Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/specials/a5000

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 37.8 KB | 774 lines

                Introducing the Acorn A5000
                ---------------------------
                      Paul Beverley

On Friday 27th September 1991, Acorn Computers launched, to the
assembled press representatives, an exciting new computer to extend
their range − the A5000 (admittedly, not a very striking name!) The look
of the new computer didn’t exactly bowl anyone over either. It was quite
smart, but looked remarkably similar to many three-piece microcomputers
produced these days. But it was when Acorn revealed the power of the new
computer and we saw the price tag that we realised that Acorn have again
made a major step forward in terms of computing power per pound
(Sterling).

        The A5000/2HD package

The package on offer is a 2 Mbyte (upgradable to 4M), ARM3 based
computer with their new operating system, RISC-OS 3. It has a 1.6M
floppy and a 40M IDE hard drive. There is also a high resolution
multi-sync colour monitor on a tilt and swivel stand. The price of this
complete package is an amazing £1499 (+ VAT) including the monitor.
Regardless of its looks or its uninspiring name, the A5000 is, without
any doubt, going to sell extremely well. Demand is going to far outstrip
supply for quite some time, I would guess, although Acorn say that mass
production of these new computers is due to start in January. They
wouldn’t be drawn on what they class as “mass” production but current
production rates are something in the region of 1,500 a month which is
tiny compared to what they could end up producing if this takes off in
the way I think it will. (Remember that, so far, Acorn have sold over
150,000 ARM3 based machines.)

Adrian Look and Brian Cowan, who also witnessed the birth of the A5000,
have written about the software and hardware aspects of the new
computer, so I will confine myself to the implications of the new
machine for the existing range of Archimedes computers and look at some
of the possible applications of the A5000.

The current version is an A5000/2HD to give it its full title but in the
new year, Acorn will be releasing the A5000/1FD. This will be a basic 1
Mbyte machine with no hard drive and it is planned to retail at £999
+VAT (= £1174). The reasoning behind this decision is, presumably, that
in this autumn quarter, the demand will be extremely high and they might
as well sell the full system while they can. In the new year, when the
full production comes on stream they will be more prepared to allow
people to choose to start with the basic machine and do their own memory
and drive upgrades.

(Actually, I’ve thought through the pricing of this and cannot see that
is likely that anyone will be able to beat the price of the A5000/2HD as
it is so aggressively priced.)

        A5000 Learning Curve

If you want even better value for money than you should buy the A5000
Learning Curve package. This comes with the A5000/2HD and some extra
software plus a two-hour tutorial on two audio cassettes and a Home
Computing magazine. The software includes PC Emulator (1.6) with DR-DOS
5.0, Genesis Plus, First Word Plus, Acorn DTP, Pacmania and Lemmings.
For this, you pay an extra £38 − a total of £1799 inc VAT.

        What about the opposition?

How does this new computer compare with the opposition? Is it really
more powerful? Well, I don’t profess to be a great expert on the current
generation of Apple Macs although, until the Archimedes came of age,
Archive magazine was produced on three Macs!

Acorn quoted a few figures for computing power saying that a top end Mac
Ci ran at 6.3 MIPs and a 386DX PC would run at a similar speed, whereas
the A5000 runs at 13 MIPs. Some will argue that Acorn are not comparing
like with like because they are comparing complex instruction set
computers (CISCs) with their own reduced instruction set computer
(RISC). However, the whole philosophy of RISC machines is based on the
observation that, for a large proportion of the time, CISC processors
are executing only simple instructions, so at twice the number of
instructions per second, albeit simple instructions, the A5000 really is
faster.

Having used Macs for quite some time, one thing I am certain of is that
having the operating system in ROM is a considerable advantage. Now,
with RISC-OS 3, the A5000 also has the Font Manager, 12 outline fonts
(i.e. 3 sets) and eight core applications also in ROM − !Edit, !Draw,
!Paint, !Configure, !Calc, !Alarm, !Chars and !Help. As one who has
spent many happy hours waiting for Mac applications to load from disc(!)
I believe that ROM based fonts and applications increase the “power” of
a computer significantly.

