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Comment by myelin | Hacker News Reader

For more background on the whole Second Processor system, see the "Acorn's Second Processors and the Tube - what, and why" thread at Stardot: http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14211

On that note, Stardot is a small but thriving community around the BBC Micro, and Acorn Computers' other machines -- the Acorn Atom, Acorn Electron, BBC Master, BBC Master Compact, and the Archimedes/RISC PC machines. The author of PiTubeDirect is an active poster there, and the tone is generally very friendly and on-topic. I've been reading/posting for the last year or so and it's turned Acorn-focussed retro hardware into my favourite hobby. I'd highly recommend taking a look if you used/loved one of these machines back in the 80s/90s.

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Wait...Acorn as in 'Acorn RISC Machine'/ARM? I didn't know they made actual consumer hardware, that's pretty cool. Sort of funny that the modern BBC Micro:bit went on to run on a Cortex-M0 core.

I also kind of love that the BBC's learning hardware calls its method of routing instructions to coprocessors 'The Tube'.

The early ARM machines didn’t really make it out of the U.K. I had some early Acorn/ARM stuff in 1988. It was by far the most advanced bit of kit at the time. Literally smoked everything and did so for a number of years afterwards.

Example: 1987 graphics demo: https://youtu.be/653Ger80ros

They even did a line of unix workstations!

Nice video on the matter here from 1987: https://youtu.be/hrj-EEnsacQ

Acorn Archimedes - A Technical Introduction - 1987 BBC VHS Video. [1] Quoting from YouTube description: "Fred Harris talks to Roger Wilson about the technical aspects of the Acorn Archimedes A305. Also features footage from Zarch by David Braben. Produced by the BBC. Digitised from VHS Video Tape by The Centre for Computing History."

According to Wikipedia [2]: "The Acorn Archimedes was the first RISC-based home computer." and "The Archimedes was one of the most powerful home computers available during the late 1980s and early 1990s". Article also includes basic performance comparisons with m68k (Amiga & Atari).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKTa54UikgE

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

The ARM was protoyped, designed an simulated on a Beeb, first silicon worked unmodified.

The BBC was the ultimate tinkerers platform, the underside of the case is a long row of headers for various expansions.

Well it was primarily designed as an educational tool, and thus a direct inspiration to the RPi.

After all, David Braben, creator of Elite (that originated on a BBC Micro), is also co-founder of the RPi foundation.

I can highly recommend the BBC drama "Micro Men", about the early years of the British home computer boom and the rivalry between Sinclair and Acorn. It gives a real flavour of the mad, maverick years before the IBM clones took over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM

Not technically routing instructions since each processor executed only from its own memory. To execute code on the other processor you'd have to do a block memory transfer over the Tube, then send a request to execute code at a stated address.

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