and Apple nearly went bankrupt. The Electron had been launched in 1983, but problems with
12008-493: The clone would also include a monitor and drives in the price. The price was further reduced to £199 plus VAT in early 1987, with GEM Desk Top, GEM Write and GEM Paint being provided free with the upgrade, and a "final price cut to £99" was reported in 1989, effectively exhausting the remaining stocks. Although largely abandoned by Acorn as the company shifted its emphasis to the Archimedes range, one commentator considered it "one of
12166-635: The co-processor, also indicating that 512 KB of RAM appeared to be insufficient for the target audience, whose applications tended to need 1 MB of RAM, this already being provided by the upgraded 32016 Second Processor product known as the Cambridge Co-Processor. This model is, as the name indicates, a compact version of the Master 128 (ostensibly known as the "Baby B" during development) with some expansion functionality removed and other expansion options added, and with different bundled software. Unlike previously released Acorn microcomputers, it
12324-449: The colour monitor also provided a SCART connector, anticipating "future applications" employing more colours and even "overlaying video pictures". The Master Compact was also sold as a "TV system" bundling a PAL television adapter that was also sold separately. The cartridge and cassette ports were removed as a space saving measure, and RS-232 hardware not populated on the circuit board as standard. A multifunction mouse and joystick port
12482-483: The company and seeing their combined stake fall from 85.7% to 36.5%, the Italian computer company took a 49.3% stake in Acorn for £10.39 million, which went some way to covering Acorn's £10.9 million losses in the previous six months, effectively valuing Acorn at around a tenth of its valuation of £216 million the year before. Acorn's share price collapse and the suspension of its listing was attributed by some news outlets to
12640-443: The company's failure to establish itself in the US market, with one source citing costs of $ 5.5 million related to that endeavour. In July 1985, Olivetti acquired an additional £4 million of Acorn shares, raising its ownership stake in the company to 79.8%. Major creditors agreed to write off £7.9 million in debts, and the BBC agreed to waive 50% of outstanding royalty payments worth a reported £2 million. This second refinancing left
12798-401: The computer when operating in its "native" BBC Micro mode. Along with compatibility issues, the pricing of the Master 512 upgrade also inhibited its competitiveness. The estimated price of an IBM PC clone of £500–800 compared "very favourably with the £900 needed for a complete Master 512", this being the Master 512 upgrade together with the base system, monitor and disk drives, considering that
12956-441: The coprocessor. To remedy compatibility issues caused by a lack of memory, one company, Essential Software, provided an upgrade service augmenting the fitted RAM of the Master 512 upgrade with four 1 megabit devices providing 512 KB to yield a total of 1 MB of RAM. Priced at £99, and also compatible with Problem Solver, the upgrade overcame the elevated memory requirements of DOS Plus relative to MS-DOS and also allowed
13114-478: The delivery of "an innovative, cheap machine for education" – the Compact – through robust competition with Acorn in the sector. Although the Compact has a "three box" arrangement, the main functionality of the system is actually provided in the keyboard unit, much like the Master 128, but rather reduced in size in comparison to the Master 128 and Model B, being styled on the Acorn Communicator . The unit under
13272-562: The designer can fairly easily count how many gates and I/Os pins are needed, the number of routing tracks needed may vary considerably even among designs with the same amount of logic. (For example, a crossbar switch requires much more routing than a systolic array with the same gate count.) Since unused routing tracks increase the cost (and decrease the performance) of the part without providing any benefit, gate array manufacturers try to provide just enough tracks so that most designs that will fit in terms of gates and I/O pins can be routed. This
13430-467: The development of the MK14, Hermann Hauser , a friend of Curry's, had been visiting SoC's offices and had grown interested in the product. Curry and Hauser decided to pursue their joint interest in microcomputers and, on 5 December 1978, they set up Cambridge Processor Unit Ltd. (CPU) as the vehicle with which to do this. CPU soon obtained a consultancy contract to develop a microprocessor-based controller for
