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The Pride Of Cambridge.
Acorn Computers have a very, very long history of producing innovative computing solutions going back to the pioneering days of home microcomputers in the 80s, including the well loved BBC Micro line. The RiscPC represents the culmination of Acorn's years of experience in one extremely clever machine which unfortunately also represents the last computer they would produce.
Built around the ARM architecture (yes, that ARM architecture) the RiscPC featured many innovations in industrial design as well as a well rounded set of hardware and some amazing expansion options.
The RiscPC was a hit with composers with an excellent version of Sibelius available while it also ended up having a strong career in the UK as the hardware of choice for television station automation.
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ARM StrongARM
200MHz main CPU IBM 5x86C 100MHz
secondary CPU 32MB EDO RAM 40GB ATA hard disk
(RiscOS and Windows) 32x CD-ROM drive Iomega Zip100
drive Acorn/Aleph1 486
PC card Castle ethernet
podule Castle SCSI podule Second chassis
slice RISC OS 4.03 and
Windows 95 OSR2.5Oh boy howdy, does the RiscPC have a few!
The first is the dual CPU design. This allows a primary CPU, in this case the later StrongARM 200, alongside a secondary CPU for compatibility. My machine included the Acorn/Aleph1 486 secondary CPU card with a staunch IBM 5x86C 100, a badge engineered Cyrix 5x86.
The second is the modular chassis. Best as I know, they did it first and certainly the finest example I've seen. The chassis is broken up into 'slices', each slice holding two 'podule' expansions, a 5.25" drive bay and a 3.5" drive bay. Want more space? Fit another slice! My machine is a two slice but weirdly, with just a single slice backplane meaning I can't add any more podules! The slices are held together with simple pins that lock in with a simple 90° rotation. Easiest thing ever!
The drive bays have unique curved spring loaded doors and give the RiscPC a very unique look.
The video hardware is integrated into the mainboard, which lives in the base slice. Interestingly, the system shipped with either no additional VRAM, a 1MB VRAM expansion or a 2MB VRAM expansion. Mine had the 2MB expansion installed but it had multiple rotten traces from a battery leak and was damaged beyond repair.
A Facebook Marketplace find! The owner had it listed as 'Riscpc parts', but the photos clearly showed a complete system. I gave him a heckle, he said it has no drives but is otherwise complete and I could have it free of charge if it's getting a good home!
I fully stripped the machine, removed the decaying battery and washed the whole board down before reassembling. A few caps had been knocked off the StrongARM card so I resoldered those then fired the machine up and bugger me, it fired into life quick sharp!
I fitted a new drive, installed RISC OS then proceeded to fettle about getting the networking functions working, proper CDROM support working and finally firing up the Aleph1 486 card. RISC OS is a very unique platform and is quite unlike anything I'd played with prior!
Sadly a common issue with RiscPCs is that the battery eats components and mine is no exception, there's damage to the audio amplification circuit meaning I no longer have working sound... for now. Once I get it fixed I'll be exploring what can be done with the RISC OS / Archimedes platform on stream.