[sclug] Free computer

[Dickon Hood]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 18:47:52 +0000, David Given wrote:
: I have a computer to give away! No, it's not the Tesco one.

: I am the proud owner of an Acorn Risc PC serial number 72-ACB15-1010373.
:  It's got 10base2 ethernet (read that carefully), the 16-bit sound
: upgrade, the 30MHz ARM610 processor upgrade, the 486SX processor
: upgrade, the RiscOS 3 ROM upgrade, a 210MB hard disc containing...
: stuff, an official Acorn PS/2 keyboard but I think I've lost the
: proprietary mouse, and a whole 14MB of memory in two different kinds.

I think I have two of them :-)

: Alas, I'm not sure it boots properly. It powers up to the Supervisor
: command prompt, but the desktop won't start (presenting you with a blank
: dialogue with a 'Cancel' button), and half the modules (like ADFS) don't
: seem to be there. I'm not sure whether that's because the CMOS battery
: is so flat it's practically Flatlandian, or whether it's because I don't
: have the right kind of mouse, or the right kind of monitor (finding one
: sufficiently low-tech to work was a challenge), or whether it's
: symptomatic of more subtle damage, but my Acorn skills are too old to
: diagnose this. But BASIC does work.

Delete-poweron.  It'll clear the CMOS.

: So... would anyone like this? It's a classic, one of the computers of
: the old UK tradition that made the British Empire what it is today;
: however, if you want to run a modern operating system on it, or run
: modern software, or use modern networking protocols, or indeed do
: anything *useful* on it, you're probably a bit out of luck.

: Oh, yes... it does run Linux.

: Very, very slowly.

I know the chap who ported it :-)

-- 
Dickon Hood

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No virus was found in this outgoing message as I didn't bother looking.