The other aspect of computer “power” which the Archimedes and the A5000
in particular demonstrate is programmability. At the hardware level, for
example, the video mode can be set at the flick of a mouse to any of a
wide range of standard modes provided on ROM. This can be extended by
using further screen mode modules which could be written quite easily by
third party suppliers like Atomwide and Computer Concepts. For the
programmer, there is a vast array of routines with appropriate “hooks”
to allow them to be used from within any programming language or from
machine code routines. There is also, in ROM, a “shared C library”
showing Acorn’s commitment to supporting those who are developing
applications using the C language.

With the new PC emulator and the processing power of A5000, we will no
longer have to apologise for the lack of speed when running MS-DOS
software. We can also now read 1.44M discs from PC’s and I believe that
a Mac disc reader is now a possibility with the new floppy drive
interface hardware.

        What about the A3000/410/420/440?

How does the new machine fit in with existing Archimedes computers?
Indeed, does it fit in at all? Acorn have discontinued the A440 and
dropped the ex-VAT prices of the A410 and A420 by £200. So let’s look at
a few VAT inclusive prices to see how the different computers compare.
(These are prices as quoted to Archive members. They include discount on
monitors and memory upgrades but not on the computers to keep in line
with Acorn’s pricing policy.)

Each is priced with 2 Mbyte of memory.

        monitor:    standard    multisync

        A3000        £935         £1185

        A410         £1316        £1566

        A420         £1500        £1750

        A5000       (£1474)       £1761

That price comparison says to me that no one in their right mind, or at
least, who is in possession of the full facts, is going to buy an A420
since the A5000 has twice the floppy drive capacity, twice the hard
drive capacity, a lot more than twice the processing speed and RISC-OS
3! Even the A410 has very little to recommend it unless you really
cannot afford to stretch beyond £1316, and are prepared to make do with
low resolution display.

If you can wait until January(-ish), you could buy a 1M, floppy only,
version of the A5000 at £1174. If we guess at £90 for the 1 to 2M
upgrade and add a standard resolution monitor, that gives us £1474 or
£1724 if you want a multisync monitor − but that takes you to within £37
of the A5000/1HD with its 40M hard drive and Acorn multisync monitor. I
think Acorn are onto a winner − I can’t, at the moment, find any
sensible way to beat their pricing.

        What about the A540?

The next question to ask is where the A5000 stands in relation to the
A540. The low price of the A5000 makes the A540 look grossly over-priced
at £3524 and so they have lopped £500 off the ex-VAT price bringing it
down to £2936. Acorn have also tried to separate the two by keeping the
memory of the A5000 down to 4M maximum (which obviously also keeps the
cost down) and by making VGA+ the highest graphics mode available. The
A540 has an SVGA mode but it is equally possible to give the A5000 an
SVGA mode by writing an appropriate screen mode module.

So how do the prices compare? If we take an A5000 and add 2M of ram
(£140) and a SCSI controller with a 100M drive (£790), we get something
that is on a par with the A540. On this basis, we get, for the two 4M
machines:

        A5000 + multisync         £2691

        A540 + multisync         £3392

The processor speeds are the same, they both have 4M of ram and a 100M
SCSI, so what does the A540 offer for the extra £600? Firstly, the A540
is easily expandable up to 16M by using plug-in memory boards (at £540
per 4M). Secondly, because the processor is on a separate board, it can
easily be upgraded to ARM4 or whatever becomes available. Thirdly, it
offers the high resolution monochrome mode (1152 × 900) which is not
available on the A5000 as it requires extra hardware to implement it.

However, at £600 less, the upgraded A5000 offers RISC-OS 3 (which could
be made available on the A540 but Acorn are making no promises), the
extra 40M IDE drive, a 2M floppy drive, space for a second 2M floppy and
the possibility of adding a 4M floppy when the prices come down
sufficiently. As far as memory upgrades are concerned, although Acorn
have “no intention of providing further memory upgrades for the A5000”,
they have provided contact points which would allow for the connection
of add-on boards with extra MEMC’s and memory and there is certainly
enough space in the box to fit them. It looks to me as if Acorn wouldn’t
be too unhappy to let the A410, A420 and A540 quietly slip into oblivion
− but I hasten to add that this just my own personal opinion.

