A StrongARM powered prototype Acorn Network Computer has surfaced on an online auction house. The kit, known as a ‘Fast NC’ or ‘Office NC’, is being sold off by ex-Acorn engineer Piers Wombwell, who used the unreleased machine to port Java to RISC OS.

The NC, which has been gathering dust in Piers’s attic, is essentially a 200MHz StrongARM RiscPC in a slim case. The computer has 16M of RAM, 2M VRAM, a 10baseT network card and RISC OS 3.7 in Flash ROM. It requires a network to boot, as it relies on a BootP server to give it an IP address.

Piers said: “I intended it to be my front room MP3 player, but I couldn’t be bothered networking my front room. So I bought an Airport Express.”

Network Computers that made it into production usually sport a slower ARM7500 processor. The set top box was launched in 1996, although the ground work for it began in mid-1994. RISC OS continued to be used past the Acorn break up in IPTV STBs.

eBay.co.uk: Acorn Office NC

Posted: 10|28|05 at 8:41 am. Filed under: UK News.