13588-437: The development of this machine. It was at this time that Acorn Computers Ltd. was incorporated and Curry moved to Acorn full-time. It was Curry who wanted to target the consumer market. Other factions within Acorn, including the engineers, were happy to be out of that market, considering a home computer to be a rather frivolous product for a company operating in the laboratory equipment market. To keep costs down and not give
13746-486: The display modes offering the highest quality graphics on earlier models. Of the total 128 KB of RAM, 64 KB was provided as standard RAM, being used for applications, screen memory and system workspace. Another 64 KB was provided in the form of four 16 KB bank-switched pages of sideways RAM. Of the 64 KB standard RAM, the lower region of 32 KB was employed in a fashion familiar from earlier models, providing workspace for languages, applications and
13904-429: The door to the broad commercialization of gate arrays. The first CMOS gate arrays were developed by Robert Lipp in 1974 for International Microcircuits, Inc. (IMI) a Sunnyvale photo-mask shop started by Frank Deverse, Jim Tuttle and Charlie Allen, ex-IBM employees. This first product line employed 7.5 micron single-level metal CMOS technology and ranged from 50 to 400 gates . Computer-aided design (CAD) technology at
14062-417: The doubters reason to object to the Atom, Curry asked industrial designer Allen Boothroyd to design a case that could also function as an external keyboard for the microcomputer systems. The internals of the System 3 were placed inside the keyboard, creating a quite typical set-up for an inexpensive home computer of the early 1980s: the relatively successful Acorn Atom . To facilitate software development,
14220-465: The early 1980s, gate arrays were starting to move out of their niche applications to the general market. Several factors in technology and markets were converging. Size and performance were increasing; automation was maturing; the technology became "hot" when in 1981 IBM introduced its new flagship 3081 mainframe with CPU comprising gate arrays. They were used in a consumer product, the ZX81, and new entrants to
14378-455: The early 1990s, were seriously disrupting the gate array market. Designers still wished for a way to create their own complex chips without the expense of full-custom design, and eventually, this wish was granted with the arrival of not only the FPGA, but complex programmable logic device (CPLD), metal configurable standard cells (MCSC), and structured ASICs. Whereas a gate array required a back-end semiconductor wafer foundry to deposit and etch
14536-555: The end of 1984, Acorn Computer Group was organised into several subsidiary companies. Acorn Computers Limited was responsible for the management of the microcomputer business, research and development, and UK sales and marketing, whereas Acorn Computer Corporation and Acorn Computers International Limited dealt with sales to the US and to other international markets respectively. Acorn Computers (Far East) Limited focused on component procurement and manufacturing with some distribution responsibilities in local markets. Acornsoft Limited
14694-461: The end of 1987, moving away from "individual customers" and towards "volume products", resulting in 47 of Acorn's 300 staff being made redundant, the closure of the custom systems division, and the abandonment of the Communicator. In February 1986, Acorn announced that it was ceasing US sales operations, and sold its remaining US BBC Microcomputers for $ 1.25 million to a Texas company, Basic, which
14852-472: The endeavour, the loss-making operation was closed in 1995 as part of broader cost-cutting and restructuring in response to a decline in revenue and difficulties experienced by various Acorn divisions. Ostensibly facilitated or catalysed by Olivetti's acquisition of Acorn, reports in late 1985 indicated plans for possible collaboration between Acorn, Olivetti and Thomson in the European education sector to define
15010-523: The extra instructions of the 65C12 permitted slightly greater code density, the OS and BBC BASIC ROMs, still limited by the memory architecture to 16 KB each, were augmented by additional ROMs. In total, the updated OS, known as MOS 3.2 occupied 35 KB and incorporated features previously introduced in the Graphics Extension ROM for the BBC Micro, along with additional commands and system calls plus
15168-490: The extra memory. An upgrade to the Master 128 operating system ROM was released by Acorn in early 1990, providing bug fixes and some performance and functionality enhancements, with the filing systems benefiting in particular. View, Viewsheet and Edit applications all saw various levels of enhancement. One notable feature was the introduction of "relocatable" language (or application) ROM support, permitting appropriately written ROM-based software to automatically take advantage of
