VNC-linke software or screen recorder for RISC OS

I’ve recorded screencasts on Windows for tutorials before, and honestly, the built-in stuff like the snipping tool for windows is pretty handy for screenshots, but not for making full-length videos or capturing everything with audio and annotations. For regular OSes, I tend to use more advanced screen recorders when I want better options. I haven’t tried this on RISC OS, but on Windows, there’s so much more flexibility with third-party tools.

If you’re looking for tips on capturing or recording beyond basic screenshots, there are a bunch of guides and apps out there that show how to work around system limitations or get better results. I found a lot of useful info by reading up about the https://www.screencapture.com/blog/how-to-use-snipping… and how different screen capture tools stack up.

@colinhoad.com

So... Perry in Scrubs, then.

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Accessing ROOL Via Three Broadband

I am unable to access this site when using Three Broadband – I get:

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to www.riscosopen.org. PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR

Error code: PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR

    The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
    Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem.

Is there anything in the site config that could be blocking Three broadband?

I am using a TOR browser to post this!

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 14th December at 1pm.

Is that 13:00 UTC ?

In the winter, yes :)

@colinhoad.com

This is *TONIGHT*!

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Clarity Theme ko-fi

Thank you for Clarity3, which is looking good here.

In unprotected mode !Boot shows the default ROOL yellow icon. There is a !boot icon within the theme which is displayed in protected mode. As far as I can see the !boot theme icon needs to at !Boot.Themes.Clarity.!Sprites and does not need to be in the ThemeDefs Sprites file at all, applications can load their own icons. (Unless I am missing something. (Always hazard here.))

I’d still advise unticking the ‘Protect theme icons’ in Configure while testing, in case there’s anything missing.

Most noticeably the icon for text files, file_fff. small_fff is present.😀

HTH

Odd BASIC error messages

In first example (2>>1)= 1 is a equality test the answer is false (0) or true(-1)

in second Print displays 2>>1 and doesn’t understand = 0 (affectation) in this sentence.

Bluetooth Again

A small update from yesterdays progress:

In de code there was an example from BL scanning and advertising mod and that seems to work. Now the long process of code refactoring starts and getting the rest to work.

Iyonix SCSI Card Support

not much i can do with very little input from ROOL either, as they supplied the upgraded ROM in the store, i’ve added a Bug report in regards to the SharedCLibrary and i’ll see what they come back with.

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 15, and it's fair to say this might just be the flagship game of the Cascade Cassette 50... youtu.be/hI7yn51QTRMhttps://youtu.be/hI7yn51QTRM

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"I don't need this water, I'll pour it in the bin" - my brain, apparently.

It's happening folks, I'm going senile.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Typographers and fontographers, are you brave enough?!

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Rectangles ... and more

Hi everybody -

I’ve written a guide to drawing rectangles … which I hope is rather more interesting than it sounds :-)

Read it here. Comments and corrections welcome!

Cheers, Chris

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Paul Proctor's BBC Micro 'Cookie' development disk. A conversion of the 'Ultimate Play The Game' Sinclair Spectrum classic that was never officially released. However, a disk copy of it was leaked at some point and it spread around very quickly.

GitLab timeouts

Apologies to anyone who’s having trouble accessing GitLab (and packages.riscosopen.org) at the moment. The server is being heavily overloaded by crawler bots from China. We’re working on blocking these, but it may not be resolved for a day or so.

RISCOSbits Launches Chimera Christmas Cracker Edition

What a Fab Deal! Wow

@colinhoad.com

Start your engines, it's day 14! youtu.be/tzz8pPjzmdEhttps://youtu.be/tzz8pPjzmdE

@rougol.bsky.social

https://www.riscository.com/2025/acorn-biographer-rougol-15th-december/

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@colinhoad.com

Remarkably, I found some free time to pick up my OPL language server project again... https://www.colinhoad.com/getting-carried-away-and-how-to-stop-it

RDPclient with Windows 10

I’ve just had the same issue with RDPClient connecting to a new install of Windows 11 Professional 25H2.

There were some additional settings that I needed to change to get RDPClient to connect. (I was seeing the same “connection reset by peer error”)

1. Open GPEDIT.MSC

2. Expand Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Security

3. Change “Set client connection encryption level” to “LOW”

4. Change "Require use of specific security layer for remote (RDP) connections to “RDP”

5. Change "Require user authentication for remote connections by using Network Level Authtication to “DISABLED”

6. Reboot the PC

Obviously lowering the security defaults for Remote Desktop is a bad idea security wise, so use at your own risk!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This, but code.

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@colinhoad.com

Day 13 and we're still going! youtu.be/ZfNyFH90ZrQhttps://youtu.be/ZfNyFH90ZrQ

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Good wire obtained. Rethreading underway. Yes, I do like making it difficult for myself don't I?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

My dad just offered to make me a coffee... for the first time in 50 years.

And they say people don't change!https://media.tenor.com/QfhuPrcLdgQAAAAC/quite-frankly-im-overwhelmed.gif?hh=202&ww=498

@iconbar.com

Rougol December 2025 meeting on monday - Rob Napier

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2263.html

The December 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday and is a special bonus extra (usually there is no meeting in December) with Rob Napier.https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2263.html

Status update for RISC OS 64-bit work

It’s been about 5 weeks since I did a status update on the 64-bit RISC OS work.

• The Wimp Templates subcomponent was worked on as part of the Live Coding and is now complete – See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-wimp-templates for the details.

• The `riscos64-status` repository has been updated with a few things:

  • `PicoC` is noted as a ported language.
  • `Lua` is noted as a ported language.
  • `TCC` is noted as a ported implementation of a C compiler.
  • `GCC` was removed from the ported implementations (it’s not ported, but is usable to build for RISC OS 64, and had been misplaced).
  • `Pascal` is noted as a ported language (using the P2C tool).
  • `Rust` is noted as having been prototyped for use with RISC OS 64.
  • All the feature documents for component now include completion percentages on their pages.

• The `Kernel: Modules` subcomponent had been started.

• The `EvaluateExpression` module has been stubbed.

• The `IIC` module has been stubbed.

• The `OSSWIs` module has been stubbed.

• The hourglass maker has been ported to RISC OS 64. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-hourglass-maker for details.

  • The module can be found in the `riscos64-status` repository as with many others.

• The Pascal-to-C implementation is being worked into the build environment.

• I presented the general status of RISC OS 64 work to ROUGOL, and the presentation is available on YouTube and through my presentation site. See https://presentations.riscos.online/pyromaniac4/index.… for video, slides and resource links.

• RISC OS Pyromaniac screenshots and videos were updated with the details of the changes and work towards 64-bit. See https://pyromaniac.riscos.online/examples.html#talk2025 for images and videos.

• The RISC OS 64-bit C library has been updated with better handling of linking hidden and internal symbols, and `fgetc` now works properly. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-clib for details.

• `objasm2gas` tool has been updated to handle `:INDEX:` and `:BASE:` (as well as the `@` metavariable), and fix problems with field mappings using registers not being calculated as expressions.

• The `Kernel: Introspection` component will be the next live coding project.

Anyhow, that’s where things are for me. You can always follow the repositories to see what’s being done.

As usual, if anyone wants to contribute to these, please speak up.

Allow creation of surfaces.

Thank you!- I need to read the manual.

(‘’removed misunderstanding.. Not my week’’)

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

RIP Stanley Baxter. This BBC Micro advert was a classic.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPdx5P1izwI

@colinhoad.com

If you've not been following this series, I highly recommend it (again!) It's been so informative, and will make you feel smarter 😁

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@riscosbits.co.uk

This is a real Christmas Cracker! Stocks are very limited at this price, and only available while the webpage is up. Once the stocks have gone, the page will disappear...

riscosbits.co.uk/cracker.htm

#risc_os #LimitedOffer #ChristmasCracker #ItsAWrap

Rob Napier, Acorn Biographer – ROUGOL meeting, 15th December

This Monday will see an incredibly rare event take place – so rare, in fact, that there are more dentists for hens than occurences like this: The RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) will hold a December meeting, with Rob Napier taking the virtual podium to talk about his current work-in-progress, an Acorn biography. Beaming himself from Nicholson, a small hamlet 300km from Melbourne, Australia, the meeting will be held online only, via Zoom – details below. Serving in the Air Force until four decades ago, Rob resigned his…

RISCOSbits Christmas Cracker

Bag yourself a RISCOSbits Chimera Christmas Cracker Edition for just £349 by taking advantage of a very limited Festive release!

This Christmas, unwrap something truly special: a proper RISC OS desktop system that feels like a gift every time it powers on. The Chimera Christmas Cracker Edition is a special seasonal version of our flexible modular system, offered at a festive price and delivered fully built, configured, and ready to enjoy straight out of the Christmas box. The ideal Christmas Present!

At its heart sits a 4GB Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (an upgrade from the standard 2GB head found on the traditional Chimera), running RISC OS 5.30 directly from firmware on its onboard eMMC — it’s fast, reliable, and refreshingly uncomplicated. Storage is handled by a generous 256GB NVMe drive, which means rapid booting, smooth file transfers, and a level of responsiveness that makes the whole machine feel like freshly fallen snow: clean, crisp, and surprisingly even! It’s the ideal machine for anyone who wants to sit down with a mug of luxury hot chocolate and simply get on with using RISC OS, without the fiddly setup and configuration that can sometimes take the sparkle out of new hardware.

Under the tinsel, the Chimera platform itself offers a solid basic specification designed for dependable daily use. You get HDMI output for modern displays, two front and two rear USB ports for your keyboard, mouse, and storage devices, and wired gigabit network connectivity for smooth internet access and file sharing. The externally-powered Mini-ITX enclosure keeps things cool and quiet, like a silent night, while offering stable desk-ready hardware that doesn’t displace the baubles on your workspace. This is a system built to be practical, expandable, and straightforward — no elves required.

This edition is supplied in a neatly finished Mini-ITX case with that external power supply and is small enough to sit beside a tree or tuck neatly under your desk, but still smart and sturdy enough to serve as your everyday RISC OS system. And powering it works in exactly the same way as any other Mini-ITX system. With easy access to both the top and the bottom of the motherboard, for swift hardware changes, you just plug it in, add a keyboard, mouse and screen, press the power button and you’ve got a calm, reliable workstation for writing letters to Santa, sending your Round Robin Christmas email, composing a new Christmas Number One, and everything else that makes RISC OS such a Joy.

Although this Christmas offer is focused on a single head for pure, straightforward RISC OS computing, the magic of Chimera is that it is a gift that can keep on giving. The system has expansion capacity for up to FIVE additional heads, giving you the option, whenever you feel like treating yourself again, to add different styles of RISC OS setups, variants of Raspberry Pi OS, or alternative Linux environments. Today’s stocking filling extravaganza can turn into next year’s full-sized tech sleigh, complete with a Santa sack of heads ready to switch, swap, and evolve as your needs change.

This festive edition isn’t just affordable enough to appeal to Scrooge (at well over £100 off the price of a standard Chimera), it’s a way to step into the New Year with a RISC OS system that grows as you do. Whether you’re returning to RISC OS after some time away, upgrading from older hardware, or selecting a present for someone who still remembers their first Acorn machine from a Christmas Past with a little seasonal glow, this Chimera makes an excellent choice. There are no distractions, no coal in the stocking — just solid performance, thoughtful design, and room to expand when the Christmas Spirit moves you.

Let Rudolph the Red Nosed Postie bring home your Chimera Christmas Cracker for just £349 while our very limited stocks last — because the best presents are the ones that keep on giving long after the Christmas lights have been taken down, and well into the Christmas Future.

Cratchitt while you can! Just click here for details!

RISCOSbits hopes you’ll go crackers for a Christmas Chimera

A pet mythical beast that’s for life, not just for Christmas With Christmas fast approaching, there’s a festive funbox available from RISCOSbits for a limited period. The RISCOSbits Chimera Christmas Cracker Edition (easier written than said – especially after those Christmas drinks) will be available for a limited period from today. The seasonal special edition of the Chimera machine will be delivered fully built and configured – so it’s ready to plug in and use as soon as it’s unwrapped. Based around a Raspberry Compute Module 4 with 4GB RAM…

@colinhoad.com

Whoaaa we're halfway thee-eere, whooaaa, livin' on a... Cascade game? Well, it's Day 12 and this is how far we've come: youtu.be/PEbm0EnRprAhttps://youtu.be/PEbm0EnRprA

Rougol December 2025 meeting on monday - Rob Napier

The December 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday and is a special bonus extra (usually there is no meeting in December) with Rob Napier.

@iconbar.com

RISCOSbits Launches Chimera Christmas Cracker Edition

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2282.html

RISCOSbits announced a festive variant of its Chimera modular RISC OS system, offering upgraded specs at a reduced price. An ideal Christmas present for someone - or yourself if you've been good…https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2282.html

RISCOSbits Launches Chimera Christmas Cracker Edition

RISCOSbits has announced a limited-run festive variant of its Chimera modular RISC OS system, offering upgraded specifications at a significantly reduced price point. It makes an ideal Christmas present for someone or even yourself (you have been very good this year!).

@rougol.bsky.social

Coming up this Monday! We are hopeful that some of Rob's Acorn colleagues will also be joining the chat 😃

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Acorn biographer at ROUGOL, Mon 15th Dec 2025

Reminder that the meeting is this coming Monday. As an extra enticement, some of Rob’s former colleagues/interviewees might be joining us too :-)

Downtime

All done.

ToolboxC++Lib Discussion

Just an update. I’ve recreated from scratch an application to generate code for C++ Desktop applications from a Toolbox res file and interested selectable events. The application is called !Prototype and can be found in the tools directory of the GitHub Repository.

SerialUSB 0.16, Hearsay 2.25.03 and !Serialdev blockdrivers 2.40 released

I’m having difficulty opening the RaspberryPi serial port with Hearsay, things keep hanging. Is it even supposed to work?

Obscure wimp sprites

One thing I’ve learned while working systematically on sprites is how much better the new Paint is than the older RO5 ones. It’s far more reliable (I’ve been using the paintbrush tool all the time, with no crashes), and the new additions are genuinely helpful. In conjunction with ArtWorks, it’s become a very capable pixel editor. You can still crash it from time to time (deleting sprites from the spritefile window seems to sometimes cause this), but the Bounty improvements are really very impressive.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Yule be sorry if you miss this tree-mendous #RISC_OS cracker - it really is snow joke. And don't mull it over for too long, or they'll all be gone!

Remember, even at Christmas, it's okay to treat yours-elf.

I'll get my coat...

#puntastic #RISC_OS #LimitedEdition #BeQuick

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - David Pitt's Festive RISC OS Paint tip

When the text size gets really big, you may see some jaggedy edges.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Been busy recently with an electrical project that involved lots of intricate wire routing, but really struggled with soldering the cables now they're all in place.

Just realised they're not copper, they're bleedin' copperised aluminium. 🤬🔥☹️😭https://media.tenor.com/vui2TXEoHasAAAAC/the-shining-jack-nicholson.gif?hh=278&ww=498

@riscosbits.co.uk

Just 24hrs to go! Is this going to be the #RISC_OS bargain of the year? We're full of #ChristmasSpirit (hic), so it may just be!

#BuyingMyOwnPresents #RISCOSComputers #ModernRetro #We_Wish_You_A_RISCOS_Christmas #And_A_Linux_New_Year?

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - David Pitt's Festive RISC OS Paint tip

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2283.html

David also has an excellent festive tip for Paint users (It's not too late to send us your advent entry).https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2283.html

@colinhoad.com

SAVE THE DATE! ABUG North will be at a new venue in 2026 (6th & 7th Feb) - more details on Stardot here: https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=472092#p472092

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 11 in the Big Cascade House, who's up for eviction from the gaming world today? youtu.be/pL6o8J8-1Z0https://youtu.be/pL6o8J8-1Z0

@riscosbits.co.uk

It's nearly time to unwrap our little #RISC_OS present. Friday 12th at midday. For those of you lucky enough to snap up the limited stock, it'll be worth the wait. So don't be a #Grinch or a slouch on Friday!

#RISC_OS #Unwrapped #BestPresentEver

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - David Pitt's Festive RISC OS Paint tip

David also has an excellent festive tip for Paint users (It's not too late to send us your advent entry).

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - David Pitt's Festive RISC OS desktop

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Advent_Calendar_2025_-_David_Pitts_Festive_RISC_OS_desktop/index2280.html

Many thanks to David for a very seasonal and festive RISC OS desktop (It's not too late to send us yours).

Setting up a new monitor

Perhaps a useful facility for RISC OS would be to be able to substitute a user-supplied EDID definition block during boot (pre-desktop).

You can already do that. EDID blob files (with filetype &F76) can be used in all the places an MDF can – you can drag and drop onto Display Manager’s icon bar icon, or *LoadModeFile it, and the monitor list shown in !Configure can chew them too if placed somewhere in the BootResources:Configure.Monitors to be scanned with the others.

@colinhoad.com

Day 10 is upon us! Will Cascade soar to new heights - or sink like a stone? youtu.be/UvbbHN3Bv3shttps://youtu.be/UvbbHN3Bv3s

@riscosbits.co.uk

Our festive offer will be a hot one! And such a sweet deal!

#ChristmasCracker #RISC_OS #LimitedTimeOffer #WhileStocksLast

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - David Pitt's Festive RISC OS desktop

Many thanks to David for a very seasonal and festive RISC OS desktop (It's not too late to send us yours).

*Count possible issue

Just like to echo a thanks on the fine detective work by @Thomas and the show of initiative by @Piers going into the code and digging in at code level. Amazing stuff guys – well played :)

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This rarely seen BBC Master 128 luggable recently sold on eBay. It's a custom build by Paxton Instruments and includes dual 5.25" drives and a green screen monitor. All of the original connectors/ports have been preserved on the back of the unit. This one is also fitted with an SD card device. HEAVY

@colinhoad.com

Repeat after me: These. People. Are. Not. Human.

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Lurgy has now almost gone. Back to disk archiving and hopefully discovering some lost gems from the 1980s. These game developer disks were sent to me by R. Fred Williams who worked at Big Red Software and Binary design in Manchester. We bumped into each other at the Retro Event in Cambridge recently

Ilitek-tp touchscreen

So I have this interesting device – it is a Raspad 3 (combined with a RP4b 4GB).

I am sure i recently got it to boot RISC OS 5.31 but it hasn’t done so again today so will have to play with it more. When it did boot the screen worked but not the touchscreen function (it’s RISC OS) – the touch screen works in Raspberry Pi OS and identifies as a ilitek-tp screen working on HDMI.

Has anyone got any idea if this can be made to work with RISC OS.

Apparently the ilitek-tp screen is a capacitive type device.

Also don’t think the USB ports on the main board (not the Rpi4) were working with RISC OS but let’s start with the screen.

If i can’t get it working with RISC OS then it may get used as a Pi-Core music player.

Proivde Simple 3D api to basic?

RISC OS already support OpenGL. This wish list item would be to provide a simple module translating GL or VUlkan(?) calls to an appropriate SWI. in BASIC you would then do SYS “GLFunc”,“@”, PTR param_block.

Where GLFunc gets 2 pointers, 1(string) to the name of OPenGL(ES) or Vulkan Function, and the second param being a sutiable width pointer to the parameter block.

Alternatively it would be nice to have some kind of native 3D api, that can be called directly from Basic.

@colinhoad.com

It's hard being a purist programmer. You realise your small program need a function to do a particular thing, documentation suggests it exists in a module, so you import that module and... suddenly the compiler is pulling in a whole crapola of other dependencies and turns it into a bloated mess.

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 9 - what horror lurks behind the Advent of Beeb Games calendar door today? youtu.be/NOgZm1rNA4Ahttps://youtu.be/NOgZm1rNA4A

@riscosbits.co.uk

A gold standard festive offer coming soon!

#risc_os #ChristmasCracker #LimitedEdition #BeQuick #GoldStandard

A Puzzling Addition to the Platform

With uncharacteristic speed following the release of Puzzles 1.00 for RISC OS, version 1.01 is now available to download from https://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/risc-os/games – copies can also be found on the PlingStore, and should appear in PackMan shortly.

The main changes from 1.00 are a few updates from the upstream – the user-facing ones are to the Dominosa, Mines and Undead games.

The RISC OS front end now supports the text_fallback() function, which allows it to make the characters in the top half of the current RISC OS character set available to games if they wish to make use of them. This improves the text display in a couple of the puzzles. If you’re playing Puzzles on a platform that doesn’t support the UCS lookup tables, or are using an alphabet that doesn’t have the desired glyphs in it, then games will continue to use plain ASCII as before.

List of modules in C

Perfect thank you

@colinhoad.com

Such a genuine relief to know I really don't have to care about any of this anymore #Linux

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@colinhoad.com

Revolut, you are my going on holiday PAYG card, I am not going to use you to "Power up with CRYPTO!" so please, less of those app notifications, ta.

@colinhoad.com

What skill did you master that you will never, ever use again?

Reciting the name of every book of the bible in order (both testaments).

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Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 7th December at 1pm.

That may not be entirely true.

Indeed, it does depend on having those high resolution printers or displays – not having them is unusual in business settings nowadays, but it’s probably still fairly common in domestic settings, and perhaps some smaller business settings – but surely not if they care much about fine detail?

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Detlef Frohlich's D64Dir2Spr project

I love the C64. Amazing machine with a truly amazing sound chip.

@colinhoad.com

Spotify, there, telling me I have a listening age of 68...

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Detlef Frohlich's D64Dir2Spr project

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Advent_Calendar_2025_-_Detlef_Frohlichs_D64Dir2Spr_project/index2275.html

Many thanks to Detlef for a second of his projects (It's not too late to send us yours).

@colinhoad.com

Happy Monday! Let the joy of another random Cascade Cassette 50 game get you set for the week... it's Day 8! youtu.be/9XqIzIEzt6whttps://youtu.be/9XqIzIEzt6w

@colinhoad.com

OK, this is very funny! The bbcmicro.co.uk site has made "Cascade Cassette 50" their Game of the Month, in honour of my Advent of Beeb Games series this year 😂

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Detlef Frohlich's D64Dir2Spr project

Many thanks to Detlef for a second of his projects (It's not too late to send us yours).

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - RISOSbits brings some sharing at Christmas

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Advent_Calendar_2025_-_RISOSbits_brings_some_sharng_at_Christmas/index2278.html

Many thanks to Andy at RISCOSbits for showing us sharing is not just for Christmas for RISC OS users (It's not too late to send us yours).

@riscosbits.co.uk

A special festive treat coming soon!

#risc_os #ChristmasCracker #LimitedEdition #BeQuick

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 7! Can Cascade maintain its winning streak from yesterday? 🤔😅 youtu.be/aTadPdoWI-0https://youtu.be/aTadPdoWI-0

Iris and Messenger Pro 9

I… cough… insert a single SYS “WImp_Poll” command every 100th READ or WRITE, or every 100th iteration of huge nested loops, to make it multi-task. Real programmers will probably shout: “Eek!”, but well, it works.

That’s fine until the Wimp_Poll returns an event that you need to handle immediately… at which point, things can start to get very messy, very quickly… As soon as you start to add things like window redraw, a state machine hanging off Null events is often easier to make work. :-)

Archive magazines available

As part of my mission to get a full set of Archive magazines, I’ve ended up with quite a few duplicates.

These are mainly from 1989 through to 2000. I’ve got 200-300 magazines, probably covering most of this range.

If anyone would like these please get in touch. They are free to collect. I’m based in Suffolk.

I’m still looking for the 2001- 2023 magazines.

Thanks all Ian.

Modern Frosted Theme

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Advent_Calend…

RiscOSBits Demo’s Frosted Theme in latest Iconbar Advent post, Thanks to those that are testing the Theme :)

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - RISOSbits brings some sharng at Christmas

Yes it looks really good! thanks for demoing it

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - RISOSbits brings some sharng at Christmas

I thought you'd like that! And your original cogs backdrop on the ECOfile itself!

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - RISOSbits brings some sharng at Christmas

Oh Yay RiscOSBits is using the New Frosted Theme too! Nice

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 6! Time to roll the Cascade dice once again... youtu.be/b_4I7GOoMmAhttps://youtu.be/b_4I7GOoMmA

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - RISOSbits brings some sharng at Christmas

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2278.html

Many thanks to Andy at RISCOSbits for showing us sharing is not just for Christmas for RISC OS users (It's not too late to send us yours).https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2278.html

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - RISOSbits brings some sharng at Christmas

Many thanks to Andy at RISCOSbits for showing us sharing is not just for Christmas for RISC OS users (It's not too late to send us yours).

IPv6

O2 and Vodafone are still on IPv4 CG-NAT where as EE and Three use IPv6.

Vodafone will move to IPv6 post merger, but I have no idea of the timescale on that. Their fixed broadband has supported it for a while.

@iconbar.com

Fire at CJE Micros

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Fire_at_CJE_Micros/index2279.html

According to reports in local media, the West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service were called to a fire in CJE Micros' building in Littlehampton shortly after 11pm Tuesday. The fire was extinguished and crews left shortly before 2am Wednesday.

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Mark Stephens gets back to BBC BASIC

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Advent_Calendar_2025_-_Mark_Stephens_gets_back_to_BBC_BASIC/index2276.html

Here's my computer corner and RISC OS project (It's not too late to send us yours).

BASIC V vs BASIC VI

I’ve updated the blog post and improved the test program, to include testing the BASIC VI FPA interpreter.

With some surprising results: I wasn’t expecting FPA integer operations to be so slow! How does that work?

Updated results and the new program here: ROAST

Fire at CJE Micros

According to reports in local media this week, the West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service were called to a fire in CJE Micros' building in Littlehampton shortly after 11pm on Tuesday evening. The fire was extinguished and crews left the scene shortly before 2am on Wednesday morning.

Fire at CJE Micro’s

You have probably heard already that CJE Micro’s have suffered a fire at their premises in Littlehampton. This happened late on 2nd December, so – thankfully – nobody will have been there working. However, while nobody was harmed, the fire appears to have been quite significant. I’ve reached out to Chris Evans, and he has provided a statement to put on RISCOSitory so that people are aware of the situation. he wrote: We have had a major fire at our unit in Littlehampton Tuesday Night. Unfortunately we have lost a…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

RISC OS nerdery: Now I’ve found a bug in OS_ReadArgs, by code inspection rather than experiment. What on earth could be the justification for this disappearing value?

