Ah well, at least now we have complete coverage of Mac-bashing in El Reg!

We know it's just deep-seated jealousy. For exampe, I want OSX but don't want to buy the hardware (er, isn't that a monopoly??)

Ho hum

It's still ahead of its time. Unfortunately.

But it _WAS_ ahead of its time damn it..... I admit it, I've still got two... and I even use them sometimes.... <zzzrrttt> ahhh...

>hat>coat>taxi

as they say at el reg

"because your PowerPoint is dead"

So true... SO TRUE!!

Ah, the big wide green jealous streak of a Vista user who thought his new OS would blow Mac OS X out of the water, but then realised he'd bought a pig in a poke....

An ICL OPD. Now that would have been frightening.

Wow Simon.

Pissing off the OS/2 fans I can understand (there's only two of them and they don't have time away from babysitting their machines to come round and knock on your door).

Having an occasional dig at the Linux fraternity is fairly safe, as in the event of any nastiness developing you can always get them to turn on each other by asking exactly *which* Linux distro is this "best thing since sliced bread" that they're on about.

Saying rude things about Windows is always safe as all Windows users know in their heart of hearts that it's all true.

But you've gone and wound up the Clone Army. I shall miss your BOFH column, for the worshippers at the feet of Jobs brook no criticism of their Chosen Way, cannot be deflected from their single-minded purpose and will surely throw you to the Tiger and the Leopard.

If you wish to survive, save your ammunition. Don't fire until you see the whites of their iPods.

Let the flame-fest begin.

TeeCee

.... what are you doing with that wheely chair in here?

Surely an Archimedes would be an acceptable machine for any IT nerd - classed as 'retro'?

The sweet, sweet smell of frying geek. All we are missing now is the smell of stale cigarette smoke to complete that authentic early computer dawn.

So I'm not the only one who gets a warm fuzzy feeling every time an Archimedes is nearby...

Magic Tempestuous Code, Simon. ...... for Perfect Butterflies.

PGP Full Monty Fans/Space Driver Engines/Virtual Machines.

Is El Reg going to do anything Revolutionary in Velvet with IT?

this brings back fond memories of my "MAC vs PC flamewars". i'm not averse to MACs at all, but the heart and soul that went into those flamewars always made me come back for more.....

Dance monkeys, dance

I'd better keep that old BBC Model B I have at home well hidden!

Made me smile...

Owl logo is something only known in the UK so for the rest of the world the following explanation.

It is something from the early 1980's.

The BBC had a computer program, and made a deal with a computer manufactorer about delivering the equipment. The manufactorer could then use the Owl Logo on the computers it sold.

These machines where a big hit in the UK. Selling over a million pieces.

Stuck in the loft ... hasn't been powered up in about 5 years

but i still have it.

Oh shit - my mum's still got a couple of old RiscOS archies kicking about somewhere... I remember Zarchzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! ... fk

Another shocking cliffhanger to the BOfH...

In the next episode:

Will the PFY find himself strapped to a chair?

Will the boss ever finish his powerpoint presentation on time?

Will Simon remember to recharge the cattle prod?

None of these questions, and more, answered on the next episode of...

BOfH.

:O :O :O :O :O :O

I'm not sure that the Archimedes ever carried an owl logo. This was the logo for the BBC micro, not Acorn, and although the A1000 may have been marketed as a BBC micro, I don't know that it carried the logo.

I am prepared to be proved wrong, especially if someone can post pictures.

Wahey! We bagged a few! :-D

By the way, Kenny, there's no point banging on about Vista when the story quite clearly mentions a *Linux* user group.

http://bbc.nvg.org/history.php3

makes reference to the owl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

shows a picture and tells you which machines/keyboards had the Computer Literacy Project logo on it.

My BBC model B, board issue 3 with patch leads and all, serial number in the 1000's is still (very) quietly ticking along. Brilliantly built machine (apart from the keyboard PCB, where the tracks keep breaking). Such a good teaching system.

Problem is, I don't appear to be able to buy blank soft-sectored 5.25 floppies any more! And does anybody know how to link it up to my Gigabit Ethernet! An Econet-to-Ethernet bridge would be good, except that I never upgraded my own BEEB for Econet.

Bit of history. The BBC were sued for using "BBC" as the brand for the computer. A company called something like "Brown Baveri" used to produce a Modula 2 compiler and had registered a "BBC" trademark for use with computers, and stopped the British Broadcasting Corporation from using the abbreviation. Sometime around the board issue 7 systems, BBC disappeared from the perspex function key strip cover to be replaced with the name spelled out in full.

Wish I would learn to do my research first. It was "Brown, Boveri and Cie" (it's in Wikipedia, of course).

Arggghhhh, I still have an old Archimedes at the bottom of my cupboard (it was pretty powerful, had a 20meg hard drive, and everything!). It sits on top of my old BBC Model B. Ahhh, retro geek heaven!

And I've just ordered a MacBook Pro. Do I have to cattleprod myself?

And, for Mr Gathercole's benefit, the early Arcs came in 2 flavours -- the cheaper 2 had red function keys (you know what I mean retro geek boys), and an owl logo. The more expensive 2 had grey function keys and no owl. I had the no owl version...

Sorry Peter but your a sick individual. You've committed a heinous crime.... There never was an Archimedes A1000, BBC A1000 or even an Acorn A1000, that number was for used on a crappy 16bit Amiga....... Hang your head in shame!

The BBC Archimedes A305/A310 & the BBC A3000 had the owl logo. The A3000 also had an Acorn logo as well as the owl. All other RiscOS machines has the Acorn logo only.....

