The Acorn Archimedes was the first desktop to use the ARM architecture

Re:The Acorn Archimedes was the first desktop to use the ARM... by mkl on Friday June 26, 2020 @06:36AM (#23650502)

> 4 million colours

That would be 22 bit, which seems quite unlikely. Perhaps you're thinking of 4096 (= 2^12 = (16)^3)? It seems only 256 of them could be shown at once and only 240 could be modified [1][2][3]? If those are correct then it is more limited than VGA, which could show 256 colours chosen from 262144 (= 2^18 = (64)^3). Some Archimedes resolutions were more like low-end SVGA though [1].

[1] https://lowendmac.com/2018/acorn-archimedes-computers/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth

Edit:

[3] Original brochures! http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Brochu... and http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Acorn/Brochu...

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Re:The Acorn Archimedes was the first desktop to use the ARM... by mcv on Friday June 26, 2020 @07:38AM (#23650866)

You're probably right. I do remember hearing about 4 million colours at the time, and being wowed by the amazingly subtle colour, but 4 million does indeed sound very unlikely.

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Re:The Acorn Archimedes was the first desktop to use the ARM... by walkingolof on Friday June 26, 2020 @08:11AM (#23651080)

I was an A3000 owner, it had a 4096 color palette (12 bits), note "palette", the best resolutions supported 1 byte per pixel, so 256 colors on screen, out of 4096.

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Re:The Acorn Archimedes was the first desktop to use the ARM... by mkl on Friday June 26, 2020 @09:03AM (#23651501)

Nitpick: That would be a 256 colour palette, from a 4096 colour colour-space.

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Re:The Acorn Archimedes was the first desktop to use the ARM... by walkingolof on Friday June 26, 2020 @11:40AM (#23653212)

Your right, but the terms where never used correctly back in the day..

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