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So much history here for me.

One landmark buried in there was the ARM 250 chip based machines.

I think they were some of the first system on a chip desktop computers.

They lacked the glamour of the Arm 3 based machines launched around the same time but really they were ground breaking.



I think it was possibly the first to go into a desktop computer.

ARM250 datasheet here: https://home.marutan.net/arcemdocs/ARM250.pdf

For Acorn, this chip really helped to bring costs down for the A30x0/A4000 machines - the Electron of the Archimedes era. The RiscPC equivalent was the A7000/A7000+ with the ARM7500/ARM7500FE, the FE being novel for the inclusion of the FPU which ARMs had traditionally not included.


The A7000s sort of passed me by as I had a RiscPC at the time (which predicatably I really regret selling).

I always wanted an FPU for my RiscPC, do you know how much difference they made day to day?


The ARM7500FE is considerably slower (in terms of clock speed) than a StrongARM, but the FPU apparently makes StarFighter 3000 run very well.

StrongARM with an FPU would have been incredible, however no FPU option exists for the RiscPC. There was a commercial software package that would allow the FP capabilities of the 486/586 copro to be used from RISC OS, but I'm not sure how effective it was.




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