5 ms·
Acorn just plain didn't have the manpower. They failed to effectively enter the international market and so other companies with a wider customer base out-inves
by ajb 1y ago
Acorn just plain didn't have the manpower. They failed to effectively enter the international market and so other companies with a wider customer base out-invested them.
They had a UNIX clone in 1988. The guy that did the kernel, Mark Taunton, used it for his daily driver until some time after 2000 but they never ported their GUI to it.
The internals of riscos were creaking by the end; it didn't have a proper library system and only had cooperative multitasking. There was an internal project ('galileo') to replace it, but it suffered from second system effect and NIH and never saw the light of day.
- fidotron 1y ago> They had a UNIX clone in 1988. The guy that did the kernel, Mark Taunton, used it for his daily driver until some time after 2000 but they never ported their GUI to it. Are you referring to RISC iX? I had no idea there were serious users of that to be honest. A few years ago some Acorn strategy documents leaked from the early 90s and it showed they basically knew the game was up long pre-Risc PC. I don't think any number of people would have helped them by 1992. There was this odd void where everyone (such as Xara) kind of knew the PC was going to take over everything, but it just wasn't quite there, and then suddenly it was.
- ajb 1y agoYes, RISC iX. I've no idea how many users it had to be honest . They kept going for a period by virtue of owning ARM. When the shareholders persuaded them to list it directly, the game was over. Before that they bet on set-top-boxes and the supposed PC replacement, the NC (thin client).