A large number of features are planned to be included in the forthcoming Select 3 release of RiscOS. Read it all here.
RISC OS 4 Select Update March 2003
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Does RISCOS still contain stolen GPL PCI – driver code from the 2.5 dev series Linux Kernel ? ( reported on /. on 8th Feb 2003 – Castle Technology refused to reply to the allegations )
Also, I’m curious.. whats the target market for this OS? the machines it runs on look like PCs but the technology is slow to say the least….
Apologies, that was Castle RISC OS 5.0
( http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact556.html )
the Riscos 4.0 is a different branch of the family.
riscos was great, a really great OS in it’s day. Quick, useful and very reminiscent of AmigaOS IMO.
you can get Acorn risc pcs on ebay for under £100 nowadays so might be worth a punt.
Can’t be that many users left nowadays though. (sadly)
actully we still use acorn and riscos in some of our progammingclasses in school
See the following link
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Castle+Technology+GPL+group:comp….
As already pointed out though RISC OS 5 is not developed by RISCOS Ltd who are responsible for Select.
The RISC OS user base has declined rapidly over the last few years due to lack of financial investment in the platform and companies making promises and never delivering.
However, RISC OS remains a very responsive and user friendly OS and hopefully with new developments such as Castle Technology’s Iyonix the market will pick up again.
RISC OS still has my favourite GUI, better even than NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X IMO. I doubt Acorn had a huge HCI department when designing it, yet unlike Microsoft they made very few UI mistakes.
The underlying OS wasn’t that great, although it was far more stable and had better multitasking than System 7. But the GUI was far ahead of it’s time, it still feels modern today despite few major changes since RISC OS 2 in 1988.
It even ran on fast, reasonably priced hardware and had lots of great software. It’s a real shame more people didn’t get to use it.
No need for it especially when we have better, more modern Operating Systems, RiscOS is a waste of money
I rember learning how to program on them using the built in BBC emulator, used to hate that thing, didnt like much of the rest of the apps much either to be honest, but the machine itself was wounderously simply, for a 40mhz machine ( i think they were 4000/5000) with no custom chips they were very fast, more usable then the pentiums 2 we had running 98 (though to some extent that could have been because of crippline RM system management software that stoped you doign practically anything)
No need for it especially when we have better, more modern Operating Systems, RiscOS is a waste of money
When RiscOS came out, it was amongst the best and most modern OSes. I take it you bothered with it then?
“No need for it especially when we have better, more modern Operating Systems, RiscOS is a waste of money”
One good reason to keep older OSes alive is that they often contain ideas which have been forgotten or were never used in the currently popular OSes.
New does not necessarily mean better in every respect (or at all).
RiscOS looks as dated now as it did in the late 90’s, which was the last time I attempted to use it.
We used to own an A3000… nice little all in one computer in a similar, eh.. borrowed, design as the Amiga 500 or Atari ST. It was a good enough machine, but the silly podule expansion system made it ridiculous to upgrade. I think ours had the 2mb upgrade.
Basic V was good, but it was overly compilcated to do anything usefull with. Forget GUI apps… I attempted to write one once and gave in quickly. Lack of documentation about programming with WIMP was always the problem I had. I guess with a C compiler things would probably been a little better, but alas, this wasn’t something we had the money for.
Ah well, at least when it crashed it rebooted in seconds…
Although /. weren’t interested at the time, Castle did admit that some code in RISC OS 5 was based on Linux sources and released the code. See:
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact559.html
and then released source..
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact568.html
Anyway, back to RISC OS 4 – a breakdown of the new RISC OS 4 features is here:
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact581.html
Chris.
that was the plug for drobe, then, was it?
hehehe
How does RISC OS look dated when it is so easy to customise anything? you can easily make it look like other OSes with various themes to download on the web, and it ain’t that hard to write your own
Andrew
Who cares if it looks dated, it doesn’t act dated.
If I wanted something pretty I’d put a poster on the wall, if I want something useful and efficient I’ll use RISC OS.
Leaves every other GUI in common use feeling as though it just stepped out of the year 1980.
“We used to own an A3000… nice little all in one computer in a similar, eh.. borrowed, design as the Amiga 500 or Atari ST.”
Actually it was the A3000 BBC Computer, dictating the design was from the BBC Range of computers.
“It was a good enough machine, but the silly podule expansion system made it ridiculous to upgrade.”#
That was only to the BBC Style Computers, try looking up information on the RISC PC, could with hold upto 8 Interface Cards & 1 Networking slot (upto 100Mbs)
Select adds so much to RISC OS. It still doesnt have the omphf that other OS’s have. Pity really.
It’s as dated as you like. I personally like brightness and shock factors, hence I have fun ‘colouring in’ my computer. See the link in my name.
Jymbob, president of the ‘we want a stupidly colourful OS’ brigade, but in a less random fashion than Win XP.
PS: Look. Now we win on looks *and* usability!
Not much oomph? It’s got a few shortcomings, true, but speed wise the OS has plenty of pace. It’s the hardware that’s lacking in oomph, unfortunately, and even that has at last started to move again. As for what it can actually do, it runs the computer fine, and most of the old irritations that were present once upon a time are gone. What does it lack for you? (as opposed to the hardware and software to run on the OS, which is a different issue).
Using a StrongArm RiscPC with RISC OS 4 and Select feels like the nippiest desktop I’ve ever used. For raw CPU power, no of course it doesn’t stand up to a P4 3Ghz, but in day to day usage, RiscPC still feels faster IMHO. I can’t wait to find out what an Iyonix ( http://www.iyonix.com ) feels like…
“Basic V was good, but it was overly compilcated to do anything usefull with. Forget GUI apps… I attempted to write one once and gave in quickly. Lack of documentation about programming with WIMP was always the problem I had.”
You obviously never read my book, “A Beginer’s Guide to Wimp Programming”, published in 1992 which told you how to write GUI apps in Basic V.
I’m now revising it for freeware release.
Martyn
In addition to Martin’s book there was plenty of *other* sources of information (although as an easy way into programming the Wimp Martin’s book is probably the easiest means of getting into it). Nice to hear it’s soon to be released again.
Additionally Acorn themselves provided the PRM (Programmers Reference manuals (4 volumes which add up to something thicker than a telephone directory). Oh an before I forget Vol 5a which was released later. Much of these resources are also on CD-ROM form (either from RISC OS Ltd, or updated as part of the more expensive Programmers Development Suite issued by Castle), or the information on sites like http://www.drobe.co.uk (appologies to the guys on tib
Regards
Annraoi
I feel that “A Beginner’s Guide to Wimp Programming” is a tribute to the machine, its operating system and software by virtue of the fact that the book, consisting of roughly 180 pages and 33 graphics, not only describes how easy it is to program a RISC OS computer, but was entirely produced on such a machine, including the writing, layout and typesetting, proof printing and PostScript output for the camera-ready copy, although the machine contained only 2 Mb of RAM.
Try doing that on certain other platforms!
Martyn
The A4000 used a 12MHz ARM250 CPU, Memory Controller, Video Controller combined into one, The A5000 used a ARM3 which I believe could run at 25MHz.
“The A4000 used a 12MHz ARM250 CPU, Memory Controller, Video Controller combined into one, The A5000 used a ARM3 which I believe could run at 25MHz.”
Some, including the one I fitted to my Archimedes, ran at 36 MHz.
It’s history now, though.
Martyn