Acorn technical documents

(now including Jérôme Mathevet's links)

Available here are various documents on Acorn computers that I've collected. Most date from the early days of the Archimedes, and some were posted on SID, Acorn's now defunct bulletin board (announcement). If the original document is dated, the date is shown in brackets next to the document title. However, this may be their release date and not the date of creation. Some are culled from news - the full headers are included so you can look the relevant threads up on Google Groups if necessary.

On most of these documents there is no indication of author or copyright holder. I seek no gain of any kind from making these documents available, and if I informed that I am breaking copyright I shall remove any pages at the first opportunity. None of the news articles have X-No-Archive set - if you'd like me to remove one of your articles, let me know. All information is provided in good faith, but I cannot make any guarantees as to its accuracy.

This page is designed to complement Robin Watts' Documentation on Acorn Computers pages - he was too busy to incorporate them into his site when I contacted him, so these two sites should be used side by side. I have tried to eliminate any duplicate material in the list on this page, but if you find any, please let me know.

Much of the material here is taken from Usenet, Arcade BBS, old public domain discs, contributors and other sources. If you have any more material like this, please do not hesitate to contact me (theo [at@] markettos.org.uk) - it will doubtless be of use to someone.

Browse the directory structure - the whole archive is here, including those that are duplicates of those on Robin's site. There are more than those listed below.

Quick Links

Hardware: Machine information . Ports . Datasheets/specifications . Driver documentation . Hardware projects . Ultimate FAQ . Hardware designs . Driver software

Software: Coding standards. Low-level . ARM code . Applications

Miscellaneous: Miscellaneous . Product announcements . Other archives

Hardware related

Machine information

Archimedes 300 Series Hardware Product Specification (14 Feb 89)
AMULET1 - An Asynchronous ARM Processor [09/06/93]
ARM6, ARM7 and ARM8 chip details and availability [14/06/93]
Full list of specifications of Acorn machines [27/11/92]
RiscIx upgrade details [00/00/93]
Discussion about buying / using multisync monitors [10/05/92]
Safety Test Guidelines to meet the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989
Archimedes hardware - reverse engineered for emulation (offsite)
A5000/A4/A3010/A3020/A4000 interrupt sources
Omega hardware information (offsite)

Ports

Pinouts on the Archimedes machine (14 Feb 89)
Archimedes Serial Port Application Note (Issue D) (15 Feb 89)
Archimedes serial line - the story so far... (5 Jul 88)
Acorn document on the hardware bugs in early Archimedes machines
Quadrature (ie pre-A7000) mouse pinout
Parallel port access on Acorn machines (offsite, by Stuart Tyrrell Developments)
A4 power supply pinout
A3000 memory expansion connector pinout
A3020/A4000 network connector with (untested) directions on how to build your own ethernet Media Access Unit (specifically for i-cubed cards, but might work for others).
Pinout and links for Computer Concepts' Eagle M2 card.
Schematic of the Risc PC's serial port and most of the parallel port. From the TRM schematics of an issue 1 board.

Serial blockdrivers (offsite)

Datasheets

Original ARM chipset datasheets (ARM2, IOC, MEMC, VIDC, VIDC20)
ARM3 (VL86C020) datasheet (and front/back matter from ARM Family Data Manual published by VLSI)
Acorn Enhanced Expansion Card Specification (issue 5, July 1994) [PDF, PostScript and Sparkived Drawfiles]. Also mechanical drawings.
Also available, Archimedes Podule specification issue 1 (15 Feb 89). Issue 5 should be used for new designs, but this includes information of historical interest, in particular the coprocessor interface. The accompanying Draw file diagrams are also here.
Risc PC/A7000 network slot specification Mark II
Chips and Technologies 82C711 datasheet - 2.5MB PDF file (as used in A4, A3010, A3020, A4000 and almost identical to the 82C710 used in the A5000)
SMSC FDC37C665GT datasheet (offsite link) - IO chip used in the Risc PC
SMSC FDC37C669 datasheet (offsite link) - IO chip used in the NC, Bush STB, and I think A7000(+), RiscStation and Mico.
Programming the VIDC registers [31/07/92]
Archimedes memory map
WD1770/2/3 Floppy disc controller chip details [25/02/93]
Simtec Hydra multiprocessor board documentation and applications (offsite)
Technical details of 8/12/16MB upgrades in the A540 (schematic)

