• Phoebe Rise PC 2 design team leader Peter Fox tall

She's eccentric and offbeat. Her multiprocessing end. This is also where found the new NLXstandard form big argument I've had with people is friends have to think twice the entertaining story of multiple VIDCs factor which they are developing for that people say that they don't like it about what she says but her came in. This was somebody's wild their next generation motherboards. It's and then come back two days later and poetic pronouncements are idea. It was also something that was a wonderful design which allows you to still remember it and I say that yellow often thought-provoking, in a quashed straightaway. slide the board in and out. There's no front means you've recalled it. We funny kind of way. If you are electrical connection to it except for an looked at a transparent design (like the not familiar with the American MW These were early days then? edge connector. We found some Apple iMac) but we discarded it. We twenty-something comedy PF Peter Bondar's presentation at manufacturers who were just don't have a mechanical design sitcom then you won't know the Acorn World show in 1996 came developing those so we got in right at department so I picked up the Phoebe or her Friends. She is from our brainstorming and some things the beginning. We are using a case mechanical side of it. So the case and the name, if not quite the presented then never actually happened. which is unique to Acorn development, that sort of thing I've ended up inspiration, of Acorn's new a mini tower. We wanted the detailing. As the project manager you barrier-breaking Rise OS MW But the proiect began to take professional look of a mini tower. It have to pick up all the stuff others don't workstation, Phoebe Risc pe 2. shope? gives us the expansion that we think have time to do. As development versions of PF Once we had got a core most people probably want. Phoebe go out for testing and solution we began to get a team MW What hove Mike Stephens the finishing touches are made together. Mike and myself were key MW What about the slice concept and his colleagues come up with for to Rise OS 4, your favourite people initially because we'd both done introduced with Risc PC? Rise os 4? Acorn magazine has taken a the StrongARM. Alex Bienek was PF People loved the slice idea PF We had quite a lot of fleeting opportunity to talk to brought in, who is a stalwart in Acorn and we did look at case suppliers. The discussions about what to improve Peter Fox (PF), leader of the and has been here for about 15 years. I mini tower gave us a good about the software package, over and project which has realised this don't know if he'll like being called a compromise. Most people only have above the existing RISC OS, and to exciting new technology we 'stalwart'. He's been involved in two slices, some three. You get the change the things people had the most will soon be using in anger. podules, 10MD 1, lots of stuff. He extremes and the enthusiast with ten gripes about. Hence things like the new EditorMark Webb (MW) put wanted to get into the new ASIC and slices. But we had to compromise and filecore system which gives us long the questions. championed that for us. So the three of say seven expansion cards and four filenames, many more files in a us started running and we recruited our hard-drive slots. There are four PCI and directory, the new look canfiguration MW What's the history behind the lead hardware engineer to help out. The three podule slots so you've got plenty setup, new pinboard. We've taken the new Acorn computer? rest of the team came fram other of room there. We got some user interface and made it more PF Basically I got together with projects as and when they became reservations about having no slices but sociable for people. You have to accept Chris Cox and Ray Pinchard and a available as the year (1997) the mini tower is a good solution. We that people have seen and used the couple of other guys from sales and progressed. used a couple of design houses in other platforms and they've seen some marketing at the end of November '96 competition with each other to come up nice features and we'd be mad not to after we'd done the StrongARM MW How many people were with a styling which is modern, looks incorporate similar features. They've upgrade. I did thot with Mike Stephens, involved? professional, stands out from the crowd, taken our ideas so it's been a two way who's the lead software engineer on PF We ran for quite a time as a is not like a Pc. These were the key street. Other than that it's been about Phoebe. We crashed out what we'd like small core team, four or five people things, not necessarily to say it's an making RISC OS far more tailored to to do as an upgrade, to improve on the trying to sort it out and eventually it Acorn but to look professional, the StrongARM and the architecture of Risc pc, whot could we put in - things really grew into a big team. I suppose upmarket and different. We used a the new design. A lot of work has gone like PCI came out of that, and how to in mid '97 it became a big, really big, Fitch who have also designed for into revising the kernel. Mike is the remove the bottle neck on the main praject - big priority. lomega, Reebok and those sort of kernel guy and has got some memory bus. We got together the key companies. We showed people designs tremendous performance increase in the features and asked ourselves: do we do MW What was the design looking at Acorn World in 97 but we didn't get software alone by just rewriting and it as an upgrode, do we do a new like at this stage? much feedback. Most people were retailoring more for the platform. The machine? That was a real PF We couldn't fit the board in more interested in the technology than faCt is that we can show a machine at brainstarming session and from that we the existing case. The power supply the look. I think the desire for the case Wakefield at 11Mhz and people go presented our ideas to Peter Bondar. It was too small and the PCI power was to extend it to be innovative to "hey that's about the same speed as a was still Acorn Risc Technologies at that drawings were looking entertaining. We other markets as well as our existing Risc PC" and in fact it's running at time and he was the technical director. put feelers out to try to find a decent one. If it looks wacky then someone is about a third of the speed of a Risc PC He was keen to get a little bit more in case. It's a tremendously expensive going to say "what is that?" Hopefully and it looks reasonably usable ..That's a it. He wanted a little bit more pazazz. thing to develop a new case. It's we can get other niches in the testament to how the software is So that is how we ended up with the hundreds of thousands of pounds. We marketplace because of the design. The running now.

