ARM Club 2/ARMCLUB_CD2.iso/contents/magazines/spectrum2/!Spectrum2/Articles/Features/RiscPC

Text File | 1994-09-11 | 6KB | 97 lines

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Risc PC technical overview
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  There were rumours that Acorn were making a new computer and now
it's here. But what does it offer above our older Arc's. Well, quite
a lot. For a start, the main unit is much better looking than all
other Archimedes systems and is made from the same type of material
that crash helmets are made from (that's probably why extra slices
cost so much!). It comes as standard with a 210 or 420 megabyte IDE
drive, although larger sizes are available with some dealers. For
memory you have a choice of 2 megabyte main ram (DRAM) and 0
megabytes of special video ram (VRAM), 4 megabytes DRAM and 1
megabyte of VRAM and finally 8 megabytes of DRAM and 1
megabyte of VRAM. You also have a choice of an AKF60 14" SVGA
Multiscan Energy Saving monitor, with a dot pitch of 0.28mm,
horizontal frequency of 30-50kHz, vertical frequency of 40-90Hz,
resolution of 1024x768 and weighs 12.5kg or you can get an AKF85
17" SVGA multiscan Power System monitor with a dot pitch of
0.27mm, horizontal frequency of 30-82kHz, vertical frequency of
50-120Hz, resolution of 1600x1200 and weighs 21kg. When first
released, you had to buy a monitor with the computer, but having
listening to what people want, Acorn are reconsidering that, and some
companies do sell RISC PCs without monitors at a cheaper price. The
RISC PC now uses SIMMs (Single In-line Memory Modules) memory
upgrades (like what PCs and Macs use) and has two slots to simply
plug them in. At the moment the largest SIMM is 64MByte, but it
shouldn't be long before you are able to buy 128MByte SIMMs, which
means that the limit for memory on the RISC PC will be 256MByte,
along with 2MByte of Video RAM, giving a grand total of 258 megabyte
for your own use. Although the cost of such a machine will be way out
of the budget of many people. So what else has it on offer? Well, it
has 32-bit colour capabilities, although at the moment only 24-bits
are used. It also has a better sound filter, so you won't need to buy
an Intonation sound upgrade to hear the real sound that's coming from
your computer. It also has a dual processor option, where you can
connect a PC processor and run natively as a PC with the added bonus
of the ARM processor doing some of the work making it faster than
what it would of been running on the same specification PC. One
problem that faced older A-series computers was expansion. With the
RISC PC there is no need to worry. Common on the A300 series, A400
series, A540 and A5000 is the backplane that you fit expansion cards
on, the RISC PC is no exception, except whereas before the cards were
16-bit and only had access to 4K of processor address space
indirectly, they now are 32-bit DMA (Direct Memory Access) with the
ability to access 16Mb on-card memory direct, so they don't need to
slow the processor down. Fortunately the old cards still work with
the RISC PC (with the exception of double-size podules which will not
fit in the box). Unlike older A-series computers, the RISC PC can be
stood up on its side, in "Tower" mode. To do this you fit four feet
to the base and then tilt it on it's side. This saves space on your
desk, but can prove hazardous. For example, if you must have it in
tower-mode and you wish to use CD-ROMs, then you must buy a
caddy-type CD-ROM or you'll have a hard time putting the CD in and it
will fall out when you eject the CD. The machine itself can be built
up with a number of slices, each slice being able to hold a 3½"
device and a 5¼" device. 3½" bays generally fit 3½" disc drives, hard
drives, and tape streamers, whereas the 5¼" bays would most likely be
used by CD-ROMs and the like. As the RISC PC can be took apart in a
matter a seconds, (as there are no screws), security, you might think
is a problem, well, it isn't. The whole machine is locked together
using plastic keys, which can be padlocked into position, it can also
be bolted to a desk if required. Also, in schools, files are at risk
from being deleted, copied, viewed, etc... and has always been a
problem, although many utilities have tried to help in this situation,
but still haven't always been successful. The RISC PC can lock
directories on the hard disc(s) to stop people from getting in without
a password. Very useful. From what I've read, it doesn't look as
though you actually get any commercial software with the RISC PC,
sure you get the Applications, which are now on the hard disc instead
of in ROM as in OS 3, although they have now been updated to the New
look and have extra features for the RISC PC. You also get 100s JPEG
files in full 24-bit colour, 13 Artworks' files and viewer, 8 Replay
files with new versions of ARMovie and ARPlayer, which accounts for
47MByte including !Fonts, !System, !Scrap, etc... As expected,
NewLook is no longer loaded from disc and is instead in the new ROMs
for RISC OS 3.5. Other noticeable features is that the whole desktop
is displayed in an outline font, the icon bar and windows are marbled
and the Palette utility is no longer present and is replaced by the
Display manager. Also as you examine the new desktop further, you
will begin to notice other small improvements. i.e. the DragASprite
module is now transparent (unless you set bit 8 when calling
DragASprite_Start, which is new to RISC OS 3.5), Drags from filer
windows no longer produce the boring rotating dash box, but you now
"pick-up" the file, and if you select a group of files, you pick-up a
wrapped parcel. There are many other little cosmetic changes like
when you open up a directory, it's icon changes to an open folder;
neat. I would like to see a new version of RISC OS that has many of
the features of the RISC PC, like NewLook in ROMs so you don't have
to wait for it to load up and then taking up 100's k of RAM, the
filer DragASprite icons, and all the little touches that can work on
old A-series computers like my 3010. Please, Acorn!

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