RISC OS Archive
RISC OS goes open source with Apache 2.0 license
RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL) are hugely proud to announce that we will be working with RISC OS Developments (ROD), following their recent acquisition of the RISC OS intellectual property through the purchase of Castle Technology Ltd (Castle), in the next phase of the mission to reinvigorate the RISC OS market.
ROD will be working alongside community maintainers ROOL to republish the source code to this popular niche operating system under the Apache 2.0 License, in a move aimed at removing existing barriers to entry for developers from the open source community and enabling free-of-charge use in commercial products for the first time in RISC OS's history.
Great news for the RISC OS community, and I hope this ensures RISC OS will remain available to play and hack with for years and years to come.
Under the microscope: Aemulor
After the release of the Iyonix PC in 2002, RISC OS started moving from 26-bit architecture towards 32-bit. Nowadays all modern RISC OS machines are 32-bit, but an awful lot of older applications are still not compatible with modern 32-bit RISC OS.
Aemulor, originally a commercial application but now free to download, is a software emulator that allows RISC OS applications which were written for a 26-bit ARM systems to be used on more recent CPUs that provide only 32-bit addressing modes. RISC OS itself is unaware that there is anything unusual about the 26-bit applications that are running under Aemulor, to RISC OS they appear as normal applications - they appear on the icon bar and can communicate fully with other 26 or 32-bit applications.
I've bought a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ just for RISC OS, so hopefully, I can start posting more about this old but venerable operating system in the future. Any tips or interesting things for me to investigate are welcome.
RISC OS 5.24 released
RISC OS 5.24 has been released.
The headline features see previously neglected areas of RISC OS dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, with JPEG support, monitor EDID support, handling of larger hard drives, and the network stack being upgraded. The bounty system is delivering some really worthwhile enhancements into the software. USB and network stack improvements are a massive undertaking, and ROOL broke each into several stages to make them more manageable.
There are also some genuine improvements to user features such as clipboard improvements and new features in Paint. Lots of applications have received little tweaks such as unicode and fancy fonts in Chars, improved dialogs in Printers, tweaks to HForm, DosFS, Maestro, more secure LanmanFS which can connect to Windows 8 and 10, etc.
RISC OS 5.24 is freely available for Raspberry Pi machines.
Wakefield 2018 RISC OS show report
It was a glorious sunny day in Wakefield and a very upbeat RISC OS show with lots of interesting hardware and software. You can see some show pictures, and here are my show notes if you were not able to attend.
A detailed description of the Wakefield 2018 RISC OS show.
RISC OS 5.22 stable released

RISC OS Open Limited (ROOL) are pleased to announce the much anticipated latest stable RISC OS release, it incorporates a massive 454 changes for the Tungsten platform (used in the IYONIX pc from Castle Technology), 484 changes for the OMAP3 platform (used in the ARMini from RComp), and 423 changes for the IOMD platform used in the Acorn Risc PC/A7000/A7000+.
For the first time the stable release includes the OMAP4 port, a Cortex-A9 processor used in the PandaRO from CJE Micros and ARMiniX from RComp.
Still going strong.
The design behind RISC OS 4 and 6
RISC OS Pi released
RISC OS for Raspberry Pi: aiming for a beta release in September
Raspberry Pi To Embrace RISC OS
Retro RISC OS Games Into the 21st Century
ARMini Wakes Up Wakefield
RISC OS in ‘No Longer Thoroughly Obsolete’ Shocker
The ARM based RISC OS has been floundering in the wilderness somewhat these past years, but it looks like it may - finally - be on the path to a real Lazarus moment with the new Beagleboard and, unusually, El Reg has taken an interest.