PipeDream on the Acorn Archimedes
Key takeaways
- A productivity suite that willfully rejects common notions on how such software should behave, on an operating system most haven't heard of, running on a processor 30 years ahead of its time.
- During the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" years of home computing, up to around 1995, a lot was thrown and a lot failed to stick.
- Take for example, our focus today.
A productivity suite that willfully rejects common notions on how such software should behave, on an operating system most haven't heard of, running on a processor 30 years ahead of its time.
During the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" years of home computing, up to around 1995, a lot was thrown and a lot failed to stick. Sometimes clumps would form that appeared to have the combined friction necessary to maintain wall grip, each holding the other up. But, like Mitch Hedberg's observation of belts and belt loops, it was difficult to discern who was helping who stick to what.
Take for example, our focus today. We have a completely novel CPU, built by a tiny team of engineers who had never designed a processor before, running a bespoke operating system squeezed out in a rush to meet the shipping deadline of a computer that wanted to carry on the legacy of a system beloved by British schoolchildren, hosting a productivity suite that completely rethought what the term "productivity suite" even meant.