The 1990's were a tough decade for Acorn Computers Ltd, the market for the computers and the software slowly declined eventually culminating in the destruction of Acorn Computers Ltd as Acorn was worth less than the value of shares it held in ARM Ltd. During this period the number of Public Domain libraries also declined as one by one the other libraries, such as Skyfall, ArcAngel and others, closed down and were absorbed into APDL. By the early 2000's APDL was the last remaining Public Domain library that specialised in software for Acorn computers.

Despite the slow contraction of the Acorn market APDL continued growing as it moved into the commercial software field. The first large APDL takeover was of RISC Developments, the publishers of RISCUser and Beebug magazines, and this marked a change of direction for APDL. Whilst the PD library continued being updated APDL now started to devote more energy to commercial software and started acquiring rights from other companies that had either left the Acorn market or had closed down. Rather than just box shifting APDL also continued developing the products that it purchased from other companies. For example a number of high profile products didn't work on the StrongARM processor when it was released in 1996 so APDL updated the applications and offered low cost upgrades to existing customers.

Acorn Computers Ltd closed in 1998 but APDL carried on growing. iSV Products was absorbed in 2001, the 32bit Game Specialists Fourth Dimension became part of APDL soon after. Whilst APDL's range of software had been growing a range of hardware devices was also appearing. IDE interfaces were the first to appear and the range quickly grew with some hard to source items, such as Acorn Mice, being added due to demand. Alongside the software and hardware APDL moved into publishing with the bi-monthly RISCWorld CD based magazine.

By 2010 APDL's range covered hundreds of products. You could buy anything from a £3.00 CMOS battery to a complete computer with a specification to suit anyone and buy hundreds of different software titles to run on it. APDL also offered repair services for Acorn branded equipment and purchased second hand machines for refurbishment or as parts donors. Due to ill health APDL stopped attending the RISC OS shows and so APDL became mail order only. Despite the already vast range of products APDL continued expanding until 2014.

In May 2014 David Holden tragically died after a short illness. As he was the driving force behind APDL and as all the stock and the source code were in his premises APDL ground to a complete halt.

Why has it taken so long?

It took over a year before it was possible to recover contents from APDL's premises in Sydenham. At short notice a team was assembled with the aim of recovering the sources to the APDL software range and as much of APDL's stock of hardware as was possible. Over two weekends and with the help and support of David Holden's family over 2000 cubic feet of Acorn hardware was packed and removed from APDL's premises. At the same time every development machine was checked and packed up and taken away so that the backups could be taken.

That was 11 years ago and as you can tell it's taken a long time to get APDL's software side up and running. The aim was to produce a new website and to make all of the APDL software available as a free download. There have been four false starts with significant time expenditure on different website designs. In one case the APDL domain was 'appropriated' by the hosting company locking the development team out of the part built website. There have also been very significant problems with the APDL build system, as it became clear later some of the system was stored on a removable storage device that was never located.

One by one we've got past each problem but the new APDL was a personal project and had to fit around 'real' work and so the pace has been glacial. In the intervening years some offers of help melted away (that's the glacial theme again) and in the end the only way to get going again was for me to add two hours to each work day and work on APDL every evening. Every work day evening for over 2 years I've been re-writing, re-designing and re-arranging the APDL content. With a bit of luck the new APDL will go live at the end of May 2026. That won't be the end though, because there are more software products that we want to re-release free of charge but it all takes time and I'm going to have a few evenings off first.

Aaron Timbrell 07/05/2026

What's changed for the new 2026 version of APDL?

We haven't just uploaded content from the old APDL servers or from a backup of one of the old APDL websites. Almost everything you find on this new APDL site has been significantly updated or is new. Hundreds of new graphic designs have been produced for this site and many products have completely new logos and artwork.

Every commercial product is now available as a free of charge download (for personal use) and has updated documentation, with many products having PDF manuals for the first time. We've remade almost all the product manuals to the same A4 size and with the same layout style. Every manual was been extensively proof read with corrections to spelling and grammer. Where possible we've also updated illustrations and screenshots, for example to replace screenshots taken on RISC OS 3.1x with those taken on RISC OS 4 using the default Homerton desktop font. We've also added contents pages and/or index pages to longer manuals.

Every product page has easy to use graphics that show you what versions of RISC OS and what hardware a particular application will run on. If an application is 32bit compatible you will see a green '32bit' logo in the bottom right of the thumbnail box art. Products that only run on 26bit hardware will have an orange '26bit' logo in the same place. The product page has a more detailed chart that lists exactly which combination of hardware/OS that product will work on.

The APDL PD library has had extensive changes to the documentation. We've added some more 'discs' that were in the library but not mentioned in the catalogue. It's also been reworked with a much better catalogue system. If something catches your eye in one of the PD catalogue pages you can just click directly on the download instead of having to download a zip file then find what you want from a plain text file in a text editor and then locating the download amongst hundreds of almost identically named archives. The PD library is also much easier to navigate as there are now direct links at the top of each section that link to every catalogue section.

The RISCWorld magazine archive has had 1000's of edits. It's been checked for spelling and grammar and we even found a couple of orphaned articles and some bad internal links. We've gone through each article and double checked any commercial contact details. If an organisation still exists then we've updated the web address and contact details but if the organisation has ceased RISC OS activity we've removed the hyperlink part and just left the plain text.

© Copyright 3QD Developments - 28/09/2026