        Applications

Let’s turn our attention now to what we can actually do with all this
raw processing power. The three areas which Acorn quote as being ripe
for the A5000 are image analysis, multimedia and DTP. As I know little
or nothing about the first two, I’ll share my vision for the latter!

        DTP systems − Cheap, but powerful !

If you are interested in setting up a DTP system then the A5000 must
surely be the best value on the market. To start with, the A5000 gives
you the speed of the A540 − about 13 MIPs, which compares well with the
6.5 MIPs of Apple’s latest, and most powerful, Mac Ci. Then you add to
that the improvements in the RISC-OS 3 operating system which Adrian
Look outlines for us in his article. In particular, the font manager is
in ROM and the facility is provided to have rotating fonts. Next, you
look at the price and speed of laser printers available for your DTP
system, e.g. Computer Concepts’ 600 d.p.i. Laser Direct HiRes 4 at £1100
inc VAT. This means you can get an extremely fast 600 d.p.i. DTP system
for just about £3,000 inc VAT and I challenge anyone to find a DTP
system of comparable power at under £10,000!

If you need a scanner, you can get a Computer Concepts 300 d.p.i.
flatbed scanner for £990 plus £200 for a SCSI interface which again is
well below prices of scanners for other DTP systems. Alternatively, you
could think of a Faxscan system. For £110, you can get an interface to
an Amstrad FX9600 fax machine which acts as a 200 d.p.i. flatbed
scanner. The interface plus an FX9600AT is £570 and this gives you a
fax, an answering machine and a telephone as well as a scanner!

Actually, if you want the HiRes 4 laser printer to be able to operate at
the full 600 d.p.i. instead of 300 d.p.i., you need to add a 2M to 4M
upgrade for the A5000 at £140. This gives you a total price of almost
exactly £3,000 (including VAT) plus a scanner if you need one. Also,
until the end of October, there an offer from Computer Concepts of a
free copy of Impression II with every laser printers − we think it is
the best DTP package available for the Archimedes and it normally
retails at an Archive price of £180.

        Floppy based DTP?

It is also quite possible to think of being even more economical by
using a floppy disc A5000 for doing DTP. There are three families of
fonts held in ROM (which, with the Font Manager, would normally occupy
450k on disc − a significant chunk out of an 800k disc) along with many
other facilities that might otherwise have to be held on disc. In any
case, the floppies will hold up to 1.6 Mbytes, so even large
publications such as Archive, which averages 1.2 Mbyte per copy, could
be done on a floppy-only A5000. (This will have to wait until January
when Acorn release the A5000/1FD − the 1 Mbyte, floppy disc version of
the A5000.)

        What is the future of the A5000?

By “1992 Q2” Acorn are supposed to be having a floating point
accelerator available which will speed things up yet again on anything
involving floating point calculations. The only thing is that we don’t
know how realistic Acorn’s assessment is of the development time needed.

Even without the floating point accelerator’s extra speed, the A5000 is,
in my book, an absolute winner. As long as Acorn manage to ramp up their
production rates sufficiently to meet the demand, this could be the
start of another major success for Acorn and a shot in the arm (ARM?)
for the UK computer industry.  A



                A5000 − The Hardware
                --------------------
                    Brian Cowan

At the Press Launch, we managed to get a fair amount of information
about the hardware of the new A5000 and we even persuaded Acorn to take
the lid off for us. There will be more information available once Paul
or I get hold of an A5000 ourselves, but here is the basic information
that I was able to glean.

        Physical layout

The layout of the computer is very similar to the A300/400/540 in that
it has a separate keyboard, a box housing the main p.c.b., floppy
drive(s), hard drive and up to four podules, and then the monitor, on a
tilt and swivel stand which sits on the top of the main box. However, in
terms of the internal hardware, the A5000 is a substantially different
from the A300, A400 and A540, all of which were much the same −
certainly, they all used the same casing.

