The very thing I've just finished working on which is why these pages haven't been built just yet! What I can tell you about it is that it's still Z80 based like the older models but it has a 16MHz, rather than 4MHz processor so, in effect, it runs four times faster than previous models.

The extra horse power enables it to run a brand new Word Processor that has been written from scratch to make the most of the new machine's features. Probably the most major enhancement is that, unlike Locoscript, it is truly WYSIWYG - all fonts and styles are shown on screen exactly as they will appear on the printer.

Rather than just supplying a Word Processing program, like previous models, the new model has Spreadsheet, Address Book, Diary/Alarms/Calendar, Calculator and File Manager included as well. Perhaps the complete "home office"? (which is why we call it Anne, after Queen Anne's Gate - the location of the Home Office in London)

All the supplied software uses the same windows, icon, mouse type of graphical interface that gives the machine a more modern feel than the previous versions which were, after all, designed about 10 years ago

As well as a serial mouse interface, there is a second serial interface that is unused but means that we will be able to develop communications software for it very easily in the near future. There's also a standard parallel interface that will connect to many of the 300 and 360dpi printers that are supported (such as Canon BJ, OKI lasers, HP PCL lasers, Epson 24 pin printers, etc, etc)

The floppy drive has also entered the 90's - it's a 1.44MB drive that uses MS-DOS format disks so exchange of info with PC's is far far easier than previous models. The drive can also read 720K CP/M disks written by the older PCW models and the WP can import Locoscript 1, 2 and 3 documents. The operating system also has Locolink built in, so, with a cable from Locomotive Software it will be possible to connect to an old 3" drive PCW and transfer documents across easily - they just look like they are being loaded from a drive attached directly to the machine

The supplied programs are located in Flash ROM which means that there is no need for "boot discs" - the programs are just instantly accsible at switch on. However, using Flash rather than normal ROM means that the programs can be easily updated in the future as they are enhanced. The programs make use of the "huge" 1MB of DRAM while running but, in addition to this, part of the Flash is used to provide a memory drive. However, unlike the DRAM memory drive of the previous PCWs this is non-volatile so things stay there when you switch off. In fact you can go for weeks without using a floppy - just using one every now and again to back up the Flash "Filing Cabinet's" contents evry now and then to make room for more new stuff.

So, how can one develop software for Anne?

It kind of depends how seriously you want to develop for the machine. There is a brilliant underlying OS (ROSANNE) that provides a lot of the functionality of a Windows like environment and makes writing mouse/menu type programs a breeze. However there is no command line OS so there are no "traditional" development tools for the machine that run on the target hardware.

We are unlikely to develop such things because we use a far more powerful development system and this is what we'd expect any serious developer to use as well (course they could use it to develop an assembler/compiler if they thought there was a market for it!).

Our development systems basically take an off the shelf Anne and then weld a small daughterboard onto the bottom that replaces the internal Flash with SRAM mapped into its place. This daughterboard also contains a monitor and a SCSI interface. On a PC we then have a SCSI card that links across to the Anne system and run the Psygnosis (major games company) developed "Psy-Q" Z80 assembler system.

This is unusual in that as well as having the normal capability to assemble object to a file you can also get it to direct the assembler output to the SCSI card which then blasts it into the SRAM that is faking the Flash on Anne. There is also an extremely powerful source level symbolic debugger that monitors what is happening in Anne as the software runs and allows you to put all sorts of breakpoints and watches on the target system.

I've done all sorts of development over the last 12 years but I can honestly say that this is the most powerful development system I've ever used. The only downside of it compared to running a compiler/debugger on the host machine is cost - the SCSI/SRAM that goes onto Anne has quite a high component cost so the entire development system including the assembler/debugging tools costs several hundred pounds. However, for anyone seriously interested in development it's the only real way to go about things. It makes a hosted asm/debug look like a Skoda compared to this Ferrari!

Our development systems were designed and put together for us by Cirtech, the company that is well known for all sorts of hardware add-ons for previous PCW models. See below for details of how to get one of these SCSI based development systems.

Well the above is the way to program it if money's no object but for back bedroom code hackers there is a cheaper and simpler way (some might even say more fun!)...

The equivalent of the system menu lists the main tasks in the machine (WP, Spread, Diary, Addr, etc) but in addition it has an entry to "Run external program" which basically puts up a file selector that lists any .PRG files on an MS-DOS compatible floppy disk or in the machine's memory disk.

A .PRG file is simply Z80 code written to execute in the 16K between 4000 and 7FFF. It gets control at 4100 and can then allocate itself up to almost 1MB of DRAM to load as much extra program/data as it likes. It can make full use of the ROSANNE operating system. Such a program can easily be written on a PC using a Z80 cross assembler. There's a shareware one called Table Assembler that I really like that would be excellent for the purpose. I think it can be easily found on a lot of systems for download.

The only downside of developing this way is that there is no debugger available (currently) so you'd need to include some debug code in your own program to see what is happening. In the early days of Anne a colleague wrote a low level OS+disassembler that we are hoping to adapt into freely available code for third party developers but that's not available right now.

The majority of the OS at the heart of Anne and parts of some of the applications were written by Creative Technology (producers of MicroDesign on the old PcW) so they are best placed to be able to help anyone wishing to develop for Anne.

They can supply a disk of info which includes documentation for the OS and example programs to get developers started and will also arrange to supply the Cirtech designed SCSI development systems. They can be contacted as follows:

On the OS Rescue disc shipped with Anne I have put a document called "Questions & Answers" which contains a bunch of questions asked by users and their corresponding answers. In that file I said that there would be updates posted at this web page. Never one to disappoint the following link will take you to my small file archive where you will find the latest file.