15326-467: The first ARM silicon on 26 April 1985; it worked first time and came to be known as ARM1. Its first practical application was as a second processor to the BBC Micro, where it was used to develop the simulation software to finish work on the support chips (VIDC, IOC, MEMC) and to speed up the operation of the CAD software used in developing ARM2. The ARM evaluation system was promoted as a means for developers to try
15484-448: The first-level metal interconnect. This increased chip densities by 40%, significantly reducing manufacturing costs. Early gate arrays were low-performance and relatively large and expensive compared to state-of-the-art n-MOS technology then being used for custom chips. CMOS technology was being driven by very low-power applications such as watch chips and battery-operated portable instrumentation, not performance. They were also well under
15642-505: The increased speed of the coprocessor relative to a traditional IBM PC, display and keyboard differences (also supporting the BBC Model B keyboard for users of that machine with the co-processor attached), the behaviour of "memory resident packages" such as Sidekick, and the behaviour of particular applications. The product reportedly allowed well-known programs such as Ashton Tate's dBase III and Borland's Turbo C and Turbo Prolog to work on
15800-530: The industry. Gate array master slices with unfinished chips arrayed across a wafer are usually prefabricated and stockpiled in large quantities regardless of customer orders. The design and fabrication according to the individual customer specifications can be finished in a shorter time than standard cell or full custom design. The gate array approach reduces the non-recurring engineering mask costs as fewer custom masks need to be produced. In addition, manufacturing test tooling lead time and costs are reduced —
15958-518: The instruction set allowed the code to be very dense, making ARM BBC BASIC an extremely good test for any ARM emulator. Such was the secrecy surrounding the ARM CPU project that when Olivetti were negotiating to take a controlling share of Acorn in 1985, they were not told about the development team until after the negotiations had been finalised. In 1992, Acorn once more won the Queen's Award for Technology for
16116-516: The interconnections, the FPGA and CPLD had user-programmable interconnections. Today's approach is to make the prototypes by FPGAs, as the risk is low and the functionality can be verified quickly. For smaller devices, production costs are sufficiently low. But for large FPGAs, production is very expensive, power-hungry, and in many cases, do not reach the required speed. To address these issues, several ASIC companies like BaySand, Faraday, Gigoptics, and others offer FPGA to ASIC conversion services. While
16274-415: The keyboard. Acorn issued a safety warning for the Master 128 and ET models in 1986 related to the battery installed in the machine. This battery was fitted in a circuit that permitted the charging of the battery "contrary to the recommendations of the battery manufacturer". Due to the risk of combustion with this particular lithium battery arrangement, Acorn introduced a remedy involving its replacement with
16432-436: The latter out of a total of 450 employees. Meanwhile, Acorn's chosen method of expansion into West Germany and the United States through the establishment of subsidiaries involved a "major commitment of resources", in contrast with a less costly strategy that might have emphasised collaboration with local distributors. Localisation of the BBC Micro for the US market also involved more expenditure than it otherwise might have due to
16590-508: The literacy programme computer contract was awarded to Acorn, and the Proton was launched in December 1981 as the BBC Micro . In April 1984, Acorn won the Queen's Award for Technology for the BBC Micro. The award paid special tribute to the BBC Micro's advanced design, and it commended Acorn "for the development of a microcomputer system with many innovative features". In April 1982, Sinclair launched
16748-555: The machine's configuration while powered off. To hold the expanded OS and BASIC, the Master 128 was fitted with a ROM device having a capacity of one megabit, or 128 KB. Alongside the OS and BASIC, a text editor suitable for writing programs was included, DFS and ADFS provided filing system support to access files stored on disk, the View and ViewSheet applications respectively offered word processing and spreadsheet functionality. A terminal emulator