Hospital Tablets

Spotted this on Stardot rpcemu.m.h.org.uk

I wonder if this would work on Samsung 9- 10 inch Tablet?

Where is HostFS pointed too.

Can one have local files?

@colinhoad.com

Somehow, Cloudflare returned

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Mark Stephens gets back to BBC BASIC

Here's my computer corner and RISC OS project (It's not too late to send us yours).

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 5! Surely... surely it must be better than yesterday's entry? 😅 youtu.be/Qf_2rSPftn4https://youtu.be/Qf_2rSPftn4

@colinhoad.com

Calling all former BT engineers! Did you ever have one of these? It's actually a Psion Organiser II LZ64 but BT had a bunch made for them, rebadged as the P464, and with its own "Kilostream" software that only works via the Comms Link. Please reshare, as I'm keen to learn more about how it works!

Hugh Bowman PI V1.14 Released - A new Original RISC OS Game!

@AVB,

I wouldn’t bother. Pretty much every solution for running RISC OS applications supported sound. The ‘RISC OS On Linux’ project, totally understandably, hasn’t got around to that yet. And if you are just using typical desktop apps, then it’s no big deal. We are talking about one implementation here, with what, a handful of users. I’d be stunned if it was worth the effort.

Also, I think for most games, the sound is key too.

If anyone wants to spend time on it, I’d suggest a module which accepts the relevant SWIs/vectors/whatever for the sound APIs, and just does nothing with them. That would allow audio apps/games to start. In the future, some enterprising soul can figure out how to glue the module into talking to the Linux audio API.

CJE Micros

I wish CJE all the best in recovering from the fire.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Yesterday I mentioned a RISC OS oddity with the OS_ReadArgs call regarding evaluation of parameters, so I thought I’d document it more clearly.

WARNING: This will be deeply upsetting for Basic programmers...

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32Bit AKA Roms

Now Tried 12 SCSI HDD’s none of them mount or format, and *Devices doesn’t output the drives correctly. So theres clearly an issue on the Iyonix with SCSI

Only 1 Drive i get Direct-Access, but the Filer doesn’t see it, and thinks its 6PetaBytes LOL

@colinhoad.com

Insert a movie into another movie:

ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF EGYPT

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@colinhoad.com

It's Day 4, and it's fair to say I may have cracked with this one...! youtu.be/SGqpoZIjC5shttps://youtu.be/SGqpoZIjC5s

AMCOG Games Ten Year Anniversary Sale

We’ve been making games for RISC OS for 10 years.

Thank you to everyone who has bought our games, come and visited us at shows our listened to our talks at clubs.

To celebrate we have discounted one game from each year that we have been making games for RISC OS until the 14th of December 2025.

Morphix – 2025 : 9.99 : (Normally 14.99)

3D Moonbase Attack – 2024 : 9.99 (Normally 14.99)

3D Turbo Boost – 2023 : 7.99 (Normally 11.99)

3D Pingo – 2022 : 7.99 (Normally 9.99)

Spy Mission : The Ice Caves of Dr Atom – 2021 : 4.99 (Normally 6.99)

Scuba Hunter – 2020 : 4.99 (Normally 6.99)

Escape from the Arcade – 2019 : 7.99 (Normally 10.99)

Stunt Drivers – 2018 : 4.99 (Normally 6.99)

Protector – 2017 : 4.99 – (Normally 6.99)

Xeroid – 2016 : 4.99 – (Normally 6.99)

Legends of Magic – 2015 : 4.99 (Normally 6.99)

Available from the Plingstore:

http://www.plingstore.org.uk/ps/download.aw

For more information, please see:

https://www.amcog.co.uk/index-riscos.htm

Why not join us at WROCC tonight?

https://www.wrocc.org.uk/meetings

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Detlef Frohlich's PicoPython project

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Advent_Calendar_2025_-_Detlef_Frohlichs_PicoPython_project/index2271.html

Many thanks to Detlef for showing us his PicoPython project (It's not too late to send us yours).

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Detlef Frohlich's PicoPython project

Many thanks to Detlef for showing us his PicoPython project (It's not too late to send us yours).

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 3! What delights will the Cascade cassette 50 reveal today? Find out here: youtu.be/zGLcXSINg-ohttps://youtu.be/zGLcXSINg-o

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - new Frosted theme from Martin Eastwood

V0.2 Update With Added Stack.Sans Desktop Font

So What Now?

Yes simon of course, You, Paolo and Gerph all have your own projects which isnt directly linked to ROOL itself. But everyone has a different idea as to what a future Risc OS should look like and some would prefer it just to remain the same, I don’t think ROOL have actually specified what the preference is for how a future risc os should be. I mean 32Bit is going to last us until at least 2030 with Pi4’s still in production till then. at this point id be happy with multicore.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Loving this look! ASCII RPGs for the win!

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

And on the subject of the RISC OS Filer, the fact that there is no standardised way to cause the LOADING of a file is utterly shameful, and purely a result of ideological not-invented-here silo-purity tribalism which everyone concerned should have grown out of in the school playground.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Tiny RISC OS d’oh!

I was just documenting the Filer’s star commands (which are many, varied, and highly variant-dependent) when I noticed how bad RO5’s *Filer_DClickHold is.

This sets a delay which, if you hold the second click of a double-click for that time, simulates the Shift key.

@rougol.bsky.social

Early notification that ROUGOL have a Christmas meeting this year, on Monday 15th December, but it is *online only*. Hear from Rob Napier who is writing the biography of Acornhttps://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Hall tackles the Hydra

Then my mistake, my confusion, my apologies.

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 2 of the Advent of Beeb Games! youtu.be/CgUdbLLEjPwhttps://youtu.be/CgUdbLLEjPw

@iconbar.com

WROCC December 2025 talk on Wednesday - Amcog Games

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2268.html

The December 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 3rd December and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom.https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2268.html

WROCC December 2025 talk on Wednesday - Amcog Games

The December 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 3rd December and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Wraight brings us Clarity

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2274.html

Many thanks to Chris Wraight for his new theme for RISC OS users and experiment with funding new developments (It's not too late to send us yours).https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2274.html

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Wraight brings us Clarity

Many thanks to Chris Wraight for high new theme for RISC OS users and experiment with funding new developments (It's not too late to send us yours).

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - new Frosted theme from Martin Eastwood

Many thanks to Martin Eastwood for bringing us a beta preview of his forth-coming Frosted Theme (It's not too late to send us yours).

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Hall tackles the Hydra

What on earth are you on about, JJ?

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Hall tackles the Hydra

Why are you always so bitter about rod/rcomp? They are a company they have to make a living they give away a lot of their work for free.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The BBC Micro is 44 years old today, Happy Birthday! However, many customers had to wait until early 1982 for delivery of theirs due to limited supply availability before Christmas. During its lifespan just over 1.5 million were sold - exact figures are not known. I still have my original one.

@colinhoad.com

As Anatoly points out, Microsoft couldn't help themselves here and - even on a jumper supposedly "celebrating" the software of yore - they've shoe-horned in a Copilot icon.

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@iconbar.com

'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Hall tackles the Hydra

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Advent_Calendar_2025_-_Chris_Hall_tackles_the_Hydra/index2267.html

Many thanks to Chris Hall for bravely tackling this beast for the benefit of all RISC OS users.

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Hall tackles the Hydra

I see the ROD/RCOmp crosscontamination continues. For everyone else, ClusterFS is not stable enough for release, but for RCOmp, its good enough to be put on a commercial computer that they sell. They just need to stop pretending that ROD is anything other than RCOmps fundraising wing.

@colinhoad.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Chris Hall tackles the Hydra

Many thanks to Chris Hall for bravely tackling this beast for the benefit of all RISC OS users (It's not too late to send us yours).

@colinhoad.com

Thank you, office Christmas Quiz.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Windows 11 Companions for RISC OS youtu.be/MnC_zU7HpRk?si…

See the basics of our Windows 11 Companions, and feel the potential!

#RISC_OS #RISCOSCompanions #WindowsInWindowsInRISCOShttps://youtu.be/MnC_zU7HpRk?si…

@colinhoad.com

If you fancy another (much more informative!) advent series this December, do check out @matt.godbolt.org 's advent of compiler optimisations, first episode here: youtube.com/watch?v=eLjZ48gqbyghttps://youtube.com/watch?v=eLjZ48gqbyg

@colinhoad.com

What's that knocking at the door? Why, it's the first of the Advent of Beeb Games videos! youtu.be/jWa0oNtmBc4https://youtu.be/jWa0oNtmBc4

Changing the tick button icon

Thanks for the idea, Simon – done!

Windows 11 upgrade breaks LanMan98

yes that might be right :)

SMB2/3 protocol

Sorry for being slow, but as usual no one is helping me, and with ShareFS…

Happy to help with ShareFS. Can’t contribute to any code but I can test the living bejeezus out of it!

@iconbar.com

https://bsky.app/profile/houseofmabel.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy/post/3m6uo2pra67s2

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@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Finished to test the preliminary version of my new Desktop Theme Manager for #RISC_OS check out some screenshots here. I combines all old Theme managers into a single one fully rewritten in C:https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/dme-project-porting-a-lot-of-themes-to-the-new-exttheme/

Early ExtTheme almost ready for alpha testers

To everyone interested,

I have completed testing the new Theme “Actuator” for my ExtTheme. At the moment, to load a new theme I am using CHris (Little Yellow Moon) original Theme Configure plug-in, but I need to rewrite that, because ExtTheme allow a use to customize a theme (and remembers the customizations between theme switching).

Check this link to have a look at which Themes are already available (there are more than the screenshots in the article), but this gives you an overview:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/dme-projec…

Note for Chris and Martin:

I am trying to write some documentation, as soon as I am done I’ll figure out a way for you both to be able to install this and start playing with it.

Please DO NOT use your daily RISC OS system for these tests! I need to replace the Configure plugin and the update may leave stuff behind! So this is just to test your own themes.

I am planning a public beta for Christmas if I have enough time.

@colinhoad.com

ME: what software do I need to install to rip an ISO image from a DVD? LINUX: it's already there in the OS, just run dd on the command line with /dev/cdrom and write to an .iso file

Linux is so great...

@colinhoad.com

A reminder that this kicks off *tomorrow* at 9am! #AdventOfBeeb youtu.be/RHdgIHr78RMhttps://youtu.be/RHdgIHr78RM

Iris Feature Request

Another thing : Copy and paste from the address bar would be nice :)

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 30th November at 1pm.

Next week I’ll be finishing the font handling, and adding in some more test code. It should be relatively easy to do, I hope. That should make the component functional, and we can move on to something else.

I’m thinking that the next one to implement will be the FSCommands module. Largely it’s just an interface from the commands to the OS_FSControl calls, so it should be pretty trivial.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, please drop a line, as these sessions are intended to be interactive and informative.

November 2025 News Summary

Charles has uploaded his recent Pyromaniac / RISC OS 64-bit talk he gave at Rougol on 17 November 2025.

RISC OS North 2026 show date announced

Richard Brown and Andrew Rawnsley, the organisers of 2025’s inaugural – and successful – RISC OS North show, have announced the date of the second show to be held in Warrington as 21st March, 2026. The second show will take place in the same venue as last year: Village Hotel Warrington,110 Centre Park Square,Warrington,WA1 1QA. More details will no doubt appear in due course, but for the moment… write (or type) that date into your diaries, and get those travel plans sorted.

2026 show date announced

After the success of the inaugural RISC OS North show in 2025, picking up the baton from the Wakefield Show, we are pleased to announce the date of the second event as: Saturday, 21st March, 2026 We look forward to welcoming everyone at the same venue as last year: Village Hotel Warrington,110 Centre Park Square,Warrington,WA1 […]

AMCOG delivers witness statement about Hugh Bowman to WROCC – 3rd December

The guest speaker for the next Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) meeting, which takes place on 3rd December, is Tony Bartram of AMCOG Games. Tony released his latest game, Hugh Bowman PI, at the London Show just over a month ago, with its more general release (with some updates) just a few days ago, and that will be the first part of what he will be talking about to WROCC. His talk will be more than just a look at the game itself, however, and will also include the…

Windows 11

I have recently updated to Windows 11 64 bit. I should like to use the excellent Impact Database with it. Can I simply buy the USB stick, install it and use the database versions I have saved on my hard drive?

Many thanks in advance for the kindness and tolerance of the RO community.

Regards

Tony Todd

RiscOS North 2026?

As far as i was told, its going ahead yes, just no date or announcement yet.

@iconbar.com

November 2025 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/November_2025_News_Summary/index2255.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2255.html

November 2025 News Summary

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

@iconbar.com

Drag'n'Drop 15i1 edition reviewed

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/DragnDrop_15i1_edition_reviewed/index2258.html

The latest edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine was released at the recent London Show and should be with subscribers now. Congratulations on reaching Volume 15!

Hard Disk support

Replying to myself. This is a moot point for me now as I realise that 32GB is the max size for HHD in RPCEmu so it wouldn’t have helped me anyway.

@colinhoad.com

The 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th... photos, they're all just computers. And that's probably accurate!

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@colinhoad.com

I'm not a "who remembers this, then?" account, but today I finally tracked down an advert that - for whatever reason - got lodged in my child-brain when I was young. Anyone else remember this series of ads? Pretty sure there was more than one.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P92n1LHexsw

PC Emulator

Ref the old Acorn PC Emulator – what was it compiled with – doesn’t look like ‘C’.

Drag'n'Drop 15i1 edition reviewed

The latest edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine was released at the recent London Show and should be with subscribers now. Congratulations on reaching Volume 15!

@colinhoad.com

Cheers for the excellent pens and bonus stickers @chinnyvision.bsky.social! Hopefully resting them on a Beeb isn't heresy 😄

Pyromaniac Evolution at ROUGOL, Mon 17th Nov 2025

I’ve published the RISC OS Pyromaniac presentation on YouTube now – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC9deUZTmNA if you want to catch up on what I spoke about. My presentation site has been updated to include this – http://riscos.online/talk2/pyromaniac4/index.html – and include the speaker notes, slides and other resources.

Mounting RISC OS disk/image on linux

It might be worth running DiscKnight on the origin disc (or DiscReader on the image) with verbose turned on, as that might give a clue as to what the various things are objecting to.

@colinhoad.com

Most people know that the random junk pixels printed around the edges of various Acorn Electron games are sections of game code 'hidden' in screen memory. But not all of it is actually code, because that would lead to an uneven border, so some of the junk characters are just... junk!

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

For anyone wondering whether our friend @nickpelling.bsky.social is ok - he's alive and well and has not been abducted by aliens: He appears to be researching a book on Roswell.

Oh hang on 👽

@colinhoad.com

Running "Frak!" on my new Linux machine. Probably didn't need 128GB of RAM and an Nvidia 5070 for that, though 😅

Frosted Icon Set for 2025

Ok guys,

let me disable the wobbly stuff (there are quite a few, because I started to reverse engineer WTB patch if anyone remebers it, to add it to my ExtTheme and allow even more customizability), I’ll package it and give it to both of you for testing.

It should take me a few days max.

ExtTheme already has all your work Chris for your old Theme Manager, so you’ll need to create a theme file with all the configuration options like you did in the past. The Theme file format is identical (I kept the same format for compatibility with the past Themes made for your TM). There are more options now, and it does work fine with coloring the windows border (well it can do even more than that, and add size to the border too, but that size is one of the wobbly functions).

It also already includes all the features of ThemeDef from ROOL, and everything is rewritten in C (’cause some folks complained that DME Launchpad was written in BBCBASIC…).

I’ll need both your emails, please contact me at the link below, and as soon as I have disabled the things that makes RO unstable I’ll send you a PackMan package that should install both the Configure UI and the Theme actuator.

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/contact/

A required note: This is alpha quality code, so there might be issues even with the unstable features disabled.

One of the funniest unstable feature is having the iconbar on the left (or right or top) of the screen (yes can do that too), it works, BUT it also duplicate the iconbar XD – I am still fighting with that one, so will be disabled.

@iconbar.com

Coding a Fortran program on RISC OS

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Coding_a_Fortran_program_on_RISC_OS/index2261.html

If you were wondering what to do with that new Fortran Compiler in the latest DDE, Sprow has a very timely article for you...

Hugh Bowman PI opens his RISC OS detective agency

Initially launched at the recent London Show, and now available to buy from !Store, the latest title from AMCOG Games is Hugh Bowman PI. In the game-noir, you play a private investigator called Hugh Bowman, and can take on one of three cases – all of which involve breaking into Professor Von Sparks’ compound. Once in, you can drive around the area, and enter individual buildings to search for clues and – eventually, hopefully – solve the case. In the compound itself, there are robots to avoid, although they temporarily…

Clarity theme in development with (mini) crowd funder

Chris Wraight – aka Little Yellow Moon – is developing a new theme for RISC OS, called Clarity. His aim is to create a comprehensive new look for the desktop, to include window furniture and backgrounds, system icons, and a wide selection of common file types. There is a mini crowd-funder for the theme up and running, with a modest target of £250 (with, at the time of writing, 26% already fulfilled) – Chris explains that this is experimental; an investigation of using Ko-Fi to provide a small amount of…

Test your flag knowledge with FlagQuiz

If you have a familiarity with flags and want to test your knowledge of them, or if you find yourself flummoxed by them and want to try to learn a few, Kevin Wells has a new piece of software that might be of interest. As you might guess from its name, FlagQuiz is a simple flag-based quiz. The application will display a flag, selected at random, and present you with four options for which nation it belongs to; choose one, and see if you got it right – and after…

Recovering a RiscOS Disk

The machine will boot quite happily to a low resolution desktop without a !Boot on the disc.

Hanging is far more likely to be due to a faulty/corrupted disc, how is it known to be good?

Is it actually on the motherboard IDE interface or is it a 3rd party IDE podule card?

If you remove the drive, you say you can’t get the desktop, but is it still hung or do you have a * prompt?

If it is the latter, you can get to the desktop by typing desktop

@armbytes.bsky.social

Newsflash: Fortran mini-tutorial surfaces on TIB 🔥 #Code4Fun #RISCOShttps://www.iconbar.com/articles/Coding_a_Fortran_program_on_RISC_OS/index2261.html

Looking for old Archive magazines

Andrew – if you are still willing to sell / pass on your Archive magazines I would be graeteful and can collect. I’ve got the earlier ones, but later issues are illusive. I’m combining several ‘collections’ to make up a full set, and will be making available all spares to whoever wants them.

StrongED 4.70a19 released

Fred many thanks for this update, especially as StrongEd now supports the newly released Fortran. It is great to be able to create Fortran code and compile it all from StrongEd

Microfunding for small projects

Or am I confusing it with a feature from RISC OS Select?

There was a feature in RISC OS Select that protected the ROM icons, which was later developed further to introduce a priority sprite pool

Coding a Fortran program on RISC OS

If you were wondering what to do with that new Fortran Compiler in the latest DDE, Sprow has a very timely article for you....

Quick StrongED question

Adding tab to the list of terminator characters seems fine to me. A tab won’t normally appear elsewhere in a BASIC program apart from strings so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve modified KeywordFix accordingly and will do some testing.

Thanks for the detective work, and the fix!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I wouldn't trust an LLM to generate code, never mind what to code. However, they do make excellent Rubber Ducks.

I just solved a troublesome design problem while describing something to Gemini, which has cheered me up no end.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

@support.bsky.team You've broken your Android app such that:

1. I keep having to sign back in

2. You've messed up the login fields so the keyboard doesn't know it's a username/password combination so the password manager isn't triggered

It works correctly on the web, but not in the app.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

One of the best, original home computer games. Ported to so many different computers. Made by A&F Software, the name taken from the initials of the company's founders, Doug Anderson and Mike Fitzgerald

Page breaks in ovpro

Hi

I am trying to find out how I can do page breaks in Ovation Pro. Maybe someone can tell me!

Coding on RISC OS fireside chat, this Saturday - 22nd Nov.

A huge shout-out to everyone who made it. The next “Coding on RISC OS” fireside chat is pencilled in for 10th January 2026. Come and join in, no experience necessary.

If you’re curious here’s a link to an informative article.

@armbytes.bsky.social

A huge shout-out to everyone who made it. The next "Coding on RISC OS" fireside chat is pencilled in for 10th January 2026. 🚀🕹️🛸 #Code4fun #ARM #RaspberryPi #OpenSource #RISCOS #Zoom #Meetup

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Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 23rd November at 1pm.

More live coding today at 1pm. Come along if you’re interested!

Pine64 Tablet

it can’t run RO native but will run RO on Linux, but be advised RO on Linux has it’s issues still and isnt really fully ready to be daily used.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

💻 Weekend project: I finally got time to update the #MerlinOS presentation with the newest features:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/portfolio/merlin-a-modern-memory-safe-kernel-and-platform/#kernel-documentation

#OperatingSystem #KernelDevelopment #SystemsProgramming #EmbeddedSystems #MemorySafety #FormalVerification #OpenSource #SoftwareEngineering #LowLevel

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The lead-up to November is always a busy time for game developers. You have to get your games on the shop shelves in time for Thanksgiving. If you missed this holiday then you would lose a huge amount of potential sales. Here's a few of the ones I worked on with incredibly talented teams.

@iconbar.com

Live Coding with Gerph on Sunday

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Live_Coding_with_Gerph_on_Sunday/index2266.html

If you were intrigued by Gerph's Monday ROUGOL presentation, or just want to improve your coding skills, then you are in luck!

Live Coding with Gerph on Sunday

If you were intrigued by Gerph's Monday ROUGOL presentation, or just want to improve your coding skills, then you are in luck!

London Show, Sat 25th October 2025

No i think its been misunderstood, what im doing is seperate from anyone else, i wanted to do interviews at the London Show and record, but i was put off, then i was approached by ROD which indicated its something they wanted for north so i said i would look into it. Whoever is handling the theatre talks will be doing the same again.

That’s odd, because what you originally wrote – in response to perceived quality issues with the London theatre videos – was

I’m planning to go to the north show next year and upload videos, but mirror the presentations with a PIP approach to having the host in the talks.

which certainly read as if you were planning to video the talks. If not, then we have all indeed misunderstood1; in that case, apologies.

No one has said anything about taking over anyone’s job, Not that i knew that certain individuals had roles reserved to themselves.

They don’t. But common sense says that when you have a platform running off a limited pool of volunteers, and also have volunteers happily in place doing some roles, it’s generally best to see if new volunteers can take on roles that aren’t already being done. Instead of finding out that the volunteers who you’ve just displaced from constructive roles have little interest in doing something else and have just buggered off into the sunset taking their skills with them.

If the original volunteers are looking for a change of scenery, on the other hand, then go for it. Obviously.

I do think the idea of a video with little interviews where possible of attendees and possibly exhibitors if possible would maybe help encourage people is a good one as it could complement the theatre talks.

Indeed, although a small word of caution: it does need to be planned in advance (which can be before the show opens, if you’re not getting under people’s feet, or during the day), so that exhibitors know to expect an interview and don’t just have a live camera shoved in their face. Sorry, but the latter has happened before (as have other things that you might not expect – after many years exhibiting at events, I’ve learned the hard way that some corners of the RISC OS community are… odd). This may explain some of the cynicism being expressed. That’s also why recorded and edited is better than livestreamed: with the live option, some people may be unhappy with what gets out2.

1 or have been misdirected?

2 WROCC’s videos tend to be edited, I think. Usually just to remove the more blatant pauses and awkward bits, but sometimes to remove things that presenters have got cold feet over in the cold light of the next day.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

My Polestar was perfectly happy crawling along behind a motorbike in traffic, but when the bike stopped at the lights, the cruise control switched off complaining "No lead car"...

Which I think is species-ist or something? So not cool, car. Shame on you. Motorbycyclists can't help being like that.

@colinhoad.com

Tonight's the night! #Telekon #GaryNuman

@nemo20000.bsky.social

If you've any doubts about EV ownership, check the responses of thousands of actual owners... It's certainly nothing like the headlines in some newspapers.

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@iconbar.com

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Fireside_developer_chat_on_saturday_night/index2265.html

It definitely feels like the bleak mid-winter. So why not have a cosy Saturday night in? Throw another log on the fire and join some very informal and friendly chat with other RISC OS developers online.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Magic smoke escape route.

The IconBar advent calendar needs your help

If it runs RISC OS, we’d love to feature it on TIB for our adent calendar!

@riscos.bsky.social

Meanwhile, on the ROOL forums...

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

It definitely feels like the bleak mid-winter. So why not have a cosy saturday night in. Throw another log on the file and join some very informal and friendly chat with other RISC OS developers online.

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Fortran 77 is here, just a couple of years behind schedule!https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/11/20/episode-iv-a-new-hope

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"The driver was stopped and given words of advice about the traffic offences he was committing and also reminded about the seriousness of celebrating Christmas before December" 🎄https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgkgy8749xo.amp

Episode IV - A New Hope

Not only did 1977 see the release of space opera Star Wars – A New Hope, but it was also a year famous for the release of Fortran 77, the follow up to Fortran IV and ’66.

Your compliance is imperative

Fortran is one of a family of imperative programming languages, and was originally short for For mula Tran slation. Finding applications in scientific fields such as modelling of weather systems, molecular structure, and of course calculating star ship propulsion vectors.

Image available as wallpaper from r33v01v3 via Steam

As described in our FAQ the imperative languages are in the class of languages that the Norcroft compiler supports, and we’ve long known from odd scraps of evidence such as the RISC iX User Guide that there was a Fortran version at one time which went alongside the C language we’re so much more familiar with.

With help from Codemist a search of their archives managed to locate a partial copy last worked on in the 1990s on a backup tape stowed inside an old R2-unit.

Joining the Fortran front end – the part of the compiler which deals with language specifics – with the rest of the contemporary tools creates the f77 compiler. In addition, a brand new 200+ page manual describes its use in detail, along with ANSI runtime library.

