The Stork was a compact portable RISC based sub-notebook computer produced by Acorn RISC Technologies, a division of Acorn Computers, in mid-1996. It was a technology demonstrator design which Acorn hoped to license to 3rd parties who would customise it as they wished. There were rumours that deals had nearly been closed with various unnamed companies, but none of them came to anything so the Stork remained a prototype and the A4 remained Acorn's only portable computer.

The Stork is based around the 32-bit ARM RISC Processor - ARM7500. The ARM7500, also used in the A7000, was the computer-on-a-chip designed by ARM Ltd, which combined a ARM7 processor with associated MMU, 8 word write buffer and 4Kbyte cache, video generator, memory controller and I/O system in one 240-pin monolithic device. The Stork ran the RISC OS 3.6 ROM based operating system.

Three screen options were offered with the Stork, the example in our collections features the 9.5-inch 16 Greyscale Monochrome 640 x 480 STN LCD  option. The Stork also features a built-in trackerball, RS 232 serial port, parallel printer/floppy disc drive port, stereo audio output via 3.5mm stereo jack socket and expansion port/docking interface.

Our Stork has serial number STK14 and was kindly donated by Chris Whytehead. More information can be found at his website.

Manufacturer: Acorn Computers Ltd
Date: 1996

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH35716. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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