Hardware drivers

Archimedes Podule Loaders (15 Feb 89)
RISC OS Support for extension ROMs
Hard Disc Utilites (18 Nov 88)
New ADFS SWIs for IDE etc. [14/10/91]
Joystick SWIs [14/07/92]
Parallel device driver within RISC OS 2.50
Hi-Res mono mode 23 on a Taxan 795 monitor [29/01/91]
Archimedes disc errors (see the comp.sys.acorn.* FAQ for a newer listing)
What MEMC do I have? (probably specific to RISC OS 2)
VIDC Enhancer software support
ANT Ether3/EtherB documentation (offsite)
Notes on ADFS_IDEUserOp
Acorn Unix Econet Device Driver and Network Device - notes on RISC-iX's network driver, particular how it handles transmission of packets Econet packets over Ethernet (later AUN uses the same strategy). Abstract says: "This document describes a device driver which controls the Acorn Econet and a Unix Networking Device which uses Econet, in Acorn's implementation of Unix 4.3BSD, from both the user's view and from that of a programmer who wishes to understand and maintain the code." (1988/9)
Device Control Interface version 4 (DCI4) network driver specification:
- Revision 1.01 (14 April 1997) (text format)
- Revision 1.02 (22 April 1998) (PDF) (to be available)

Hardware projects

Risc PC VRAM problems with StrongARM and Kinetic
Speeding up Acorn A5000 computers: PDF, text by Nick Smith et al (17 Mar 93)
How to connect a 4MB SIMM to an A5000 by Christian Ludlam
Removing the audio filter [14/03/92]
Upgrade your A310 to 4MB: Sparkived drawfiles, text. In Dutch and something Scandinavian (I think!) with English translation.
Upgrade an A310 to RISC OS 3 by Yann Perrais.
Fitting a Master/Archimedes Econet module to a podule for use in a Risc PC (Ian Bradbury got this to work with some code changes to the Econet module.)
Converting a PC floppy drive to work on an Acorn
Converting an optical mouse for Risc PCs and earlier quadrature outputs [offsite link]

Ultimate FAQ

(zip archive, directory structure, index). This is a collection of various interesting documents sent to Usenet (hardware and software info). Individual documents are linked separately on this page. Also includes:

Eureka 1, 2, 3 This was an electronic magazine run by Dave Walker. Useful hints (except those involving direct access to VIDC registers !) and hardware info (Podule interfacing, I2C) to be found. Issue 3 is the most interesting of all.

Software related

Language coding standards

(many files here don't contain any version numbers or dates, so dates are based on the filing system date, which may or may not be accurate)

ARM Object Format 2002, v2.00 (2 Feb 89)
Acorn Library Format / Object Library Format 1993, proto-1.00 (2 Feb 89)
RISC OS Application Image Format 1993, 1.00 (2 Feb 89)
Acorn/ARM Procedure Call Standard 2003
Acorn Symbolic Debugging Table Format 2002
Squeezed AIF object format (reverse engineered)

Low-level

ARM code

Applications

The RISC OS 2 Interactive Help System
Whatever happened to Acorn's Modula 2 compiler?
6502 applications on ARM machines (15 Feb 89)
6502 Emulation under Arthur (15 Feb 89)
Archimedes applications: Author's guidelines (15 Feb 89) - historical, contemporary with Arthur
Sound on the Archimedes machine
PC Emulator (v1.3) compatibility (3 Aug 90)
Fancy text format for printing text files with bold etc (a subset of the First Word Plus format)
comp.sys.acorn Application Writer's Guide [22/06/92]
Code to find closest colour out of RISC OS 256 [30/01/92]
OS_SpriteOp Transformed sprite SWIs [15/06/92]
RISC OS 3 FilterManager SWIs [03/08/92]
Program to toggle DragASprite [08/10/92] (missing a252drag.txt)
How to drive DragASprite
RISC OS 3.10 icon validation commands [13/10/92]
ShowFree SWIs [18/11/92]
External Edit protocol (uuencoded file) [05/01/93] (in the Ultimate FAQ zipfile)
Throwback protocol and SWIs [31/01/93]
BASIC interpreter changes since 1.02 [10/09/92]
Font file format, Outlines and IntMetrics (version 8) [00/00/93]
Glass: proposal for new template file format [23/02/93]
Useful hints and tips #1: !Run files [14/06/93]
Useful hints and tips #2: using !Make [14/06/93]
Suggested improvements in RISC_OSLib
First Word Plus printer driver guidelines
Acorn Replay file format
Acorn Replay Moving Blocks codec description
A 'whirlwind tour of the RISC OS 3 printing system'
Exporting Draw files to EPS

Miscellaneous

The Philosophy of RISC OS
Details of the BBC standard interchange format, UNIFORM
Designed 'to allow different Archimedes applications to read each other's data.'
Assembler headers for the RISC OS 2 kernel (zipped)
The Acorn Question & Answer database (circa 1992, CSV format)
RISC OS 3 upgrade FAQ
Acorn Bug Report Form [11/11/91]
Acorn and Sun audio formats (and convertor) [02/11/91]
TAO operating system [02/06/93]
Acorn-related addresses [24/06/93]
Acorn ftp and mail-server archives [21/06/93]
Newsgroup ucam.cl.risc-ix-users - a few brief and largely uninteresting threads from this University of Cambridge Computer Lab private newsgroup (articles locked as they were never intended for public distribution).

Product announcements

Acorn targets new Markets with Major Products Launch