@colinhoad.com

I think we all know that if Beethoven had had a home micro, it would have been the Beeb 😉

@colinhoad.com

...arriving next Tuesday! 🤩

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@iconbar.com

Announcing the TIB 2025 Advent Calendar

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Announcing_the_TIB_2025_Advent_Calendar/index2259.html

For the last two years, TIB has run an advent calendar over the festive season. And we are looking to our readers to contribute again to make it three in a row...

@colinhoad.com

If you see this, post your getaway vehicle

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@colinhoad.com

Saw an ad from JetBrains on the tube that read "stop replacing AI devs with humans!" and now I hate JetBrains.

Announcing the TIB 2025 Advent Calendar

For the last 2 years, TIB has run an advent calender over the festive season. And we are looking to our readers to contribute again to make it 3 in a row....

New App FlagQuiz

I have released a new RISC OS application called FlagQuiz which is a quiz about flags from around the world. It is multiple choice quiz with 10 questions with each question having 4 choices, you are presented a flag and have to guess the country it belongs to. It supports the RISC OS interactive help, … Continue reading "New App FlagQuiz"

@colinhoad.com

I've been thinking about it for some time, and yesterday's latest from Microsoft re: agentic AI has finally convinced me. New daily driver laptop ordered from laptopwithlinux.com. I'm going Linux full time, I am through with Windows.https://laptopwithlinux.com

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Don't miss this one. Steve Furber's 'From little Acorns to building brains' talk. Part of the ARM at 40 anniversary celebrations.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeQn_AJqX54

Talking to USB

Have tidied up the utilities as below:

will refine them and make a better attempt to write them in discrete functions in due course.

Meanwhile I have a new computer – the Hydra – and am playing with it (and writing a review of it).

@colinhoad.com

This is so messed up I almost can't believe it. How a company like Microsoft can have sunk to this level is just beyond me. AI brainrot to the max.

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-warns-security-risks-agentic-os-windows-11-xpia-malware

Time to Update !Killer :)

A few things in no particular order.

1. There was a security permissions “gotcha” that we’d not spotted that came in during a gitlab update a few months ago that was preventing the automatic git mirroring occurring for the TCP/IP 6 project. This has now been resolved, so the code should now auto-update between the internal project git and the ROD git. As a result, the missing 7.09 code is now present as expected.

2. AFAIK that auto-mirroring only applies to that specific project, and happens more-or-less in realtime, so should always reflect latest code. Those wishing to contribute should contact us for further info. Other project repositories work as you would normally expect.

3. Vprotect and Killer sources are now in the ROD git. However, they are not publicly visible due to concerns over security, and there not being enough remaining skilled coders to provide the necessary levels of peer review.

4. My goal would be for public binary builds to appear ASAP

5. Access to those git repositories is available on request, but it is likely we will vet applicants to at least some degree because of the sensitivity of the materials. We have already had one compelling offer to provide long term maintenance of this software, but I’m aware other work has been done and am keen to see all interested parties working together on this.

6. The hint about the Explore link was in the “Explore the github” but you can do so directly via https://gitlab.riscosdev.com/explore

7. Don’t expect to see the Vprotect/Killer projects in the public “explore” due to their sensitivity, until such time as releases are ready.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Cloudflare are having a bad Tuesday.

@iconbar.com

November 2025 Rougol report - Gerph is back

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/November_2025_Rougol_report_-_Gerph_is_back/index2262.html

It's been five years since Gerph last talked to ROUGOL so he was back with an update. And he's been busy - his presentation included 51 information-packed slides!

@colinhoad.com

This is code for "we expect taxpayers to bail us out"https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy7vrd8k4eo

November 2025 Rougol report - Gerph is back

It's been five years since Gerph last talked to ROUGOL so he was back with an update. And he's been busy—his presentation included 51 information-packed slides!

Unable to delete directory

I had a RO Toy Train program on VRPC that would create a file/Dir using HostFs and RO couldn’t get rid of it.

Had to use Win – took a while to find out :-)

PS is ‘New Directory’ one word? Space??

SerialUSB 0.17

Chris,

Yes, I confirm with Colin’s version available on his site.

http://ftpc.iconbar.com/usb/

For information: I use it for file transfers from my smart phone via a serial Bluetooth adapter. The transfer works at 460000 Bauds.

Titanium pci scsi

the only cards that are supported are the ones from elesar as far as i know and sadly the driver is only with purchase of the cards

http://shop.elesar.co.uk/index.php?route=product/produ…

USB headsets

Thanks, Stephen. 48000 Hz only, both directions.

Developers’ fireside chat – 22nd November

The next friendly fireside chat for people interested in RISC OS software development will take place at 7:30pm on Saturday, 22nd November. Taking place online via the Zoom video conferencing service, these meetings are intended as an informal way of allowing RISC OS programmers, and anyone interested in the subject, to get together online to discuss relevant matters. There is no set agenda for these online meetings, and instead the discussion is steered by what people want to talk about. People are free to ask questions or bring up (and…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

@breakintoprogram.co.uk I have found it. Knew I had a spare somewhere, and it’s ’beige’ too. 1.44Mb. It’s yours!

@colinhoad.com

The Advent of Beeb Games... returns for 2025! youtu.be/RHdgIHr78RMhttps://youtu.be/RHdgIHr78RM

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Huge thanks to the lovely staff at @computinghistory.org.uk for being perfect hosts for RetroFest 2025 ( Gaming Edition ). Massive thanks also to @shortcircuit.org.uk for organising everything and making the event such a great success. Same goes to the amazing exhibitors who made it all possible.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Great to meet Andrew Barnabas ( composer ) at the retro event in Cambridge on Sunday.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

BBC Micro Galaforce can be found in the Power Up exhibition at the Science Museum in London - and Manchester! I feel very old now knowing that my work is in museums....

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@iconbar.com

London Show 2025 talks are now online to watch

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/London_Show_2025_talks_are_now_online_to_watch/index2260.html

The recordings of the talks at the recent London Show are now available on YouTube.

WROCC November 2025 talk on Wednesday - Martin Avison

Recording of talk is now online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNTkF0Q9_VU

London Show 2025 talks are now online to watch

The recordings of the talks at the recent London SHow are now available on youtube.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Oooops! Look what followed me home from the Retrofest gaming event. I guess I have a new PET to look after. Needs some work doing to it before it's ready to go! The first computer I ever used. Thank you, Chuck Peddle.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Great to meet some wonderful people at the Retro Computer Fest 2025 event in Cambridge!

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

I've just reminded myself that not only are Greek and Cyrillic Alphabets routinely confused with UTF-8, even Latin1 is not immune - something as typographically unremarkable as "×£" would be misunderstood as "ף", a Hebrew character.

This is why KeyPress must be interpreted in the current Alphabet.

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@armbytes.bsky.social

https://youtu.be/RNTkF0Q9_VU?si=brT347njU1CtomLm

@armbytes.bsky.social

Interested in coding on RISC OS? Want to learn more or meet others? Join our friendly fireside chat on Zoom—DM for credentials (unchanged). If you are a developer, come and connect. The event is this Saturday, 22nd November, at 7:30 pm (GMT). #Zoom #Meetup #RaspberryPi #ARM #Retro #AcornComputers

Gradgrind updated

Gradgrind (a palette/gradient editor for RISC OS) has been updated to 0.92beta, with new features and a number of important bug fixes.

New features include the ability to import/export GIMP palettes, modify palette files in more ways, and an extra display for the palette.

Summary info on the ROAST site , or see the Downloads page for full details of the changes.

RISC OS and Wifi

its here for the ROD stack only listed under John Ballance not Risc OS Developments…. https://gitlab.riscosdev.co.uk/johnballance/internet6

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Had a very busy first day at @computinghistory.org.uk for the retro festival gaming edition event. Great speaking with so many people about the BBC Micro and gaming in general. Thanks to those who said hello. One more day to go. Thanks to @breakintoprogram.co.uk for the company and transport.

Rougol November 2025 meeting on monday - Pyromaniac update

The Pyromaniac project has evolved into other areas, so I'll be talking about how that's happened. About RISC OS Pyromaniac, the tools that I've created, the way that I'm testing things, the things that I'm doing towards RISC OS 64, and how I've changed what I'm doing to be more effective.

@rougol.bsky.social

At this Monday's (17th) ROUGOL meeting we will be hearing all about the evolution of RISC OS Pyromaniac from Gerph. Last pub meet of the year! https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

Pyromaniac Evolution at ROUGOL – 17th November

Your next opportunity to attend a RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meeting is Monday, 17th November, where Gerph will be discussing the evolution of RISC OS Pyromaniac. If you don’t already know, RISC OS Pyromaniac is an online resource developed by Gerph that provides a semi-hosted re-implementation of RISC OS, capable of running 32-bit programs with a focus on testing software. Gerph first talked about the system to ROUGOL five years ago this month, with the last follow-up talk four years ago – and if you want to…

Theatre talks from the London Show now on YouTube

The RISC OS London Show, which took place a few short weeks ago, maintained the usual format – a main hall where the exhibitors had their stands, and a show theatre for a selection of exhibitors to deliver short talks. If you couldn’t attend the talks on the day – or the show itself (shame on you, unless you have a good excuse) – you can now watch them online thanks to the recording and editing efforts of Leo White. If you want to watch them all in one long…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm now using &437 for that RISC OS Alphabet which required a little "handling" of OS_Byte,71 - so this module actually enables all other 16b Alphabet numbers.

Form an orderly queue.

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NAS devices

Thanks for help so far. I’ll contact RISC OS suppliers next week.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The "AI that's taking your job" drawing clocks...https://clocks.brianmoore.com/

@iconbar.com

Rougol November 2025 meeting on monday - Pyromaniac update

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_November_2025_meeting_on_monday_-_Pyromaniac_update/index2256.html

The November 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday and features Gerph.

Why is ROOL doing this?

Ok, so maybe ‘random’ wasn’t strictly accurate, what I really do is use the same one swi allocation that was ever even approximately mine every time I write a module. From memory this includes the original use, a podule rom board to boot NFS, A broken driver for DE600 parallel Ethernet interface, a dot1Q vlan encapsulation layer (also broken) a driver for a bbc Winchester or Filestore drive on a Arc 1MHze bus podule, or more recently a DCI 4 implementation of the DCI2 ip over econet encapsulation, so I think I will get away with it for a while yet.

Clearly a web site you make an account on, confirm you email, upload the !Allocate file, which at least proves you are reasonably ligit, and emails you back and displays on the web page, would be very much better.

RISC OS London Show 2025 - Notes from the talks

The videos of the show theatre persentations are now online...

@rougol.bsky.social

The recordings of the RISC OS London Show theatre presentations are now availablehttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdbtoCQ_z-HFgLf7GUliPGIX5CNSTk97Bhttps://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdbtoCQ_z-HFgLf7GUliPGIX5CNSTk97B

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas.

Updated XP1Dr2SVG

@Clive

your new version works well, well done.

I continued working on !Svg2Draw, I added xlink decoding. I had problems with your old files because there is a element which is actually not used.

In your new version the tags remain but this element no longer has content and in this case my program works.

Thank you for your drawings and your program, this allows me to develop the application.

For anecdote, as I had not understood that these drawings were illustrations for your books, I looked for towns like Meyroha, Barioha… :-)

@armbytes.bsky.social

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdbtoCQ_z-HFgLf7GUliPGIX5CNSTk97B&si=ag3CwzFaUw_3cItA

RingBound

Version 0.48 of !RingBind uploaded. This has almost identical functionality to version 0.44 but adds an edit mode where internal links can be added.

Rougol November 2025 meeting on monday - Pyromaniac update

The November 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday and features Gerph.

Recce outage

Apologies to Recce users who may have noticed that fetching Google StreetView images has not been working since the start of November. We have now fixed the problem. There is no need to update your software.

If you do notice persistent problems with any of the Recce data sources, do please let us know via the support email address or our contact form as we may not be using the software as frequently as you do!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A creditable showing for the BBC Micro against various souped-up Apple IIs, but no Second Processor versions which (by the end of 1984) included 65C02, Z-80B, 6809 and 68000 options. All would have been faster yet.

Later there'd be 65C102, 80186, 80286, 32016 and of course ARM.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

"I thought I was following that guy?"

Six months later...https://media.tenor.com/EMPvXgWy1QUAAAAC/gandalf.gif?hh=280&ww=498

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I see the new version of the versatile Amazon Echo is specially optimised for listening to Ozric Tentacles.

That's a Wynne-Win for me.

Toolbox File Format

Yes, though remember Gadget is a variable size depending on the gadget. The original Toolbox manual describes it the best as it highlights various pitfalls.

Set num_gadgets and they then go sequentially in the ‘data’ field. Each gadget has a size, which is (usually) the offset to the next gadget.

http://www.riscos.com/support/developers/toolbox/windo…

http://www.riscos.com/support/developers/toolbox/windo…

The pitfalls are that you shouldn’t assume the size of each header (ie. Window template or Gadget template) and instead use the offsets “The use of a body_offset field is to allow expansion in the header, without losing backwards compatibility.” Similarly ‘gadgets’ is an offset, in the Window template, and “type/size” has the gadget size in the gadget top two bytes (the second link above describes “type/size”).

For reading a file, you should handle the offsets properly, but the reality is they are just memory dumps of the C structures that have never changed size.

Annoyingly, it says “Note that for the gadgets listed below, the size is ‘built in’ to the Window module, and so the size can be set to zero…” which is ridiculous, so means you’ll have to hard-code the sizes for the original gadget set. I think you should use the built-in size if the value in the file is zero, and the value in the file if it’s non-zero.

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

The pre-built version of v0.9.4 for Mac linked to from the official homepage includes an Intel and ARM64 universal binary for the Interpreter version, which averages around 280 MIPS on my M4 Mac.

StrongED stopped working

I can use the current VZap on my Pi CM4 with Nvme just fine with no errors, the Nvme Drive is just seen as ADFS 4 mine is also a FAST System

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

But do remember that the point of using Docker is so that you're not having to rebuild things everywhere - you can either use the image directly, or overlay additional content on it. If you want just the RPCEmu system that's in gerph/rpcemu-base. And of course, if you've any improvements to the system, PRs are always gratefully received.

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

Many thanks!

!UnixFonts

Are there any more !UnixFonts available for Iris? or can we add more?

See https://freetype.org/freetype2/docs/index.html for supported font types.

There are some available via PackMan.

and is there any reason Iris can?t use the full font system on risc os?

It would be better to ask ‘is there any reason why RISC OS can’t use FreeType for it’s font system’.

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

The details are all in the source repository I posted.

@colinhoad.com

I detest this recent UX trend where the options to a supposedly binary question are "Yes" and "Maybe Later" / "Not Right Now" / "Review Later". What's wrong with a plain "No"?

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

If you have the details on how to build from source, I would love to give it a try and post the results.

RPCEmu inside Docker, using VNC

The article today about using RPCEmu on macOS reminded me that I’ve not mentioned the Docker images for RPCEmu that I created some time ago since they were updated. It also made me finally add the automatic resizing and push a multi-arch image (coo, I can now do both ARM and AMD in the same image!).

To use…

docker run -it --rm -p 5901:5901 -v $PWD:/riscos/Shared gerph/rpcemu-3.7

or

docker run -it --rm -p 5901:5901 -v $PWD:/riscos/Shared gerph/rpcemu-5

then connect to the VNC server (with Screen Sharing, or some other client) at localhost:5901 and use the password password.

The current working directory is shared into $.Shared.

As this is a separate configuration, a clean system, and has access to the filesystem it’s really trivial to customise, or just use for running those odd things that you need now and then. And you can be sure that you’ve not broken the system as it’s exactly as distributed.

The disc image is as supplied by the easy start bundles, with tiny tweaks (removing the Acorn logo from the backdrop, changing the screen mode to be larger, and adding a module that resizes the X server on mode change). This also has the interesting side effect of making the system rather more useable when made full screen.

And of course, being docker, you can also run this on Linux and on Windows, and it’ll be pretty much the same.

Sources, as usual, are on GitHub – https://github.com/gerph/rpcemu-docker. You can see the startlingly dumb way that the screen resolution is communicated out of the emulator in the VNCResize module. It’s certainly enough to work on the simple mode changes.

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

The macOS RPCEmu seems good to me on my home Mac - it's an older Intel mac though, so that might be some of the reason. However, using it with networking natively is much more difficult. I used to have it working, but on one upgrade or another it broke.

@armbytes.bsky.social

https://youtu.be/W2yDnrYrhR0?si=P6SmBoxq5k_907t0

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I’ve mentioned it before but it continues to intrigue me – compare the mysterious Mexico [sic] alphabet from the M128 International ROM with the CodePage-437 character set.

Both of these are RISC OS Alphabets (but not 7bit numbers) and make a distinction between semantic and appearance Unicodes:

@iconbar.com

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Moving_back_to_Linux_RPCEmu_on_my_Mac/index2244.html

I'm a big fan of RPCEmu which provides an excellent RISC OS environment on my Mac when I'm travelling. In this post I'm going to explore why I have switched back to the Linux version and cover some of the issues I encountered.

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

I'm not sure how you're getting numbers so low on your Mac version. I just opened an old version I compiled a while back on my M1 Mac and get an average of just under 140 MIPS. Copying it over to an M4 Mac I have for work, it gets an average of around 220.

RISC PC Boot Failure with UniPod

Wonderful! glad its working

Floating Point in C

I’ve got the score up over 900k, and once over 1m, by giving it more registers – I chose to set the baseline to allow the output to run on a PiZero which only has 8 D VFP registers. But 8 D registers means (under AAPCS) none are preserved over a function call. Giving it more would clearly be more efficient, but limits the h/w it can run on. I see apcs-softpcs (which I copied for VFP init) requests 16 D registers.

Curiously, 4 saved D FP registers outperforms 6 or 7 saved (ie. in addition to the 8 D arg registers) – I’ll investigate more as that shouldn’t really happen. ARM’s Norcroft currently has a limit of 31 registers (int + FP), due to its impressive use of signed maths throughout, so I can’t easily use 8 + 8.

After a little bit of fiddling around … it now runs.

That’s quite neat. Potentially could be useful, in fact, since my regression test harness (running on unix) can’t execute any code under RISC OS, only check the disassembled output. I was pondering ELF output for a Pi, but I’ve done all the work on a Mac (hence RPCEmu, hence forgetting about unaligned memory).

Modern, mainstream browsers tend to block insecure links/content in secure pages.

Yay, fewer spamages. It’s literally a one-line python http.server running as a very restricted user as I couldn’t be bothered to setup up a web server, but probably should one day.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Timing... 🧐

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@colinhoad.com

5 months in to the 5:2 diet and I've lost 7.5kg as of this morning 😊

Moving back to Linux RPCEmu on my Mac

I am a big fan of RPCEmu which provides an excellent RISC OS environment on my Mac when I am travelling. In this post I am going to explore why I have switched back to the Linux version and cover some of the issues I encountered.

ROOL adds Fortran support in latest DDE update

That's pretty cool. I'd love to see Python and COBOL added, particularly Python. Yes, it's an interpreted language by design, but on other platforms you can compile it, too.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Okudagrams are old-hat, so of course must be supported in RISC OS.

Keyboard layout and *configure country

Looking at the RISC OS source, on reset the keyboard type is set to UK in KeyPostInit in Kernel/s/PMF/key. I have modified RISCOS.IMG so that this routine sets the type to USA instead of UK (by directly changing byte 0×458d4 of the RPi Stable 5.30 ROM image to 0×30, from 0×01 – there doesn’t seem to be any checksum on this binary image on the Pi).

As a workaround, this seems fine – now I have a default USA keyboard when booting directly to supervisor/BASIC.

Translating BASIC to C

Long term readers of these fora may remember that I think Printer Manager is far too big to be extended to deal with IPP printers in its present BASIC form.

It occurred to me that it might be possible to translate it to C, in small increments, leaving it testable at all times, by translating bottom-up (i.e. replacing the lowest level functions and procedures first) and replacing them with calls to a module written in C. The module would only be needed until all the translation is done, by which time we’d have a complete translation into C that then would be converted from a module to an app.

Printer Manager is an enormous job to take on top-down, as nothing could be used until it’s all done. The way I’m suggesting would have something testable and usable (the ultimate test of testability!) at all stages.

Any thoughts?

!FTPcs Problem

Shouldn’t affect anything other than another ftp client that uses AcornSSL which it would fix

Running a BASIC programme

If you double-click on a BASIC file in a filer window, you get a window headed ‘Run RAM::RamDisc0.\(.ProgName’ when it asks for INPUT. BASIC has been run by the Alias\)@RunType_FFB system variable *Basic -quit %0.

Is there any way of accessing this info from within BASIC to know, for example, from which directory the file was launched?

Sine Nomine Software at the London Show

The new software is now all available from the Sine Nomine Software website. There are small charges for upgrading ImpEmail, Impact and RiscOSM.

We have also uploaded fresh map data, suitable for use only with the latest version of RiscOSM, version 2.30. Datasets for a wider range of European countries will be appearing over the next few days, including those like Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria which really benefit from the improved support for non-Latin scripts.

UltimaVM - project's updates 2025-11-08

Given the interest shown at the latest RISC OS London Show by many people, here is a post about the new progress with examples:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2025/11/09/ultimavm-u…

Enjoy! :)

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Here is an article with all the details about a new chunk of progresses on #UltimaVM and the new project's mascot Luma. Still lots of work to finish to get the first beta release out, but hey I am moving forward!https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2025/11/09/ultimavm-update-2025-11-08-more-features-added-to-ultima-function-pointers-code-sections-and-more/ #RISC_OS #riscos #Linux #Windows #macOS #BSD

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I've just uploaded an update to my RISC OS !RMA utility, primarily to fix RO3 compatibility (thanks to Phil Pemberton for the report) but I noticed I hadn't released the previous version that featured an important upgrade - the ability to explore ANY Heaped Dynamic Area. So, a useful update:https://rma.20000.org

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 9th November at 1pm.

Starting in 20 minutes.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Remembering my great-grandfather, William George Edwards who lost his life on 27th March 1915. Chief Engineer on the SS "Aguila", attacked by a U-boat. His son, my grandfather, was just 9 at the time. #lestweforget

@riscosbits.co.uk

New video uploaded: youtu.be/AuB1leFGihY

Demonstrates how our RISC OS Companions integrate with the RISC OS desktop environment.

#RISC_OS #RISCOSCompanionhttps://youtu.be/AuB1leFGihY

RPCEmu NAT fail.

LDRB     r12,[r0,#8]
LDRB     r12,[r0,#9]

Could this perhaps be a really really old codegen bug that’s been unmasked by a code change? It looks awfully similar to a short accessing bug I reported in 1989. We had to work around that with a macro that did the operations discretely.

Problem connecting to gitlab.

Is there a problem with gitlab? I haven’t been able to connect during the day for 2 days. I was wondering if other people have a problem connecting.

Status update for RISC OS 64-bit work

getting married

Congratulations indeed!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

3Dfx. Simply the best! I remember buying my first 3Dfx videocard - an Orchid Righteous 3D. Truly a game changer! Programmers could use the Glide 3D graphics API or battle with an early version of DirectX.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Apparently overclocking calculators is actually a thing!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seBmf9gMQO0

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Preparing for the Retro Computing Festival ( Gaming Edition ) 2025 at The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge next weekend. Here's a Visual Code setup that allows me to build 'Galaforce 2' from its original 6502 source code and deploy the game to an emulator on a PC. Simple, quick workflow!

!Paint Outline Fonts

Nope, not at all.

It’s not just praise that helps developers, as there are “faults” that aren’t actually technical failures.

Explanations of what is perceived as not right, and suggestions for an alternate, are useful too.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Les Dennis is counting the days to the inevitable dramatisation, isn't he.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The development studio for 'X2: Wolverine’s Revenge' - Bruntwood Hall, Cheadle, Manchester (2002). This is where we developed the game - on the top floor, formerly the servant's quarters. I'm at the back popping up my head to see what's going on. That arched window is where we are located - top left

RISCOSBITS New Stacker!

i could also use the linux side’s NVME drive and mount as a NAS/Share on any of my RiscOS machines! it also showed up on Windows and Mac!

LinuxBits Icon – CM5 part of the stacker

PiServer – Other CM5 with Netatalk for wider sharing across multiple platforms

Guide to Impression

The Guide to the Impression Suite now comes with a complete worked example of how to turn a document into a RindBind manual. It starts with an Impression Publisher document which is the original manual for Equasor, TableMate etc. that was originally created in Impression. The process to print that as a PDF, then to extract individual Draw files for each page from that PDF is described in detail with examples at each stage. Packaging this into a ‘RingBind’ file is also described in detail with all the files created at each stage provided. As RingBind reserves space for the Draw file data for four pages, each the size of the largest individual Draw file for a page, it makes sense to reduce the few largest Draw files to a resolution appropriate to screen display rather than printing. The process to do this is also described. A copy of MakeDraw is required.

RO 5.30 Upgrade

Thank you

BBC BASIC - Simple OOP Extensions

I have always thought that BBCBASIC needed records.

RTR’s BASICs have Structures, but the syntax doesn’t really feel native to BBCBASIC.

I have been a fan of Wirth’s Oberon with type extension of records as it is a clean simple concept.

Most OO languages go off into the weeds with very complex and subtle features that are not really needed for 99% of programs.

I have outlined a possible syntax/semantics for a simplified OOP style record structure description below.

Let me know what you think.

OUTLINE OF CONCEPT:

Defininng a record type

No Args (fixed size)

DEF RECmyrec

A% // Integer field

B // Floating field

C$ // String field

D@ // Pointer field (any RECxxx) initial value NULL

DIM E% 1024 // Raw byte block field 1kB inline in record, use with indirection operators

DIM F%(9) // Array of 10 ints

DIM G(9) // Array of 10 floats

DIM H$(9) // Array of 10 strings

DIM I@(9) // Array of 10 pointer to record initial value NULL

ENDREC

With Args (variable size and initial values)

DEF RECmyvarrec(n$,m%,blocksize%)

name\( = n\) // Initialise value

DIM list$(m%) // n+1 strings – record contains a pointer to the array

DIM block% blocksize%*2+38 // can do calculations; specifies number of bytes, numbered 0 to result-1

ENDREC

Global or Private

R@ = RECmyrec // Globals use the heap (I would prefer if the language had GLOBAL to specify global varsfor symmetry/clarity)

// this version of the creation syntax does not make it obvious that allocation is taking place here

GLOBAL R@ = RECmyrec // opt global designator

R@ = NEW RECobject // alternetive syntax choice for creating a new record, makes it explicit that record allocation is taking place.