        The physical differences are:

1)  The box is a wider but it is not as deep. I have illustrated the
importance of this by comparing the positioning of an A440 and an A5000
on a 30" wide desk which is up against a wall so that cables cannot
over-hang the back of the desk. (The dimensions of the box are 100 × 430
× 340 mm − height, width and depth)

2)  The keyboard plugs in at the back of the computer. It has a somewhat
longer and more flexible cable than existing machines, so that shouldn’t
be a problem. In some circumstances, notably schools, it should be an
advantage because it is less easy for the plug to be pulled out.

3)  The on/off switch is on the front of the computer beside the floppy
disc drive. Many people have told Acorn they don’t like having the
switch at the rear − particularly for special needs users.

        Keyboard

The keyboard is not new; it the same one that is supplied with the A540.
Indeed, A410s and A420s are also now supplied with these same keyboards.
The only obvious difference is the lack of a pop-up keystrip holder.
Your keystrips have to rest on a ledge above the function keys. This
means that it is easier to swap keystrips because you don’t have to
force them into a keystrip holder but the negative side is that you can
lose them more easily.

        Inside the box

When I looked inside the box, the first thing that I noticed was the low
chip count. I had speculated in my Hardware Column (Archive 5.1 page 43)
that, in addition to the ARM chip set, it might include a PC-type,
single chip I/O device covering IDE, floppy drives, parallel port and
serial port. It does so and this considerably reduces the number of
chips needed and provides more compatibility with PC devices.

        Ram & processor speed

The RAM runs at 12 MHz as it does on the A540 (cf 8 MHz on the other
Archimedes) and the ARM3 clock is 25 MHz so it works a lot faster than
the older Archimedes computers. Acorn were claiming that it ran at 13
MIPs. It also has space to fit a FP accelerator chip though there wasn’t
a socket. This means that it can only be fitted by dealers and then only
by those with a “surface mount re-work station”. (Acorn say that it will
be a user-fitting job. Production machines will have sockets. Ed.)

The currently available A5000 comes with 2M of RAM, upgradable to 4M and
Acorn have “no plans to make higher memory versions available”. They
did, however, say that contact points have been made available which
would make it possible for third parties to add further MEMC’s and
memory boards. The RISC-OS software can, presumably, handle larger
memory because the A540, even with RISC-OS 2, can go up to 16 Mbytes
already.

        Podules

There are the usual four podule slots which is an advantage over the
A540 which has one slot already taken up by a SCSI podule. RISC-OS 3
allows up to 16 podules but obviously the physical size and power supply
availability limit what can be done internally though it would be
possible, in theory, to build a 16-way backplane and supply a new metal
cover, tall enough to fit an extra power supply and a 12 more podules.
(And an extra big fan! Ed.)

        Display options

In terms of hardware, the video output of the A5000 is the same as the
A540 or as an A300/400/3000 with a VIDC enhancer. In terms of software,
you can select any of the standard modes offered by RISC-OS. These
include modes up to VGA and VGA+ (640 × 480 in 256 colours) but stops
short of the Super VGA offered by the A540. This seems to me to be more
of a marketing ploy than anything − to provide an extra reason to
persuade potential purchasers, who are deciding between the A5000 and
the A540, that the extra features are really worth the extra money. As
far as we can tell, the A5000 is quite capable of generating SVGA. All
it needs is someone for someone to write the appropriate mode module. In
any case, those of us who have become used to modes like 102 (1152 × 448
in 16 colours) can have them as soon as someone writes the appropriate
mode module.

The computer apparently detects the type of monitor it is attached to
and sets the monitor type accordingly. I cannot immediately see how this
would work, but it must have something to do with the fact that it now
uses the PC standard D-type monitor socket with three rows of pins −
about 12 in total − instead of the 9 pin D-type used on the other
Archimedes computers.

The monitor which Acorn are bundling with the A5000 is a 14" colour
multisync with micro-processor control. What happens is that, in the
automatic mode, it “learns” what settings to use for signals of a given
frequency and so automatically changes, for example, the x shift when
you change between certain of the Archimedes’ modes.

