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How Olivetti Stitched up Acorn
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paulzolo
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:27 pm
Posts: 12251
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 Some interesting thoughts from Chris Curry, one of Acorn’s founders, here: http://elleeseymour.com/2012/02/24/how- ... -up-acorn/I remember at the time, it seemed odd that Acorn had been taken over by Olivetti considering that there was no real IBM compatibility in their products. Mind you, it looks like Olivetti were sitting on a gold mine in Acorn which they didn’t recognise:  | | | | Quote: I asked Chris if Olivetti could have developed the ARM chip, now used extensively in mobile phones; in 2008 ARM produced its 10 billionth processor chip, and last year Microsoft announced that its next generation of Windows operating system would be based on ARM microchips.
Olivetti could have done, but they didn’t know what to do. The thing about ARM, the Acorn RISC Machine is what it stands for, is that it was already in several Acorn products, including the off-shoot that was making set-top boxes, but nobody had really started to sell the chip as a design to other chip makers until Robin Saxby came along. Acorn was part owner of the joint venture with Apple, and what happened in the end was that there was a reverse takeover so that ARM took over Acorn and Acorn shares were converted into ARM shares, so I imagine Olivetti had some shares still by then, they probably got some ARM shares out of it. | | | | |
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| Fri Mar 02, 2012 2:31 pm |
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james016
Doesn't have much of a life
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 5:52 pm
Posts: 1899
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That first scenario is quite typical
"Why aren't we doing x,y,z?"
"YOU told us not to"
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| Fri Mar 02, 2012 2:55 pm |
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cloaked_wolf
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Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 8:46 pm
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A fascinating read. It's easy to imagine what acorn could have been and I wonder how the future would have come out. I need one of Prof Farnsworth's machines!
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| Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:38 pm |
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paulzolo
What's a life?
Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:27 pm
Posts: 12251
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You get the feeling that had Olivetti not mashed them up so much, Acorn would still be a name in the computer industry today. OK, they may be pushing out IBM clones, but the development of RISC OS may have gone further than it did (RISC OS can be found in some TV set top boxes). You will certainly find some of the bigger players in the Acorn market still going: Sibelius (music composing end editing), Xara (née Computer Concepts), Beebug (now networking). Anyway, some more Curry articles: http://elleeseymour.com/2012/02/25/chri ... n-bombing/ - on the TV programme Micro Men where everyone played it straight, but didn’t tell Alexander Armstrong to. http://elleeseymour.com/2012/02/28/chri ... etworking/ - Social media and networking (spoilers: he doesn’t like them) http://elleeseymour.com/2012/02/27/camb ... echnology/ - Telecare technology. An interesting idea.
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| Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:12 pm |
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