PRIVATE T@ = NEW RECmyrec // PRIVATEs use the heap. Same as PRIVATE in RTRBBCBASIC

STATIC — used for “class variables/methods” see below

I prefer the use of NEW rather than DIM because DIM is already used for Arrays and Structures

Stack (LOCAL vars)

LOCAL S@ = NEW RECmyvarrec(“Bob”,9,256) // Locals also use the heap because we will often export the reference from the scope expecting the record to persist.

When LOCAL pointer variable goes out of scope, the pointer on the stack is deleted, but the record (on heap) remains and may cause memory leaks,

CLEANUP should be used periodically.

If it is known that the record is no longer needed, it should be deleted before it goes out of scope.

The interpreter could detect escaping references and delete those that don’t, this can be complex with subtle errors, so manual or GC is easier.

Alternatively use Reference Counting (simpler, but risks memory leaks)

Delete Records and Release Heap Memory (manual GC)

DEL p@ — frees the storage fields (strings, arrays, blocks) then frees the record, does NOT follow pointer fields.

CLEANUP — executed outside any PROC or FN, marks all records reachable via global and private pointer variables then sweeps unmarked heap, does NOT follow pointers stored in Raw byte data blocks.

Method:

Add all global & static pointers to the keep queue

While keep queue not empty

….Pull the next pointer from the keep queue as current record

….If current record not marked

……..Add all pointers to records to the keep queue

……..Mark current record for retention

Sweep the record heap freeing all unmarked records using the DEL operation above.

DELREC q@ — as DEL above, BUT it also follows pointer chains deleting all linked records, does NOT follow pointers stored in Raw byte data blocks.

Method:

Add q@ to the delete queue

While delete queue not empty

….Pull the next pointer from the delete queue as current record

….If current record not marked

……..Add all pointers to the delete queue

……..Free all the storage fields

……..Mark current record for deletion

Sweep the record heap freeing all marked records

Access to fields

The field access operator is . followed by the name of a field.

name\( = P@.name\)

Procedure Fields / methods

DEF RECobject

A%

B%

DEF PROCmethod1(a%,b%) // LOCAL vars and params must not have the same name as a record field!

A%=a%-b%

B%=a%+b%

ENDPROC

DEF FNfunc1….

DEF PROCmethod2……

ENDREC

Usage of procedure fields:

R@ = NEW RECobject // alternetive syntax choice for creating a new record, makes it explicit that record allocation is taking place.

R@.PROCmethod1(56,99)

q = R@.FNfunc1

Record Extension and overrides

DEF RECparent(args)

name$

DEF PROCmethod1:ENDPROC // an empty method, calling it does nothing, acts as a placeholder for later redefinition.

DEF PROCmethod2(blah%)

// Some code here

ENDPROC

DEF PROCmethod3(blah%)

// Some other code here

ENDPROC

DEF PROCmethod4:UNDEFINED:ENDPROC — an undefined method placeholder, calling it throws an error, must redefine, like abstract in other languages.

ENDREC

DEF RECchild1(args) EXTEND RECparent(arg exprs) // allows inherited fields to be initialised/dimensioned

address$ // a new field

DEF PROCmethod1 // this overrides any method with the same name, implements something for method1.

// Do something

ENDPROC

// PROCmethod2 is not defined here, so the one from the parent is inherited.

DEF PROCmethod3(blah%) // overrides PROCmethod3

// Do this

PARENT.PROCmethod3(blah%+8) — here we call PROCmethod3 from the parent.

// Do That

ENDPROC

DEF PROCmethod4 // this defines PROCmethod4 for the first time.

// Do something. Calling PARENT.method4 here throws an error (default halt program)

ENDPROC

ENDREC

PARENT

// passes control to an overridden method, that method may have been inherited through several levels of extension, it will activate the last matching definition.

THIS

// refers to the current object within a method, it is implied when accessing fields within methods.

TYPE$

// refers to the type of a record as a string e.g. “RECchild1”

TYPE

// refers to the type of the record internal representation, can be used for type tests

IF THIS.TYPE = RECchild1 THEN …

TYPE and TYPE$ work on any pointer variable as well. to allow type comparisons (compare 2 pointers or pointer against TYPE value):

IF R@.TYPE = P@.TYPE // do they have the same dynamic type?

IF R@.TYPE <> RECsometype // R@ is NOT pointing to a RECsometype?

IF R@.TYPE > P@.TYPE // is R@ pointing to a supertype of P@?

IF R@.TYPE >= P@.TYPE // is R@ the same OR a supertype of P@?

IF R@.TYPE < RECparent // is R@ a subtype of RECparent?

IF R@.TYPE <= RECparent // is R@ the same as or a subtype of RECparent?

Calling an undefined method is a fatal error and will halt the program.

Fields are not redefined/overridden and must only be named once in an extension chain.

There is no multiple inheritance, interfaces, generics as these are complex and hard to do correctly.

Managing Namespace Pollution and example of “class” var/method

If a program has a large number of record types with lots of internal fields and methods that the user of the record does not need to touch the interface becomes a confusing mess.

Most OOP languages allow marking fields and methods as private/public, etc

I propose that for the BASIC extension above that all fields and methods are private by default and only visible inside the REC structure and by any child REC that extends from it.

To make things visible to the program at large, fields and methods are marked with an export mark ‘<-’

DEF RECobject

<- A% // A% is visible to the whole program as MyPtr@.A%

B% // B% is only visible to methods inside RECobject fatal error to attempt access outside.

<- STATIC C% // this is global to all instances of RECobject

<- DEF PROCmethod1(a%,b%) // Can be called anywhere as MyPtr@.PROCmethod1(…)

A%=a%-b%

B%=a%+b%

ENDPROC

DEF FNfunc1 // Can be called inside PROCmethod1 or PROCmethod2 or FNfunc1 as THIS.FNfunc1(…) or PARENT.FNfunc1 (if inherited)

= C%

<- DEF PROCmethod2 // Can be called anywhere as MyPtr@.PROCmethod2(…)

A% = THIS.FNfunc1

ENDPROC

<- STATICDEF PROCdouble // affects all instances, can be called without any live instance

C% = C% * 2 // Can only manipulate STATIC fields and call STATIC methods/functions

ENDPROC

ENDREC

The exported API of this REC is:

DEF RECobject

<- A% // A% is visible to the whole program as MyPtr@.A%

<- STATIC C% // this is global to all instances of RECobject

<- DEF PROCmethod1(a%,b%) // Can be called anywhere as MyPtr@.PROCmethod1(…)

<- DEF PROCmethod2 // Can be called anywhere as MyPtr@.PROCmethod2(…)

<- STATICDEF PROCdouble // affects all instances, can be called without any live instance

ENDREC

Example usage outside the definition

RECobject.C% = 5 // set the class var C% to 5 for all RECobjects

R@ = NEW RECobject

R@.PROCmethod1(20,10)

PRINT R@.A% // prints 10

R@.PROCmethod2

PRINT R@.A% // prints 5

DEL R@ // delete the record

RECobject.PROCdouble // there are no live instances at this time

p@ = NEW RECobject

p@.PROCmethod1(100, 15)

PRINT p@.A% // prints 85

p@.PROCmethod2

PRINT p@.A% // prints 10, as C% was doubled by PROCdouble

DEL p@ // delete the record

Sorry about the terrible formatting, the forum editor wipes indentation.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here's a Sinclair Microdrive cartridge with a UK pound coin for comparison. We trusted these mini-magnetic tape loops with our valuable data in the 1980s. Totally insane! To be fair, they were actually quite reliable. The tape loop is 5 metres long and stores a minimum of 85 to 100KBytes of data.

@colinhoad.com

Managed to Harry Potter myself on the corner of a kitchen cabinet this morning ⚡️

Compute Module 4 supported?

Have you tried CPUClock?

Many thanks Andy and everyone who replied, that was so simple and now CPUClock controls my CM4 temperature.

my machine is clocked at 2200MHz.

George I have increased my clock speed from 2 GHz to 2.1GHz, I am not quite brave enough at the moment to go all the way to 2.2GHz.

Finally, many thanks to all the brave pioneers who five years ago, helped develop the CM4 into the great device it is today.

Sites blocking all but mainstream browsers

I’ve just tried updating the useragent on !Iris to a newer version as its a few versions behind, ebay loads but doesnt load very well with Chrome 132.0.0.0 as default agent. as suspected websites are changing again and Iris is starting to break down. i’ve noticed a few sites being rejected or just hanging.

Iris/Python3

Yep its very good, recommended to install if you’ve not got it yet already! TCP IP Stack 7.09 – Netmanager Oct 2025

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Thanks to @markee174 and The Icon Bar for the review of the latest issue of Archive! #riscos #acorn #raspberrypihttps://www.iconbar.com/articles/Archive_Edition_276_reviewed/index2253.html

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

VCR tape copying virus! Hilarious. I should have implemented a similar thing in my BBC Micro game protection systems.

Contacting members

Many forums allow contact, although it’s done via “private messages” inside the forum system rather than by providing contact details directly. As far as I’m aware there is no such feature on the ROOL forums.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

BBC Basic is not Perl, but nemoBasic’s long strings and DIV$ operator do make it good at consuming and parsing text files.

I’ve just added a long-planned feature: “StrongTabs” seps mode – which isn’t limited to tab characters or one-character separators, but consumes multiple separators as one...

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

This weekend I finally found some time to add multi-sentence line support and finish the Transpiling Framework for my #UltimaVM, a fast and secure bytecode interpreter for #Linux, #Windows, #macOS, #BSD, and #RISC_OS.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

In Blake 7, the flight computer of the Scorpio was in fact powered by an Acorn System 1. 6502 rules the universe!

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Picked up my Sinclair Oxford 300 from the calculator doctor @breakintoprogram.co.uk . Dean was able to track down the fault and get it back up and running again. We also had time to have a catch-up and talk about the good old days. Many thanks, Dean!

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Acorn Phoebe

Ref Phoebe has anyone seen one working?

Rare to have one fired up: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6753

Yeah it was fun to have access to it, if only for a couple of months.

I documented most of what I learnt here;

https://www.4corn.co.uk/articles/phoebe/

I think there is emulator version of Phoebe partly done.

It’s rpcemu;

https://www.4corn.co.uk/articles/phoebe/#emu

And having a 1GB physical address space != 1GB RAM.

Indeed, it was a max of 512MB RAM on the Phoebe in 2x 256MB simms

What is Hearsay?

So not David Pilling’s terminal emulator then, despite him being the first in your list, or maybe because…

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

What is Hearsay? www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20094 #riscos #acorn #raspberrypi #opensource

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The multi-page HSBC advert in today's Times is I think the most complicated bit of web binding/gathering I've ever seen in newsprint. Amazing use of narrowed webs! Very clever. There was a time this would have been prohibitively expensive, but print advertising is dying. Omnicom Media is this you?

@iconbar.com

WROCC November 2025 talk on Wednesday - Martin Avison

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_November_2025_talk_on_Wednesday_-_Martin_Avison/index2243.html

The November 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 5th November and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

WROCC November 2025 talk on Wednesday - Martin Avison

The November 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 5th November and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

risc pc alpha 1 file transfer

The Drivers you need and app are all part of the 3.07 Package of !Pc which is here PC3.07 – in this version is an app called !MakeBootDisc which will get you up and running, will display a menu and ask if you want to boot 95 or 98 CD

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Do you remember using these?

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Quick, recover the data before the disk totally dies! Squeaky disks always get my heart racing.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Moldy disks - my pet hate! Especially when you have important disks to try and archive. This Aculab DASH-80 system disk is probably the only one in existence. I have managed to recover most of it after a lot of cleaning. A bit more work and I can hopefully fully recover.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

You must watch this! The early history of ARM by Sophie Wilson, one of the co-creators of the ARM processor.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8MWXdEbDeI

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 2nd November at 1pm.

Quite a slow session today; lots of chatter about other things, but also a lot of explaining why I’ve planned things the way that I have, and how I’m doing this work.

The repository – riscos-wimp-templates – has a simple build and CI environment that tests things. We can open a file and close it – that’s pretty much it. But I’ve also created a simple module that lets us call the SWIs that are defined.

The modules, such as they are, can be found in the riscos64-status repository, as usual.

Interestingly, at the end, I used `PicoC` to perform the test on RISC OS 64, as there isn’t a useful 64bit RISC OS BASIC on there – I never got around to making the SDLBASIC do SWI calls properly.

Next week, I’ll be continuing, I think. Working on the Window and Icon decoding from the templates.

BASIC V 1.85 buggy formatting

I can’t think of a computer language I’ve used that has implied multiplication.

Computers are stupid, they need everything spelt out explicitly, which is exactly how it should be.

Boot RISC OS Pi on Pi 4 from MSD

You could try reformatting the card, downloading the RISC OS Open Raspberry Pi card image – it’s the first item here:

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry…

and imaging it to the reformatted card. You’ll need a USB SD card reader but these are readily and cheaply obtainable. You’ll also need disc-imaging software – as it happens Raspberry Pi do a perfectly good one:

https://raspberrytips.com/raspberry-pi-imager-guide/

You can’t simply copy the diskimage to the card, the card must be imaged, hence the need for imager software (apologies if you already know all this, I can’t estimate your capability from the original post). Good luck, HTH.

Boot RISC OS Pi on Pi 4 from MSD

You could try reformatting the card, downloading the RISC OS Open Raspberry Pi card image – it’s the first item here:

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry…

and imaging it to the reformatted card. You’ll need a USB SD card reader but these are readily and cheaply obtainable. You’ll also need disc-imaging software – as it happens Raspberry Pi do a perfectly good one:

https://raspberrytips.com/raspberry-pi-imager-guide/

You can’t simply copy the diskimage to the card, the card must be imaged, hence the need for imager software (apologies if you already know all this, I can’t estimate your capability from the original post). Good luck, HTH.

October 2025 News Summary

https://www.davidpilling.com/wiki/index.php/Spell

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Two weeks to go....

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Well... 🙀

Learning BASIC

Last year I spent many ‘happy’ months writing these short guides. Having taught English abroad for 13 years I learned the hazards of ‘teacher talk’ and as you can see these volumes contain only code, with some image [usually of what the code produces on screen], but without the usual waffle most other programming books contain.

The title ‘The Happy Hacker’ was inspired by a song of the same name written by Chris Jeffers for the Alto computer over at Xerox PARC. [ https://soundcloud.com/audimprove/happy-hacker and https://vimeo.com/111334072].

Last week I reviewed all of the code and came up with one small improvement:

Rotate {Volume 1, page 12}

…

REPEAT

MOUSE x,y,button

…

ELSE

WAIT <———-add this to smooth rotation!

PROCplot_points

PROCrotate

PROCplot_points

ENDIF

UNTIL button <> 0

The original does NOT contain the ‘WAIT’ command – it still works but not smoothly.

I also made some additional content, not yet included in this Happy Hacker series, which I may include in ‘Volume 14’ one day.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/9gkst23e5499j5r/The+Hap…

October 2025 News Summary

MultiTask now disassembles Draw files extracted from a PDF and concatenates individual characters on the same line to form words and spaces.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Bless the positivity of ebay reviews.

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@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

Look what's arrived, just in time for the weekend. #ArchiveMagazine #RISC_OS @archiveriscos.bsky.social

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Happy Halloween! Who remembers playing 'Ghouls' on the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron?

@iconbar.com

October 2025 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/October_2025_News_Summary/index2236.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

PipeDream 4.63 released

You can now download this from https://croftnuisk.co.uk/coltsoft/ or wait a little until it reaches PackMan’s updated list…

Source available in GitHub for the curious – https://github.com/skswales/colton-software-pipedream4 – as well as downloadable binaries in case my site goes phut.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A signed print of the cover artwork for 'Acorn : A World in Pixels' by Ste Pickford @stepickford.bsky.social. Ste and I worked together on several games at Software Creations in the 1990s. I love this artwork. Can you identify all of the characters/games featured?

WROCC explores Pluto – 5th November

That’s the email client, not the dwarf planet, of course! Martin Avison will be the guest speaker at the next Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) meeting, at which he will be discussing news and email client Pluto. The application was first developed in the late 1990s by Jonathan Duddington, and Martin will go into detail about its history, leading up to it becoming open source and still maintained even though its creator has moved on to other things. He will also demonstrate a new installation of Pluto, along with…

Post-show offers and updates from RISCOSbits

It’s now the end of October, and this year’s London Show has come and gone – hopefully it was a successful event for exhibitors, and an enjoyable one for visitors. It was certainly successful for RISCOSbits, according to a post-show announcement from Andy Marks. The first thing he mentioned were the slate coasters hinted at almost two weeks before the show, and revealed the day before. Describing them as very popular (I can see why), Andy says they are now a regular product and can be ordered online, individually or…

October 2025 News Summary

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Finally had some time to update #UltimaVM presentation article with all the latest improvements. I still need to publish the latest release of the Reference Manual, but at least the article is now up-to-date:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/portfolio/ultima-vm-unified-lightweight-typed-instructions-machine/#current-transpilling-framework-support-for-other-assembly-and-bytecode-transpilling

#Bytecode #VirtualMachine #RISC_OS #Linux #macOS

@iconbar.com

ROOL adds Fortran support in latest DDE update

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/ROOL_adds_Fortran_support_in_latest_DDE_update/index2254.html

ROOL clearly have big plans for the RISC OS DDE

ROOL adds Fortran support in latest DDE update

ROOL clearly have big plans for the RISC OS DDE....

SerialUSB causes zero page access

I got mildly fed up of seeing a ZeroPain log entry every time I plug my phone in to charge it, so finally I got round to looking at the problem. Hardware is a Pi3B+ running RO5.31, never more than a few weeks old; and a Samsung S24 phone. The phone defaults to charge only, so it doesn’t appear to be a serial USB device.

The error happens with SerialUSB versions 0.14 and 0.16, but not with 0.12.

The error is at offset 0000588c in module SerialUSB, same address in 0.14 and 0.16. The instruction is LDR R1,[R0,#2] and R0 = 0. It happens if the phone is plugged in before power-up, and also if the phone is plugged in later.

I’d like to give more info, but the USBInfo app normally just puts up an error window saying “nown4.20 © Pineapple Software 1996” when I try to look at anything. There you are, two bugs for the price of one.

More seriously: whatever useful debug info I can give, just ask.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

45 years ago, the arcade game PAC-MAN was launched in North America ( October 1980 ). It was an instant hit and soon became one of the most iconic videgames of all time. 100s of copy-cat versions were created for home computers, virtually all were un-licensed. One of my all-time favourite games.

SYS as a function

Thanks for that. It looks like we’re mostly aligned. Keeping the non-RISC OS 5 clearly marked in the wiki helps avoid any confusion for people (notably developers) who are downloading RISC OS 5 from elsewhere on our site, or looking at the sources in our repo.

I would say that you announcing things or presenting things is great, but it isn’t equivalent to contacting us directly or even posting in the Code Review forum to discuss anything that will consume shared identifiers or flags. ROLL unfortunately doesn’t have the people or the bandwidth to proactively track everything going on in all the RISC OS-community and adjacent projects. If we’ve given mixed messages in the past, then I apologise for that.

That aside, it’s great to see people actively thinking about and working on paths that move RISC OS forward and out of the current 32-bit only shackles.

WROCC Meeting - Martin Avison: Pluto - 5th Nov

Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club

Meeting on Wednesday 5th November at 7.45pm

Martin Avison: Pluto

Martin will explain the background to Pluto, demonstrate a new install of Pluto and AntiSpam, send and receive some emails, and finally demonstrate a fully populated Pluto and some of its facilities.

This ‘virtual’ meeting is open to all, and will take place using the Zoom conferencing service using our regular meeting credentials. Zoom invitations will be sent out ahead of the meeting, but only to those who email info2025@wrocc.org.uk to request one. If you would like to be part of the meeting (and don’t already have the link from a previous meeting or receive an invite in the next 24 hours as a member of WROCC), please RSVP — at the latest by the end of Tuesday 4th November (GMT). We email the links out on the morning of the meeting.

If you haven’t used Zoom before, we suggest that before Wednesday you try to join the Zoom test meeting at https://zoom.us/test on the device that you intend to use, in order to check that your system works OK. You will not require a Zoom account to take part.

Past Meetings

Videos of previous meetings can be found in our links to past meetings at https://www.wrocc.org.uk/meetings

Club Membership

Annual membership of WROCC is available for those living near and far at 10.00ukp per year.

Members receive:

• A PDF newsletter with all the latest news and articles.
• Entry to meetings.
• Access to the WROCC Internet Discussion Forum.

For further information, please email info2025@wrocc.org.uk or visit the Club’s website at https://www.wrocc.org.uk

RISCOSbits Post Show Update

Fantastic show and i now have my new wooden case with printed extras, fits very nice on my desk with the new Keyboard and Mouse Pad :)

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I almost missed this anniversary! LEGO DC Super-Villains was launched in North America on the 16th October, 2018 - other regions shortly after. A great game and an amazing development team! I chose The Joker variation of the 'developer brick' for this game.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

An important thread:

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Way back in 1998 I was working on my first PC title, 'Incoming'. I was tasked with CPU & GPU optimizations and 3D card compatibility. Back then PC 3D cards were in their infancy and had lots of issues, mostly associated with their drivers. Sometimes we had to work around know problems with hacks!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

BBC Basic is available for multiple platforms and processors, but there’s one keyword (well, two) that’s definitely not portable – CALL.

I decided to address that (ha!) in nemoBasic:

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here's the letter I received from Superior Software after sending them an early version of BBC Micro 'Crazee Rider'. I'd only been working on the game for a short time so we were still working out which direction we should take. The original brief was a follow up to 'Overdrive', but with corners.

Thank You for an Incredible RISC OS London Show!

Belated thank you to everyone, exhibitors and visitors, who came along on Saturday and made it such a fun day with a lovely cheerful atmosphere. I had to keep putting extra chairs out in the theatre because it was packed with people standing at the back, which was great to see! Same again next year… :-)

Time and Date Issue

#MeToo. If it’s of interest, this is still an issue with the current ROM. Somehow it loses reference to Resources:$.Resources.UK.Messages and then many things (like *Time, Configure’s time&date and keyboard sections) stop working, with the error message being day-dependent ’cos the token being looked up is. I fixed it by replacing CMOS on the errant Pi with a backup.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Mr Kipling, this is pathetic. Dreadful. Abject.

I almost began to consider not eating it.

It actually looks better in the photo. Damn you Google camera wizards.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Thanks Google.

I mean Error Dog.

@iconbar.com

Archive Edition 27:6 reviewed

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Archive_Edition_276_reviewed/index2253.html

Archive Magazine 27:6 arrived this week, just in time to the London Show. After a quiet summer, it kicks off what looks like a busy Autumn.

Archive Magazine Oct/Nov 2025

Print copy arrived yesterday.

Archive Edition 27:6 reviewed

Archive Magazine 27:6 arrived this week, just in time to the London Show. After a quiet summer, it kicks off what looks like a busy Autumn.

@riscosbits.co.uk

It's been a satisfying evening... thanks, @archiveriscos.bsky.social

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The Acorn Springboard, an ARM co-processor upgrade for the IBM PC in the form of an ISA card. I don't think many of these were actually produced and are certainly rarer than the ARM Evaluation System Second Processors which attach to a BBC Micro. Does anyone have one of these or ever used one?

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The news section of Electron User kindly gave me some free publicity for Galaforce when it was launched. I think this was in the October 1986 issue.

RISC OS bites macOS

It turns out that files starting with the characters Draw were characteristic of a binary vector graphics format used by the !Draw app for RISC OS 2 in 1989.

first used by the !Draw app for RISC OS 2 in 1989. tyvm.

Fireworkz 2.33 released

You can now download this from https://croftnuisk.co.uk/coltsoft/ or wait a little until it reaches PackMan’s updated list…

Updated examples and docs packages too.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 26th October at 1pm.

A pretty excellent session (excluding the section where I left the audio off! oops!). Code variable private words are now in, the testing from RISC OS Pyromaniac has been added, and all passes, and it’s doing everything it needs to. It’s pretty much complete.

I might spend a little time on optimisations next week, to make it a bit more performant, if people are interested in that. If not, then next week I shall move on to another project.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Just got off a zoom call with an old friend from the Software Creations & Genepool days. Craig Houston and I worked on NES Wolverine, SNES Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge and X-2 Wolverine's Revenge. Great to have another catch-up. Photo shows me in blue jumper and Craig right at the back.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Huge thanks to @breakintoprogram.co.uk for fixing my broken Sinclair Oxford 300 calculator! Great to see it working again.

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Happy 25th Birthday to the SONY PlayStation 2 which was launched in North America on the 26th October 2000. Over 160 Million PS2s have been sold during its lifetime making it the best selling videogame console ever. Image credits:- Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Limited (SIEE).

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

What an incredible day at the past RISC OS London show!

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20078

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Last year I met up with schoolfriends Paul Proctor and Andrew Farrow. Paul programmed the BBC Micro conversions of Knight Lore, Alien 8, Nightshade and other Ultimate games. Andrew helped him with the room mapping. Paul played Alien 8 for the first time in about 40 years! Book/game signing too.

Pubilc Beta Test - Multi Machine UI

This is totally awesome, thanks Peter and Mat! :)

Creatng an ebook - 'part 2'

I’m now asking for info wrt a slightly different situation where I want to be able to make an ebook from a set of numbered jpeg files, one per page.

This is to generate ‘de-oxidised’ versions of PDFs of ancient pulp mags/paperbacks and render them in a far easier form to read.

I can export the jpegs OK. I can also write a Composcript to generate a new set of jpegs that have been ‘de-browned’. But I then need to put those into a new PDF with one jpeg per page. The result then to be more easily read using the usual ebook reading progs on my natty tablet device. (I’ll probably also greyscale the pages in most cases if they’re ‘colour’ jpegs with black text on the brown of oxidised pulp paper.

