Acorn World 1997 product brochures & show guide
Christopher Bazley
Whilst clearing out my old room in my parents' house, I discovered
three Acorn product brochures (for the A7000+, J233 StrongARM Risc PC
and Home NC) together with the official show guide for Acorn World
1997, where I presumably picked them up. I am reluctant to consign
historical artifacts to the recycling bin, and it occurred to me that
a hardcore Acornologist might be interested in preserving them for
posterity. They could presumably be scanned for further dissemination
on the internet, given the right hardware and software (both of which
I lack).
The A7000+ and Risc PC brochures both consist of an A3 sheet of glossy
paper folded in half (to make four A4 sides). The first page is
entitled 'Product Data' and has a photograph of the complete computer
system, with headings 'Introduction' and 'An overview'. The second and
third pages are illustrated by screenshots of RISC OS, with headings
such as 'Powerful', 'Web', 'Java', 'Expandible', 'Compatible' and
'Networking'. Acorn's URL 'http://www.acorn.com' is repeated across
the bottom in a banner which spans all four sides. The fourth page is
entitled 'Technical Overview' and gives detailed specifications of the
machines in the form of bullet points.
The Home NC brochure is similar in style but covers only two sides of
a single A4 sheet: the front is an introduction and the back is
'Technical Data', without a middle section. There is an annotated
photo showing the location and type of connectors on the back of a
Home NC.
An extract from the show guide:
"I would like to thank you for coming to this year's Acorn World, and
also take this opportunity to thank all show sponsors and exhibitors
in supporting the show, it is very welcoming and rewarding to work in
an industry that pulls together so whole heartedly [sic]. It is these
foundations that makes [sic] this show so successful and why the Acorn
community survives [sic] year after year. The show is undoubtedly the
pinnacle of the Acorn industry where new releases and exciting
announcements are made. Acorn is not alone in using the exhibition as
a springboard to launch their new range of developments. The Acorn
World 97 show this year had had major input from Acorn. Not only will
you see on display a large range of software solutions developed by
our large and committed developer community, a wide range of partner
products are being demonstrated, some for the first time in this
country, on the Acorn stand."
An extract from the Home NC brochure:
"As the internet becomes more popular, more and more people want to
get connected. The problem for many of them is that the desire to get
wired is frustrated by a lack of understanding as to how. They
consider the use of a conventional PC as either too difficult or too
expensive.
The Acorn Home NC is a low-cost, easy-to-use Internet access device,
which plugs into a normal telephone line, PAL TV set or monitor, and
power outlet. Use is enabled by a user-specific Smartcard which, when
inserted into the front-mounted slot, enables the Home NC user to log
on to the Internet Service Provider automatically, with only a simple
PIN required for identification.
Acorn's core anti-aliasing and anti-twitter technologies are highly
evolved and perfectly suited for the delivery of high-quality text and
graphics on to low-cost monitors - including TVs."
An extract from the A7000+ brochure:
"Computationally intensive applications benefit from the Acorn
Floating Point Accelerator, which provides high-precision calculation
at speed, fast 3D rendering and good X terminal performance.
The A7000+ operating system - RISC OS - is a stable, scalable
multitasking operating system, which has been designed to run from
ROM, leaving nearly all of the hard disc available for your own
requirements. Conserving system memory and virus protection are other
advantages of the RISC OS ROM-based operating system. Shipping in over
600,000 systems worldwide indicates the suitability to large number
[sic] of applications, from regular productivity tools including
spreadsheets and database applications through to sophisticated
multimedia authoring and video editing systems.
RISC OS recognises that every one [sic] needs to use their machine in
their own individual way. A number of unique facilities enable
on-the-fly configuration of screen resolution and memory usage to
adapt to specific applications and requirements."
Free to a good home; otherwise I'm afraid they're going in the bin.
Postscript: The following conversation illustrates why it's not a good
idea to rationalise too deeply about keeping old junk.
C: "Oh, you think I should throw it away?"
M: "It might be valuable. You could always give it to your children."
C: "What children?"
M: "I'm afraid that is something you'll have to organise."
C: "Just so I can give them a 50 foot printer cable?"
--
Chris Bazley
My corner of the web: http://www.bigfoot.com/~chrisbazley/
Star Fighter 3000: http://starfighter.acornarcade.com/
finemoo...@hotmail.com
Im interested in the brochures & show guide.
Would you be able to post them for free? I just love reading the old
Acorn magazines and stuff.
I dont think i could've read them when they were out lol i was only 3
(I'm 15 now). Got allot of retro comps and stuff.
Thanks for your time.
Gwion Mainwaring
Chris Hughes
Christopher Bazley <ch...@bazley.freeuk.com> wrote:
> Greetings,
> Whilst clearing out my old room in my parents' house, I discovered
> three Acorn product brochures (for the A7000+, J233 StrongARM Risc PC
> and Home NC) together with the official show guide for Acorn World
> 1997, where I presumably picked them up. I am reluctant to consign
> historical artifacts to the recycling bin, and it occurred to me that
> a hardcore Acornologist might be interested in preserving them for
> posterity. They could presumably be scanned for further dissemination
> on the internet, given the right hardware and software (both of which
> I lack).
Why not offer them to the Centre for Computing History?
--
Chris Hughes