About APDL

Member of the Association of Shareware Professionals.

APDL was the first independent Public Domain and Shareware library for the Acorn Archimedes computer, formed just after the first machine appeared in 1987. That's why it doesn't have a fancy name, it was the Archimedes Public Domain Library. Other libraries have come and gone, but APDL is still here. In fact, we've been around so long that even Acorn Computers have vanished and the Archimedes name for their original RISC processor machines is almost forgotten.

During those early years we expanded and took over the three other major libraries, DataStream, Arch Angel and The Datafile.

With the expansion of the internet most of our business is no longer concerned with PD and Shareware. However, our PD CDs contain over 600 Mb of compressed material each. It would take weeks of browsing to find just a fraction of this on the internet.

We are also the specialists for Acorn format Clip Art. We have more than three Gigabytes of clip art of all types, over 700 floppy discs, all ready-to-use in Acorn format, and we have four 'own brand' Clip Art CDs plus various others.

PD and Shareware are certainly not forgotten but are now only a small part of the service APDL provides. We are a leading (probably the leading) supplier of RAM, hard drives, CD ROM drives and CD writers for RISC OS systems, and produce the best and fastest IDE expansion cards. We also have an extensive and expanding range of software of all types, some distributed under the APDL - ProAction brand and some through the iSV Products label.

In late 1999 APDL took the important step of producing the first ever CD magazine for RISC OS computers, RISC World. No less than three magazines had closed during the preceding years and we felt RISC OS users deserved a wider choice. RISC World is now an established part of the RISC OS landscape, and continues to go from strength to strength. To find out more see the RISC World page on this site or visit the official RISC World web site