16906-484: The market boomed, profits for the industry were lacking. Semiconductors underwent a series of rolling recessions during the 1980s that created a boom-bust cycle. The 1980 and 1981–1982 general recessions were followed by high-interest rates that curbed capital spending. This reduction played havoc on the semiconductor business, which at the time was highly dependent on capital spending. Manufacturers desperate to keep their fab plants full and afford constant modernization in
17064-399: The market increased visibility and credibility. In 1981, Wilfred Corrigan , Bill O'Meara, Rob Walker, and Mitchell "Mick" Bohn founded LSI Logic . Their initial intention was to commercialize emitter coupled logic gate arrays, but discovered the market was quickly moving towards CMOS. Instead, they licensed CDI's silicon gate CMOS line as a second source. This product established them in
17222-400: The market while they developed their own proprietary 5-micron 2-layer metal line. This latter product line was the first commercial gate array product amenable to full automation. LSI developed a suite of proprietary development tools that allowed users to design their own chip from their own facility by remote login to LSI Logic's system. Sinclair Research ported an enhanced ZX80 design to
17380-480: The mass market which could be expanded with more sophisticated and expensive processors. The Tube enabled processing to be farmed out to the second processor leaving the 6502 to perform data input/output (I/O). The Tube would later be instrumental in the development of Acorn's ARM processor . In early 1980, the BBC Further Education department conceived the idea of a computer literacy programme, mostly as
17538-460: The monitor housed a 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -inch floppy disk drive and the system power supply. Both monitors supplied with the Compact were Philips models: a "green screen" monochrome monitor for high-resolution applications connected using "an Electron-style phono socket", whereas the colour monitor provided a 0.42mm dot pitch "generally billed as high resolution" and offered the traditional RGB monitor connector used by previous Acorn machines. However,
17696-602: The most exciting products Acorn has ever developed". The Master Scientific was announced at the time of the BBC Master's launch, but was not produced. It was to have an 8 MHz 32016 coprocessor with 32081 floating point processor and 512 KB of RAM, running the PANOS operating system. This was similar to the previous external 32016 Second Processor. Ultimately, Acorn dropped the Scientific due to unspecified technical problems with
17854-429: The performance of the existing dominant logic technology, transistor–transistor logic . However, there were many niche applications where they were invaluable, particularly in low power, size reduction, portable and aerospace applications as well as time-to-market sensitive products. Even these small arrays could replace a board full of transistor–transistor logic gates if performance were not an issue. A common application
18012-424: The portfolio. Even from the time of Acorn's earliest systems, the company was considering how to move on from the 6502 processor, introducing a Motorola 6809 processor card for its System 3 and System 4 models. Several years later in 1985, the Acorn Communicator employed the 16-bit 65816 processor as a step up from the 6502. The IBM PC was launched on 12 August 1981. Although a version of that machine
18170-630: The position of seeking a financing partner for Acorn, but in a significantly more urgent timeframe, making "financial institutions or a large computer company" the most likely candidates, these having the necessary resources and decision-making agility for a timely intervention. The dire financial situation was brought to a head in February 1985, when one of Acorn's creditors issued a winding-up petition. It would eventually emerge that Acorn owed £31.1 million to various creditors including manufacturers AB Electronics and Wong's Electronics. Wong's had been awarded
18328-469: The price of the machine in late 1987, bundling the Mertec Compact Companion interface with it to provide the BBC range's traditional expansion connectors, pricing it at £344 including VAT without monitor. Unlike the other models in the series which provided a battery-backed clock and memory for configuration settings, the Compact utilised EEPROM storage for its configuration with support for only
18486-537: The production problem and in 1984, production reached its anticipated volumes, but the contracts Acorn had negotiated with its suppliers were not flexible enough to allow volumes to be reduced quickly in this unanticipated situation, and supplies of the Electron built up. At the time of the eventual financial rescue of Acorn in early 1985, it still had 100,000 unsold Electrons plus an inventory of components which had all been paid for and needed to be stored at additional expense. 40,000 BBC Micros also remained unsold. After
