Acorn R200 Series Documentation
Acorn's documentation for the R200 series workstations, the Acorn R260 and Acorn R225, and for the Acorn Archimedes A540 that shares their hardware, hosted here comprises the installation guide, a sales leaflet and a set of twelve circuit and assembly drawings. The dealer service manual has its own page: Acorn Archimedes 500 Series and R200 Series Service Manual.
Installation Guide
[edit | edit source]The Installation Guide for the A540, R260 and R225 is Acorn Computers' user guide, part number 0486,251, issue 1, July 1990 (ISBN 1 85250 080 8). The reader's comment form at the back calls it the "A540, R260, R225 Installation Guide". The hosted scan has 128 pages with an OCR text layer.
Contents
[edit | edit source]| Section | Page |
|---|---|
| Part 1: unpacking, setting up the computer, switching on, if things go wrong (including restoring the default configuration) | 1 to 17 |
| Part 2: RISC OS tutorial (desktop, mouse, discs, windows, menus, keyboard, files and directories) | 19 to 60 |
| Appendix A: hardware components and connectors, internal links | 63 to 76 |
| Appendix B: monitor connections | 77 onwards |
| Appendix C: attaching peripheral devices | 91 onwards |
| Appendix D: expansion card installation | 103 onwards |
| Appendix E: maintaining the computer (cleaning, the mouse, the fan filter) | 107 to 111 |
What it settles
[edit | edit source]- The R225 is discless: it has no floppy drive or hard disc indicator light (p. 63), no disc icons on the desktop (Switching on), and is factory-configured for the thick Ethernet socket (Appendix A).
- The power supply's air filter should be cleaned at least once a year; the replacement is Acorn part 0816,017 (pp. 110 and 111).
- A DELETE power-on restores the factory configuration, and the guide lists the default settings, including
noRISCOSfor machines that boot straight into RISC iX (pp. 16 and 17). - The keyboard plugs into a 6-way socket on the front: pin 1 reset, 2 not connected, 3 0 V, 4 5 V, 5 serial data from the keyboard, 6 serial data to the keyboard (p. 64).
What it does not contain
[edit | edit source]No circuit diagrams, parts lists or component-level fault finding, and nothing on the backup battery. Those are in the service manual and the drawings below.
R260 leaflet
[edit | edit source]Acorn R260, leaflet APP 480, first edition, August 1992, two pages: specification with RISC iX 1.2, 8 MB expandable to 16 MB, 2 MB ROM, a 120 MB formatted SCSI disc, SCSI and Ethernet as standard and the supported display modes. Its figures are for the 1992 machine; launch machines had RISC OS 2 and a 100 MB disc.
Circuit and assembly drawings
[edit | edit source]Twelve Acorn drawings, scanned at 400 dpi, from the drawings that accompanied the Archimedes 500 and R200 Technical Reference Manual. The hosted service manual lists most of them but its scan does not contain them. They are joined into one PDF in this order:
| PDF page | Drawing | Number |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Main PCB circuit diagram, sheet 1: MEMC, ROM and ARM interface | 0186,000 |
| 2 | Main PCB circuit diagram, sheet 2: video and audio | 0186,000 |
| 3 | Main PCB circuit diagram, sheet 3: I/O system | 0186,000 |
| 4 | Main PCB circuit diagram, sheet 4: DRAM | 0186,000 |
| 5 | Main PCB circuit diagram, sheet 5: power and ground table | 0186,000 |
| 6 | Main PCB assembly | 0186,000/A |
| 7 | 4 MB RAM card circuit diagram | 0186,002 |
| 8 | ARM3 CPU (PGA) card circuit diagram | 0186,104 |
| 9 | Backplane circuit diagram | 0186,001 |
| 10 | Keyboard circuit diagram | 0186,900 |
| 11 | Ethernet II expansion card | 0173,070 |
| 12 | SCSI expansion card (issue 2 and later) | 0173,010 |
The set has no Ethernet I card drawing and no power supply circuit; Acorn treated the power supply as a sealed module.
Pages that cite these documents
[edit | edit source]
Download: Acorn A540, R260 and R225 Installation Guide.pdf
Download: Acorn R260 leaflet (APP480).pdf
Download: Acorn Archimedes 500 Series and R200 Series circuit diagrams.pdf