I don’t mind if the process has to take some time to chug though hundreds of jpegs, I can get a cup of single-estate tea and a biscuit as my RO box does the job. Problem at present is that some anient pulp mags/books are almost unreadable due to becoming oxidised and the the PDF /ebook maker didn’t bother to deal with that. But I suspect a tool like this would be very handy for anyone who wants to read material that exhibits this problem.

And I suspect that for me this RO approach will be easier than trying to work out how to automate the process on Linux as I already know how to use !Compo, etc, for the actual processing. Just not the bit where the resulting bitmaps need to be packed into a PDF (…or other ebook format? Is there one that just ‘zips’ the pages with some meta-info to guide ebook rendering? That might be handy!)

!Chess 1.30 released

The archive has lost the filetypes: they’re added as an extension to the filenames. But it’s easy to change that, though. Thank you for the update.

The archive on the release page is a risc os zip file, if unzipped inside risc os using sparkplug/infozip/sparkfs etc, the filetypes are present. Do not unzip this archive using linux/mac/windows zip software, as the filetype information will be lost.

RO5.30 Why is SVC Stack Protected from USR Mode Reads ?

the page table format which allows for LPAE to work doesn’t have the combination of user mode R/X priviledged R/W/X.

Does that mean the OS needs the SVC stack to be executable? Is that something I have to worry about?

@iconbar.com

RISC OS London Show 2025 - Notes from the talks

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_London_Show_2025_-_Notes_from_the_talks/index2250.html

Here are my notes from the talks. As usual, any mistakes or omissions are mine.

@iconbar.com

RISC OS London Show 2025 - pictures

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_London_Show_2025_-_pictures/index2249.html

Here is a selection of pictures to show you what the event was like

@iconbar.com

RISC OS London Show Report 2025

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_London_Show_Report_2025/index2248.html

The 2025 London Show took place in its new regular venue.

Overall there was a real buzz and plenty of people attending.

Here is what I saw on the floor.

RISC OS London Show Report 2025

The 2025 London Show took place in its new regular venue. Doors opened at 11am and there was the usual stands and talks. You can also see all the stands in our pictures and notes on the talks. We even had some nice weather!

RISC OS London Show 2025 - Notes from the talks

Here are my notes from the talks. As usual, any mistakes or omissions are mine.

RISC OS London Show 2025 - pictures

Here is a selection of pictures to show you what the event was like.....

@iconbar.com

RISCOSbits last minute hardware offers at tomorrow's show

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISCOSbits_last_minute_hardware_offers_at_tomorrows_show/index2246.html

RISCOSbits have a late-breaking announcement about some last minute hardware offers tomorrow

RISCOSbits last minute hardware offers at tomorrow's show

RISCOSbits have a late-breaking announcement about some last minute hardware offers tomorrow...

RISC OS Developments at London Show (inc Iris download instructions)

Got it. Wrong “autobuilt” path. Sorry for the noise.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Just in case the cryptic images haven't helped, here's an easier picture clue of an external antenna!

We'll have them for sale at the @rougol #riscoslondonshow2025 with access to FREE #RISC_OS control software for #ComputeModule4 systems, like our FreeNVMe and FAST systems.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Want a flash new keyboard, that will literally flash if you ask it to!?

Fully programmable Cherry MX Red near-silent keys, backlight LEDs, customisable key colours on individual keys! Emulate a BBC, A3000, A3010 or Pi500+ keyboard!

See it at #riscoslondonshow2025

#risc_os

@riscosbits.co.uk

See and buy our new #FASTNVMeXL system with our #FreeNVMe drivers, and a whopping 8GB RAM usable under #RISC_OS. Sleek, smooth, and very cool!

#risc_os #riscoslondonshow2025 #WhatWillYouDoWithIt?

@rougol.bsky.social

The RISC OS London Show opens tomorrow morning at 11am. For news of the latest products being released and special offers, see the @riscosopen.bsky.social forumwww.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1 #riscoslondonshow2025https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1

@riscosbits.co.uk

Exclusive: see it working with your RISCOSbits #RISC_OS #FreeNVMe or #FAST system at tomorrow's @rougol London Show: riscoslondonshow.co.uk

Stop The Presses - Last Minute RISCOSbits News and Special Offers

In last minute stop-press news, RISCOSbits are pleased to announce a few additions to the London Show stand.

For those of you who are in the market for a RISC OS laptop, RISCOSbits may have exactly what you are looking for at the London show! We will have VERYLIMITED stock of Linux enabled, but RISC OS capable Pinebook Pros available for sale at the London show. Whilst these laptops are not fitted with RISC OS for licencing reasons, we can demonstrate them running RISC OS to show you that it is possible and easy to do. All you will need to do is pop along to another stand at the show and purchase access to the ROM.

As people may be aware, there are two variants of Pinebook Pro – one with a UK layout keyboard, and one with a more generic (US) layout. We will have the latter available.

The Pinebook Pro comes equipped with 64GB of eMMC storage preinstalled and pre-formatted for RISC OS use. The laptops (running Linux) will be available on a “first come, first served” basis for only £150 – remember, stocks are very limited. We also have a super bargain special offer on one with a slight donk on the top rim of the shell. Doesn’t affect the functionality, but we’ll knock a further £25 off!

Our next bit of exclusive news is we’ll be selling external antennas for Compute Module 4 systems, especially those in metal cases. Many of you will be aware that the Linux method of enabling this using dtparams doesn’t work on RISC OS, but by partnering with Stader Software, we are able to offer exclusive free access to antenna control software for RISC OS to enable the external antenna.

As an added bonus, if you buy a system with a WiFi- enabled Compute Module 4 from our FreeNVMe or FAST range and you ask for an antenna, we’ll give it you for free, including exclusive access to the control software for RISC OS. Combine this with our ‘Get In Free*’ offer and you’re making incredible savings! It’s also worth remembering we publish the prices and specifications of our systems on our website so you can calculate the bang per buck you get with RISCOSbits!

We’ll also have a few gold and black case badges to tell the world what’s running inside your otherwise anonymous case! And at a pocket money price of only £2.50!

And the final teaser is we’ll be bringing along some delightful Welsh slate drinks mats, engraved with your favourite OS logo. Available for just £5 each, they’re sure to make your desk look oh so pretty and er, ringless. You could even buy a set of four for £18 for your coffee table or home cocktail bar!

So ‘coast’ on over to our stand to grab yours!

Hardware discounts from R-Comp at the London Show

With the clock counting down rapidly until I can get to the pub the doors open for tomorrow’s London Show, another announcement has arrived from R-Comp: Stop Press – We’ll be knocking 20ukp off all hardware items (over 50ukp) at the show. You don’t need to quote any adverts or phrases or claim anything special. Just money off for everyone 🙂 At the recent Show Preview user group meeting, Andrew Rawnsley of RCI demonstrated some new hardware items that had been proving popular this summer, and will be available at…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A Silicon Graphics 'Indy' workstation. I used one of these for Nintendo 64 game development. A great machine with awesome OS. The N64 development board fits neatly inside the blue case. Such a shame SGI are no longer around. Great hardware, with a great price tag!

@iconbar.com

Show offer on Impression User Manual and free software to collect

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Show_offer_on_Impression_User_Manual_and_free_software_to_collect/index2252.html

If you don't have a copy of the Impression User manual and would like a printed copy, Chris Hall has a very special offer for you at the London Show.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I suspect Michi is wrong here and that it's actually a common UI bug: "feedback" and "commit" using different algorithms OR DIFFERENT COORDINATES.

While the finger is still in contact with the screen (or the mouse button is down) the app (keyboard) provides feedback at the current coords...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo

RCI Hardware at London Show - 20ukp off too

• We’ll be knocking 20ukp off all hardware items (over 50ukp) at the show.

  You don’t need to quote any adverts or phrases or claim anything special.

  Just money off for everyone :) **

At the recent Show Preview user group meeting, Andrew Rawnsley of RCI

demonstrated some new hardware items that had been proving popular this

summer, and will be available at the London Show this weekend.

18 inches of RISCBook

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

First up was a new 18" RISCBook laptop. For those unfamiliar, the

RISCBook range of laptops run RISC OS and Windows together, providing the

best of both RISC OS and Windows software, with links between the two OSs

to allow them to share resources such as files, printers, clipboard, and

networking.

The pressing onset of Windows 11 has prompted a number of users to upgrade

this Autumn, and the 18" laptop has proven popular. Although 18" may

sound huge for a laptop, screen shapes have become more flexible in recent

times, and the 18" uses a 16:10 ratio with more vertical space for

documents. This means it is roughly the same size/weight as a 17" laptop,

whilst offering more screen space (1920×1200). Very practical for working

on documents, and the high refresh rate (144 Hz) IPS panel looks lovely.

We’ve found that as people age, they appreciate the larger screens and

full size backlit keyboards (with number pads), whilst finding the

convenience of a laptop is easier to fit in various rooms. For example,

RCI’s Allan (Andrew’s father) now uses his laptop downstairs to save

having to trek up to the more traditional machines in his office upstairs.

Whilst the laptops aren’t RISC OS friendly when they arrive, RCI is able

to adapt them to run RISC OS beautifully, with smooth performance and

flexible software compatibility (run both 26bit and 32bit applications).

Touchpad mouse gestures (eg. 3 finger tap) mean that replication of the

three button mouse is great too. Of course, you can plug in a mouse (or

use a wireless one) too.

These laptops are no slouches – 8-core, 16 thread AMD chips amply

demonstrate why AMD have become so dominant again recently – they can

motor through anything from web browsing to video editing. Whilst the

graphics are on-chip, they’re top tier for what they are, making games

possible too. With 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage packed into a slim and

low-weight chassis, there’s a lot of “oomph” inside.

Of course, RCI offers a range of other RISCBooks too, from 13" upwards

with a variety of screens including OLED. However, these 18" units have

proven quite popular, and so we’re singling them out to RISC OS users.

The laptops should be on display in London. Expect to see RCI’s MiniPC

range too.

Pinebook Pros

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Speaking of Laptops, RCI still have one or two Pinebook Pros – they grab

stock from around the world when they appear online. Pinebook Pros offer

a fantastic native-RISC OS experience with class leading performance,

working wifi, and even optional NVMe sockets for high speed storage.

Prices fluctuate as limited availability often results in price spikes,

but RCI is trying to keep prices in the same ballpark as before.

N.Ex.T, Hydra and NVMe

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

RCI will also be showing N.Ex.T and Hydra systems as usual – expect to see

large NVMe drives and some exciting new features. See the latest v9 (and

the forthcoming v10) NVMe drivers with SMART disc health features and

drive health checks. See native RISC OS disc partitions, 4K sectors, our

NVMe toolkit and more.

Hydra shows how Pi4 and Pi5 tech can be used side-by-side, and you’ll be

able to see ROD’s new RISC OS Direct for Pi5 running on a Hydra Head.

Check out the tiny mini.pi N.Ex.T computer which packs almost every

feature into the tiniest box, at a cracking price.

There will also be some rather different devices shown with up to 8 NVMe

slots! Aimed at file sharing and home NAS appliances, these small silent

boxes provide exceptional capabilities at surprisingly affordable prices,

whilst opening up a range of options for RISC OS and allowing room to

expand and grow. Come and find out more at the show.

RISCube Minis

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

We’ve talked about RISCBooks, but 2025 has also bee the year of MiniPCs

with our range of RISCube Minis offering state of the art features and

stunning performance at lower-than-ever prices. See features like the

latest USB4, multiple 4K+ displays, Wifi 6E and 7, 2.5 Gbit ethernet and

more – all useable from RISC OS!

Monitors

=-=-=-=-

We’ll have a selection of IPS and OLED displays available on the stand for

you to check out and plan the best way to make your day-to-day computing

more pleasurable. Remember your screen determines everything you see and

do on the computer, so if you’re an enthusiast (and coming to a computer

show counts as an enthusiast!) then you deserve the best you can.

Monitor prices have come down a bit recently, so why not take advantage of

that to treat yourself?

Whatever takes your fancy, come and check out our range at the RCI stand

at the show and say hello!

!PDF crashing

how did you manage to make such a crispy photo of a screen, without moiré’s and such?

With Chris Johnson’s !Snapper loaded and key triggers set (righthand Shift and Ctrl), you can get a sprite or PNG of the screen saved out milliseconds before the window closes.

Show offer on Impression User Manual and free software to collect

I do have some 120MB sticks pre loaded as well ...

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

If you love Assembly, I am sure you'll love my UltimASM DSL, it allows you to design the Assembly of your dreams or to code in 6502, 6809, 68000 and even VAX ASM on #RISC_OS (and all other supported platform by my #UltimaVM).

Want to know more? Come at the RISC OS London Show Saturday 25th October!

Chris Hall’s last minute London Show offers

One final email has landed in the RISCOSitory bunker before things get fully shut down for the duration of the London Show, and it’s from Chris Hall: The 368 page Impression User Manual (in the form of a PDF file) was originally provided free to purchasers of Impression X. This User Manual is now available in electronic form free to all users of Impression Style (which is free to download from !Store), Publisher and Publisher Plus from !Store. A printed version of the manual is still available, normal price £25,…

Show offer on Impression User Manual and free software to collect

If you don't have a copy of the Impression User manual and would like a printed copy, Chris Hall has a very special offer for you at the London Show

Show Offer

The 368 page Impression User Manual (in the form of a PDF file) was originally provided free to purchasers of Impression X. This User Manual is now available in electronic form free to all users of Impression Style (which is free to download from !Store), Publisher and Publisher Plus from !Store.

A printed version of the manual is still available, normal price £25, which includes a personal download link for Impression Publisher Plus version 5.13, courtesy of RISC OS Developments. I shall be discounting the few remaining copies of this manual at the show.

Although the User Manual was created in Impression, with contents and index created automatically, the PDF that was produced was designed to produce a printed manual. It therefore has no internal links. The RingBind version of the User Manual does have page to page links from the Contents pages, section to section and all 12 pages of the Index.

I shall be handing out USB sticks at the show free of charge with the latest version of !FamTree, version 1.58 (May 2024) [which will be made free to download from !Store after the show]. The USB sticks are only 32Mbytes so you can have as much of the other software listed below as will fit – for example a RingBind version of the RISC OS 5.30 User Manual (with over 3000 internal links) or both RingBind and PDF versions of the Impression User Manual. If you want more then I’ll put it on your own USB stick or another 32MB stick. No individual zip file is larger than 14Mbytes. At least until stocks run out…

This amounts to over 242M bytes of data all on a 128Mbyte USB stick.

London Show sees launch of NetFetch 6 from R-Comp

In another bit of last minute London Show news, a new version of NetFetch is being released by R-Comp. Here’s the full announcement from Andrew Rawnsley: R-Comp are launching version 6 of NetFetch at the London show, over six years since v5.5 launched at Wakefield 2019. (Spoiler – it’s live now on !Store) NetFetch provides flexible mail and news fetching for RISC OS, including anti spam and other filtering capabilities, as well as a friendly front end to RISC OS internet-related software. A version of Messenger Pro is included to…

Last minute show news from RISCOSbits

With the RISC OS London Show now only one day away, here’s a last-minute announcement from RISCOSbits: In last minute stop-press news, RISCOSbits are pleased to announce a few additions to the London Show stand. For those of you who are in the market for a RISC OS laptop, RISCOSbits may have exactly what you are looking for at the London show! We will have VERY LIMITED stock of Linux enabled, but RISC OS capable Pinebook Pros available for sale at the London show. Whilst these laptops are not fitted…

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

Looking out of the window, I see it's a beautiful autumn morning and much nicer than the numerous weather apps on my phone implied. #lake_disctric #cumbria #living_in_the_lakes #westmorland

@riscosopen.bsky.social

London is closer than you think!https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/10/23/london-is-closer-than-you-think

London is closer than you think

This year’s London show organised by ROUGOL is this Saturday the 25th October from 11am. Shows are the perfect opportunity to meet and talk to fellow RISC OS users and developers about what they’re doing with our favourite operating system.

Venue details

A short distance by public transport, around ten miles from Heathrow airport, less than four miles from the M1 motorway, the Harrow District Masonic Centre is closer than you think; see this Google map for directions.

Please note: engineering work means the Bakerloo tube line is closed this weekend.

See BASIC in action

See the alpha version of BBCBASIC rewritten in C, running natively on both RISC OS 5 and Windows x64, and find out what’s required to get it all finished. It’s a considerable technical effort, and will pave the way for all kinds of language extensions in future.

Want to know why nightly builds of BASIC gained a new SYS-as-a-function keyword recently? It’s all part of the mission to the moon.

NetFetch 6 new available

R-Comp are launching version 6 of NetFetch at the London show, over six years since v5.5 launched at Wakefield 2019.

(Spoiler – it’s live now on !Store)

NetFetch provides flexible mail and news fetching for RISC OS, including anti spam and other filtering capabilities, as well as a friendly front end to RISC OS internet-related software. A version of Messenger Pro is included to provide users with a “ready to use” kit.

Since the release of v5.5, email provision has changed quite substantially. Many more ISPs require enhanced security in a variety of forms – more passwords and logins, more SSL/TLS encryption, greater identity checks and so on. NetFetch 6 recognises this and has revamped its configuration to emphasise the features that modern people require. New and returning users will find that setting up NetFetch 6 is considerably improved, especially with modern ISPs.

These improvements have been brought about because internet providers such as Orpheus and Plusnet have both undergone changes recently, and whilst helping user sort out their problems, we discovered various areas that

needed to be improved or made clearer. Version six reflects these, modernising and improving the experience.

News handling has also seen a revamp, as many ISPs no longer offer newsgroup facilities. Those that do often require username/password login, so the old setup routines no longer made sense. We have now taken news out of the initial setup to streamline things, and instead introduced a new Assistant to guide people through setting up free newsgroup access regardless of ISP. By following the built-in assistant, and filling out two boxes, you’ll be able to get newsgroup access set up whenever you’re ready. Meanwhile, existing users will appreciate clearer settings, and easy support for both server login and SSL/TLS.

Speaking of encryption, v6 sees support added for the latest TLS 1.3 standard including handshake-level identity checks. These are conducted as part of the TLS connection to prove you are who you say you are – something that we have seen mandated on real-world “big company” TLS 1.3 servers.

NetFetch 6 will be available as a paid-for upgrade to existing customers, launching at the London show, but anyone who has purchased v5.5 this year (2025) can claim a free upgrade by specifying their purchase date when

ordering. Version 6 will be available in person at the show and via !Store download.

NetFetch 6 costs 35ukp new, with upgrades costing 20ukp either in person or via !Store. The new version is live now on !Store and as with its predecessor, includes free updates for the foreseeable future (6 years again? Can’t promise, but who knows!).

Best wishes,

Andrew

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Once upon a time you needed one of these huge beasts, and a lot of money, to make a video. Dixons catalogue, circa. April 1986.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Get in to the #riscoslondonshow2025 for free with #FreeNVMe! Sort of...

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20069

Free entry at the London Show 2025 with RISCOSbits*

*it’s okay, ROUGOL, we’re not sneaking people in through a side entrance!

To celebrate the first show outing of our updated and very latest release of FreeNVMe genuinely open source drivers, RISCOSbits are offering to refund people’s entrance fee, by way of an extra discount on all purchases of NVMe-enabled pre-built systems at our stand.

Terms and conditions obviously apply (we’ll only offer one refund per customer) but we’re happy if you get together with a RISC OS friend and send your mate up to buy another NVMe system on your behalf to get a second discount!

Simply quote ‘Oi! Gimme my door money back’ when making your purchase and we’ll knock it off the price!

About FreeNVMe

FreeNVMe is the next generation of fully Open Source RISC OS storage technology and it’s completely free!

As the result of partnering with Stader Softwareentwicklung and RISC OS Open, RISCOSbits have been instrumental in developing, and further updating, the free and fully Open Source NVMe driver and filing system, that we first demonstrated way back in December 2023. And it has been in reliable use on RISCOSbits’ Compute Module 4 systems ever since.

Designed from the ground up to fit perfectly with existing RISC OS filesystems, FreeNVMe follows all the usual filecore conventions so that all existing tools, such as DiscKnight, work straight out of the box – no custom tools are required.

A conscious decision was made to adopt the existing standards for filing systems, so that any developments to the core of RISC OS would automatically integrate with FreeNVMe.

There’s no tie-in to a paid-for support scheme – our driver is designed to work with the nightly builds from RISC OS Open. And it’s completely free. You can download it now, without having to buy a system, an NVMe drive or anything else:

www.riscosbits.co.uk/nvme/

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry…

And FreeNVMe is genuinely open source. You can look at, and download, the source code directly from the RISC OS Open repository NOW. You have the opportunity to contribute to the code to improve FreeNVMe and make it into the real community-led filing system it was intended to be.

FreeNVMe is designed to offer the following features as standard:

• Works on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 systems
• 4Kn sectors to allow for drives up to 2TB
• Partitioning via freely available software
• DiscKnight compatibility
• Standard file system icon (no separate app needed)
• Dual format drives with separate icons for each format.

And FreeNVMe is FAST! So fast that we felt comfortable incorporating it into our premium range of computers without any hidden charges.

What’s New

In our latest developments, rather than chasing irrelevant numbers, we’ve been focusing on real-world usability and integration – from more reliable file handling and faster boot times to improved support for large storage volumes and smoother performance under pressure. At the show, you’ll be able to see how NVMe, when properly harnessed, makes RISC OS feel more modern, stable, and capable than ever before. We’ve also improved drive compatibility to near 100% – there’ll always be rogue drives, but we’ve even built in a system to manage them.

We don’t need to make strangely calculated claims about how it compares to other products – we just give it to you for nothing so you can make your own mind up!

@riscosbits.co.uk

Coast at your desk with our Show exclusive Welsh Slate Drink Mats (with rubber pads to avoid scratching!). At a bargain price of £5 each.

Limited stock, so hurry up to the RISCOSbits stand!

#CoastingWithRISC_OS #RISC_OS #AcornComputers #riscoslondonshow2025

@riscosbits.co.uk

You'll be upset, too, if you miss it! Exclusively available at the #RISC_OS London Show! #riscoslondonshow2025

Out 25th October - Mystery release!

No, nothing wrong with your screen! Exciting major update to a very popular product – find out at the London RISC OS show on Saturday….

www.dragdrop.co.uk

Release 9d of RCI’s NVMe drivers, with NVMeTools and SMART

Another announcement has popped up, this time from RCI, R-Comp Interactive (aka RCI – R-Comp’s sister company), about an updated release of their NVMe drivers. This is what Andrew Rawnsley’s email said: R-Comp Interactive is pleased to announce that version 9d of our NVMe Drivers are now available. Since the drivers are already incredibly fast (up to 80% faster than competing products), and work with a wide variety of drives, the focus this time has been on expanding functionality, features and the experience for both users and developers. Headline features…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Picture Editor having fun at Editorial Editor's expense. 🤭

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PhotoDesk 3.25 released

We are pleased to announce that version 3.25 of PhotoDesk is now available to download for existing users via !Store.

Following on from 3.24’s colossal number of changes, 3.25 is a much smaller affair, correcting a few things that slipped through and have been reported since:

• “click_in_rotate” routine called “click_in_draw” with the incorrect number of paramters. Now fixed.

• Resize and Rotate functions had Bi-cubic and Bi-linear modes swapped. Expected operation has been restored.

• PNG files were being saved without compression, leading to very large files. Since PNG compression is lossless, this was not sensible, so PNGs are now compressed as you’d expect.

The update is available as a free download for anyone who purchased the XAT edition (3.18+) of PhotoDesk some years ago.

We will have a number of fresh CDs with 3.25 on at the London Show this weekend. We offer them as very low cost “stocking stuffers” for existing users. The CDs contain extra software (3.25 adds Chris Terran’s GradGrind palette editor designed for use with PhotoDesk) that wouldn’t fit in the regular download, plus extras like full sets of example images and documentation etc.

If you don’t have a CD drive, bring a USB stick (we do sell them, but they tend to be larger ones) and we’ll copy the CD contents onto the stick for you.

Best wishes,

Andrew

RISC OS Developments London Show news – including a public Iris release

With this year’s London Show drawing ever nearer – the doors will be open to the public in just two days on 25th October, at the Harrow District Masonic Centre – another announcement has landed in the RISCOSitory bunker, and, amongst other interesting news, this one includes something we’ve all been eagerly awaiting for a very long time: a public release of web browser Iris from RISC OS Developments. Over to Andrew Rawnsley for all the gory details: Iris Releases via PackMan The Spring and Summer saw multiple beta releases…

@colinhoad.com

Well, I can now safely remove "Alien Earth" from my muted words list! What a great show, quite possibly the best thing to be made in the Alien universe since the first two movies. And with much of the beautiful aesthetic of the original, which pleased me greatly.

New site is live

did the site go down all day? its up now but its hit and miss

@iconbar.com

PhotoDesk 3.25 released

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/PhotoDesk_3.25_released/index2251.html

It has clearly been a very busy few months at R-Comp... And they have found time to squeeze in a new version of PhotoDesk.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Come and see our #ECOS Companion devices for #risc_os, and see how you can run responsive alternative operating systems alongside your favourite OS. Order yours at the Show!

#riscoscompanions #riscoslondonshow2025 #InternalOrExternal

@riscosbits.co.uk

Now under #RISC_OS control... see the control software in action at the @rougol Show. #riscoslondonshow2025

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I've had "fun" today replacing a broken halogen floodlight with a smart LED one. Controlled by Tuya (infrastructure) and visible to Alexa (for the house), I also had to make it visible to Google Home so that I could control it by voice in the car.

PhotoDesk 3.25 released

It has clearly been a very busy few months at R-Comp....And they have found time to squeeze in a new version of PhotoDesk

@colinhoad.com

Seeing people watermark their AI "art" on LinkedIn... where to even begin 🙄

PhotoDesk 3.25 now available

With the London Show now so close you can almost taste it – okay, I might be confusing the show with my snack – another software update has been announced by R-Comp, with immediate availability via !Store, and the option to buy at the show. This time the update is to PhotoDesk: We are pleased to announce that version 3.25 of PhotoDesk is now available to download for existing users via !Store. Following on from 3.24’s colossal number of changes, 3.25 is a much smaller affair, correcting a few things…

@iconbar.com

October 2025 Rougol report - RISCOSbits show plans

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/October_2025_Rougol_report_-_RISCOSbits_show_plans/index2247.html

The October 2025 talk featured RISCOSbits supremo Andy Marks giving us a bit of a preview of their stall for Saturday's Show.