18644-839: The proprietary operating system offering "limited flexibility". Instead, Olivetti sought to promote its M19 personal computer for the European schools market, offering it to Acorn for sale in the UK (ultimately, as the rebadged Acorn M19 ). Olivetti would eventually offer both Acorn's Master Compact and the Thomson MO6 to the Italian market with its Prodest branding. Gate array Similar technologies have also been employed to design and manufacture analog, analog-digital, and structured arrays, but, in general, these are not called gate arrays. Gate arrays have also been known as uncommitted logic array s ('ULAs'), which also offered linear circuit functions, and semi-custom chips . Gate arrays had several concurrent development paths. Ferranti in
18802-645: The requirements of the GEM desktop caused potential problems when running some applications, although memory expansions existed to mitigate such problems. System call compatibility was only assured for MS-DOS and PC DOS 2.1, but other DOS versions were not supported, and undocumented system call usage ("fairly rare, but does include some Microsoft packages") could cause applications to run incorrectly. Software written for later GEM versions would also not necessarily run correctly. A product by Shibumi Software called Problem Solver aimed to address various compatibility issues related to
18960-475: The rest of the Master series. This version of BASIC was called Basic4(1986), aka 'BASIC41'. This was later replaced with version 'BASIC42' in 1987. This later BASIC ROM included the updated message (vs previous BBC BASIC ROMs): Roger Wilson & R.A. Sack The Compact included Acorn's first publicly available GUI . Little commercial software, beyond that included on the Welcome disk, was ever made available for
19118-429: The result of disagreement between Acorn and Lazards over the measures needed to rescue the company, with Lazards favouring a sale or refinancing whereby the founders would lose control, Acorn and their replacement advisors, Close Brothers, were reported to be pursuing a "radical reorganisation of the company". Lazards had sought to attract financing from GEC but had failed to do so. Close Brothers also found themselves in
19276-537: The same test fixtures can be used for all gate array products manufactured on the same die size. Gate arrays were the predecessor of the more complex structured ASIC ; unlike gate arrays, structured ASICs tend to include predefined or configurable memories and/or analog blocks. An application circuit must be built on a gate array that has enough gates, wiring, and I/O pins. Since requirements vary, gate arrays usually come in families, with larger members having more of all resources, but correspondingly more expensive. While
19434-512: The same time, Acorn also bought into Torus Systems - a company developing a "graphics-controlled local network called Icon" for the IBM PC platform - to broaden Acorn's networking expertise. Icon was a solution based on Ethernet, as opposed to the Acorn-related Econet and Cambridge Ring technologies, equipping appropriately specified IBM-compatible computers to participate on a network using
19592-495: The solution, starting with a "logic plan", proceeding through the layout of the logic in the gate array itself, and concluding with the definition of a test specification for verification of the logic and for establishing an automated testing regime. Verification of completed designs was performed by "external specialists" after the transfer of the design to a "CAD center" in Manchester, England or Sunnyvale, California, potentially over
19750-564: The standard until then. This later innovation paved the way to full automation when coupled with the development of 2-layer CMOS arrays. Customizing these first parts was somewhat tedious and error-prone due to the lack of good software tools. IMI tapped into PC board development techniques to minimize manual customization effort. Chips at the time were designed by hand, drawing all components and interconnecting on precision gridded Mylar sheets, using colored pencils to delineate each processing layer. Rubylith sheets were then cut and peeled to create
19908-420: The state of Acorn's finances intensified with the appointment of a temporary chief executive, Alexander Reid, to run the company, together with the announcement that Acorn had replaced its financial advisors, Lazards, and that the company's stockbrokers, Cazenove, had resigned, ultimately leading to the suspension of Acorn shares, these having fallen to a low of 23 pence per share. With these events reportedly being
