This page contains the answers to the most frequently asked questions about David Holden and the new APDL website

What is this website?
This website was set up to collate and preserve the work of our friend David Holden who sadly passed away in May 2014. For over 25 years David ran APDL, the Archimedes Public Domain Library. APDL developed software for Acorn computers and specifically for computers running RISC OS. Everything on this site is for RISC OS and won't work on any other operating systems without an emulator.

David's death left a big hole in the RISC OS world. Over the years APDL had expanded and purchased rights to hundreds of RISC OS applications. He also developed a large range of hardware, from replacement processor cards to IDE interfaces. If you wanted a replacement CMOS battery, or a new mouse ball it was APDL who could supply it. Without David the entire APDL operation just stopped.

APDL was just PD, wasn't it?
Over the years David Holden obtained rights to a great many commercial software packages, many of these titles would have vanished otherwise. Beebug, Clares, Fourth Dimension, iSV Products, ProAction and many other names became a part of APDL.

David didn't just buy in products, he continued to develop them. He added new features, fixed bugs and converted older applications to run on newer versions of RISC OS. A good deal of the commercial 32bit RISC OS software owes its existence to David.

What's happened to APDL's software?
With the help and support of David's family we have recently recovered all of the APDL development machines. This has allowed us to secure the source code to the entire APDL software catalogue.

So what's happening?
The plan is to make all of the APDL software titles available free of charge to single users. The iSV Products section of the APDL site is the first to open with all of the iSV applications available for download.

Some older applications are only suitable for 26bit machines but APDL did convert some titles to 32bit. So where possible it's the 32bit versions that are available as these should run on all RISC OS devices.

Although the APDL applications will be made available free of charge that does not mean that they are freeware. Everything will be supplied under licence from the copyright holder(s) and will be exclusively available from the apdl.org.uk website.

When will everything be available?
It's going to take time for us to sort through all the APDL applications. We all have full time jobs and the preservation of APDL isn't a commercial operation. No one will be getting rich from it.

Please don't ask when a particular application will be available, we will get to it as quickly as we are able. There is a vast amount of data to work through and we are not operating to a fixed timescale.

Can I ask a question?
Every query that we have to reply to takes time and that's time that could be spent on testing and cataloguing. So please don't e-mail (or phone) us with questions, Everything that we can say at the moment is in this press release and there's nothing more to add. When there is we will issue further press releases.

What about Technical Support?
We are sorry but we don't have the spare resources to offer technical support on any APDL product at this point in time.

What about instructions manuals?
APDL sold printed instruction manuals for some of the products. These manuals are being converted into PDFs and will be included in the downloads with the applications concerned.

Can I Help?
At the moment we have all the people we need assisting with the project. If we do need further help then we will put out a press release on the comp.sys.acorn.announce newsgroup.

What about APDL hardware?
There will be further announcements about the range of APDL hardware shortly. Take a look at the APDL News page to read the press releases.

Aaron Timbrell and David Bradforth May 2015

This Web site was hand coded by the Friends of David Holden.
All contents are © The estate of David Holden and/or Aaron Timbrell & David Bradforth 2014
Graphics constructed using DrawWorks Millennium
Last updated 15/05/15