68 ARCH1MEDESWORLD VOLUME 15 ISSUE 10 1998 Ben Avison (S/W Design) Andrew Dawson (IOMD2) Ca/inBartlett (Manufacturing)

Bernard Sidd/e (IOMD2 and H/W Design) Tim Roddis (S/W Design) Murray Papworth (Manufacturing) Steve Tay/or (H/W and S/W Test)

Chris Garry (IOMD2)

MW RiSe os has to cope with ports, MIDI port. It's a Soundblaster header so you could have a wave table everything else, rother than the new hardware features? compatible codec. It gives you synthesiser plug in. We've got a brightish pale blue and grey. We've PF The software team has done hardware volume controls so there are software emulation of it on PC and it's gone for 256 colour icons and actually all the background to PCI, the tweaking two volume controls and software phenomenal. It's so sweet. being able to give some nice shade of RISC OS to allow PCI to work. mixing of all your sound inputs. So and fine lines, more tailored tawards They've done control of the new sound what we've done is we feed everything MW What can a Phoebe owner the big desktop, less for the 640x480 system which has got codecs in it. into the codec - VIDC sound, CD expect to see on the desktop? but more for the 102 4x7 68 and I We've incorporoted an industry sound, line input, and its own sound • PF We've gone for a complete think it's worked very well. There are standard codec, an Analog Devices and you can mix all those together to new look. It's more upmarket in its 250 new icons which hove been part. It gives us stereo line in and out, get levels. It's got some nice little look and feel in terms of the icons, designed in house by Mark Moir. He's headphones, microphone, twin joystick sound features. It's got a wave blaster backdrops, marbling and texture and very into grophic work and he's done

ARCH1MEDESWORLD VOLUME 15 lSSUE 10 1998 69 anather 250 law resalution versions. MW What testing af the software the biggest users of on certain applications that it is One thing I really like in the software is goes on? so there's a lot of feedback internally struggling. We wanted to go for the the new configuration program which PF What we are doing for this - they all whinge and moan about X, market standard which was 66Mhz at we've made a much more general version is we are selling 100 machines Y, Z. We've had feedback as recently the time. It's very difficult to get al~ area. Third party applications can be to developers which will give them the as Wakefield and we've toyed with 1 OOMhz motherboard to work reliably added to the configuration so you don't opportunity to develop their hardware that and worked out what we can and and it becomes a bit of a black art. We have to go searching through your hard and software but it also gives us the can't do. The feedback from shows is needed a new 10MD and we needed a drive to try to find your app. You know opportunity to get tremendous taken in and used. new VIDC20. Also the way the you just double-click on !Boot and you feedback from them. We will audit memory system worked was a will be straight into the application's internally but will give the developers MW Where does Phoebe's extra problem, just by the nature of the way configuration. Also there's a lot more the chance ta infarm us of problems processing power came fram? that some of the signals were routed. there, like your pinboard setup rather and what they dan't like. We've PF In terms of hardware, the So we had to change the orchitecture than a pull-down menu on the already taken customer feedback and machine had to be faster. The memory slightly to try to be a bit more of a pinboard. It works well and we've had it's been looked at in terms of the new bus was obviously strangulating grant/request system. We could see good feedback from that. design. Acorn's own offices are one of StrongARM in the Risc Pc. You can see that we had to look at a different way, a bit more of an industry standard way of running the memory system.

MW Was such a radicalredesign necessary? PF With doing the StrongARM and 7500 we'd seen the way that signals worked, things which mean that you are almost on the limit of that machine and really we needed to look at some other way to give us the confidence that we could hit the high speed. It's general feel and experience. We went for the new IOMD2 which made it easier to expand things, to give us the multiprocessing capability in hardware, to give us more DMA channels, better control. We moved the keyboard and mouse PS2 ports elsewhere so they are proper industry standard, the theory being that you can plug any keyboard or mouse into it and it will work. The new IOMD2 also gives us the opportunity to have PCI interfacing. The architecture we had wouldn't give us PCI. Effectively PCI is interpreted as a second StrongARM and we do a conversion to make it look like it. It's a nice way of doing it and seems to work. You have multiple masters. The StrongARM on the board happens to be one. The PCI bridge has to be another because it's a master device. In terms of the IOMD2, you make the PCllook like a StrongARM to then make the actual interface easier, very complicated but easier. Then you have another master which is your multi-processor card. You have three masters, and you can have more than one StrongARM master. You can put three StrongARMs in a row and have some glue logic that feeds that down to the main processor but you can only access one at a time. We changed to SDRAM to give higher speed, the industry standard at the moment and it's quite cheap, which is great.