@riscosbits.co.uk

We're making the #RISC_OS case for wood!

Or should that be 'we're making a wood case for RISC OS'...

See them in the (tree) flesh on Saturday at the @rougol #riscoslondonshow2025 this Saturday.

@riscosbits.co.uk

It's touch and go, but will we have a Pi9home (brew) ready to show at the #riscoslondonshow2025?

#risc_os #justbecause #notrealbutbetterthanapokeintheeye

@rougol.bsky.social

The RISC OS London Show is only a few days away, on Saturday 25th October. Chat to exhibitors old and new, and listen to the latest news in our theatre talks. All the details on the show website www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk/index.php

@colinhoad.com

Stop scrolling & post 2 characters who bring you happiness 😀

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Subversion and RISC OS 4.39

Silly me is trying to do some development on RO 4.39, using svn 1.6.23 from Packman.

Try as I may, I cannot get this system to remember my svn credentials for the repository being used, having to enter them on every single commit (unlike on RO 5).

@colinhoad.com

Colleague appears to be eating what I can only describe as Onion Five Ways 🥴

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

THIS SATURDAY! The RISC OS London Show is back, showcasing the latest products and projects, and providing a chance to meet up, chat, and attend talks about our favourite little OS. #opensource #acorn #raspberrypi www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk

October 2025 Rougol report - RISCOSbits show plans

The October 2025 talk featured RISCOSbits supremo Andy Marks giving us a bit of a preview of their stall for Saturday's Show.

RISCOSbits at London 2025

We are pleased to announce that RISCOSbits will be exhibiting at the RISC OS London Show on Saturday, 25th October 2025. As a continuation of our commitment to providing high-quality, great value and innovative RISC OS systems, we’re bringing along a full range of new and improved products for users of all levels—from casual tinkerers to serious power users.

You’ll be able to get hands-on with our most advanced systems to date, including the blazingly fast FIRE systems with capacity for up to four full speed SATA SSDs (potentially 8TB of RISC OS format storage!), our sleek and compact VENOM, eNVY.Me and PiRO Qube NVMe machines.

You’ll also be able to get your hands on one of our new FAST NVMe XL systems, upgraded to 8GB of useable RAM! Good luck trying to use all that!

The DIY Range

We’re also excited to show off our DIY product range – a collection of hands-on kits that let you build your very own RISC OS computer. Whether you’re a seasoned hardware builder or just fancy getting under the hood, there’s something here for you.

Our entry-level system offers a compact 85mm x 110mm design, powered by a 2GHz CPU and 2GB RAM, with 128GB NVMe storage and a 32GB SD card to run RISC OS from. It’s simple, snappy, and just £119 – a great way to get started.

For those who want a little more flexibility, our mid-range kit expands to a 140mm x 120mm footprint and includes a more versatile selection of ports, 32GB of eMMC storage, 128GB of NVMe storage and USB-C and barrel jack power options – ideal for more advanced projects, priced at £179.

At the top end of the range is our DIY powerhouse system, featuring a 2.2GHz CPU, 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC, a 256GB NVMe drive, and a custom designed wooden case that you can finish and personalise yourself. It’s the ideal choice for users who want customisability without sacrificing power or style, available for £199.

All kits come with pre-configured software, essential components, clear instructions, and zero soldering required. Just add your own screwdriver – and maybe a cup of tea!

For more details, see our new website at www.riscosbits.co.uk

Showcases at RISC OS London

We’ll also be lifting the lid on two exciting new developments currently in the works. First up is a brand new dual-OS computer system, mini.BOB. This little beast synergises the best hardware elements of Linux and RISC OS into one seriously powerful unit, all within a tidy, ultra-small footprint case. If you’ve ever dreamed of a seamless crossover between two platforms in a compact and efficient package, this might just be it.

We’ll be demonstrating the results of our ongoing work in enhancing NVMe functionality across the RISC OS platform. Rather than just chasing numbers, we’ve been focusing on real-world usability and integration – from more reliable file handling and faster boot times to improved support for large storage volumes and smoother performance under pressure. At the show, you’ll be able to see how NVMe, when properly harnessed, makes RISC OS feel more modern, stable, and capable than ever before.

We’ll have our custom wood panelled ITX cases available to take away. In either 5 litre or 8 litre capacity, these beautiful little cases make your otherwise anonymous systems really stand out. Designed as a DIY kit, they come as both a fully matt acrylic case or one with wooden front and top panels, also adding a two port USB header converter. Ideal for CM4IO based systems.

And if you want a flash but quality keyboard for your RISC OS needs, we’ll have some on sale that will literally flash – if you ask them to!

With individually backlit near silent Cherry Red MX keys, you can emulate the Retro look of an A3000. And with a few keystrokes, an A3010! That’s right, you can colour each individual key to whatever colour you want.

And, of course, we’ve got a couple of other developments we’ve been quietly refining in the background – ideas and innovations that have kept us excited at RISCOSbits HQ, and we can’t wait to share. Maybe even a throwback to 2005, “adjusted” for the modern 32bit world.

We’ll be showing off, for you to order on the day at special Show prices, our ECOS and ECOfile range of companion systems, to enhance your RISC OS experience by using the best of other OSes.

We’ll also have a selection of clearance stock at bargain prices, some lovely stickers and badges, also available at special low prices. Plus a few other decorative items that we’ll share in due course.

Whether you’re a long-time RISC OS veteran or completely new to the scene, the RISC OS London Show is the perfect opportunity to see the latest developments, chat with us, and explore what RISCOSbits has to offer. We’re excited to bring something for everyone—and we look forward to seeing you in Harrow!

RISCOSbits’ London treasure trove

It’s now only a few more days until this year’s RISC OS London Show, which will take place on Saturday, 25th October, at the Harrow District Masonic Centre – and last night was the latest RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meeting, at which RISCOSbits gave us a teaser of what to expect from them at the show. So here’s a more detailed run down directly from the horse’s mouth RISCOSbits keyboard: We are pleased to announce that RISCOSbits will be exhibiting at the RISC OS London Show on…

URI Launch Sometimes Fails

Oops, yes. He was very happy for the first release to be any number I chose at random under 1.00 (or indeed over 1.00, but the conversation was about under).

@iconbar.com

Fireworkz Pro 2 version 2.33.00 released

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Fireworkz_Pro_2_version_2.33.00_released/index2245.html

R-Comp has released a free update for Fireworkz Pro.

@colinhoad.com

Another weekend, another retro event! Here's my little report from ABUG South, October 2025: youtu.be/B6TegM0ffnshttps://youtu.be/B6TegM0ffns

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Take a look at this great video by the Slow Mo Guys. They explain how arcade game displays work - regular CRT and also Vector based ones. Without doubt the best explanation I've ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVpYL44jUQ

Fireworkz Pro 2 version 2.33.00 released

R-Comp has released a free update for Fireworkz Pro

Fireworkz Pro 2 reaches version 2.33.00

A new version of Fireworkz Pro 2 has been released by R-Comp (with availability via !Store and on CD at the RISC OS London Show on Saturday, 25th October). Over to Andrew Rawnsley for more details: We are pleased to announce the release of Fireworkz Pro version 2.33.00 as a free upgrade for existing users of 2.3x series. It is available to download now on !Store – look in your “My Software”. The new version includes a number of changes including: Improved load / save performance on modern systems (helpful…

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

In the new issue of Archive Magazine, we sit down with none other than Hermann Hauser, the co-founder of Acorn Computers, for an exclusive interview. It's not too late to subscribe! www.archivemag.co.uk

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Fireworkz Pro 2.33.00 released

We are pleased to announce the release of Fireworkz Pro version 2.33.00 as a free upgrade for existing users of 2.3x series. It is available to download now on !Store – look in your “My Software”.

The new version includes a number of changes including:

• Improved load / save performance on modern systems (helpful on SD-based systems)

• VerityMono font (included) is used where monospaced fonts are presently used on systems that don’t have DejaVu Mono already present. This improves on-screen presentation especially for older computers or those running vanilla RISC OS 5.

• No longer leaves hourglass on exit (thank goodness!)

• Updates for national holidays dates in 2026 and 2027

• Improved documentation and example files – updated content, fixed links and extended function examples

• Correct handling of 2-colour toolbar sprites

• Built using latest tools for improved SWI performance, but still compatible with older systems

Overall this new version should perform faster and look nicer than previous versions, whilst fixing some bugs.

Users who qualify for the update can download now on !Store. We’ll also have CD versions (can be put on USB stick too, but bring your stick as we’ll only have larger ones for sale) at the London Show for people looking for physical copies. Existing users can purchase the CD/physical edition for a very low cost making it an ideal show-trinket, whilst other folks can take advantage of show prices on upgrades/full copies.

Fireworkz Pro 2 is an office suite for RISC OS with word processor, spreadsheet and database facilities. Its spreadsheet elements are particularly strong with Excel import/export. Tabling facilities make it ideal for use with DTP packages like Impression/Ovation with data-driven “live” tables and charts. Web/HTML export is also included as well as PDF facilities.

The software is supplied with several manuals and many examples, tutorials and reference files.

For more information, please look for it on !Store.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 19th October at 1pm.

Mostly good session. The OS_* SWIs were implemented (OS_ReadVarVal and OS_SetVarVal), and seem to be working ok. Error numbers were set properly, and code variables are now implemented. However, they’re only working in 32bit RISC OS. 64bit RISC OS has a different interface, which I’ve implemented, but quite apart from the code variables, I seem to be getting errors back oddly. I suspect that’s CMunge, but I’m not completely sure. I’m investigating.

Fetching Failure

Afraid I’m not understanding the above sufficiently to understand how/why I can dodge pass this roadblock and download the files from Adobe using the RO browers or wget. I’ve experimented, but no cigars! :-/ I did try the unpacked URL with wget, but again, nuffink..

That said, I’ve clearly lost from my mind (sic) quite a lot. A parallel to this is that I find when I open the Imperium zips the files ending with “\doc” get filetyped as ‘text’ when I need them set to “msword” to load correctly into !TechWriter and have the markup enacted and any references to illusrations loaded into the TW display/output. I should know this, but then I’ve started to forget how much I’ve forgotten. Age…. 8-/…

Important travel update for the London Show

If you’re coming to the RISC OS London Show, which at the time of writing will take place in just six days, the organisers have posted an important update for people using public transport: For those planning to travel by tube, note that the Bakerloo Line through Kenton station is closed on the day of the show. Trains from Watford And Euston to Kenton are still running. Use the Metropolitan Line to Northwick Park station instead, it is only slightly further away. More info, maps, and walking directions from the…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This fun little game has legs, unlike its protagonist. Just needs lots more levels. Snake+gravity:https://si-nk.itch.io/non-mewtonian-cat

Rougol October 2025 meeting on monday - RISCOSbits Preshow teaser

We will also be joined by Chris Johns to talk about porting his block drivers to the RObits FAST systems. Two talks for the price of one

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Just under four weeks to go until the Retro Computer Festival Gaming Edition weekend! I shall be exhibiting alongside fellow Software Creations game developer @breakintoprogram.co.uk so please come along and say hello. I shall be showing how BBC Micro games were developed back in the day.

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RISCOSbits pre-show teaser at ROUGOL, Mon 20th Oct 2025

The next meeting of the RISC OS User Group Of London is:

RISCOSbits pre-show teaser, presented by Andy Marks and special guest

Monday 20th October 2025, 7.45pm

The Duke of Sussex

(upstairs in the Chichester or Petworth Room from 6.30pm)

23 Baylis Road, London, SE1 7AY

http://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/venue.html

Also online via Zoom from 7.30pm

https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/

RISCOSbits always has interesting new products with imaginative names to release at the RISC OS London Show which is coming up on Saturday 25th October, and this is your chance to hear Andy Marks give a sneak preview of what to expect. We will also be joined by Chris Johns to talk about porting his block drivers to the RObits FAST systems.

Andy has posted a list of the machines you definitely will see at the show elsewhere on the forum with contact details for reserving one to take away with you!

Our venue is right next to Waterloo Station and there is parking directly outside. Directions here – https://rougol.jellybaby.net/venue.html

For any queries or to receive the Zoom link (same as previous months) contact us – https://rougol.jellybaby.net/contacts/

Bryan.

@rougol.bsky.social

That's the one!

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@colinhoad.com

"might" 😂

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Any druids out there need a BBC Micro? Or maybe it's one for any fans of hieroglyphs? Or perhaps it's just made up!

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RISCOSbits comes to London almost a week early

Keen, or what? Okay, so technically Andy Marks from RISCOSbits might not actually be in London (but on the other hand, it’s possible that he might be1). Either way, in-person or appearing virtually, he will be the guest speaker for the next RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meeting, which will take place on the evening of Monday, 20th October. With the RISC OS London Show taking place only a few days later – Saturday, 25th October – the meeting is billed as the RISCOSbits pre-show teaser, at which…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

We were working on a SNES 'Taz' game at Software Creations in about 1993/4 and all that remains of the game are these three Taz sprite frames. That may change if I uncover any other artwork. I believe these were drawn/animated by Andy Wilson ( RIP ). Andy is at the front in the photo.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

PKXARC that's a name I've not heard in a long time. Along with ARJ, RAR and LZH format files.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Over 40 years ago we played 'Hopper' on the BBC Micro/Acorn Electron and 'Frogger' in the arcades. Today it's become 'Crossy Road' for mobiles and tablets. There was a rumour that 'Hopper' was named after Andy Hopper, a senior employee at Acorn Computers in the early 80s. Very likely a myth!

@iconbar.com

Discover Merlin and other projects at RISC OS London Show next Saturday

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Discover_Merlin_and_other_projects_at_RISC_OS_London_Show_next_saturday/index2241.html

The RISC OS London Show is next Saturday and there will be lots to see!

Discover Merlin and other projects at RISC OS London Show next saturday

The RISC OS London Show is next Saturday and there will be lots to see

@nemo20000.bsky.social

🎦 This was superb. Best film I've seen for a long time. Cynical, paranoid, transactional, and utterly cinematic. BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime.

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

When you saw the Acornsoft MODE 7 loading screen you knew you were about to play a great game! A sign of quality. In 1986, Acornsoft and Superior Software joined ranks and games were released with both companies names present on the packaging.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

50% over the speed limit. That'd be an immediate ban in the UK.

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@iconbar.com

Rougol October 2025 meeting on monday - RISCSObits Preshow teaser

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_October_2025_meeting_on_monday_-_RISCSObits_Preshow_teaser/index2237.html

The October 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday and is billed as a pre-show teaser from RISCOSbits.

@colinhoad.com

ABUG South is go! #toomanymachines #nosuchthing

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Archive Magazine Oct/Nov 2025 issue is out now! Archive is the magazine for RISC OS users. It's not too late to subscribe and get the latest issue - see www.archivemag.co.uk/subscriptions.html for details. Worldwide subscriptions available! #riscos #raspberypi #opensource

@nemo20000.bsky.social

LOL!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This defence of LLMs is really a damning indictment of interface design - the fact that humans have to resort to ML pattern matching to satisfy the arcane requirements of APIs *designed by humans* is caused by the gulf between the conceptual requirement of the author and the bureaucracy of API cruft

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Rougol October 2025 meeting on monday - RISCOSbits Preshow teaser

The October 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday and is billed as a pre-show teaser from RISCOSbits

@colinhoad.com

Realising I have now reached the stage of attending retro events where I pack things *to give away* 😆

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Yay! A RISC OS laptop that isn't an inch thick (unlike my other Dell). This one only has 4 cores though...

Not that RISC OS would notice! 🤭

[now to deploy AHK to fix the Fn-Menu keypress 😡]

@riscosbits.co.uk

A delicious custom walnut Chimera for a customer at the #RISCOSLondonShow2025

The photos really don't do it justice.

#RISC_OS #custombuild

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The last hurrah for the current Q50 Skyline will be a 400hp special. Seems quaint in the EV era - even a little MG4 XPower would trounce it.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

31st December, 1989 ( New Year's Eve ) and I was finalising the CES demo of NES Silver Surfer. It was an early build of the game featuring only 6 playable levels. This document describes a cheat-mode you can activate to make the Silver Surfer invincible! This was removed in the final release.

TrainTimes 2.08 arriving now

Having recently updated TrainTimes to version 2.07, Kevin Wells has already brought out another new version of his application for checking up on railway timetables and other related information. Version 2.08 sees the addition of ticket office opening times to the station details window. Kevin has also dealt with an oversight in the previous release, whereby he hadn’t taken into account of stations being added, changed, or deleted when allowing station details to be viewed from a sub-menu in the Change Station section of the application. Like many of Kevin’s…

A5000 new motherboard

Seems someone has a go at recreating a A5000 motherboard Ref ‘Stardot’ – I wonder if there is room for a 8Mb upgrade to be designed in :-)

The London Show is less than 2 weeks away....

Train times for Kenton for the day

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I have a BBC Master 128 with USB, IDE and an internal HD. I have also added a Rasberry PiCoPro to it so I can run ARM, 32016, Z80 and 80186 code on it! It's great that people keep old hardware alive by making cool stuff like this!

RISCOSbits asks that you get your London Show Special Reserve orders in now

Sadly, though, they’re not asking everyone for their drinks orders for the day. It’s now a touch under two weeks (or is it a touch over one and a half?) until this year’s London Show, which takes place on the 25th October at the Harrow District Masonic Centre, and it’s time for another exhibitor announcement – this time from RISCOSbits. It seems that the team at RISCOSbits will shortly be taking “an impromptu, badly timed and slightly inconvenient holiday, immediately before the show,” which means there won’t be enough time…

@iconbar.com

London Show 2025: Pre-Reserve Your RISCOSbits Hardware for collection

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/London_Show_2025_Pre-Reserve_Your_RISCOSbits_Hardware_for_collection/index2242.html

RISCOSbits are prioritising having pre-built systems for customers over a general selection.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Are you old enough to remember these connectors? The joy of climbing under your desk looking for loose connections when the network disappears!

Image from https://flylib.com/books/en/1.152.1.40/1/

@colinhoad.com

This is a professor at the University of Illinois.

Why on earth are the big tech companies being given this kind of priority over every other energy need? It's totally mad.

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RPCEmu run in Haiku

Can someone post this? I would like to try it on my Haiku machine.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Probably the best, fastest 8-bit computer I've ever used. A Master Turbo ( 4MHz 65c102 ) + 28MByte Hard Drive. Perfect for BBC Micro game development. Made obsolete with the arrival of the Acorn Archimedes range in June 1987. That jump from 8-bit to 32-bit was massive!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Microsoft ends support for Windows 10 today, October 14th 2025. Windows 11 doesn't work on 3 of my PCs due to CPU incompatibilities. However, I shall keep running Win10 on them now as they are used for lots of retro related stuff. I know I can 'force' an upgrade, but they may break in the future.

London Show 2025: Pre-Reserve Your RISCOSbits Hardware for collection

RISCOSbits are prioritising having pre-built systems for customers over a general selection. So, if you are looking to acquire one of their very desirable systems at the show, you can reserve a system to collect. This also means they can spec it exactly as you want!

@riscosbits.co.uk

RISCOSbits Special Reserve: https://riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20052

#riscoslondonshow2025 #risc_os

@iconbar.com

The London Show is less than 2 weeks away....

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/The_London_Show_is_less_than_2_weeks_away..../index2240.html

And Tony (Amcog Games) has a really great 2 minute video on youtube promoting it...

RISCOSbits Special Reserve at London 2025

It’s okay. We’re not launching a RISCOSbits Whisky at the show, it’s just your chance to reserve items from our Show Stock.

Due to an impromptu, badly timed and slightly inconvenient holiday, immediately before the show, we’re out of time to take orders to build up pre-ordered machines to be collected on the day.

So to make amends, we’re offering a chance to reserve items for purchase on the day. We’ll have the following items on sale:

VENOM – premium compact NVMe machine

FAST NVMe – another excellent premium NVMe machine in a full Mini ITX case

DIY Systems – we have the ONE, TWO, and THREE systems available to reserve

Chimera – a multi-headed machine with a special free surprise for the show!

PiRO Qube – the smallest NVMe machine possible!

eNVy.Me – a modern, lightning blue NVMe system with a unique case

FASTFIRE – our speedy SATA machine with multi-disc capabilities. The fastest true multi-disc systems available.

We’ll also have a few late additions to our usual range with bumped up specs. Plus a range of very new things that should signal it’s worth making the case for visiting us at the show. But we’re not putting those up for reserve. You’ll have to coast on over for those.

To reserve your item, drop us an email at london2025@riscosbits.co.uk to let us know what you’d like us to hold for you.

Reservations will be made on a first come, first served basis. All we ask is that you collect your reserved items by 1pm on the day so we don’t have to disappoint too many people!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"Get your hand off my pelt"

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Another "I'd like to run RISC OS on that but I probably shouldn't"

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Aargh. If you're going to heat a sealed drum of oil, please don't do it with a non-compliant unattended heater with no redundant safety mechanism.

Unless you want to explode your fabrics printing factory. Again.

[a calender is a rolling machine]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyl9x1428vo.amp

@colinhoad.com

Fun and games repairing vintage Mac Classics and Acorn cheese wedge units at the @tnmoc.bsky.social "Mac & Cheese" Fixathon event over the weekend! youtu.be/O8U1R_09FDIhttps://youtu.be/O8U1R_09FDI

TrainTimes Chugs Along To Version 2.08

My train time table application for RISC OS called TrainTimes has had a couple of tweaks making it now version 2.08 New in this version is that it is now possible on the Station Details window to see th eopening times of the ticket office. The tweak was that when I introduced the station details … Continue reading "TrainTimes Chugs Along To Version 2.08"

The London Show is less than 2 weeks away....

And Tony (Amcog Games) has a really great 2 minute video on youtube promoting it....

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

42 years ago 'Atomic Protector', for the BBC Micro, was published by Optima Software. A sister company of Database Publications, the people behind 'The Micro User'. The development team was myself and Martin Galway - this was our very first published game. We were 17 and studying for our A-levels.

RPCEmu 0.95 o Fedora KDE 42 is it possible to connect a Joystick

Hi Alan,

I wrote USBJoystick, however it is only suitable for ‘native’ RISC OS hardware – not emulators. It talks to the built-in USB stack in RISC OS 5 and maps HID devices to the old Acorn joystick API. So if you had, for example, a Raspberry Pi running RISC OS, then you could plug in a USB controller, and it would ‘just work’.

RPCEmu is a hardware emulator of an Acorn Risc PC. Those machines didn’t come with USB (they pre-date it!). You would need RPCEmu to provide some sort of USB-compatibility-layer, which would let USBJoystick work. Or perhaps with less effort, RPCEmu could emulate the Acorn joystick API using whatever the underlying system (Linux, Windows or macOS) supports.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is pure gold. A who's who guide to the staff at Sinclair Research Limited, from 1984. Photos and details for everyone at the various offices around the UK. There's some great hairstyles and clothing - you have been warned!https://www.sinclairql.net/downloads/1984-00_Who's_who_at_Sinclair-OCRed-SQPP.pdf

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is a typical day at the office when you are a graphics programmer. 'Spammy polys' that need debugging to see what the heck has gone wrong with the shaders! Usually easy to track down if you have a decent GFX debugger / capture system.

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WebP and ImageMagick

Thanks for confirmation! I’ve updated the ROAST article.

How to set objasm debug options for the Econet module source

There is a thread over on stardot regarding getting an ADF10 Econet module to work on a UNIPOD, it presents anecdotal evidence that this been done successfully before but evidently lost without trace.

https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29655

I have long wondered about that and in a moment of weakness decided to have a look at it.

SO far I have taken the Econet module source from the IOMD build of RISC OS 5 from my RasPi over to a SA RPC with a unipod, and up to date ROOLDDE, where I can build it out of the RISC OS source tree by dropping its make file into amu.

This results in several targets RMs including Econet, EconetSA & EconetD. The EconetSA module works on anther SA RPC with an Acorn AEH60 Econet module, so that’s a good start at any rate.

In the source I can see quite a lot of extra debugging output, particularly around scanning the podules for the right one, an area that I need to rework first. But running EconetD does not result in any debugging output, and nor actually are any of the strings I can see in this code present in the binary.

I have not used objasm before and never explored this mire of macros.

I can see in code section below what appears to be conditional assembly dependent on ‘DebugFindHardware’

FindPoduleLoop

DECS r3

BMI AddressUnknown

[ DebugFindHardware

BREG r3, “Podule_ReadInfo: R3 = &”

]

Push “r10, r11, r14”

MOV r0, #Podule_ReadInfo_SyncBase + Podule_ReadInfo_ID + Podule_ReadInfo_Type

MOV r1, sp

MOV r2, #3*4

SWI XPodule_ReadInfo

Pull “r10, r11, r14”

[ DebugFindHardware

DREG r10, “Synchronous base address = &”

BREG r11, “ID = &”

DREG r14, “Type = &”

]

BVS FindPoduleLoop

BIC r11, r11, #2_101 ; Knock out FIQ/IRQ request bits

TEQ r11, #SimpleType_Econet:SHL:3

BEQ AddressKnown

TEQ r11, #SimpleType_Extended:SHL:3

TEQEQ r14, #ProdType_Econet

BEQ AddressKnown

B FindPoduleLoop

AddressUnknown

LDR r10, =EconetController ; Default for internal hardware

AddressKnown

[ DebugFindHardware

DREG r10, “Address we are using = &”

]

I can see that ‘DebugFindHardware’ appears to be set in this line but I am not making any sense of it:

DebugFindHardware SETL (:LNOT: ReleaseVersion) :LAND: {FALSE}

The make file does not seem to hint at how debug options are set either.

What am I missing here?

Alan

Status update for RISC OS 64-bit work

I’ve also tried to ensure that components which build as 64-bit are marked explicitly with the ‘riscos64’ label on GitHub.