        Floppy drive(s)

There is a single 3½" floppy drive which works in a high density format
providing up to 1.6M on a single floppy disc. It also supports, as you
might guess, ADFS 800k in both D and E formats. However, there is no
mention on the Technical Specification sheet of whether it will handle
the older ADFS 640k L format. We were told that it would also read, but
not write, DFS discs and there is support for 720k and 1.44M MS-DOS
formats. (Acorn’s press information also mentions Atari formats up to
720k. Ed.)

There is space underneath the existing floppy drive for a second one and
there is a detachable front panel is provided to accommodate this. This
is in addition to, and not as an alternative to, the hard drive −
another improvement over existing Archimedes computers.

The floppy disc controller will actually handle 4M unformatted floppy
drives as well as the 2M drives supplied and so it would, in theory, be
possible to replace the drive with one handling the higher capacity
although the software would have to be changed (RISC-OS 4?) to deal with
it. Acorn have not used them in this unit as the aim of keeping the cost
down was far more important than getting extra capacity on the floppy
drives.

One other major improvement is that, because they have used the
intelligent PC I/O controller, floppy disc drive operations can take
place in the background. The effect of this is that loading and saving
are faster and formatting can take place while you continue with other
tasks.

        Hard drive(s)

There is a single 40M Conner IDE hard drive (average access time 25 ms)
which feels fairly fast though we weren’t able to do any speed tests on
it. We couldn’t see anywhere obvious for a second IDE drive to fit or be
connected, but a 2½" IDE drive might fit underneath the floppy drive
where the second floppy should go. There are no connectors for a second
IDE drive − you would have to daisy-chain onto the existing cable and,
if it was an external drive, somehow run the cable out of the back of
the computer. If you wanted other external drives, you could put in a
SCSI podule and connect to any of the available SCSI drives (which
currently go up to 1,000 Mbytes).

Although IDE has been used, this is transparent to the user as it has
been worked in with ADFS. The internal IDE drive is simply ADFS drive
:4.

        Parallel port

Because they have used the PC I/O chip, the parallel port is fully
bi-directional. The advantage of this is that many more of the (cheap)
PC peripherals will be able to be used. One disadvantage (for the likes
of Computer Concepts and Oak Solutions) is that their dongles will no
longer work. CC are actively working on an alternative!

        Serial port

The serial port is again more PC compatible in that it works to the
(earlier, lower spec) RS232 standard rather than the RS423 used on all
existing Archimedes computers (as used on the original BBC Microcomputer
back in 1981/2). The I/O chip is capable of somewhat higher speeds than
we have been used to although the Technical Specification only quotes
9600 baud.

To maintain backwards compatibility with Archimedes peripherals using
the serial port, Acorn have had to emulate the “features” of the old
(bugged) serial chips.

        PC keyboards

The PC peripheral chip also provides facility for a (PC-type) mouse and
keyboard and although this has not actually been implemented, it only
needs a separate board with a couple of chips on it to do so. Acorn have
made provision for this by providing space for an extra socket on the
back panel of the computer.

        EMR interference protection

Great care seems to have been taken to avoid the kind of
electro-magnetic radiation interference that characterises many of the
Archimedes computers. (In the research work I do, I have to switch the
Archimedes computers off while the readings are being taken. They are
then turned on again automatically and are set to boot up in order to
download and process the data that has been gathered.) Acorn have tested
the A5000 against a whole range of EMR regulations for different
countries and are, apparently, satisfied that they are going to be able
to sell it in a wide range of other countries.

        PC Emulation

The comments I made in my Hardware Column about the PC Emulator (Archive
5.1 p43) apply to the A5000 except that it now runs as fast as it does
on the A540. The A5000 Learning Curve Pack apparently comes with DR-DOS
5 which should be an improvement over MS-DOS 3.3 currently supplied with
the PC Emulator if you buy it on its own.

Another important improvement which the A5000 provides is easy access to
PC format discs. You can format, read and write MS-DOS discs at 720k and
1.44M densities. When you put any disc into the drive and click on the
drive icon, it checks to see what disc type it is. If it is any of the
Acorn formats, things proceed in the, now familiar, fashion. If, on the
other hand, it detects a PC disc, it catalogues it (with full length
MS-DOS filenames) in a RISC-OS window and you can move and manipulate
the files as you would in RISC-OS. If you try to edit the files then a
certain amount of automatic filetype translation takes place. For
example, a .TXT file would automatically be loaded into !Edit. When you
try to transfer files across from PC to ADFS, again, filetypes are
translated where possible and, if necessary, filenames are truncated.