MW How many engineers worked on the hardware?

70 ARCH1MEDESWORLD VOLUME 15 lSSUE 10 1998 sorting out any manufacturing issues. discipline to get certain things done There's also on audit period. If Chris and in order, and we get hounded by Cox has 0 key RISC OS product then Chris Cox ta get things out of the it's 0 logical step to use members of door! the some team again because they hove the skill set and the expertise but MW Finally, what about that it just depends on who is available. name? PF Me and Ray come up with

;;;:;; MW What's it like working at Phoebe. We were brain-storming. You Acorn? hove to come up with 0 code name. I PF It's 0 relaxed atmosphere. I liked Friends and Ray liked Friends. don't crock the whip and shout and Phoebe was 0 bit different. All the PCBs yell. But everyone's aware of the hove got names. The processor board Acorll~ deadlines and people put the time in. is Rachel and the podule backplane is Getting ready for Wakefield we only Monica. The ASIC was called Chandler hod the machine working properly on originally. Phoebe has stuck. It's not the Thursday for the show on Saturday that common, it's spelled 0 bit and you are frantically putting in the differen~y. We hod 0 huge list from the time. No-one does a 9-5 but everyone Clan but it was very difficult to come up puts in the time and effort and with something which really stood out dedication. All the engineers are in and mode you realise what it was, and jeans and T-shirts. It is a relaxed kind the world hod kind of got this Phoebe of place but you have to have image in its head.

Phoebe - Risc PC 2 Specification Software

• New Kernel to support the new hardware, better task swapping, cached screen ete.

• New filecore to support more files in a directory (up to 80,000), long PF A lot of it is done by one MW Is there 0 certain enthusiasm file names, bigger discs (up to 128Gb for IDE) ete. guy in terms of actually doing the for 0 non Intel product? • New ADFS to support new IDE interface major design, one other person on PF Acorn's 0 very good place to • New CDFS work but I didn't come into Acorn os on layout. We hove 0 CAD system with • New and improved look to desktop including the following: o CAD layout guy. A few others feed enthusiast. I came in os 0 hardware • New Icons in on certain areas, on PCI, on designer and the majority of the team • New Wimp sound, on the podule interface. are not Acorn enthusiasts, which gives • New pinboard us the opportunity to come in with on • New filer MW And were does Peter Fox independent view and with new design • New configure fit in? ideas. Mike was into Acorn machines • New help PF I came in September but it's now his job. Some of the • Improved sound support including: 1994. Previously I worked for GEC software people came in becouse they • New Midi Marconi in-flight systems. I liked the product and used it. Hardware • New sound control developed video entertainment people look to work in consumer • New disc images/sounds and games ete. systems for Boeing aircraft, back of electronics in the UK. The company has seat video ete. They are still going o very good reputation in the and if you fly United Airlines you'll electronics field, with the ARM spin-off, Hardware see my work. I came to work on and now we are 0 consultancy so there Stark, which was 0 portable we put are opportunities for doing other things. • 233MHz SA110 together in 95/96, the RISC OS • New IOMD2 - improved bus speed 64 MHz portable which never happened. MW Does a team like this stay • Up to 512M SDRAM - 32M as standard Then I did StrongARM and now together? • New VIDC20 - 1 00% performance increase Phoebe. PF Some members of the team • 4M EDO VRAM are already on other things. The • 4 pC! slots running 32bit 33Mhz interface MW What's the background of specialists in X, Y, Z come in, do their • 3 standard podules the other engineers? bit, and then go away again. A team • 4M ROM PF Some of the team hove like this will disperse into other projects • E-IDE allowing 4 drives running 16Mb transfers worked for other PC manufacturers, within the company. What those • 32x CD some are straight from college, projects will be, nobody knows. Most • PC style Game port - joysticks, Midi ete., line in, line out, mie. in and others from hi-tech electronics of us are in until the end but some of headphones out, Soundblaster sound with Waveblaster header companies. Mike, the key software us will be moving on once we've got to • 2 serial ports, IrDA support and a guy, has been here for five or six o point when we manufacture. I'm • Multiprocessing support in Hardware years. He came from 0 research here to the bitter end. Once it's in • New case, new power supply consultancy and was 0 RISC OS user. manufacturing I'm still fully employed

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