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ARX (operating system)

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ARX
DeveloperAcorn Computers Ltd.
Written inModula-2+
OS familyUnix-like
Working stateDiscontinued
Marketing targetLow cost paperless office computing workstation
Available inEnglish
PlatformsARM
Kernel typeMicrokernel
Default
user interface		Graphical user interface[1] and special keyboard keys[2]
LicenseProprietary
Preceded byMOS
Succeeded byArthur, renamed RISC OS

ARX was an unreleased Mach-like operating system written in Modula-2+[3] developed by Acorn Computers Ltd in the Acorn Research Centre (ARC) United Kingdom (UK) and later Olivetti Research Center and later on Software Technology Laboratory (when Olivetti acquired Acorn) at Palo Alto, California for their new ARM architecture reduced instruction set computer (RISC) central processing unit (CPU) based Archimedes personal computers.

Overview

According to the project Application Manager[4] during the project, while Acorn was developing the kernel, it used C and Acorn Modula Execution Library (CAMEL) in Acorn Extended Modula-2 (AEM2) compiler (ported from Modula-2 ETH Zurich (ETH) using Econet hardware), though never released externally, CAMEL was ported to use it in Sun Microsystems Unix computer,[5] in an effort to port Sun's workstations Sun NeWS to the Archimedes, and after Olivetti acquired Acorn, developed a compiler based on AEM2 for the programming language Modula-3.[6]

ARX was a preemptive multitasking, multithreading, multi-user operating system. Much of the OS ran in user mode and as a result suffered performance problems due to switches into kernel mode to perform mutexes, which led to the introduction of the SWP instruction to the instruction set of the ARM3 version of the ARM processor. It had support of optical (write once read many (WORM)) disks file system[4] and featured a window system, a window toolkit (and a direct manipulation user interface (UI) editor[7]) and an Interscript-based text editor, for enriched documents written in Interpress (a HTML precursor). The OS had to be fitted in a 512 kibibyte (KB) read-only memory (ROM) ROM image.[8] This suggests that ARX had a microkernel-type design.

It was not finished in time to be used in the Acorn Archimedes range of computers, which shipped in 1987 with an operating system named Arthur, later renamed RISC OS, derived from the earlier Machine Operating System (MOS) from Acorn's earlier 8-bit BBC Micro range.[9]

The Acorn Research Centre was acquired by Olivetti.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Acorn History (untitled)". Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  2. ^ "Chris's Acorns: Acorn A500 (prototype)". Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  3. ^ Bruce, Cockburn. "Aha – what about Modula-2?". Usenet post to comp.sys.acorn detailing the relationship between ARX and Modula-2
  4. ^ a b TOP3 smart moves Richard Cownie. Real World Technologies (September 2009)
  5. ^ Chase, David. "David Chase (resume)". Retrieved 2015-10-25.
  6. ^ Jordan, Mick (1990). "An extensible programming environment for Modula-3". SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes. 15 (6): 66–76. doi:10.1145/99278.99285. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
  7. ^ "Brian T. Lewis - Resume". Archived from the original on 2004-05-01. Retrieved 2010-12-26.
  8. ^ "Full Acorn Machine List". Retrieved 2010-12-27.
  9. ^ Holgate, Chris; Davison, Rob; Burke, Stephen; Given, David; Harris, Ben; Kendrick, Rob; Bracey, Kevin; Fenelon, Pete; Blunt, Terry; druck; Markettos, Theo; Kossow, Al; Zuschlag, Jesper; Barclay, Alan; Crocker, Stephen; Pampling, Steven; et al. "Not A RISC By Thursday". Neil Franklin's Usenet Archive. Retrieved 2020-02-07. A set of Usenet posts detailing why ARX was abandoned for RISC OS.
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