Also, MS-DOS partitions can be read from within the RISC-OS environment
which makes file handling much easier.

Actually, it is RISC-OS 3 that provides these extra facilities and this
should, eventually, be available for the other Archimedes computers,
although they would be limited to reading 720k discs.  A


                A5000 − The Software
                --------------------
                    Adrian Look

Acorn Computers have been developing a new version of RISC-OS for quite
some time now and we have all been waiting (patiently?) and wondering
when it would see the light of day. I gather that the original intention
was to make it available for existing Archimedes computers before now
but the development has taken longer than had been hoped. Anyway, it has
now seen the light of day as RISC-OS 3 on the newly launched Acorn
A5000.

We have been able to try it out for a short while on the A5000’s that
were on show at the Press Launch and what we saw was very impressive.
Until we get hold of one ourselves, all we can do is list the new
facilities that we observed and supplement that with the information
given to us by Acorn themselves.

        Firmware

Acorn’s spec sheet sums up the A5000’s firmware as consisting of RISC-OS
3, ADFS, ANFS, BBC Basic V and character sets ISO 8859 Latin 1 − 4 and
Greek. However, it looks as if the release ROMs have Basic VI which has
its own compression utilities and a facility to link in the floating
point emulator (also held in ROM) which will be very good news for some
people. Obviously, “RISC-OS 3” is where most of the goodies are, so I
will unpack that a bit more.

        RISC-OS 3

RISC-OS 3 is a huge bank of operating system software which it is
difficult to do justice to in such a short article. So, in order to make
the best use of space, I will concentrate on the additions and
improvements to RISC-OS 2, since I am assuming that this article will be
read by those who are already, at least vaguely, familiar with the
current operating system. So here is a list in no particular order:

•  Extension modules − All of the standard extension modules of RISC-OS
2 are included in RISC-OS 3 − Floating Point Emulator, ColourTrans,
Outline Font Manager and Shared C library.

•  Tasks − RISC-OS 3 can have up to 128 tasks running together as
compared to 32 with RISC-OS 2.

•  Compression routines − Basic VI has its own compression routines but
there are also compression routines for other types of files included in
the ROM.

•  Broadcast loading − RISC-OS 3 contains support for broadcast loading
which improves the speed at which applications and data can be loaded on
multiple computers on a network.

•  Named hard drives − Instead of just “:4”, “:5” etc on the icon bar,
you get the discname displayed.

•  Icon bar icons − The icons on the icon bar are grouped by RISC-OS 3,
regardless of the order in which they were installed. This means that
all the drive icons appear together, as do all fileservers etc.

•  High resolution icons − If you are working in a higher resolution,
you can change over to a set of icons that make better use of the hi-res
modes.

•  Interactive help − Facilities are provided within RISC-OS 3 to make
the setting up of interactive help much easier. In particular, it allows
help to be provided on menu items as well as on icons and windows.

•  Hot keys − Some new hot keys have been provided for opening a task
window (which no longer has to be done through Edit), moving the icon
bar to the front and initiating a shutdown procedure.

•  Screen blanker − This will shut down the screen display after a
specified length of time to preserve the monitor. The screen display is
restored as soon as a key is pressed or the mouse is moved.

•  Multi-tasking filer − Copying, moving and deleting files now take
place in the background. This is facilitated partly by improved
intelligence within the hard and floppy disc controller circuitry. The
same is true of format, verify and backup commands.

•  Multi-format filer − RISC-OS 3 allows MS-DOS files to be written to,
read from and even formatted. You can even access any MS-DOS partition,
as if it were a normal RISC-OS directory, and manipulate the files.

•  Multitasking free space display − The amount of free space available
on the floppy or hard drives can now be displayed continuously, being
updated as file operations take place. It can also be displayed in
Mbytes rather than the almost indecipherable numbers like 65587200.