Scheduled downtime

All back now, so unpinning this.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The 'alternative' 6502 mnemonics where letters are added to the standard mnemonic to specify the addressing mode - eg LDAIM 100

This format came about because existing macro assemblers could be easily adapted to support the 6502 processor. MOS, the makers of the 6502, didn't support this format.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

"Mutant Hunter / Ghostmaker" design and renders from the development disks for "X2 : Wolverine's Revenge". Original design artwork by Han Randhawa.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

TFW you've spent £50,000 to drive round in an advert. It's bad enough when it was just for naziism... but Jared Leto?! Can you imagine.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Why is every in the twenty first century made by people who have no idea what a should do?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

My TV: "Oh, the PlayStation has just switched on! I should wake up and display... the Sky box. Yes that's what I should do."

Later: "You seem to be playing some kind of game. I bet it'd be much better in GAME MODE! Just let me conveniently blank the screen for three seconds while I think about it."https://media.tenor.com/GugokSc3Q4EAAAAC/risa-bezos-speedball.gif?hh=331&ww=498

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

It's always fun reading through old computer magazines. This issue of creative computing is from January 1979 - published in the USA. I love the adverts.

Hacktoberfest 2025

@Paolo

As you are the only user of !Diderot, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I have made a small update.

From the panel, open !Reporter and kill the application task, Access to the Resources file with Adjust on the Res button.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

One of my favourite consoles, the Hudson Soft / NEC PC-Engine! Known as the TurboGrafx-16 in North America where, for some reason, it was re-housed in a large, ugly dark coloured case! Games were sold on slim HuCard cartridges and also CD-ROM, if you purchased the external drive. R-Type was amazing!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I wonder how many people have heard of the Bally Astrocade ( AKA Bally Computer System ). Initially released in 1978. It has a really novel controller and is powered by a Z80 processor. Sadly, it didn't have the success of the Atari VCS/2600. Only 41 cartridge based games exist for it.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

One of the most difficult BBC Micro books to obtain. Is there anyone out there that has a copy? I managed to get an ex-library copy that was re-bound. Curious to know how many are actually around. It was withdrawn from sale for legal reasons - it contained an annotated disassembly of BBC BASIC.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Programming. "That module's annoying". Rewrite module. Rebuild with new data. "That nemoBasic feature is annoying". Rewrite nemoBasic. TaskWindow misbehaves. "That ZapMode is annoying". Rewriting ZapBasic.

This is why I get nothing done - I'm too busy being annoyed.

WROCC October 2025 meeting - R-Comp and ROD Show teaser

Talk video is now available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2wxbdxIayE

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Yes Dwayne, but can you control the box office?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

NOT a new version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" from Amazon, BBC or Netflix... But it bloody should be.

Is Tom Bell the best Ford Prefect yet?https://youtu.be/-431pDOiYRQ?si=ZKwJVDmuKgS703FU

@colinhoad.com

I know I post a lot of stuff about generative AI and how much I dislike it. So for a change I'm going to write this thread in celebration of the many creative people I've had the good fortune of getting to know and interact with over the past couple of years. Real human creators producing real art.

@colinhoad.com

I'm confused, does he think that's a bad thing?

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

NES Silver Surfer review in Electronic Gaming. Difficulty rating AVERAGE. Yes, Average!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Are we doomed to a lifetime of unnecessary sequels from people who misunderstood the original, if indeed they had bothered to watch it at all?https://www.ign.com/articles/tron-ares-review

Any ARM Debuggers Ported to RO5 ?

Thanks to David Feugey for allowing me to use a sub-domain on his ‘riscos.fr’ website, I am releasing a 32-bit Risc OS 5 version of !ARM_Debug. Anybody interested can now have a ‘play’.

This is 32-bit version of Theo Van Der Boogaert’s original RO4 standalone debugger and works independently of the DDE (or whatever). It does require RISC OS 5 to run though:

https://www.fladda.riscos.fr/

This is a first ‘beta’ release and contains some known bugs and no doubt some unknown bugs. All comments welcome.

I next plan to look at implementing SPSR (SVC and USR) support and possibly some co-processor instruction support (these instructions appear to be used in the RO5 kernel).

Ralph

@nemo20000.bsky.social

USR in RISC OS nemoBasic acts as a string operator modifier, causing the string(s) to be treated as UTF-8 instead of bytes. This even applies to the comparison operators, which deal sensibly with malformed UTF-8 sequences (as you can never trust input).

(example uses EXP to expand C-style strings)

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

🚀 #Hacktoberfest2025 is here! Join the #RISC_OS Community on #GitHub, contribute, earn prizes & badges, and help push RISC OS development forward. Start here 👉 https://github.com/RISC-OS-Community Or check this one: https://github.com/pzaino/risc-os-corelib ☕️ Have fun & happy hacking! 😍

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm sorry what pardon? "Stuff happens" 🤷

https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/grounding-and-subsequent-loss-of-the-dive-support-vessel-jean-elaine

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

More digging in my old BBC Micro and Acorn Electron development disks. This time I've finally managed to re-produce the workflow used to get the sprite editor working. My friend Paul Proctor used the Computer Concepts Graphics Extension ROM to create the sprites for the Electron version of Galaforce

@colinhoad.com

AI slop videos are like the very worst kind of TV advert: plenty of people out there seem to want to make them, but almost nobody wants to actually watch them.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Check out 'Orion Patrol' for the BBC Micro. A very clever 'Zarch-a-like' game by Angus Hughes ( 2025 ).

https://www.bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=4544

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A thing of beauty! The Commodore PET 2001 with chiclet keyboard and integrated monitor + tape deck. 8K Bytes of RAM was more than enough. The first computer I ever used. I learnt BASIC and 6502 machine code on it. Thanks to Pete Davidson, my amazing Computer Studies teacher. Post your first computer

The 2025 London Show is less than 3 weeks away...

News from Archive is that the new issue of Archive (Volume 27 Issue 6) will be dispatched this month (October), after several false starts over the summer, dropping through letterboxes in advance of the London Show to help get the word out.

MakeDraw

MakeDraw has been updated to version 2.84 which increases the maximum number of nested groups to 256 (from 64). It also now ignores draw object types &500, &510, &2020, &2030 and &2032 when a Draw file exported from RiscOSM is the subject of a PROCmdInclude() call. This allows, once again, maps exported from RiscOSM to be included in another Draw file being created.

Updated on my web site, !Store and !PackMan.

MultiTask

MultiTask has been updated to version 7.76 and now disassembles a few more Draw file object types. It will also concatenate consecutive PROCmdTextTran items such as individual characters in a Draw file exported from !PDF and group them in a named group object so that they can be used as hot links. Transformed sprite objects are now also saved but without the transformation matrix.

Updated on my web site and on !Store.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This weirdness in BBC Basic was theoretically fixed ages ago in nemoBasic but an unrelated typo futzed it in a different way.

I’ve just picked the bones out of that other feature and hence this started working correctly. Small victories.

@iconbar.com

The 2025 London Show is less than 3 weeks away...

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/The_2025_London_Show_is_less_than_3_weeks_away.../index2238.html

It's now less than 3 weeks to go until the 2025 London Show!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here are the computer hardware and software charts from November 1983 - PCN Magazine, UK. There were so many computers to choose from back then. Many disappeared without a trace, but the Spectrum, Commodore and BBC Micro sold really well. Great games available from Ultimate, Imagine, Bug Byte etc.

The 2025 London Show is less than 3 weeks away...

It's now less than 3 weeks to go until the 2025 London Show.....

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 5th October at 1pm.

Good session again today. New features added:

• Updating variables.
• Setting and reading macro variables.
• Deleting variables.
• Enumerating variables.

There will be NO session next weekend (Sunday 12th), as I’m busy. But the following week I’ll be adding code variables, and hopefully introducing the OS SWI claims.

Today 3.20 Released

I’m pleased to announce the release of Today version 3.20. The application lists events that have taken place (or will take place) on a given date. It contains a database of historical information, to which additional dates and personal anniversaries can be added.

Originally written by James Miskin, I produced a 32-bit update in 2006. Almost 20 years later, following a question at RISC OS North back in March, I went on a hunt for the source code, dusted it off, and have produced a new version with the following changes:

• The application has been built with a toolchain known to be ARMv7 compatible.
• There is now a Help… entry in the main and iconbar menus.
• The date shown in the scan window is updated when the system clock changes day, so long as the window was previously on the current day.
• The upper bound for the day of the month is correctly set when opening the event window.
• A minimum window size is applied when setting the extent of the scan and search windows, to avoid the search results being hidden.

A copy of version 3.20 can be found on my website, at https://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/risc-os/today. It has also been added — finally — to the PlingStore, and if I’ve managed to find the correct incantations it should also show up in PackMan over the next few days.

Originally released into the Public Domain by James, I have applied version 1.2 of the EUPL to the new release to make its status clear, and the source code can finally be found amongst my other projects on GitHub at https://github.com/steve-fryatt/today

@colinhoad.com

Cheers, @lordarse.com! Time to find out what all the fuss is about... 😉

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Only 20 days to the #RISC_OS London Show! And Next @RISCOSitory post about it: https://www.riscository.com/2025/zfp-systems-london-show/

New version of !GoL

For those who are interested in Conway’s Game of Life, I’d like to point to a new version of !GoL, that now more or less supports colour, as seen here

!GoL is at 3.55, and can be downloaded from www.riscos.sprie.nl – or directly from a fairly recent version of !GoL.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I'm currently working out what to show at next month's Retro Computer Festival ( Gaming Edition ) at the Centre for Computing History. I'm bringing along a Master 128 or BBC Micro and will focus on game development for those machines. Does anyone have any suggestions?

https://bsky.app/profile/computinghistory.org.uk/post/3m2cepagh722d

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

I was just thinking "'Snoino' is an unusual brand name"...

@colinhoad.com

The first line of the blurb and he seems to be suggesting the BBC itself got into a fight with Sinclair in order to launch their own computer literacy project. No mention of Acorn.

@colinhoad.com

Just been to see this, it was FANTASTIC! Both actors portrayed Sugar and Sinclair incredibly well and it had a lot of humour and heart. Thoroughly enjoyed it, catch them if you can, only one show left apparently...

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ZFP Systems at the London Show

It’s now just three weeks to go until this year’s London Show, which takes place at the Harrow District Masonic Centre on 25th October, and the first announcement from an exhibitor has already landed in the RISCOSitory bunker. In fact, the email arrived before last week’s post about the show, so keen was Paolo Zaino, the exhibitor in question, but I deliberately held it back so that it came after the show preview. Using the name ZFP Systems (the brand under which he originally provided professional services to retail outlets…

Ensuring an adequate Shared C Library version

Paraphrasing the section “Ensuring the necessary components are present” on page 354 of the C/C++ manual

Just in case anyone else is looking for it, that section is on page 324 in the most recent manual that I’m aware of.

Oops, yes, my brain must have flipped the 2 to a 5. Page 354 is entirely blank!

@iconbar.com

WROCC October 2025 meeting - R-Comp and ROD Show teaser

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_October_2025_meeting_-_R-Comp_and_ROD_Show_teaser/index2239.html

Wakefield's October speaker was Andrew Rawnsley from R-Comp, giving us some updates and teasers for the London Show (in case you need more reasons to attend!)

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Happy 39th Birthday to Galaforce - I'm a bit late. Seems like only yesterday when I was working on this game. Launched in September 1986 for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, published by Superior Software. Music and SFX by Martin Galway, our 2nd game together. Addditional artwork by Paul Proctor.

@colinhoad.com

You know, you read stuff like this and wonder how it is that these people ever managed to stand up a company in the first place. Do their brains turn into blue cheese after making a few billion or were they always like this deep down? Just utter, utter bullshit. Laughably so.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Superior Software placed this advert in several computer magazines in 1987 to find new software to publish. 8-bit home computer software sales were in decline and it was hard to find the right software. Their book 'Success in Software' was a very informative guide for would-be game developers.

@colinhoad.com

CORRECTION: one third of a surveymonkey poll conducted online with ~1000 respondents.

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@colinhoad.com

Someone shared this with me earlier, and it's a reminder of just how wonderful she was. The sheer glee of her performance here is infectious. youtube.com/watch?v=UKTviQNM6KAhttps://youtube.com/watch?v=UKTviQNM6KA

@colinhoad.com

BBC News - Keeping Up Appearances star Patricia Routledge dies at 96https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdjegvjz3do

Rest in peace, she was an absolute star

@colinhoad.com

Woke up this morning to find my phone auto-downloading a 3.2GB update called "Samsung Language Core", apparently a local language module for "AI services". No. Didn't ask for, do not want. Companies must stop pushing this crap on users who aren't interested!

An overlooked Wiki feature?

Almost immediately after writing the previous message I had some ideas for some quite convoluted CSS, which does in fact do a half-decent job of PRM-like indent (within reason, since screen != printed media) via this excitement:

https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/website/instiki/-/merge_…

…so that’s live now. Checking the previously-posted examples with a forced reload should do the trick. It does still get tripped up if there’s a Category reference at the top of the page, though.

APDL make their PD catalogue available for free download

Using XMP and ffmpeg I threw together a little bash script and bingo! MP3s of all my old tracker mods!

September 2025 News Summary

(Double posted fir done reason)

September 2025 News Summary

As well as having produced a Debugger module in the live coding, I've also shown how a replacement module can be built and tested using modern tools. Although obviously the videos are long, the entire process of building the module was done during those sessions.

WROCC October 2025 meeting - R-Comp and ROD Show teaser

Wakefield's October speaker was Andrew Rawnsley from R-Comp, giving us some updates and teasers for the London Show (in case you need more reasons to attend the Show!)

Printing

Let’s be careful here. The printer hasn’t been disabled; the ink cartridges have. I bought a pair of HP ink cartridges (one black, one 3-colour) from Amazon, fitted them, and the printer is OK again.

What are you doing with RISC OS?

I’ve updated my ToolboxC++Lib to include ToolboxScrollList, ToolboxTab and ToolboxTreeView. However, only ToolboxScrollList has had a simple functional test, but it works.

Sources can be found on GitHub

The documentation in the docs directory was created using Doxygen and doesn’t work directly from GitHub, has to be downloaded and viewed locally.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

'the hell? it's 4:36am... lol anyway, new UltimaVM PUSH/POP register range fast memory copy is done and there is also a little "twist" POP supports both strick LIFO (like the JVM) and natural order (like the ARM). Had to finish so late, because I had a hell of a busy day at work... Need some sleep!

@colinhoad.com

From the FT: OpenAI spent more on marketing and equity options for its employees than it made in revenue in the first half of 2025.

Incredible.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Again with the crashing. #BugReport

Rougol September 2025 meeting on monday - Publishing with Ovation Pro

For anyone who didn't make the talk on the night and may be interested in seeing it, ROUGOL made a recording which is available to watch on YouTube

@colinhoad.com

That last reskeet is taken from Cory Doctorow's (@pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy) excellent post here: https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/

Well worth reading in full, he's distilled the economic insanity of AI perfectly.

WROCC October 2025 talk on Wednesday - R-Comp

Me too.

Publishing with Ovation Pro at ROUGOL, Mon 15th Sept 2025

Wouldn’t !Murnong by Christopher Martin do that?

WROCC October 2025 talk on Wednesday - R-Comp

I'm looking forward to it!

2025 Creating a build environment for RISC OS on Linux

I’m surprised that no one hasn’t had a go at making a RO ROM with Linux tools! – instead of using a Emulator.

@rougol.bsky.social

The RISC OS London Show is now just under four weeks away! Preview from RISCOSitory - https://www.riscository.com/2025/london-show-four-weeks/

@rougol.bsky.social

For those who missed it, Gavin's excellent talk can now be watched here youtu.be/NmZSXjij7x4

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Not the Onion

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Added #JVM Stack Operations mapping to my #UltimaVM (see link). But I am thinking of adding indirect adressing:

PUSH.U64 [r0-r1] Push mem val from addr in r0 to addr in r1 PUSH.F32 [r0] Push val at mem addr in r0

tinyurl.com/JVMToUltimaVM #bytecode #VirtualMachine #Coding #Programming #VM #RISC_OShttps://tinyurl.com/JVMToUltimaVM

RPi 500+

if your audience would find it easier to do something another way, and you actively choose to do something different… then you are failing your audience.

If we take that statement literally then almost everything in RISC OS, old and new, could be seen as “failing” the audience. For example, people have been asking for easier development environments or multi-core support for years, and those needs are still unmet (and after sponsoring 2.5M GBP they still will be unmet apparently!).

That said, I do think Steve has a point.

If someone wanted to organise an online-only event (say a “RISC OS Xmas online show”), I am sure plenty of us could contribute material. The format would mostly be one-way, with prepared videos or live presentations and only limited feedback.

In-person shows, in contrast, work very differently. From my own experience, I get much more direct feedback and can respond to exactly what people are interested in. It also allows for spontaneous conversations that just do not happen online. On Zoom, only one person can really speak at a time, and asking questions in front of a whole audience may not suit everyone.

For example, at the last Bristol show I attended, I was constantly busy with people asking questions, and once the initial “ice” was broken, I had some really valuable and enjoyable conversations. That kind of interaction is very hard to replicate online.

So to me, the two experiences serve different purposes. Online events are valuable, but they cannot replace in-person shows. Even for those of us doing free software rather than running businesses, I think the in-person format offers something unique.

Hence I don’t think the in-person shows are “failing their audience”, I think they are fine and having only two in-person shows per year seems to be a good number given the slow pass in developments that are happening on RISC OS (it’s an old platform and it takes time to build stuff on it). There might be space for an on-line event for who cannot attend the in-person event.

For what concern discussing users issues, I think user-group meetings are still way more valuable (either in person or on-line), given the focus of such meetings.

@iconbar.com

WROCC October 2025 talk on Wednesday - R-Comp

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_October_2025_talk_on_Wednesday_-_R-Comp/index2232.html

The October 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 1st October and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

WROCC October 2025 talk on Wednesday - R-Comp

The October 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 1st October and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 28th September at 1pm.

Today’s live coding was very successful.

• GSTrans of variables on set now works, meaning that there’s a distinction between type 0 and type 4 variables.
• EvaluateExpression variables (type 3) are now handled on set.
• Number type variables (type 1) are handled on set.
• A new *-command has been added to allow easier debugging of the variables that have been set.
• Simple tests added to check the type, length and returned values from the SWIs have been added. These are run during the CI.
• Fortify is now present in the build, checking that the memory has all been freed (and the memory leaks have been fixed).
• Release 0.02 has been made and, as usual, the binaries are also in the riscos64-status repository.

Missing bits…

• Deleting variables.
• Updating variables.
• Code variables.
• Macro variables.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This is happening now. It did not used to happen. #BugReport

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Sweden's Nobel-prize-per-Toblerone rate is twice that of Switzerland. 🧐

Meanwhile I'm horrified to see 🇬🇧 being beaten in the chocoholic league by 🇩🇪. Come on lads, I can't do it all on my own!

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

40 years ago The Micro User magazine held a computer show at UMIST (Manchester). Aimed at BBC Micro and Acorn Electron owners these shows were very popular. It was a great place to see the latest hardware and software. WARNING:- you may spot me in this video.

vimeo.com/23537869https://vimeo.com/23537869

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

I've been working on Ovation Pro to add extra scaling options to the picture proxy setting. For those who attended my @rougol.bsky.social talk, I explained the use of proxy images. Base/16, Base/32 & Base/64 now offer even smaller proxies, making for smaller document sizes. #OvationPro #RISC_OS #DTP

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This is not going to become a Lego account, but there was a time when knock-off "compatible" bricks were rubbish.

But now, the Chinese manufacturers are beyond mere reproduction and innovating in a way Lego isn't - producing specialist bricks that AFOLs have been asking Lego for, for years.

Extracting object files from a library

I did discover the source veneer on the gitlab site which @Piers subsequently added a link to in this thread. I was using the emulator, maybe that has something to do with the hanging, haven’t tried on a RPi yet. I found out that the DDE C++ Toolbox library I’m writing had some missing gadgets as I had used the Toolbox documentation. Tabs, ScrollList and TreeView are not included. Returned from holiday so I’m gradually adding them to the library.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I've just booked my table for this years Retro Computer Festival 2025 (Gaming Edition) at The Centre for Computing History, Cambridge - Sat/Sun 15th/16th November.

I shall be exhibiting BBC Micro game development related material. Hope to see you there!

https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/74558/Retro-Computer-Festival-2025-(Gaming-Edition)-Saturday-15th-November/

London Show 2025 – just four weeks to go

Today is Saturday, 27th September, 2025, and I’ve scheduled this post to appear at 11:00am – which means at the time this article appears it will be precisely four weeks to the minute until the doors are open to the public on the 2025 RISC OS London Show, which takes place on Saturday, 25th October. The precise details you need, as a discerning RISC OS user and show visitor, are: Harrow District Masonic Centre,Northwick Circle,Kenton,Harrow,HA3 0EL. The venue has ample (and free) parking for visitors making the trip by car,…

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

🚀 Big week for #theCROWler: v0.9.8 lands this weekend! - Post-processing per rule - Remote app distribution (GitHub deploy coming) - Search API + JDorking - Bug fixes & perf boosts - Docker deploy builds ( #Arm + #Intel / #AMD ) 🔗 https://github.com/pzaino/thecrowler

#Coding #CyberSecurity #ContentDiscovery

CloudFS read error

I can understand the attraction of using pCloud directly from RISC OS. But failing that, if you have a NAS, it may be poossible to get the NAS to connect to pCloud, and then use LanMan98 or NFS to access it from RISC OS until CloudFS is revived.

I actually use this approach anyway now. The reality is this approach also boost performance. I let my Linux box do the sync up in the background, while local share is ultra fast like this and has another advantage, as soon as my ShareFS for Linux is completed and working, I’ll “re-share” my pCloud via ShareFS Server, which means pCLoud for old RISC OS 3 on the Archie as well! ;)

So the RISC OS pCloud client is useful only to who has not a 3rd party Linux box in their network.

Just my 0.5c.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

In a recent thread on here folks were talking about how useless is #RISC_OS Apps facility. Guys, let me remind that is a thing of the past. We have !Launchpad by years now that fully replace Acorn Apps (even on the old Archimedes) and gives all RO systems same features as macOS and Win 11 Launchpads

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"Scompi, chaps and pizz!" I mispronounce, deliberately; putting myself off the meal I'm making.

@iconbar.com

September 2025 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/September_2025_News_Summary/index2233.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A quick video of me unboxing NES Silver Surfer. This is a freebie copy that the team received when the game was launched. It's been sat in a cupboard for over 30 years as I have no way of playing it as it requires an NTSC NES/TV setup. Therefore, it has never been played! Mint condition.

Latest news from R-Comp: WROCC meeting, 1st October

The Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) will be holding their next meeting on Wednesday, 1st October, with Andrew Rawnsley taking centre stage to bring the group up to date with all things R-Comp. Andrew will bring the group up to date with all the latest developments at R-Comp and RCI, and with the London Show (at the time of the meeting) just three and a half weeks away, there’s a chance he may be able to share some details or sneak peaks of new releases for the event. He…

September 2025 News Summary

Fixed. Just checking you were paying attention....

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I know Amazon has many problematic aspects...

But their customer support is *amazing*. They really do value "happy customer" above all else.

September 2025 News Summary

The RISC OS London Show is next *month* not next week, Saturday 25th October to be precise. Don't give everyone a heart attack like that!

September 2025 News Summary

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

Problem reading a USB drive

Is it possible to have a version that prints out the value?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Just made a big show of trimming the hedge by the car, in the hope it won't freak out next time I drive past it.

🚘🤖 "I have slammed on the emergency brakes to save my precious paintwork from those soft compliant leaves. Be thankful I do not eject you!"⚡

@colinhoad.com

Sam Altman now claiming that if he isn't given enough compute, "hard trade-offs" will have to be made between "providing free education to all" and "curing cancer" - who is buying this flagrant, fraudulent nonsense?

@colinhoad.com

The London RISC OS Show will return on 25th October! @rougol.bsky.socialhttps://youtu.be/dAFZTS3xxTc?si=HSq-0D_XULzVTkH1

How to Purchase DiskKnight ?

I have sent you an email in the meantime, to help get things sorted.

Thanks Andrew,

All sorted now.

My version of DiscKnight now has the ‘repair’ option.

Ralph

@armbytes.bsky.social

Without an ARM, there'd be no RISC OS! Modular, compact and quick. #Retro #AcornComputers #OpenSource #RISCOS #London #Show #Octoberhttps://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-part-1-building-the-first-chip

@colinhoad.com

I sometimes wonder whether people have any self-awareness at all of how utterly cringeworthy they look posting AI-generated cartoon pictures of themselves on social media. It seems to be done with zero irony, too.

WROCC Meeting - R-Comp - 1st Oct

Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club

Meeting on Wednesday 1st October at 7.45pm

R-Comp

Andrew Rawnsley will be joining us to bring us up to date on the latest news from R-Comp and RCI ahead of the London Show at the end of the month. Will there be new developments and releases? Software? Hardware? Come and find out! Andrew will also be covering the latest goings on from RISC OS Developments, and showing the fruits of various summer projects. All being well, attendees will have an exciting release to download afterwards…

This ‘virtual’ meeting is open to all, and will take place using the Zoom conferencing service using our regular meeting credentials. Zoom invitations will be sent out ahead of the meeting, but only to those who email info2025@wrocc.org.uk to request one. If you would like to be part of the meeting (and don’t already have the link from a previous meeting or receive an invite in the next 24 hours as a member of WROCC), please RSVP — at the latest by the end of Tuesday 5th August (GMT).

If you haven’t used Zoom before, we suggest that before Wednesday you try to join the Zoom test meeting at https://zoom.us/test on the device that you intend to use, in order to check that your system works OK. You will not require a Zoom account to take part.

Past Meetings

Videos of previous meetings can be found in our links to past meetings at https://www.wrocc.org.uk/meetings

Club Membership

Annual membership of WROCC is available for those living near and far at 10.00ukp per year.

Members receive:

• A PDF newsletter with all the latest news and articles.
• Entry to meetings.
• Access to the WROCC Internet Discussion Forum.

For further information, please email info2025@wrocc.org.uk or visit the Club’s website at https://www.wrocc.org.uk

Iris PackMan install

If Iris clearly flags mismatches and tells users how to fix them, you’re golden.

