RISC OS Archive

RISC OS, the operating system from the United Kingdom originally designed to run on Acorn Computer’s Archimedes computers – the first ARM computers – is still actively developed today. Especially since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, new life was breathed into this ageing operating system, and it has gained quite a bit of steady momentum ever since, with tons of small updates, applications, and new hardware support, including things like support for wireless networking. This development has always been a bit piecemeal, though, and the pace has never been exceptionally fast. Now, though, time really is ticking for RISC OS: popular RISC OS platforms like the Raspberry Pi are moving to 64bit ARM only, and this poses a big problem for RISC OS: most of it is written in pure 32bit ARM assembly. As you can imagine, the supply of capable 32bit ARM boards is going to dwindle over the coming years, which would put RISC OS right back where it was before the launch of the Raspberry Pi: floundering, relying on old hardware. This is obviously not ideal, and as such, RISC OS Open Limited wants to take a big leap to address this. Since 2011, ROOL has successfully delivered dozens of community-funded improvements through its bounty scheme. While this model has enabled steady progress, it is not suited to the scale of work now required to modernise RISC OS. The Moonshots initiative represents a fundamental shift: focused, multi-year development projects undertaken by full-time engineers. The first Moonshot aims to make the RISC OS source code portable and compatible with 64-bit Arm platforms, a prerequisite for future hardware support. ROOL has already scoped the work, identified key milestones, and built cost models based on realistic employment and project management needs. ↫ Steve Revill in a ROOL press release They’re going to need a dedicated team of several developers working over the course of several years to port RISC OS to 64bit ARM. That’s going to require quite a bit of money, manpower, and expertise, and considering ROOL has only collected about £100000 worth of donations over the past 14 years, I can see why they’re aiming to go big for this effort. All these giant technology corporations with trillion dollar stock valuations are currently relying on ARM technology, so you’d think they could empty a few socks and cough up a few million to get this effort funded properly, but alas, we all know that’s not going to happen. I hope ROOL can make this work. RISC OS is a ton of fun to use, and occupies a unique place in computing history. I would be incredibly sad to see technological progress leave it behind, when what amount to chump change for so many wealthy companies and individuals could save it.

This is, in a way, a mature OS with an ecosystem and an aftermarket. (Which, we feel we must explicitly spell out, means that quite a few of those third-party applications and drivers will cost you money.) There are emulators that will let you run 20th century Acorn apps that you can find online, but this isn’t an emulated vintage environment like Amiga Forever. It’s not meant for running games from thirty years ago. This is a native bare-metal OS, built on 1980s roots but updated for 21st century hardware. It’s also not an experimental project with little practical use, like Redox OS or Serenity OS, interesting though those are. ↫ Liam Proven at The Register I grew up with RISC OS and still run a RISC OS machine to this day. As Liam Proven explains affectionately in this article, while as an operating system it’s missing many features we now take for granted (memory protection, pre-emptive multitasking, compositing), some of the user interface ideas it implements still manage to feel advanced compared to modern-day desktops (no need for menu bars, no clunky file dialogues, elegant mouse button assignments). The fact it’s found a home on the Raspberry Pi and continues to support an active community is testament to its enduring appeal and the amazing work of the RISC OS Open project. Some additional notes from Thom: this new release supports 7 ARM platforms, most notably the Raspberry Pi Zero, 1, 2, 3 and 4 (but not the 5), and it even supports WiFi on the 3 and 4, which is an absolutely incredible achievement. The number of fixed bugs and addressed issues is massive, and there’s even more to come later during the year, as The Register’s article notes. I was waiting on this release to spur me on to buy a new Raspberry Pi (my only other Pi is our Pi-Hole), so I’ll definitely be on the lookout for a good deal. This release deserves my full attention for OSNews.

This talk will cover everything about the Acorn Archimedes, a British computer first released in 1987 and (slightly) famous for being the genesis of the original ARM processor. The audience will get an appreciation for the Arc’s elegant design, the mid-1980s birth of RISC processors, and the humble origins of the now-omnipresent ARM architecture. The weather’s frightful, the fire’s delightful, there’s no place to go, so here’s an hour long technical talk about the Acorn Archimedes by Matt Evans.

The lead developer of a niche ARM-powered OS has written a string of in-depth articles on the design, implementation and testing of a commercial operating system. Justin Fletcher was the architect of versions of 4 and 6 of RISC OS, the ARM processor's original operating system. Although his pieces will be best appreciated by RISC OS and Acorn users old and new, the series is a fantastic insight into operating system design: check out his build system for compiling code into ROM images, the abstraction of video graphics from a legacy 1980s-era kernel, converting images on the fly, testing and debugging, executing applications and plenty more. Justin has written tens of thousands of words and will be publishing new pieces daily online and in Android and iOS-friendly formats.

"RISC OS Open are very pleased to announce the official release of RISC OS for the Raspberry Pi, 'RISC OS Pi'. This is a watershed moment for RISC OS and represents the culmination of many months of hard work from a whole community of developers, testers and other contributors. It also means the Raspberry Pi can now boast support for the quick, compact, original ARM-based operating system." This is absolutely fantastic news. I'm going to try this on my Pi later this week.

Sometimes, on a rather boring and run-of-the-mill Monday, I get news in the submission queue which just puts a gigantic smile on my face. We've talked about the Raspberry Pi before on OSNews, and other than reporting that everything's on track for a Christmas launch, it has also been announced that the Raspberry Pi will be able to run... RISC OS. A British educational ARM board running RISC OS? We have come full circle. And I couldn't be happier. Update: Theo Markettos emailed me with two corrections - Markettos isn't actually a representative of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and the quoted bits are transcribed, they're not Markettos' literal words. Thanks for clearing that up!

Since the opening up of the RISC OS source code, developers have been experimenting with the OS on modern ARM hardware. Recently, work has progressed on porting some vintage Acorn games to other platforms, including iOS and Windows. Paradise Games has released an iOS port of Inferno, and TBA Software has rendered BHP in OpenGL on Windows. TBA has also ported its TBAFS filing system to ARMv7 hardware and is investigating its TAG games engine and the modernisation of BBC BASIC. The Icon Bar has further details.

After hearing the news that videos from the recent RISC OS London Show are now available online, leading RISC OS news website - The Icon Bar decided to take a look at what RISCOS Ltd had to say in their presentation. They found some quite shocking results which point to RISCOS Ltd having lost their way.

Drobe.co.uk, the premier RISC OS news website, today announced that it has entered archive mode and will no longer function as a news reporting source. The site was founded by Peter Price in 1999 and editorship was taken over by journalist Chris Williams in 2001.Chris first broke the sad news on Monday morning via usenet:"Drobe's RISC OS news service, which launched in October 1999, will sadly cease from Monday. Running the site has been so much fun over the years and the experience has been very rewarding - from the investigative pieces and tabloid tomfoolery to the libel writ threats and meeting up with users after shows. However, all good things must come to an end - if you'll forgive the cliche - and it's time to formally move on."

"US-based company Genesi, which builds ARM Cortex-powered appliances that could be compatible with the RISC OS Open Beagleboard work, is said to be in talks with RISC OS companies over a possible port of the OS to its products. It's hoped ROS 5 could be made to run on the lightweight EFIKA MX Open Client, which sports a 800MHz Cortex-A8 processor, 3D graphics hardware, 512M RAM, wifi networking and more. Genesi analyst Matt Sealey said: 'RISC OS is really popular in the UK and the last dedicated RISC OS box - the Iyonix - has been discontinued for six months. We are currently questioning the relevant companies in the UK, including Castle, about collaboration and marketing efforts, and the support they'd need to make it a reality.'"