•  Extra filer operations − You can now search for a file, set a
filetype or datestamp a file from the filer menu.

•  Windows facilities − There is now no limit to the number of windows
that can be open at one time and you can have windows which move off the
edge of the screen.

•  Font facilities − The new font manager allows fonts to be rotated and
transformed without having to be replaced by bit maps first; it can
cache single characters rather than blocks of characters; it supports
right-to-left scripts; it can cope with multiple font directories and it
supports different character set encodings.

(As a result of these changes, although documents produced on RISC-OS 2
will be usable on RISC-OS 3, the reverse is not true. This has
significant consequences until such time as Acorn make RISC-OS 3
available to the 150,000 existing ARM3 machines which, apparently, they
are not necessarily intending to do, according to comments they have
made to date.)

•  Fonts − There are 12 fonts in the RISC-OS 3 ROMs, i.e. Times,
Homerton and Corpus. This has a very significant effect on the
possibility of doing DTP and other font-dependent applications on a
floppy disc system. A font directory with Times, Homerton and Corpus
occupies 450k. On a 1.6M floppy, that’s not too bad but it is a
significant proportion of an 800k disc.

•  Desktop saving − An option on the Task Manager provides the facility
for saving the state of the desktop. This includes applications that are
running, open directory viewers, any logged-on fileservers, any icons on
the desktop background and the backdrop picture. This desktop state can
be restored on boot up by making it into a boot file. This makes it much
easier for non-technical users to customise their own boot up
conditions. The “state” of the computer does not, however, include any
iconised windows or any opened application windows.

•  Shutdown − The Task Manager also provides a shutdown facility to
ensure that no applications have unsaved data, all network links are
disconnected and all hard drives are shut down.

•  Printer support − There is now a full printer queue facility; you can
drag several files to a printer icon and you can suspend the printing
and/or remove items from the queue; it indicates what proportion of a
file has been printed so far; you can have more than one printer active
at one time; it is much easier to create new printer types; printer
drivers can be named, so you can call them, say, “MyLaser” or
“YourEpson”; they will print transformed or rotated fonts or sprites;
they support font-downloading which is particularly important with
PostScript printers since it allows printing of Acorn fonts without
having to purchase the appropriate PostScript font for the printer.

        ROM based applications

There are now eight ROM based applications. The fact that they are in
ROM means that they are always available on the icon bar and it also
means that they use less memory. !Edit, for example, needs at least 160k
to run from disc but only 64k from ROM. Also, you can choose whether any
(or all!) of them should start up automatically on boot-up although
there seems little point as they are always available on the icon bar
anyway.

Most of the applications have also been improved in various ways. The
following list of features is mainly based on Acorn’s documentation and
there are likely to be a number of other added features which come to
light as the A5000’s are used more widely.

• !Paint − You can now replace a colour with transparent and transparent
with a colour. It offers scale x, scale y and shear. It has a timed
screen snapshot facility so that, after the snapshot has been requested,
you have time to get out the menus you want to be recorded as a sprite.
It allows you to use circle, triangle and square as a brush.

• !Edit − This now provides column tab, overwrite and word-wrap modes.
It has support for wildcarded expressions in find operations as well as
the original magic characters. It works with an unlimited number of
fonts. It has support for editing Basic programs.

•  !Draw − This looks to have been substantially improved. (One wonders
if the programmers have seen DrawPlus!) There are now many keyboard
short-cuts; colour interpolation is provided to provide smooth colour
grading from one path to another; automatic scrolling of the window as
the mouse approaches the edge with <select> or <adjust> held down;
operations can now be undone; there is text to path conversion, though
this is not needed as desperately as on RISC-OS 2 because fonts can be
rotated without converting them to paths; text can be edited in situ;
sprites can also be rotated.

•  !Alarm − This has improved support for setting and resetting alarms,
a listing of alarms available in text format, repeating alarms to be set
within a working week, more control over repeating alarms (e.g. on the
second Sunday of every second month!), automatic changing between summer
and winter time and the facility to start up a task when an alarm time
is reached.

•  !Calc − At last, it uses the keyboard keys for input!

•  !Chars − Little obvious change here.

