This machine is on loan from a friend but in December 2002 I fitted an Econet module to see if I could use it as a network station. The good thing about the A3000 is that RISC OS has all the Econet software built in.

At the time I was only running Level 1 Econet and I had some success connecting the A3000 to a Level 1 fileserver. I thought it was amusing that the mighty 32-bit A3000 with 4MB RAM was slave to a little BBC Model B!

One day I might try to put a hard disc in the A3000 and use it as a fileserver but for the moment I am sticking to the 8-bit machines.

Whilst trying to get the Level 4 fileserver software to work on this machine, I realised just how lovely RISC-OS and the Desktop environment is. It is much better than Windows and takes a second to load and never breaks down because all the software is in ROM.

The A3000 was a return by Acorn to the single-box design after the introduction of the Archimedes series of machines. It is quite similar in layout to the Master 128 being just slightly wider. Next to the A3000 logo is the familiar BBC Owl and the words "British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System" - making the A3000 the last machine to be released under the BBC banner.

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