Acorn Archimedes A440

Acorn Archimedes A440
	Acorn Archimedes A440
Specifications
Manufacturer	Acorn Computers Ltd
Type	Personal Computer
Released	June 1987
Discontinued	1989
Intro price	£2,299 (excluding VAT, 1987)
CPU	ARM2 @ 8 MHz
Memory	4 MB RAM
Storage	3.5" floppy drive (800 KB), 20 MB ST506 hard drive
Display	Various resolutions up to 1152×896
Sound	8-channel stereo, 8-bit
OS / Firmware	Arthur 1.2 (later upgradable to RISC OS 2)
Predecessor	BBC Master
Successor	Acorn Archimedes A440/1

The Acorn Archimedes A440 was the flagship model of the original Archimedes range, released in June 1987. Featuring 4 MB RAM and a 20 MB hard drive as standard, the A440 targeted professional users, universities, and high-end educational establishments requiring maximum performance from the revolutionary ARM architecture.

Overview

The A440 was launched in June 1987 alongside the A305 and A310, with the A440 priced at £2,299 excluding VAT and monitor . The A440 differed from the A410 in having 4MB RAM and a 20MB hard disc . The A410 was announced but may never have been actually sold - the July 1987 price list indicated it would be available 1st Quarter 1988, but the January 1988 price list said available 2nd Quarter 1988 .

A fully-specced A440 with 20MB hard disc, 4MB RAM and software weighed in at £2,644 . The machine represented Acorn's vision of a professional workstation built around their ARM RISC processor, competing against more expensive Unix workstations while offering superior price-performance ratios.

Hardware Specifications

Processor and Architecture

The A440 used the ARM2 processor running at 8 MHz, providing 32-bit processing with 26-bit addressing . The system was stated as running at 4.5+ MIPS, with some claims of 18 MIPS during tests . The performance increase was due to the fundamental architecture change from the 6502 models, with Acorn designing the ARM processor inspired by RISC work at Berkeley and Stanford Universities .

Memory

The A440 came with 4 MB RAM as standard , using the MEMC (Memory Controller) chip. This was the maximum configuration for the original Archimedes architecture using a single MEMC controller.

Storage

The A440 included a 20 MB ST506 hard drive as standard , though some sources mention 43 MB drives in certain configurations. Unlike the A300 series, the A440 had a built-in ST506/MFM controller on the motherboard . The system also included a 3.5" floppy drive supporting 800 KB capacity.

Expansion

The 400 series included four expansion slots and an ST506 controller for the internal hard drive . The A440 had a 4-slot backplane , providing substantial expansion capability for podules (Acorn's proprietary expansion cards).

Display and Sound

The system supported 256 colour modes from a palette of 4096 and featured 8-channel 8-bit stereo sound . High-resolution monochrome display modes were offered by the A440 , with resolutions up to 1152×896 pixels.

Operating System

The A440 was shipped with Arthur 1.2 . Arthur featured a primitive task-switching GUI, with version 0.30 released in June 1987 and 1.20 in September . For version 2 (October 1988), Arthur was renamed to RISC OS, which featured an updated GUI enabling co-operative multitasking of applications .

Earlier models which shipped with Arthur could be upgraded to RISC OS 2 by replacing the ROM chips containing the operating system . RISC OS 2 was a vast improvement over Arthur, allowing multitasking of programs with certain limitations .

Market Position and Reception

The Archimedes was officially launched in the week of June 19, 1987, with Acorn claiming the four MIPS ARM RISC machines were the fastest microcomputers in the world . The Archimedes achieved the significant milestone of being the first commercially-available RISC-based machines ever .

The ARM2 processed about 3x as many instructions per clock cycle as the Intel 80386 and 40% more per clock cycle than the Motorola 68030 . However, the Macintosh had been on the market since January 1984, the Atari ST since June 1985, and the Amiga since July 1985, giving them a 2-3 year head start .

Unix Workstation Variants

The R140, based on the A440, was Acorn's entry machine into the Unix market, functionally identical to an A440 but provided with a 52-53 MB ST506 drive with RISC iX (Acorn's brand of Unix) . The R140 cost £3,500 excluding VAT . An ordinary A440/1 with at least 4 MB RAM and a suitable hard drive could also run RISC iX .

Successor Models

In May/July 1989, the A440 was replaced by the A440/1, which included the MEMC1a memory controller giving about 10% performance improvement . The A440/1 cost £2,499 excluding VAT and came with a 50-53 MB ST506 hard disc . The A410/1 cost £1,199, the A420/1 £1,699, and the A440/1 £2,499, all excluding VAT .

Legacy

The A440 demonstrated the potential of RISC architecture in desktop systems and established ARM as a viable processor architecture. The idea for RISC architecture was first developed by John Cocke at IBM's Research Centre, with the name "RISC" coined at the University of Berkeley in California .

While commercial success was limited primarily to the UK education market, the technical achievements were substantial. The system proved that small companies could challenge established players through innovative design, and the ARM architecture would eventually become one of the most widely used processor designs in the world, particularly in mobile devices.

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