My RISC OS machine, the Risc PC

I am currently a member of the RISC OS Midland User Group (M.U.G) Check on the links page to get to their website. It's a fairly new group, but it's growing fast.

The first (and only time) I phoned my ISP I had a hard time convincing them I wasn't using a Mac or Windows machine and was in fact on my good 'ole Acorn Risc PC. The guy was convinced that I must be using a Beeb trying to connect to Prestel and started chanting that I would not be able to connect my machine to the internet.

Well here it is and i'm online, so Fud.

The current hardware setup is:

Acorn RiscPC 600
RISC OS 4.39 (Adjust)
StrongArm SA110 202 Mhz currently overclocked at 243 Mhz
ViewFinder graphics card
68 Mbytes of RAM
2 Mbytes of Video RAM
40 Gbytes hard disk
2nd processor PC card AMD 5X86 133 Mhz (Running windoze 95/98)
Also a rather large set of 2.1 speakers to play my several hundred mp3s on

Ive been using Acorns since the 80's and it must be a good machine as i've still to wonder over to the "Dark Side" of PeeCees. The desktop is pretty nippy and I find it as quick and even more productive than the above mentioned machines.

Most of my set-up has been bought 2nd hand, or modified myself, yah yah, cheapskate.

The PC card was recently bought at the Midland Acorn show for 2 quid in a box marked "Faulty". After discovering that it had a faulty processor (Constant crashing and enough heat coming from it to fry an egg, yummy) I replaced the old one with a new AMD 5X86 133 which has really speeded up things. Current amusing things include using NetMeeting to access other peoples desktop cameras and my computer at work, it's a useful piece of equipment and despite it's age I still find it a novel thing to have.

The PC card now features PCpro3, with a dual 95/98 setup (Two C: partitions and a shared D:) and a webcam. Crazy antics to come including upgrading the 128k level 2 cache to 512k, i've worked out the ICs required. Now before I finally break the damn thing I have to trace out whether anything else needs to be altered (/me Looks at the pads marked "Links").

Machine is now fitted with a Viewfinder graphics card, click on desktop screenshot above to see how a Risc PC desktop looks in 1600X1200 16 million colours.