Death of an Acorn

RiscOS has been on life support for a couple of years now. For those of you who haven't happened across it, RiscOS was an innovative operating system developed for the Acorn Archimedes / RiscPC range of computers.

The Archimedes was the successor to the BBC Micro range of computers, using the RISC based ARM (Archimedes RISC Machine) CPU. They were commonly found in UK schools in the late 1980s / early 1990s.

Often seen as a competitor to the Amiga and Atari ST (although arguably less successful in the home market), the Archimedes morphed into the RiscPC and, in common with the Amiga, has been owned by a number of companies, had arguments over the ownership of the OS and is often seen as yesterdays news.

Currently work is underway to open the source to RiscOS, and the announcement by the current owners Iyonix apparently doesn't change this.