The Acorn Archimedes A3000 was based on the Archimedes A410 but in an 1040ST/Amiga A500-style wedge unit. Designed for the home market, it was intended as a replacement for the BBC Micro and like the earlier Archimedes models it was only really used in British schools up until very recently.
Acorn started to phase out the Archimedes name and the machine was now simply badged Acorn A3000. Rumours have it that some of the Acorn A410 models had serious reliability problems and had to be recalled, so the Archimedes name was dropped to boost the machine's reputation.
Like the Atari and Amiga computers it had a built-in keyboard and disk drive located on the right-hand side, but unusually it also had two stereo speakers on either side of the unit. This form factor is ideal for a school environment as it doesn’t take up too much space and was often used with a metal plinth allowing a monitor to stand on top, usually an Acorn-badged Phillips 8853 (AKF12) or 8833 MK11 (AKF17).
The A3000 had two expansion ports. The internal one was a cut down 8-bit version of the type found on the earlier Archimedes machines. The second one, on the rear of the case, was a 16-bit version fully compatible with both earlier and later machines.
The operating system could read PC 720K disks and provided improved facilities for hard disk and networking, as well as some apps included in ROM which would appear on the task bar, such as Paint, Edit, and other useful programs.
The A3000 was replaced by the A3010 and A3020 models in 1992.
Thanks to Jonathan Hayward for his help.
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The Archimedes took regular double density 3 1/2 inch floppy disks, just the same as the ST and Amiga. Later Archimedes machines could also use High Density 1.44MB disks, but the A3000 couldn''t without an internal upgrade.
This is a beautiful little machine, owned and loved by my good self.
Everything works (will upload a picture of the system switched on ASAP).
Original manuals, software etc.
PHILLIPS 14" Monitor
Flashback, Lemmings, ChuckRock, E-type Jaguar, Chocks Away, many more!
I will probably update this listing as and when I scrutinise what I have!
Any questions, just ask! I love this machine, and to be honest, am very tempted to keep it, but I appreciate that you bidders out there have the same passion, so another good home is a welcome home....
There are some very good online-bookable couriers, so I think £20 should cover it, though maybe over two shipments (at the same time).
Saturday 4th December 2010
Daniel
NAME
Archimedes A3000
MANUFACTURER
Acorn Computer
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
United Kingdom
YEAR
1989
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
BBC BASIC
KEYBOARD
Full-stroke PC-AT style
CPU
ARM 2 32 bit RISC
SPEED
4 / 8 mHz
CO-PROCESSOR
MEMC (memory), VIDC (Video and Sound), IOC (I/O)
RAM
1Mb (up to 4Mb possible with slot in card)
ROM
512 KB (RISC OS 2) 1Mb (RISC OS 3)
TEXT MODES
132 x 32 maximum
GRAPHIC MODES
21
COLORS
256 maximum
SOUND
8 voices
I/O PORTS
Centronics, RS423, Video composite (monochrome only), RGB, optional Econet (network 250 KBits). 2 expansion slot (internal 8-bit and external 16-bit)
BUILT IN MEDIA
one 3.5'' 800k disk-drive
OS
RISC OS 2 (3.1 or later models, and most have been upgraded to v3)
