Date   : Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:12:30 -0600
From   : jules.richardson99@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: 32016 + 32082

John Kortink wrote:
>> And a final bit of archaeology, quite a few of the date codes on the
>> important chips are around the 8430s, the rest of the board is 83/84 apart
>>from the 32082, the hand blown EPROMs and the RAM which are 85/86, could
>> this have been a 64k unit upgraded a couple of years after manufacture?
> 
> I had noticed that too. Most likely manufactured around mid
> to end '84 and upgraded later on. The serial number stuck to
> the wedge is 0100034.

I found the serial numbers to be all over the place (almost as though Acorn 
had a stash of empty wedges in a cupboard and slapped the nearest PCB into 
them whenever someone actually wanted one). I suppose that 34 *might* be 
about right for late-'84, if most of the ones produced earlier that year 
got the R&D-style numbering and then they switched to the 7-digit numbers.

'86 is far later than anything on any of the boards that I had photos for 
though, and I think by that date even the ACW was a dead-end. It also seems 
far too late to be related to the Xenix work as I'd speculated; I checked 
and that was in-progress in mid-1984, so after 2 years I think they would 
have decided that it wasn't viable.

Regarding the use of sockets, I've got some turned-pin ones on issue 2 
boards, so Acorn certainly used them. I'm also reminded of the M4, though - 
that had IC sockets made up from bits of other IC sockets, so someone at 
Acorn certainly wasn't against doing such things for 'internal' hardware 
(i.e. it might still be an Acorn mod rather than done by a third party)

Interesting...

cheers

Jules