20066-501: The supply of its ULA meant that Acorn was not able to capitalise on the 1983 Christmas selling period. A successful advertising campaign, including TV advertisements, had led to 300,000 orders, but the Malaysian suppliers were only able to supply 30,000 machines. The apparently strong demand for Electrons proved to be ephemeral: rather than wait, parents bought Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum for their children's presents. Ferranti solved
20224-413: The suspension of Acorn's shares. Of subsequent significance, Hermann Hauser was also expected to announce a "VLSI chip design using a reduced instruction set". Unveiled towards the end of 1985, the Communicator was Acorn's answer to ICL's One Per Desk initiative. This Acorn machine was based around a 16-bit 65SC816 CPU, 128 KB RAM, expandable to 512 KB, plus additional battery-backed RAM. It had
20382-543: The system by putting the CPU card from the System 1 in a 19-inch (480 mm) Eurocard rack that allowed a number of optional additions. The System 2 typically shipped with keyboard controller, external keyboard, a text display interface, and a cassette operating system with built-in BASIC interpreter . The System 3 moved on by adding floppy disk support, and the System 4 by including
20540-462: The system for themselves. This system was used with a BBC Micro and a PC compatible version was also planned. Advertising was aimed at those with technical expertise, rather than consumers and the education market, with a number of technical specifications listed in the main text of the adverts. Wilson subsequently coded BBC BASIC in ARM assembly language, and the in-depth knowledge obtained from designing
20698-478: The system to meet the requirement of some applications to have 640 KB of memory available. Consequently, GEM 3, Ventura Publisher , WordPerfect 5.0 and dBase IV were all reported as being compatible. The company also produced a selection of utilities for the Master 512, including the Co-Processor Filing System (CPFS) which allowed the 512 KB of coprocessor memory to be used as a RAM disc by
20856-484: The system, also hosting screen memory for many programs, particularly games. While the 65C12 ensured software compatibility with the Model B, it perpetuated the architectural limitations of the earlier models, with a 16-bit address bus providing direct access to only 64 KB of memory at a time, thus necessitating the use of paging mechanisms to make additional RAM available. Access to the upper 32 KB region of standard RAM
21014-424: The system, despite the claim by Acorn at the time that over 100 titles would be "set for distribution on 3.5in disc format for the Compact launch". The most avid supporter of the Master Compact appeared to be Superior Software , who produced and specifically labelled their games as Master Compact compatible. Software for the Compact was comparatively expensive (typically £20 for a game) due to the much lower demand for
21172-702: The telephone network. Prototyping completed designs took an estimated 3 to 4 weeks. The minicomputer itself was also adaptable to run as a laboratory or office system where appropriate. Ferranti followed up on the ULA Designer with the Silicon Design System product based on the VAX-11/730 with 1 MB of RAM, 120 MB Winchester disk, and utilising a high-resolution display driven by a graphics unit with 500 KB of its own memory for "high speed windowing, painting, and editing capabilities". The software itself
21330-448: The time was very rudimentary due to the low processing power available, so the design of these first products was only partially automated. This product pioneered several features that went on to become standard in future designs. The most important were: the strict organization of n-channel and p-channel transistors in 2-3 row pairs across the chip; and running all interconnect on grids rather than minimum custom spacing, which had been
21488-401: The £15,000 design costs incurred by engaging Ferranti's services for the design process. Based on a PDP-11/23 minicomputer running RSX/11M, together with graphical display, keyboard, "digitalizing board", control desk and optional plotter, the solution aimed to satisfy the design needs of gate arrays from 100 to 10,000 gates, with the design being undertaken entirely by the organisation acquiring
21646-1053: Was a subsidiary of Datum, the Mexican manufacturer of the Spanish version of the BBC Microcomputer (with modified Spanish keyboards for the South American market). The sales office in Woburn, Massachusetts was closed at this time. Acorn was reported as having achieved "negligible U.S. sales". In 1990, in contrast, Acorn set up a sales and marketing operation in Australia and New Zealand by seeking to acquire long-time distributor Barson Computers Australasia, with Acorn managing director Sam Wauchope noting Acorn's presence in Australia since 1983 and being "the only computer manufacturer whose products are recommended by all Australian state education authorities". Acorn also sought once again to expand into Germany in
