One last, final, desperate attempt

[Trapper]

Does anyone, in any school or comms room, or store room, or under school crawl space or their loft at home still have any working examples of either:

 

1) Acorn A3000

 

2) Acorn A3010 - with IDE mini podule like I had zomg!

Just as an aside 2x A3010s went on eBay this week. One was a very early module before the ARM250 SoC was ready so they soldered an ARM2 with the MEMC, IODC and erm t'other one to a daughter card. This meant you could upgrade these select few A3010's to ARM3 machines. Why you ask? The A3k10 had SCART out!

 

3) Acorn A3020 - This is the one I really want. ARM250 with on board IDE controller, running RISC OS 3.11 so all my old gear will work

 

4) Acorn A5000 - Holy grail of pre-RISC PC Acorn. ARM3, extra FPE, could take a 486 with RAM on a podule and was just great. These are few and far between.

 

5) Failing all that an Acorn A4000 - Basically an A3020 in a monitor, box, keyboard arrangement. ARM250 SoC again, no expandability.

 

Basically on eBay those dudes retiring (to be polite to the great Server Room in the Sky given their age) are flogging all remaining Archie kit. Either it's a pristine BBC Master with an SDHC set up on it, or someone has taken a basic RISC PC 600 single slice from 1994 and pimped it out to the max. Saw one last week - four slices!

 

Very little ARM2/3 kit is appearing now, and when it does the cost is prohibitive. I just kick myself. When I left Sixth Form they were dumping Chris and Hermann's dreams into the skip. I begged them for an Arc. I got the single, arsest, cheeiest piece of *BLEEP* *BLOOP* they had in an A3000. I even had to remove a pencil from the floppy drive! Anyway young me left the kit to rot in the skip.

 

Now what did I notice on eBay last month? An A5000 MMU (multimedia extension). Basically a box that sits under the A5000 and runs CDs, and full capure MPEG card. It's up for £1000!! In August 2001 I walked past that in a skip!

 

Anyway long story short (sorry it's the Vallium!) does anyone have any sitting around they'd be willing to donate to a true Archie officinado? My RISC PC is sadly dead - battery melted in the loft, lost a capacitor from the 486 card, and the StrongARM card never really worked well (One of the weird SA233 cards).

 

I love emulation. I've got many setups going using Arculator (Arthur, RISC OS 2 for a giggle, OS 3 old map for A3K, OS3.11 new map for A5K) and a pimped RISC PC on rpc_emu. But it's just not the same.

 

Like when you play N64 or MegaDrive games with either the keyboard, or some wierd PC game pad. It's never enjoyable until you get an adapter for the real thing. - An aside in advice about this as I've done it this week. For anything with a D-PAD third party Chinese sweat shop parts are fine. My MegaDrive one with USB at one end, and some massive copyright infringement, but in white on the front is the dogs doohangles. Sadly my knock off USB SNES controller has problems with the LEFT-D button. No matter I just use the MegaDrive controller!

 

Best buy though was a USB to N64 controller port. This means you can use offical N64 controllers. I've used both. The cheap knock off dead a quick death. The analogue stick is crap. The one I bought last week for TWO WHOLE POUNDS(!) an original grey N64 controller was covered in filfth, but after a clean the analogue stick just moves sweet. Great for Lylat Wars!

 

Anyway ramble over

 

I beg you. Any (in order of personal preference only) A3020, A5000, A3000, A3010, A4000 you may have to donate, or sell for a modest free I am very interested. If you only have an old Archie from the 3/10 or 4/40 series let me know. I saw one sell for a tonne'o'doah as it was still in the original box, still only had RISC OS 2 installed and.... the same 20MB ST-251 rust drive. (Click here for info on this beast

 

I wait for replies. Please! I've had an awful few months, I need something retro to get my teeth into (/sob story!)

[round2it]

Trip down memory lane

 

The days when an os setup fit on a couple of floppys

 

A friend of mine run Spidersoft

He wrote software for the arc

 

Did my work experience at a repair company that had arcs just so i could blag a copy of risc os 3

[Trapper]

Ah! Inlay 3 and X-Filer. Top tools

[LoyalHeretic]

There is a slight possibility that I stashed a couple of RISC PCs in my parents' loft and that they've not been thrown out, one was originally owned by the family and the other was being disposed of by the old school where I worked.

 

If I remember rightly it had an ethernet card in, too, which I thought to be a fantastic novelty.

 

I'll have a check tonight, as i'm sure they'd rather be shot of any of my junk these days..

[ICTDirect_Dave]

When my school was chucking out it's old Acorn machines back in 99 i took about five 3020's and an A5000 to play about with. It's possible they may still be in my parent's attic. I'll be visiting in July, if I remember I'll have a dig and see if they're stored next to my C64 and Amiga 500+

 

[tmcd35]

Alas, I feel the same way about the Miggy. If I had one I'm afraid you'd struggle to prise it from my cold dying hands. I've been thinking about this general subject a lot recently, at least in terms of video games. I'm really in to retro gaming and have been thinking of starting a proper collection, I already have a number of systems in the attic. However, looking at inflated fleabay prices for this sort of stuff I am beginning to wonder if we're just playing an expensive game of russian roulette. Who will be left holding the computer/console/cartridge/floppy/tape when it finally lucks out and joins the great retro library in the sky?

 

I've decided, piracy and morality be damned! Emulation is the only true way forward.

[gshaw]

Rescued some Acorn kit from my old primary school a few years back, got a working BBC Master, very retro Microvitec Touchtec screen, couple of disk drives and a stack of software. Sadly the A3000s I grew up with had already gone which I was gutted about... loved going on those to type up history projects in Pendown

 

Also got two RISC PCs with matching screens etc. but not letting those go

[Dos_Box]

Alas, I feel the same way about the Miggy. If I had one I'm afraid you'd struggle to prise it from my cold dying hands. I've been thinking about this general subject a lot recently, at least in terms of video games. I'm really in to retro gaming and have been thinking of starting a proper collection, I already have a number of systems in the attic. However, looking at inflated fleabay prices for this sort of stuff I am beginning to wonder if we're just playing an expensive game of russian roulette. Who will be left holding the computer/console/cartridge/floppy/tape when it finally lucks out and joins the great retro library in the sky?

 

I've decided, piracy and morality be damned! Emulation is the only true way forward.

 

It may be worth you keeping an eye on this then: Amiga Years | From Bedrooms to Billions

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu_wD_0xzvA

 

I've backed it

I never owned an Amiga but am a history geek and love watching the interviews.

[tmcd35]

It may be worth you keeping an eye on this then: Amiga Years | From Bedrooms to Billions

 

Oh, I am. I should really get round to backing it. I backed their first film, which was fascinating. I think I complained about the rush over the Amiga years in that film at the time - now we know why!

[difinity]

Can the leaky battery not be removed and replaced as well as the leaky capacitor ?

I was recently given a BBC Micro with Cub monitor and am expecting to have to replace the leaky caps before i turn it on.

[Andrew_C]

I'll look, but we binned several a year or so back. Batteries leaked, I tried to repair...