In my opinion, the Acorn Archimedes was a vastly underrated computer. The Arc (as I will refer to it) was the first generally released RISC based computer. Based on the ARM processor which, at a staggering 4 MIPS, isn't fast now but an Amiga at the time went at 0.5 MIPS.

It also boasted an excellent operating system which, again like the Amiga, was in the form of a built in ROM. The difference here though was that not only was the entire operating system in ROM, the desktop was too! It also had 8 channels of true stereo sound unlike the Amiga's four (I helped convert Amiga ProTracker to it with Jim+Owain! But we increased the channels to 8), which sounded groovy although many of the tunes available were straight ports from the Miggy.

True multitasking, 4096 colours, extremely fast at the time, hardware scrolling and sprites, around 27 assembler commands only and, according to friends, very easy to program. So why didn't it do as well as it should. Well price could have been one thing but they did drop quite drastically. What about games then? Well, they were great too. And many of them like ArcElite, were the best versions ever. I think the stigma attached with being an education machine like the BBC Micro before it never rubbed off and so it was consigned to real enthusiasts only, which is a shame.

Archie attempts to bring the Arc A4000 to the masses in emulator form. While there is still a lot to do, this emulator certainly brings back the memories for me. Once booted the standard BBC Micro style prompt appears. Typing *desktop and RiscOS in all its colourful, graphical glory appears after a bit of a wait. Software is in the form of the unfortunately named .ADF files (which knackers searching on the net for them as Amiga disks will appear) which you can make yourself from your old disks using a mentioned but separate utility. Apparently though, real Arc disks can be read so the author is working on this. Hard Disk support isn't there yet along with joystick or sound support. In the case of Joysticks though, the Arc initially had to have a joystick interface so most games have a keyboard option. Which is nice.

Also supported is direct access to PC low-density floppies. I don't understand this but it is very handy for getting software downloaded off the net onto the emulator as long as it fits on the floppy. Roll on HD access! In version 0.6 the screenmode can be selected but on mine, it gave a garbled screen. A quick email to the author and he suggested a workaround. I had to use a slower screenmode but then I'm not really evaluating the speed of this anyway. It was nice to see support coming directly from the author though.

Compatibility is pretty good too. Version 0.5 wouldn't allow the excellent ArcElite to run but Chris-O has found the problem and in 0.6, it does! Magnetoids demo wouldn't run along with a couple of other demos. This doesn't need much improvement although I'm sure that sound will be tough to emulate without a serious drop in speed. Talking of speed, even on my lowly P225MMX, the speed in games was fairly acceptable. The author claims that a PII 450 is only at quarter speed but I reckon mine is running about that now. Chris-O's website is also useful as there are plenty of software links and downloads.

Overall, if you have an Arc but want to use it in 800x600 without having to buy an expensive multisync monitor then get this. To other people I would say get it anyway!

7/10 lots of things still to do but this is definitely the best Archimedes emulator ever. Bar none. Keep em coming!