ARM - the early years
As a software publisher originally for the BBC and later the Acorn Risc Machine (ARM) my company was in at grass roots level the start of the ARM story. There were so many things that could not be done, according to conventional wisdom. Thank goodness for the band of innovative and often self taught programmers who made the Archimedes (generation 1) and later RiscPC platforms, do things they were not intended to do. It was due to the largely self taught nature of many of these guys that produced the CAN DO attitude the UK is famous for.
My guys produced a simulation of the ARM chip running BBC Basic on a BBC Micro. This was before there was any silicon and was based solely on the specification from Acorn's brilliant team. They wrote applications that worked first time on the pre production prototypes!
I would love somebody to look into the early background of the ARM chip with emphasis on the early usage of ARM computers and the Acorn RISC OS operating system. There were many rumours of systems being used in high security applications because of their speed but also because nobody bothered to write viruses for RISC OS. The Hong Kong stock exchange was one name that kept cropping up.
There is a fascinating story to be uncovered and I wonder how many of the old programmers are still around that could squeeze more out of these processors than convention would anticipate. These guys often wrote in machine code but to get programs to market quickly they would often use BBC Basic coupled with machine code where the speed was needed. It was not until the C compiler arrived that we started getting the BLOATWARE so common in the PC market.
Current software such as the XARA series on PC were firmly rooted in the old Acorn market
Anyone want to take on a project?