Fred Harris Introduces the Acorn Archimedes BBC A3000 Part 2

Fred Harris from Playschool and BBC Micro Live fame introduces the computer which seemed to be in every school until the late 90s, and is still in some schools even now!

Apologies for the sound/picture quality in places, it's off a very old video!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• acorn
• archimedes
• a3000
• bbc
• micro
• live
• fred
• harris
• playschool
• zarch
• lander
• genesis
• lotus
• 123
• computer
• literacy
• project

[Snagprophet]

Wait, are you telling me this thing basically had Garage Band on? Oh my god, so much patriotism I feel so much now knowing this is all British.

[JSYBen]

@Snagprophet If you fancy a bit more patriotism, the processor in this Acorn computer is an ARM chip, a chip that Acorn invented, and a chip that is now currently in every iPhone :) Long live Brits :D

[DANWOODHOUSE1]

did the B.B.C computers have anything to do with THE B.B.C?

[JSYBen]

Yeah, the BBC contracted Acorn to build computers for them with the BBC badge on them. They were mainly sold to education, but home users bought them too.

[umcaraeumviolao]

mouse handling skills, oh ok.

hahaha

[borgirdummu]

Why the hell is E-Type sound effects playing over the game Lander?

[LOPEZdJUNGLIST]

YESSS lander!!!

[TheSophera]

@LaurelVentura In fact, that's a big part of the reason why I love so-called "shovelware" CDs, such as the ones archived at cd(dot)textfiles(dot)com - they retain the magic of those old CDs. :D

[TheSophera]

@LaurelVentura Actually, it was similar for me - when I had my first CD, I didn't have a CD-ROM drive either. I was still excited, though, and when you think about it, it makes sense; our frame of reference at the time was floppy discs, and you'd normally get a maximum of one or two cover floppies on a magazine. But a CD could hold over 451 floppies' worth! And when you consider that they didn't have large apps then, and would use up the space with apps that could fit on floppies... good times!

[LaurelVentura]

@TheSophera Thanks for that clarification. Multimedia presentation authoring software. Impressive!

[LaurelVentura]

@TheSophera That's very true. I too remember getting my first CD-ROMs on magazine covers. Those discs were like magic, holding untold mysteries - mainly because it was over a year until I actually got a CD-ROM drive so I could actually load the things!

[TheSophera]

@LaurelVentura Well, part of it will certainly be nostalgia - for many in the UK, it would have been their first exposure to a computer which used a mouse, and combined with childhood curiosity, it would have been way more exciting for us than for our parents, most likely.

Then again, people use computers differently now too. I remember my first PC magazine cover CD-ROM - it was packed with stuff which would have previously been distributed on floppies. Nowadays, they *design* for large media.

[TheSophera]

@LaurelVentura What you're seeing there is only an example of Genesis, which happens to be encyclopedic. (That particular example also didn't have terribly much information, but was supplied on the program discs.) Genesis was more of a program like PowerPoint in a way, because you created various screens and could define hotspots to move between pages, or link to other files.

[LaurelVentura]

Wow, that "Genesis" software is like an early version of Encarta.