A9home

A9home

A9home front, showing power button, speaker sockets and USB ports
Developer	Advantage Six
Manufacturer	Simtec Electronics
Release date	May 2006 (2006-05)
Operating system	RISC OS
CPU	Samsung S3C2440, ARM926EJS, ARMv5
Memory	128 MB SDRAM, 8 MB VRAM
Storage	40 GB hard disk
Predecessor	Risc PC, Iyonix PC
Successor	Touch Book, ARMini

The A9home was a niche small-form-factor desktop computer running RISC OS Adjust32. It was officially unveiled at the 2005 Wakefield Show, and is the second commercial ARM-based RISC OS computer to run a 32-bit version of RISC OS. When the Iyonix was withdrawn from sale, the A9home remained the only hardware to be manufactured specifically for the RISC OS marketplace.

The A9home was smaller than the Mac mini and housed in cobalt-blue aluminium casing, measuring 168 mm × 103 mm × 53 mm in size. The machine runs on a 400 MHz Samsung ARM9 processor, has 128 MB SDRAM of main memory and 8 MB VRAM and houses an internal hard disk of 40 GB. On the front, it features two USB 1.1 ports, a microphone and a headphones socket. On the rear, it has two USB 1.1 ports, two PS/2 ports, 10/100 BaseT network port, a RS-232 serial port and a power connection socket. Like the Mac mini, it is powered by an external PSU (5 V, 20 W). Furthermore, it has a power/reset switch, a status/health indicator and a drive activity indicator LED. The A9home is not designed to be internally expanded.

The A9home could use a program called Aemulor to emulate older 26-bit applications. This was originally developed for Castle's Iyonix PC.

In April 2006, Advantage Six Ltd announced that they were focussing on connectivity in the run-up to that year's Wakefield Show. At the show, they demonstrated integrated bluetooth. Although the A9home was officially released for purchase by end-users, its custom version of RISC OS 4 remained unfinished. As of 2013^[update], RISCOS Ltd closed after failing to release any information in 2012 about when or if the OS will become feature complete.