•  !Configure − This allows easy control over the configuration options
including the number of hard drives (plus some control over SCSI drives)
and floppy drives, various aspects of the network including those
relating to the broadcast loader, mouse sensitivity, keyboard
auto-repeat, memory allocation, sound, thresholds for fonts and the
window manager (including whether windows can move off-screen).

•  !Help − This now provides help on menu items as well as about icons
and windows.

        Disc based applications

There are now sixteen or more disc based applications

•  !Pinboard − Files, directories and applications can be “attached” to
the desktop. Simply drag the file/directory onto the desktop. Windows,
including active ones, can be “iconised” to enable best use to be made
of the available desktop space. Clicking on a iconised window restores
it to normal. Backdrops can also be created from sprites in various
patterns.

•  !Printeredit − This allows you to create printer drivers and to
“common control” your printer. Apart from having printer drivers for
different printers available on the icon bar at the same time, you can
also have more than one printer driver relating to the same printer,
though obviously not more than one can be active at the same time on a
given printer. You can therefore, more easily, print out to one printer
in different formats. Just click on the driver to make it the active
driver (other drivers to the same printer are then shaded to show that
they are inactive) and just drop the file onto the active driver or
print from within the application you are using as you would normally.

Printer drivers are provided for Apple LaserWriter, PostScript, HP
LaserJet, Canon & Integrex 132 colour, Dot matrix Epson compatible.

•  !FontPrint − This allows RISC-OS fonts to be printed on a PostScript
printer. It will translate and/or download fonts as necessary.

•  !Scicalc − scientific calculator

•  !Puzzle − sliding block puzzle

•  !65host − 6502 emulator

•  !65tube − 6502 second processor emulator

•  !Clock − analogue face and hands

•  !Mailman − manager to send and receive electronic mail

•  !Maestro − This includes some new tunes and a score printing facility

•  !Patience − card game

•  !Tinydirs − This application, which allows directories to be kept on
the icon bar, is made virtually redundant by !Pinboard’s ability to
iconise windows. The only advantage is that it can be run from a boot
file whereas iconisation is only available as an immediate operation.

•  !Lander − Remember this one on RISC-OS 2?

•  !Madness − and this one?

•  !Magnifier − You do not need to run this application each time you
need it. When you run it, it installs itself on the icon bar and can be
picked up from there when needed.

•  !Usage − Shows the usage of the processor. If you have this running
during floppy disc operations, you will see a major difference between
the A5000 and the other Archimedes computers!

•  !Squash − (This was on the computer we tried but doesn’t appear on
Acorn’s current spec sheet for the A5000.) Simply drag a file onto the
squash icon on the icon bar and the file is compacted and replaces the
original file on the disc (or other filing system). The file icon is
replaced by squash’s own icon and, if you double click on the compacted
file, it is restored to its full size (assuming there is room on the
filing system) and the original filetype icon is also restored. If you
drag a directory onto the squash icon, the individual files within the
directory are compacted but the structure of the directory remains
intact and instantly accessible. (Until someone writes a PD uncompactor,
this will only be of use on your own computer or for file exchange
between A5000 owners.)

        Conclusion

There are many facilities here that will make life much easier both for
the programmer and also the end user. It is a very exciting step forward
and I just hope that not too many extra “features” appear and that those
bugs that are already known will soon be put right. RISC-OS 3 is still
in EPROMs which are somewhat more expensive than ROMs, so Acorn will,
for a number of reasons, be keen to get RISC-OS 3 into a stable form. I
wish them well!

(That’s all very well for those lucky enough to get hold of an A5000,
but what about the rest of us? When will we be able to get our hands on
RISC-OS 3? Acorn will only say that they are “considering making it
available on other Archimedes computers”. In view of the fact that they
have sold over 150,000 ARM based machines, I suspect that they will make
every effort to get it working on other machines, and especially on the
A540 because it is supposed to be a “better” machine than the A5000
which it isn’t really if it only has RISC-OS 2 and an 800k drive.
However, Acorn have “no plans to provide an IDE interface or 1.6M drive
for the A540”. See also my comments about the relative merits of A5000
and A540 in the Introduction. Ed.)  A