I remember because I swapped my A310's keyboard for one from my schools A440/i because I didn't like the red key function keys (and I'd busted the plastic function key insert on mine)...... oh dear I can't believe I've just admitted that in public please don't call the cops - it was a swap not a 'steal'! lol

[quote]I'm not sure that the Archimedes ever carried an owl logo. This was the logo for the BBC micro, not Acorn, and although the A1000 may have been marketed as a BBC micro, I don't know that it carried the logo.

I am prepared to be proved wrong, especially if someone can post pictures [/quote]

...its a trap if you post pictures they will be able to track you down...just lock the doors, wrap yourself in tinfoil and hope for the best.

http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Archimedes.html has pics - you'll see the owl on the A310/1 keyboard.

I get the distinct feeling I shouldn't know these things, and should have flipped the anonymous bit.

http://www.archimedes.be/Images/logo.png

I'll grab a couple of pics of my Arc from the loft... :)

Heya Peter...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

"The BBC Computer Literacy Project 'Owl' appeared on the keyboard, above the function keys on the Archimedes 300 series and A3000 keyboards."

... didn't there used to be a journo, Computer News I think, many years ago. Used to call herself Lisa Israel. Tech journalism was tough back then, you needed to work deep undercover, no-one could no your real name.

You Reg guy's have it easy now. There are so a few disastrous 'new age of computing' projects to laugh at these days back then there where hundreds; Lisa, OPD, INMOS, sinclair ST... the list goes on.

Yeah I think the logo was for the BBC, therefore the Beeb range of computers.

A beeb with 32k of ram, Winchester floppy disc drive and a copy of Dare Devil Denis - can't go wrong :-)

Or POD, the educational game - trying to see how many rude words he could understand.

Peter Gathercole: see http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/GenFiles/A3000.jpg for an example. The left-most symbol in the orange area above the numpad is the owl logo.

Archimedes had some awesome games, I seem to remember... some shoot-em-'up rings a bell.

..that must be the most thinly disguised request for geek porn I have ever seen.

Well done that man.

Oh crap, I've got 4 of em and a couple of Masters as well......

*straps himself into the wheely chair*

According to Wikipedia, the A3000 did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

Yes. I admit. I was confused (comes of getting old, and anybody who was using these systems will be getting on, even a little bit).

I also have an A3050 (I think, please don't flame me) with green keys, but it does not start Arthur any more. Gets stuck with a *OS prompt. It runs all OS commands, and if I remember, it will start Basic using the whole screen. I never got into RiscOS to know how to fix it. Any ideas?

"I want OSX but don't want to buy the hardware (er, isn't that a monopoly??)"

You can't have a monopoly on your own product. That'd be like Pepsi having a monopoly in the Pepsi market.

TeeCee, there ARE more than two OS/2 users...

I should know as I'm one...

(I'm about to install eCS on a HP Omnibook 600, to tie me over until I can finish upgrading my ancient tower PC)

I'm also a Mac addict(typing this on an 12" iBook G4/133GHz), use a Psion S3c for notetaking, a Palm Zire when I'm out GeoCaching, have a Archimedes A3000 I'm TRYING to get to work(doesn't seem to want to cooperate with my monitor, which even works with my SGI), and my first computer was a 'Speccy'(Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Well, it was my brother's, really)

I still haven't tried to boot the Apple III I recently aquired, though, but that's because I don't have any place to set it up...

first pc i used at school

also first recorded use of pc mis-use

found lemmings on it

i was 8

... and nobody has mentioned "Elite" yet. Yes, Daredevil Dennis was a pretty decent game, but come on, "Elite" was the reason the BBC Model B was placed upon this earth ;-)

Not sure if a version was written for the Archie though ... I don't recall one but could be wrong. However, I *do* remember how much the Archimedes upset some of the Amiga fanboys at uni at the time :-)

Joy

Hey! Your memory isn't just fading it's non existent......... I smell a rat me thinks you've never owned an Archimedes ;-) ;-)

There never was an Acorn A3050, there was an A3010 which was white and had green function keys & cheesy pics above the keyboard.

The education variant of the A3010 called the A3020 which was cream coloured with red keys..

Neither of those machines came with Arthur, Both came with RiscOS 3.11

If you really do have an acorn try typing '*configure mode 12' '*configure wimpmode 12' '*desktop'.... but I doubt it'll work because well you know why!!!!!!!!

Always tell a joke in front of people capable of laughing :)

First computer: Aster CT80, in school. Yeah...

Ok, admittedly I am one of the filthy heathens. And there is a lot one can laugh about when it comes to Mac users. Sadly, none of it ends up in this episode. It's not exactly... funny.

Maybe a TRS80 (Color Computer, of course) to have religion. The CoCo could use OS9 (the original one!) and even support terminals!

Anything else, well, I guess one could go back to OS/360 or some such with hard copy terminals (ASR33's?, or more likely IBM 2741's).

Back to the past.....

"I also have an A3050 (I think, please don't flame me) with green keys, but it does not start Arthur any more. Gets stuck with a *OS prompt. It runs all OS commands, and if I remember, it will start Basic using the whole screen. I never got into RiscOS to know how to fix it. Any ideas?"

It'd be either an A3010 or A3020, can't remember which one had the green keys.

The CMOS RAM settings are probably corrupt if it's not been used for a while, that can stop it booting to the desktop.

Hold down Delete (IIRC) while powering it on to reset to factory defaults and see if that works.

I recall back in the day being a tech at a school with rooms full of Archimedes.

That OS was brilliant, if a little confusing in some areas, but man was it responsive or what?

Oh and yes, you could quite happily play Elite on it.

All this talk would normally have me reaching for my ebay account and diving into worlds long gone, but to be honest, theres been so many security scares recently I'm not sure I can take the risk.

(I certainly won't be using my gmail account for a while)