Imagesource: https://arcem.sourceforge.net/

Today, anyone using a smartphone or tablet can pretty safely assume that an ARM CPU sits at its core, moving electrons around to enable essential life activities like Twitter, Instagram, lalala...

What many don't realize is that the architecture of a modern ARM CPU is nearly 40 years old! 👴

The Acorn Risc Machine architecture first saw the light of day in 1987, debuting in the Archimedes by Acorn. It was the first mainstream computer to use Acorn's ARM architecture, and the machine ran on the RISC OS operating system. Known for its exceptional graphics and sound capabilities, its performance was ahead of its time.

The Archimedes series offered several models, each with varying amounts of memory and storage. Many popular games and educational software titles were developed for this platform. Despite its innovative features, the Archimedes faced stiff competition and eventually found itself overshadowed by PCs and Macs. However, the machine and its architecture have been intriguing enough to inspire the development and maintenance of emulators.

That's precisely what the mystery team behind the Acorn Archimedes Emulator has been doing. This tool has been around for over 20 years, and the journey from its source code to its binary is quite an adventure. However, for some systems, you can find compiled versions of the emulator online.

But for those adventurous souls willing to build the tool from its source code, you'll be rewarded with a special kind of 80s charm.

xmkmf -a ... just kidding.