I suppose this question is really for the Brits of this board.
Acorn made some (at the time) really cool computers in the 80s that were standard fitment in most UK schools during that time.
I used to work for a reseller that sold these things and was talking with an old buddy recently, neither of us had any clue where Acorn went to or what happened to their designs.

Isn't the original Empeg logo made from a font only available for Acorn computers or something?

I think the empeg team could probably answer this pretty accurately - IIRC Hugo has an extensive background in Acorn/Archimedes stuff.

Basically the company produced hardware and the RISC-OS operating system until the late 90's when the key education market was eaten up by PC's, despite Acorn's being massively more reliable and resiliant.

It was broken up mainly so that Acorn shareholders could recoup their investment in Arm, which was spin-off from Acorn. (Yes, they invented the Empeg's processor and I doubt this is a coincidence!).

The operating system was sold to Pace Microtech and last time I heard there was a bit of a bust-up over ownership rights. Various hardware is still being produced by third-party companies and there is still a strong niche and enthusiast market.

Gareth (owner of several BBC Micros, an A3010 and a fairly rare BBC Master Compact)

They went through some difficult times in the '90s as the primary and secondary education market finally started to switch to PCs. Acorn attempted a series of strategic moves and spin-offs including licensing the Network Compter design (5-10 years too early for concept) and Online Media (still waiting for ATM to the home), their keyboardless, touch-screen laptop (10-15 years too early for concept).

They finally bet the future of the Risc-PC product familiy on project Phoebe, a next-generation Risc-PC with more generic hardware. It would appear that the project either fell behind schedule or went over budget. Senior management pulled the project and made one final strategic move - to turn Acorn Computers into a semiconductor design shop on 14th January 1999. The RiscOS intellectual property was sold to Pace Microtech.

Later Element 14 came to be known for low-power DSL chipstets, DSL software and communications technology. They were bought out by Broadcom in 2000.

Meanwhile, RiscOS Ltd was founded and were successful in licensing RiscOS from Pace for destop computers (Pace were only interested in the technology for their satellite and cable set-top boxes). There are a number of companies still making hardware that uses the RiscOS ROM chipset from RiscOS Ltd

I still have my Acorn Electron somewhere (a cutdown BBC Micro based on a 6502 CPU). That was my first computer ever - I got it when I was 8 or 9 I think so that would have been about 1984.

My Risc PC is on the shelf next to me and theres an A3000 in the cupboard....those were the days.

I think "microsoft happened", Acorn had the education market sewn up (in the UK), but then seemed to get sidetracked with the network computer and things just went a bit pear shaped from there.

Hugo was somewhat of an archimedes god, he wrote the tracker module player and various demos (infact, I've got the source code to some of them kicking around here!), lots of commercial software through his company "the serial port" and my personal favourite ARCterm7.

Risc OS was a great operating system, the api was hugely extensive and was the first machine that I ever programmed properly, my love of ARM processors goes way back to when ARM stood for "Acorn Risc Machine".

Pity that they're no longer around, first computer I ever used was a BBC B (Made by Acorn) at primary school.....ahhh, the memories.

ah yes! The Domesday Project was so far ahead of its time it was scary.
I loved that machine.

You should pull out your A3000 just to run Zarch on it
I will have to get a beeb just so I can play Revs on it again.

How about this.....
Zarch for Linux!!

There's the Acorn Atom too - the Electron was the self-build kit, the Atom was turned into the BBC B.

My affair with Acorn spans many years:

Electron 1985 Aged 6
A3000 1989 Aged 10
A5000 1993 Aged 14
RISC PC 1995 Aged 16

The RISC PC still sits on the desk in my study. In fact, since I bought a network card for it on ebay it's suddenly had a new lease of life. Sadly the web browser is a little antique for most sites.

Anyone got a StrongARM card and RISC OS 4 ROMS they want to sell?

I liked arthur, it was the first wimp os I ever used. However RISC OS did crap on it from a great height.

bump for an old topic...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday