UK's IT crown jewels up for sale

[Llew]

iPhone chip designer ARM Holdings of Cambridge expected to be bought by Japanese company Softbank.
ARM has a long history in Cambridge, creating chip technology originally for the Acorn RISC processor back in the 80's.
Shame. Selling off the UK seems inevitable these days.

ARM chipmaker to be bought for £24bn by Japan's Softbank - BBC News

 

[Topper]

Indeed a shame, just a guess here on my part, too many unproductive fat executives there, who will get shed loads of money out of the sale? Seems to have been par for the course for the last 20 years.

Both myself and my son loved our Acorn Electron, because of it my son has a career in programming, passed his city and guilds in C++ programming at the age of 13, now nearly 33 he is still programming but in numerous different computer languages for an American software company, adding substance to the expression from little Acorns great apple trees grow

 

[Captain Jack]

Love Acorn RISC OS computers - still have A3010 buried somewhere with a 170Mb hard drive, which cost a pretty penny back in the 90's. StrongARM was the bee's knees. And still is among collectors.

 

[2cvbloke]

I hated using the old Acorns at school left over from the 80s, as I'd been brought up with other computers (Commodores (C64 & Amiga), Amstrad-era Sinclairs, IBM compatibles running MSDOS & Windows), it felt like throwing away pen and paper & using a hammer & chisel instead...

Of course today I can appreciate that Acorn did do a lot in building computer literacy in the late 70s & 80s with the BBC Micro and the associated TV series which brought about a generation of programmers for the evolving computer industry, but having grown up in the 90s when the by-then old standards were conflicting with modern technology, it muddied the waters a bit too much, with the school having an old BBC Micro on the "Do not touch" desk in the classroom with a Dot Matrix printer & 5.25" discs, when at home we had a 486 powered Compaq Presario CDS520 with a CD-ROM and an HP Inkjet printer, it made 90s computing a bit confusing, hell, I remember when I showed off an amazing feat of technology in said classroom, a "Colour ink cartridge" from our HP printer, the BBC Micro & its DMP couldn't do anything like that, despite the technology being there, just not being bought by schools...

Today though, schools are packed with computers & mobile devices (some of which are powered by ARM processors, as developed by Acorn) used for various purposes, so as a generation I feel we kind of missed out in the 90s, being left with the computer boomer generation's dregs and pre-dated the current computer generation by a few years, it's amazing I ever learned how computers worked, but then, I did take many apart to figure them out...

Just a shame ARM, which powers all kinds of devices, from Raspberry Pis to Android devices like phones, tablets and mini-PCs, has now been sold off, hopefully they'll keep running the company here, but, the usual way is buy up and ship out...

 

[Captain Jack]

Don't forget that there was Acorn BBC Micro and Acorn RISC OS systems. They were two different kettles of fish. Most seem to refer to BBC Micro as opposed RICS OS, which was rather advanced at the time (and still doesn't feel out of date).

 

[Journey]

Loved my Acorn Electron, in fact still have it in a box somewhere in the loft, unless the Mrs has done the dirty and moved it on.. Only got to use the BBC model B at school and then the Acorn Archimedes at college

Those were the days, great fun and a shame but inevitable that they have been sold

 

[2cvbloke]

Most seem to refer to BBC Micro as opposed RICS OS

I was referring to the BBC Micro as the BBC Micro with the squealey CUB monitors, not the later Olivetti-era Acorns with RISCOS & Philips monitors (as shared with Amigas and other contemporary computers), didn't really have much love for those either, seemed pretty user-unfriendly from my perspective of having used Windows95 & 98 at the time when I ended up having to use the RISCOS Acorns in secondary school...

The one Acorn that did fascinate me was the RISC-PC which you could flip between RISCOS and MS_DOS/Windows3.1, but that was another "Do not touch" computer, because computing with M$ products was seemingly a black art in the 90s...