21804-501: Was aimed at the enthusiast market much like the BBC Micro, its real area of success was business. The successor to the PC, the XT (eXtended Technology) was introduced in early 1983. The success of these machines and the variety of Z80 -based CP/M machines in the business sector demonstrated that it was a viable market, especially given that sector's ability to cope with premium prices. The development of
21962-434: Was also included to support serial communications over the machine's RS423 port or the optional internal modem. The Master series largely carried forward many of the core architectural features of the earlier BBC Micro models. The sound chip used in earlier models was retained, but the dedicated speech interface was omitted, with a "plug-in speech cartridge" anticipated by one reviewer for the Master 128. Although chips such as
22120-534: Was also spending a large portion of its reserves on development: the BBC Master was being developed; the ARM project was underway; the Acorn Business Computer entailed a lot of development work but delivered few products, with only the 32016-based model ever being sold (as the Cambridge Workstation). The company's research and development staff had grown from around 100 in 1983 to around 150 in 1984,
22278-686: Was available separately for organisations already likely to be using VAX-11/780 systems to provide a multi-user environment, but the "standalone system" package of hardware and software was intended to provide a more affordable solution with a "faster response" during the design process. The suite of tools involved in the use of the product included logic entry and test schedule definition (using Ferranti's own description languages), logic simulation, layout definition and checking, and mask generation for prototype gate arrays. The system also sought to support completely auto-routed designs, utilising architectural features of Ferranti's auto-routable (AR) arrays to deliver
22436-418: Was available to the system for workspace, freeing up memory that would normally be claimed by ROMs such as filing systems. The cumulative effect of enabling shadow RAM and using the upper memory for workspace made almost 29 KB available for normal programs and was said to "transform the machine" from its predecessors. Use of the 64 KB of sideways RAM favoured the installation of ROM images into each of
22594-484: Was combining a number of smaller circuits that were supporting a larger LSI circuit on a board was affectionately known as "garbage collection". And the low cost of development and custom tooling made the technology available to the most modest budgets. Early gate arrays played a large part in the CB craze in the 1970s as well as a vehicle for the introduction of other later mass-produced products such as modems and cell phones. By
22752-415: Was fitted, but the drives themselves were not included in the base product, these being offered by third parties and by Acorn as an official expansion. This was a Master 128 with 4 MHz 65C102 coprocessor card (which could be either bought with the machine or added to an existing Master 128). The Master AIV (Advanced Interactive Videodisc) was essentially a Master Turbo model with a SCSI interface and
22910-451: Was later acquired by Cypress Semiconductor in 2001; CDI closed its doors in 1989; and LSI Logic abandoned the market in favor of standard products and was eventually acquired by Broadcom. A gate array is a prefabricated silicon chip with most transistors having no predetermined function. These transistors can be connected by metal layers to form standard NAND or NOR logic gates . These logic gates can then be further interconnected into
23068-538: Was launched in January 1979 as the first product of Acorn Computer Ltd. , a trading name used by CPU to keep the risks of the two different lines of business separate. The microcomputer kit was named as Acorn System 75. Acorn was chosen because the microcomputer system was to be expandable and growth-oriented. It also had the attraction of appearing before " Apple Computer " in a telephone directory. Around this time, CPU and Andy Hopper set up Orbis Ltd. to commercialise
23226-537: Was localised for the PC 128 S and sold under the name Project. In addition to the localisation of the system itself, various applications were localised for the PC128S including View, ViewSheet, ViewPlot, and ViewIndex, along with a number of games including Aviator , Revs , XOR , and Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror . Pricing for the PC 128 S started at 995,000 lire for a system with monochrome monitor or 1,295,000 lire with
