The Acorn Online Media Set Top Box was produced by the ''Online Media'' division of

Acorn Computers Ltd Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England in 1978 by Hermann Hauser, Christopher Curry (businessman), Chris Curry and Andy Hopper. The company produced a number of computers during the 1980s with asso ...

for the

Cambridge Cable Cambridge Cable Ltd. was a Private company limited by guarantee, limited company engaged in the provision of early video on demand. It provided cable infrastructure in the UK as part of the Cambridge Digital Interactive Television Trial (Cambrid ...

and Online Media

Video on Demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films Digital distribution, digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typica ...

trial In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, w ...

and launched early 1996. Part of this trial involved a home-shopping system in partnership with

Parcelforce Parcelforce Worldwide is a courier and logistics service in the United Kingdom. Parcelforce Worldwide is a trading name of Royal Mail, which is a subsidiary of International Distribution Services, and is organised within the UK Parcels, Inte ...

. The hardware was trialled by

NatWest National Westminster Bank, trading as NatWest, is a major Retail banking, retail and commercial bank in the United Kingdom based in London, England. It was established in 1968 by the Corporate merger, merger of National Provincial Bank and We ...

bank, as exhibited at the 1995 '' Acorn World''

trade show A trade show, also known as trade fair, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and ...

Specification

STB1

The STB1 was a customised

Risc PC Risc PC was a range of personal computers launched in 1994 by Acorn, replacing the Archimedes series. The machines use the Acorn developed ARM CPU and were thereby not IBM PC-compatible. At launch, the original Risc PC 600 model was fitted ...

based system, with a Wild Vision Movie Magic expansion card in a podule slot, and a network card based on

Asynchronous Transfer Mode Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a telecommunications standard defined by the American National Standards Institute and International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T, formerly CCITT) for digital trans ...

. *''Memory'': 4

MiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

RAM *''Processor'': ARM 610 processor at 33 MHz; approx 28.7 MIPS *''Operating system'':

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

3.50 held in 4 MiB ROM

STB20

The STB20 was a new PCB based around the ARM7500

System On Chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and dat ...

. *''Memory'': *''Processor'':

ARM7500 ARM7 is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings for microcontroller use. The ARM7 core family consists of ARM700, ARM710, ARM7DI, ARM710a, ARM720T, ARM740T, ARM710T, ARM7TDMI, ARM7TDMI-S, ARM7EJ-S. The ARM7TDMI and ...

processor (

ARM System–on–Chip Architecture ''ARM System-on-Chip Architecture'' is a book detailing the system on a chip ARM architecture, as a specific implementation of reduced instruction set computing. It was written by Steve Furber, who co-designed the ARM processor with Sophie Wilson. ...

) *''Operating system'':

3.61, a version specific for this STB, held in 4 MiB ROM.

STB22

By this time Online Media had been restructured back into Acorn Computers, so the STB22 is branded as 'Acorn'. *''Memory'': *''Processor'': *''Operating system'': a development of

held in 4 MiB ROM

References

External links

The Full Acorn Machine List: STB
{{Acorn computers Computer-related introductions in 1996 Online Media Set Top Box Legacy systems Set-top box