Arthur Desktop Apps

[ZudoBug]

Hi all,

Anyone know if there were many desktop applications written for Acorn's Arthur OS?
I'm quite curious about this brief period of Archimedes history, as I didn't get my first Arc (410/1) until 1990, when everything was written for RISC OS 2.
I found a couple of programs in my own collection that run - both requiring Arthur 1.2 - screenshots (from Arculator) below:

I'm guessing there were more Minerva titles, as they seem to have entered the Archimedes scene very early on. Some of their games also work.

[cmj6502]

Wasn’t the first version of First Word Plus for Arthur? I had release 2 which was for RISC OS (2) but I seem to remember that release 1 was for Arthur.

[Dunkinator]

First release of First World Plus was for Arthur, as was Artisan. There were a bunch of updates to apps on the RISC OS 2.0 Support Disc. I recall there being a lot of titles for Arthur that needed updating.

I was always curious about the OS Computer Concepts were developing at the same time.

[richw]

Wasn't the first release (or perhaps preview?) of Impression an Arthur app?

What about. Acorn's ArcWriter?

Pro Artisan? I only used it under RISC OS but it was a non-desktop experience!

[Dunkinator]

Yeh I remember reading that CCs OS morphed into Impression but not sure anything was actually realised.

I think you’re right about Pro Artisan as well!

I can probably dig up a software sales list from a magazine back then if anyone is interested.

[davidb]

I was always curious about the OS Computer Concepts were developing at the same time.

See the Impulse by Computer Concept and Unix for Archimedes threads.

[steve3000]

Not a commercial application, but PiRat seems to use the Arthur desktop conventions, I've uploaded here: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=17174&p=248333#p248333

PiRat

The date is shortly after RISC OS 2 was released and the version I've uploaded appears to have been packaged as a RISC OS application (presumably to allow it to work correctly on RISC OS 2), but I expect it should still run on Arthur.

[ZudoBug]

Not a commercial application, but PiRat seems to use the Arthur desktop conventions, I've uploaded here: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=17174&p=248333#p248333
The date is shortly after RISC OS 2 was released and the version I've uploaded appears to have been packaged as a RISC OS application (presumably to allow it to work correctly on RISC OS 2), but I expect it should still run on Arthur.

Thanks. It did work, even on Arthur 0.3, with some minor file and pathname changes.
Investigator 1.00 also works on Arthur 1.2.

I had a look through an early Arc software catalogue from June '87 - Acornsoft released a few BBC programs adapted to run under the 6502 emulator initially, followed by an Arc release of "View Professional" to run in desktop mode.

Surprised there weren't more BBC conversions back in the early days. In primary school I converted a few educational progs (to run under RISC OS !65Host) at the teachers' request.