23384-486: Was low enough, at around £80 (equivalent to £420 in 2023), to appeal to the more serious enthusiast as well. It was a very small machine built on two cards, one with an LED display, keypad, and cassette interface (the circuitry to the left of the keypad), and the other with the rest of the computer (including the CPU ). Almost all CPU signals were accessible via a Eurocard connector. The System 2 made it easier to expand
23542-460: Was owned by the National Enterprise Board , a government agency operating in close collaboration with the DoI. The choice was also somewhat ironic given that the NewBrain started life as a Sinclair Radionics project, and it was Sinclair's preference for developing it over Science of Cambridge's MK14 that led to Curry leaving SoC to found CPU with Hauser. The NEB moved the NewBrain to Newbury after Sinclair left Radionics and went to SoC. In 1980–1982,
23700-434: Was provided as a 9-pin D type with its function configured in software. A Centronics printer interface was also provided. The 1 MHz bus and analogue port were not provided on the Compact. Additionally, no internal sockets were provided for adding a co-processor or 2nd processor. However, the machine did include a 50-way expansion edge connector on the right side of the keyboard, that was similar to cartridge socket #3 on
23858-411: Was provided by one such mechanism to take over some of the demands made on the lower memory region by the system. It was divided into three separate regions, each with a codename, following Acorn's architectural traditions: 20 KB of this upper region could be assigned as shadow RAM to host the screen memory, freeing up the conventional screen memory region for applications. The remaining 12 KB
24016-408: Was provided to permit the input of "foreign characters" or "top-bit-set characters" – character codes in the range from 128 to 255 – from the keyboard. The chip-count was also reduced vs. the rest of the Master range, via the use of 4x custom gate array chips. The version of BASIC on the Compact included re-coded mathematical routines, said to provide a 30% speed increase over the version included in
24174-481: Was responsible for development work. At some point, Curry had a disagreement with Sinclair and formally left Science of Cambridge, but did not join the other Acorn employees at Market Hill until a little while later. The Acorn Microcomputer, later renamed the Acorn System 1 , was designed by Sophie Wilson (then Roger Wilson). It was a semi-professional system aimed at engineering and laboratory users, but its price
24332-447: Was responsible for development, production and marketing of software for Acorn's computer range. Vector Marketing Limited was established to handle distribution-related logistics and the increasing customer support burden. As part of Acorn's office automation aspirations, conducting "advanced software research and development", Acorn Research Center Incorporated was established in Palo Alto, California. Acorn Leasing Limited rounded out
24490-433: Was sold by Acorn as a complete system bundled with disk drive and monitor (and the first high-volume system from Acorn to do so, preceded by the unreleased Acorn Business Computer and low-volume Acorn Cambridge Workstation ), aiming to provide a "one plug" solution that had, at the time of release, been successfully popularised by manufacturers such as Amstrad. Indeed, one reviewer gave credit to Amstrad for having engineered
24648-465: Was the inclusion of an internal connector for second processor expansions employing Acorn's Tube interface. The first of such internally connected second processors, known as co-processors, was the Turbo co-processor featuring a 4 MHz 65C102 and 64 KB of RAM, later followed by the Master 512 upgrade board featuring a 10 MHz 80186 and 512 KB of RAM. Outwardly, the Master series models added
24806-552: Was touching the screen little more than a simple divide/remainder operation. Likewise, the motor control relay for the audio cassette tape was controlled by a simple command and could be readily used in numerous control applications. This character set was used in the BBC Master microcomputer. Acorn Computers Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge , England in 1978 by Hermann Hauser , Chris Curry and Andy Hopper . The company produced
24964-440: Was usually an option). It used the same main circuit board as the Master 128, but the components for missing interfaces were simply not fitted (though there was nothing stopping them being added later by someone with appropriate soldering skills). The internal ROM also contained much less software than that of the Master 128. This system boasted a coprocessor card with a 10 MHz Intel 80186 and 512 KB memory. It also had
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