Compo vs Gimp / ImageMagik?

Way easier than writing a !Compo C program. The X-ray stuff is wild, but for your ebooks, a -fuzz + -opaque cleanup is way more practical.

@colinhoad.com

Absolute joy watching this one from CRD, especially when he gets into the interactive whiteboard! Our school had a grant to go out and buy a bunch of these things, and they ended up in classrooms not getting used much but were very impressive on school open days...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9a3dCd1SQI

Norcroft 64

I’ve taken a couple of embedded projects from ARM32 to AArch64. The biggest time sinks weren’t the compiler, but hidden 32-bit assumptions: pointer math in ints, varargs, packed structs, and unions. Rewriting inline asm and aligning to the AAPCS64 calling convention was unavoidable. What helped most was harsh warnings, UBSan/ASan in tests, and swapping types to size_t/uintptr_t early. For legacy apps we used a small thunk layer and kept a 32-bit build running until parity.

@colinhoad.com

This is 100% insane. Yes, an employer may stipulate this in your employment contract, but that's because *they* are paying *you* for your time, and so the things you create during your working hours are their IP. The tenant/landlord relationship is in no way comparable!

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@rougol.bsky.social

For anyone wondering why no online meet up next month, it's because there's a physical show going on instead! Saturday 25th October, Harrow, NW Londonwww.riscoslondonshow.co.uk

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I've just been looking through the SNES Music demo ROM I worked on at Software Creations and wanted to share some interesting facts about the music in PLOK!

The audio samples total 50K ( Bytes ) The SPC-700 music driver is 8K Each level tune is between 2K and 4K The sound effects use 4K.

Amazing!

@colinhoad.com

Live cam of brown bears catching salmon in Alaska! The only live feed you need.https://explore.org/livecams/brown-bears/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The project board at Software Creations - around December 1993, Park Place office in Manchester. Dominated by NES and SNES titles, some of which were abandoned or never completed. BASEBALL was 'Ken Griffey Jr. presents MLB'. PLOK had shipped. SNES title 'Moto-X' was finally released in 2023!

@colinhoad.com

So much I agree with here. Games are meant to be enjoyable, and all the more so when you can share your experiences of them with others. Easy mode is my default for new games as it helps me get a feel for them and - sometimes! - even complete them. Difficulty is there for replay only, in my world.

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New software: Gradgrind

Gradgrind update available, fixing a minor bug (incorrect hex display of colour values).
Available from: Roast

@rougol.bsky.social

&FFF (niche RISC OS reference🙂)

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Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 21st September at 1pm.

Live coding today was another success…

There’s now a Git repository on GitHub (https://github.com/gerph/riscos-systemvars) stub module for SystemVars, which allows simple strings to be stored in a dictionary and retrieved. There are some simple SWIs implemented that allow the interface to be exercised. The module also has CI to ensure that the build and loading of the module is successful – and there’s a small test to exercise the internals.

As usual, if anyone has any questions, comments or even code suggestions and PRs, please fire them this way.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

LLMs have no concept of "fact", just (highly complex) word ordering...

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@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Ok friends, I declare the best time of the year is officially open! 😂 🎃 - Thanks to my GF and Mr. Kipling

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm not a bike guy but crikey, if I were...

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The Sinclair Oxford 300 was launched in 1975 and boasted scientific functions. As with all Sinclair products it was very competitively priced - this one was £29.99, very cheap when compared with similar HP models. It had tiny 7 segment displays and a plastic lens to make them appear much larger.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The Liverpool Software Gazette lasted for only 8 issues with the first appearing in November 1979 and the last in February 1981. Published by Microdigital Ltd., it covered all of the home computers of its time. Sadly, the owners sold it to Apple magazine who changed it to Apple only content!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I'm looking forward to reading through these recent acquisitions. Z80, 6502 and 6809 machine code reference/tutorial books from the ealy/mid 1980s.

@colinhoad.com

Well, this is a new one on me! Apparently in 1989 you could buy an ISA card to connect your PC to a VCR and backup your files... to VHS or Betamax tapes 😄 110MB per tape and only £185 + VAT

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

BBC Micro 'Alien 8' development disks. I was looking after these for over 35 years on Paul Proctor's behalf. I had great fun trying to archive them during the last few years. At first some of them just wouldn't read at all. After lots of cleaning and re-tries I managed to recover the contents.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"I should get back to that colour code I was messing with"

Over a year ago. 😳https://media.tenor.com/OjyLuVbKlVUAAAAC/what-happen-shocked.gif?hh=498&ww=398

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

So, following on from yesterday's post. It's back to being another rainy day here in Cumbria – well, I guess it's not called the 'Lake' district for nothing.

But even through the wind and the rain, the beauty of this place is apparent. #TheLakeDistrict #Cumbria

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@colinhoad.com

Quote with a gif you can hear

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@colinhoad.com

New phone! Spend several minutes agonising over which ringtone to pick. Then put it on vibrate mode for the rest of its life.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/18/Rust-1.90.0/

@iconbar.com

September developer 'fireside' chat on saturday night

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/September_developer_fireside_chat_on_saturday_night/index2235.html

The nights are definitely drawing in now. So what better way to spend Saturday night than at next 'fireside' chat (20th September).

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

My perfectly usable Windows 10 PC that I use for everything will soon no longer be supported and can't be upgraded to Windows 11. I like my 'dinosaur' PC and will carry on using it for as long as possible.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Evergreen.

A9 Home port

Timo if you need here there is also a video with the full build process (from our uber Mr. Sprow):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU-wZwangCs

HTH

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

It's finally stopped raining here in the Lake District, and the sun is shining. The river level has dropped from what it was yesterday – still flowing through at a fair pace though.

It's so nice to step out of the back door of our studio and take in the tranquil scenery and enjoy a moment of calm.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Another new find. An invoice from Martin Galway for the Galaforce 2 music and sound effects - BBC Micro / Acorn Electron. Dated 2nd October 1988. It cost me £115 incl. VAT which was a great deal - mates rates! He wrote a brand new music driver ( player ) for this game and did an amazing job!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm tickled by this conference hall ceiling (presumably) whose lighting seems to be modelled on a bad FSI dither...

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Wasm 3.0 is already here!

https://webassembly.org/news/2025-09-17-wasm-3.0/

September developer 'fireside' chat on saturday night

The nights are definitely drawing in now. So what better way to spend Saturday night than at next 'fireside' chat on saturday night (20th September). As usual, 7:30pm UK time kick-off and the event is on Zoom. Stay for as long or as short a time as you like.

RISC OS 64bit work status

Quick status update on the RISC OS 64 progress, since I posted last…

• The links on the repository have been updated with pages for individual modules, listing the features that those modules need to have and their current status.
• I’m happy with my implementation of the Debugger module now, and the live coding for that has finished. It’s not quite as functional as the RISC OS Pyromaniac version / the riscos-disassemble Python package, but it’s working ok for me.
• New `Conversions` module implementation which works.
• Most of the `Convert*` modules have now been built, though not tested in 64bit (they’re not really important at this stage, but it’s good to know they build!
• The `IconBorders` modules all build just fine.
• Problems I had with `RemotePrinterSupport` have now been fixed and it builds in 64bit.
• `ResourceFS` stub module is now complete, and obviously doesn’t do much yet.
• `VideoTTX`, `VideoGuard` and `MimeMap` built for 64bit, although they’re not tested and probably won’t quite do what’s expected.

And internally I’ve been updating my build environment to better handle certain cases that weren’t working previously.

• The RISC OS Build service now has the ability to enable faster builds, using the host version of the tools – see https://asciinema.org/a/741270 for a simple run.
• Improved integration within the SublimeText editor – pressing command-B can now build things with AMU locally and highlight the errors inline in the file, or with the build service.
• Improvements to CMunge for 64bit interfaces that weren’t quite right, and the -zerrors switch, that I had recently broken.

The most recent test run says that most of the modules and tools that are present in the repository at least load correctly:

• https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/actions/runs/…

The progress for Phase 1 is looking pretty good now, with many components exceeding the original aims for this phase. Still 17 falling short, but they’re probably going to be reletively easy to get to an appropriate state.

• https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/wiki/Progress

And the SystemVars module is one of those modules that I will be moving on to in the Live Coding sessions. I suspect this will be relatively easy to deal with, but there will almost certainly be some special cases to handle.

Anyhow that’s where things are for me. You can always follow the repositories to see what’s being done.

Again, if anyone wants to contribute to these, please speak up.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Why is it orange, they won't sell you an orange one. Polestars are only available in various shades of drizzle.

It's almost like they think it'll look better in pictures! 😳

Carwow didn't seem to notice: https://www.carwow.co.uk/polestar/news/9512/new-polestar-5-first-impressions-jamie-edkins

Developers’ fireside chat – 20th September

The next friendly fireside chat for people interested in RISC OS software development will take place at 7:30pm on Saturday, 20th September. Taking place online via the Zoom video conferencing service, these meetings are intended as an informal way of allowing RISC OS programmers, and anyone interested in the subject, to get together online to discuss relevant matters. These meetings don’t have a set agenda, and topics discussed are based on the questions people might ask or what they’ve been working on and choose to demonstrate. For example, topics covered…

Stations more accessible in TrainTimes 2.07

A new version of TrainTimes has been released. The program is one from the Kevin Wells family of applications that use Wget to request data from a remote application programmer interface (API). In this case, the program can be used to check train timetables, as well as find out useful information about the trains themselves, the stations along their route, and so on. It does so through two different APIs – Real Train Times (from whom, users will need to register for an API key) and National Rail. The update…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Tatung Einstein host development system for creating ZX Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC games. Originally developed by Mike Webb and re-created from scratch by @breakintoprogram.co.uk. Software Creations and other North West based companies used this system to develop their titles during the mid-80s.

@colinhoad.com

Microsoft quite literally trolling us, now

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

50 years ago the first 6501 and 6502 CPUs were made available at the WESCON trade show in San Francisco. However, MOS found out they weren't actually allowed to sell anything on the show floor so set up shop in a nearby hotel. Chuck Peddle led the team that created the 650x family of processors.

Debugger module release

Over the course of the last 19 live coding sessions, I have produced a Debugger module which supports many of the things that we expect on RISC OS. We support…

• *Memory
• *MemoryI
• *MemoryA
• *DumpI
• *InitStore
• *ShowRegs
• *BreakSet (not for RISC OS 64)
• *BreakClr (not for RISC OS 64)
• *BreakList (not for RISC OS 64)
• *Debug (not for RISC OS 64)
• *Continue (not for RISC OS 64)
• SWI Debugger_Disassemble
• SWI Debugger_DisassembleThumb
• SWI Debugger_DisassembleArch (for AArch32 ARM and Thumb, and for AArch64 instructions)
• AArch32 instructions are disassembled (default for regular RISC OS), including the FPA instructions.
• AArch64 instructions are disassembled (default for RISC OS 64)
• The module is built and released automatically through CI on GitHub – https://github.com/gerph/riscos-debugger-c/releases
• There’s a project board to record what needs to be done – https://github.com/users/gerph/projects/1
• The module can be built, and runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit RISC OS.
• The module is tested with test code derived from the RISC OS Pyromaniac test suites – automatically within CI.

The module has been demonstrated and run on RISC OS in RPCEmu with !Zap and works as you might expect.

The module can be obtained from the RISC OS Debugger GitHub site – https://github.com/gerph/riscos-debugger-c/releases

The purpose of the Live Coding sessions was – initially – so that I could get some practice at doing coding in a different environment, and demonstrating how some techniques and skills can be used. I was hoping that it would be an encouragement to others that things which seem complicated are largely just a set of small steps to address a problem.

The Debugger module was intended to be a ‘simple’ example of how porting something useful to RISC OS can be done. It wasn’t quite so simple – there’s been work in shell, in python, in perl, and assembler and converting from C99 to C89. And working with someone else’s code which I didn’t understand at first. I hope that it has given people some encouragement to try doing things they wouldn’t have. I hope that it has also shown that mistakes are many and plentiful – and we roll with them. It’s also shown how bad my typing is!

It’s been very exciting. I’ve laughed a lot. And along the way there’s been a number of people coming into the chat and watching the sessions without knowing anything about RISC OS. People who asked questions – even if they’re not on the topic of the debugger – and have been very friendly. That’s been a nice experience too.

So it’s been quite successful, and has produced a replacement module in C for an existing module. Feel free to raise bugs in GitHub, and PRs will be happily received if they’re incremental and reviewable.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 14th September at 1pm

This was the final session on the Debugger. I’m pretty happy with the disassembler now. This final session updated the CI tests so that they (mostly) pass. There were some failures when it was finally integrated into the CI, which I decided to fix offline – they were caused by the use of a non-deterministic part of the table generation in Python. Now that it’s fixed, I think we’ve got a good version.

The Debugger has been published up on the site in the releases section: https://github.com/gerph/riscos-debugger-c

The 64bit version can be found on the RISC OS 64bit status pages: https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status

Next week, I’ll be starting on a different project – something short, I hope!

A9Home port?

All this talk of an A9home port has pushed a bit of a button for me. Anyone have a working one they’re prepared to sell?

@colinhoad.com

Beware Lairds bearing books

@colinhoad.com

There are still (free!) tickets available for this event at @tnmoc.bsky.social - would be great to see you there! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mac-and-cheese-wedge-fixathon-tickets-1614179045979

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

You can assemble 68000 code on a BBC Micro if you have the right software. This cross-assembler was published by Crossware in 1986 IIRC. They sold different versions for various 8 and 16-bit processors. The 68K version was the most exotic. Here's a test process going through lots of combinations.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social @rougol.bsky.social Apologies, something has come up, so can't make it this evening.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Great response from Martin Galway after I released a teaser for Galaforce 3 on the BBC Micro - a project I shall almost certainly never complete. I may give him the gig if I change my mind!

Coding on RISC OS fireside chat, this Saturday - 20th Sept.

Join us around the “Coding on RISC OS” campfire this coming Saturday, 20th September, at 7:30 p.m. (GMT+1) for another one of our regular, friendly and informal fireside chats.

Whether you’re curious, want to help others, are looking to get started, need assistance, or want to share a project or current challenge with the group, you’re all welcome! No experience necessary.

If you are a developer looking to connect with others, come and join in.

For the Zoom credentials (no change), DM me over on X (Twitter), BlueSky, ChatCube or Mastodon. There’s also an email link at the bottom of this informative RISCOSitory news page.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

NES game development on a Commodore 128. At Software Creations we used C128s for some of our early NES games - Solstice, Fast Break, World Games. The C128 based development system hardware and software was written by Mike Webb. This video shows me loading up the NES Magic Johnson's Fast Break code.

@colinhoad.com

The real lesson AI is teaching the business world is that you can save surprisingly large sums of money by this one simple trick of not doing the job you're paid to do properly.

@armbytes.bsky.social

Our next Coding on RISC OS meetup for programmers looking to connect and maybe support others or new starters is this coming Saturday, 20th September, 7:30 pm (GMT+1). Come and join in. DM me for the credentials (no change) #Zoom #Meetup #Retro #AcornComputers #RaspberryPi #ARM

@colinhoad.com

Let's go full dessert mode on Bluesky. Best pie: Apple Best ice cream: Rum & raisin Best donut: Those little ring ones you get at the seaside Best bar: Kit Kat Chunky Best cake: Coffee & walnut Best other: Tiramisu Runner up: Baked vanilla cheesecake [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

RISC OS users: I’ve just updated MetaSprite to work around a SpriteExtend bug concerning mouse pointer sprite palettes.https://metasprite.20000.org

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Note to self: Rename SSID to "Turn Wi-Fi off"

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Sound the trumpets! Whilst cycling if you wish! https://archive.ph/2025.09.14-130105/https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/14/wirral-to-scrap-90-year-old-ban-on-carpet-beating-and-wanton-singing

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Merry Mince-Pies-in-the-Supermarket Day to those who celebrate.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Setting up an older #RISC_OS 5 system as a freebie for a returning user. It's amazing what you forget:

How slow SD card storage is; How fast a Pi 3B+ was in its day; How cool it runs!

It's a good little machine, but it does remind you how far we've come since then.

Rougol September 2025 meeting on monday - Publishing with Ovation Pro

There are two applets that I know of for assisting in the creation of an index. Although, it's been many years since I've used either of them so can't give any more detailed help at this time.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

And while on the @riscosopen.bsky.social forum people are posting of using Linux, no resurrect RISCOSE, no something else, no nothing is possible for #RISC_OS is the typical old school mindset, #ProjectMerlin runs now on #AArch64, because if we don't start doing something, nothing will ever happen.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Presumably Laura will turn out to be the android who's there to make sure the billionaires get their alien DNA. archive.ph/ajXtA

@nemo20000.bsky.social

After years of "make everything monochrome" I note that Android 16 has suddenly decided that colour helps communication. 😲 I wonder how long this fashion cycle will last at Google? Every generation rejects the norms of the previous generation. Bless their rebellious little cotton socks. 🙄

Rougol September 2025 meeting on monday - Publishing with Ovation Pro

One question I have (as an ardent Impression Publisher user) is how do you create an index in Ovation?

@armbytes.bsky.social

This is an excellent opportunity to explore professional desktop publishing on RISC OS at no cost, guided by someone with years of experience. RISC OS is open-source and can run natively on the Raspberry Pi 4, Pi 400, and earlier models.

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TrainTimes Goes To Version 2.07

My UK train time table application for RiSC OS called TrainTimes has had a couple of updates taking it to version 2.07 New in this version is that on the train time table window the origin time was wrong, which has been fixed plus their are more ways to access the station information window which … Continue reading "TrainTimes Goes To Version 2.07"

Opportunity for a re-think?

I suppose I should reply to this thread

My view is that if there is any wider future for “RISC OS”, it’s applying the look and feel to the 64 bit OS and applications that I and millions of others are using on Linux.

A lot of what you desire already exists, or at least a runnable foundation does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHsHU-dDwAk

Source code here;
https://home.marutan.net/hg/riscwm

Here are a few pros and cons compared;

Pros

• Already runs on 64bit (arm, x64, powerpc, whatever)
• Runs Linux ¹ apps (technically more easily than ROLF, as it doesn’t require apps to be recompiled/linked against a different graphics stack).
• Runs RISC OS apps, via RPCEmu
• Contributing programmers don’t need to be able to program an OS, this is an application written in (comparatively) high-level C.
• Large chunks of contributions do not require programming at all, it is often theme and config file tweaking.
• Small enough in scope to not take person-decades of effort.
• Does not require anyone to pay for tools to contribute.
• Not asking for 2.5 million.

Cons

• It’ll never be able to exactly make all Linux apps look and behave like RISC OS ones, you can theme, tweak widget libraries, but it will never be 100% perfect.
• It’s far too easy to look at the project and go “but that’s not RISC OS” and ignore it completely.

Is it finished? Nope, but if this is something you actually want to move forward with you should certainly give it a go and see if it’s the start you wanted.

Realistically I do not worry about the ‘future of RISC OS’, there are not enough people left, and everyone has a different idea of what it is. But if you do worry about such things, I would suggest working out how to contribute to your dreams, as we are way past just sitting on the sidelines and hoping the future falls into your lap.

¹ Technically it is not hard-linked to Linux, you could run it on top of one of the BSDs, Solaris, etc, something with XWindows on

@iconbar.com

Rougol September 2025 meeting on monday - Publishing with Ovation Pro

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_September_2025_meeting_on_monday_-_Publishing_with_Ovation_Pro/index2229.html

The September 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 15th September with guest speaker Gavin Crawford.

ROX-Filer and Android Tablets

I can see that makes sense… the snag is the lack of an equivalent of the ‘welcome guide’. Even the maker’s webpages don’t help much and even use different icons to what I see on a new machine! It’s assumed the owner ‘just knows’.

Yes, I did know that Android has avery different interface because it is used on systems quite unlike a standard desktop machine. But the lack of ad init info has been the problem. Taken me ages to get even the basic functions sorted.

Ovation Pro and book publishing – ROUGOL meeting, 15th September

The next meeting of the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) will take place on Monday, 15th September, with Gavin Crawford taking the podium to talk about how he uses Ovation Pro in his publishing business. A graphic artist and designer with over forty years experience in the field of printing and publishing, Gavin started out at his family’s printing company in the mid-1980s, at which time artwork was hand-drawn. He introduced BBC Micros for admin tasks, later to be replaced by RISC OS machines, and by the mid-1990s…

Archiology

Hi all
Many moons ago (21 years, actually), I uploaded a bunch of stuff to http://www.lewisgilbert.co.uk. Having left it there, unloved and abandoned for a while, I’ve now put it on my current site Inglenot
The other site will die soon, so if anyone is still interested or linked to it, please check out the new site.
Also, if anyone can update the credits – comp.sys.acorn.networking is still given in the original – I’d be grateful
Cheers
Michael

@colinhoad.com

And... relax.

@colinhoad.com

Queue on the o2 website actually going *up* rather than down... good work, fellas.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A few old business cards I found in a box. The three on the right are from my Software Creations days when we were working on NES Solstice and SNES Equinox. Sony published both titles. The SCEE ones on the left are from much later when I was looking for a new job!

@colinhoad.com

A Nightmare on Elm Street, seen aged... 7! 😆 It was a school coach trip, lot of older kids (although none of them were 18...) and one of them had it on VHS, passed it to the front and said "sir, let's put this on". Teacher promptly fell asleep and we were all terrorised by Freddy Krueger. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Rougol September 2025 meeting on monday - Publishing with Ovation Pro

The September 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 15th September with guest speaker Gavin Crawford

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

What an absolute master piece!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oygIWCseYI0

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is me in 2025.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Fascinating accuracy test of 6502 emulators... in the form of official Nintendo NES emulations. (Including the one that accidentally implements the R65C19's JSR instead of 6502's! Oops 🤪) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjYmSniQyM

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Church choirs are not what I thought... https://archive.ph/2025.09.11-101210/https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/11/bangor-cathedral-choir-suspended-after-singing-inappropriate-hymn

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A great review of Galaforce for the BBC Micro published by Computer and Video Games magazine in September 1986. I was really pleased with this review and they gave the game a C+VG Hit award! A 9 for playability was fantastic!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Random find on some old development disks. Original artwork used in the Amiga version of Sly Spy : Secret Agent - probably also used on the Atari ST. Arcade conversion to home computers by Software Creations. I believe this artwork was taken from the arcade version and adapted by Andrew Threlfall.

Iris 1.033 released - plus a poll/request for feedback

-marm is the standard gcc flag for compiling the binary as ARM32 (as opposed to thumb, or whatever the toolchain is set to). The binary can be whatever – what the JIT generates doesn’t need to match.

It doesn’t change anything, and this statement is technically true (it would be trivial to support arm32 binary with Thumb2 JIT, and vice versa, if you had both JITs available), but it turns out WebKit didn’t have shims between Thumb and traditional so the -marm or -mthumb2 flag would have actually toggled both the binary and the JIT (pre-2018). I think that explains the confusion about using -marm to use the ARM32 JIT.

That’s possibly the reason the preferred JIT is Thumb (as the binary would have been Thumb), though another could be because condition flags seem barely used in the generated code, meaning it’s a waste of memory (space and bandwidth) (4 bits per 32-bit instruction wasted, so may as well use 16bit thumb). I imagine they’re barely used because it’s a very simple optimiser which works on all supported CPUs (at the time: SH4/MIPS/ARM32/AArch64/x86).

@rougol.bsky.social

At our next meeting on Monday 15th September @givvygavvygoo.bsky.social will be talking about how he uses Ovation Pro for book publishinghttps://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 7th September at 1pm

Yes. Feel free to try it – it’s in the riscos64-status repository.

The CI hasn’t built it properly since I started introducing the tests, but I try to put a version in that repository after it has been updated. https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/tree/master/r… has the 32bit RISC OS version.

The 64bit version also works too – you can load that into the RISC OS 64 shell and see it working…

Go to: https://shell.riscos.online/static/term64.html

Then:

*URLCopy https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/raw/refs/head… Debugger
*SetType Debugger Module
*RMLoad Debugger

and you can use it as you might expect – as stated breakpoint handling is not defined yet for 64bit.

The demonstration in RPCEmu in episode 11 starts at 2:39:54 so you can see the module being used inside !Zap.

Around here is where I’m loading up RPCEmu to test the module: https://www.youtube.com/live/sb2PBL2QmVA?si=_ezJA1CaCl…

The module is tested on RISC OS Pyromaniac, and I’ve demonstrated it on RISC OS 4. I assume it works on RISC OS 5 – other than the breakpoint handling it’s not doing anything special, and nobody’s reported any issues. Then again, nobody’s actually said they tried it so… meh…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Who remembers when you had to put CDs into a special caddy holder before you could put it into the computer's CD drive? Crazy times!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Bah beep. [best I can do with standard parts]

@colinhoad.com

Whenever anyone mentions Jet Set Willy, I find it hard to resist shouting "JET SET F*CKING WILLY!" (I may have watched Micro Men more times than is strictly healthy) [contains quote post or other embedded content]

WROCC September 2025 meeting - Chris Johns talks Filecore and Block devices

Talk now live https://youtu.be/V8rHwSvtECc

@colinhoad.com

OpenAI Says Its Business Will Burn $115 Billion Through 2029 -- The Information

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Hallelujah! No more 📌 posts! Note that they're sorted by date you clicked the save button, NOT by the post's date. A choice would have been good.

@colinhoad.com

o2 tells me I'm eligible for an upgrade, but having clicked through to the phone options it's all GALAXY AI APPLE INTELLIGENCE GOOGLE GEMINI AI AI AI AIAIAAIIAIIIAAIIAAI ...so, maybe I'll just stick with my current phone.

@colinhoad.com

THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS What a joke. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

After seeing another paper started to circulate explaining some of the causes #GenAI #hallucinate, I thought it would be useful to publish an article I’ve been working on for a while about all the most common reasons #LLMs do:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2025/09/09/ai-why-generative-ai-hallucinates-all-the-causes-you-should-know/ #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

MS Co-Pilot AI works on !Iris

Jokes apart, nice Andrew! I bet I can train Copilot too with my RAG + Knowledge DB, inthe end it’s OpenAI itself. I’ll check it out, thanks for sharing this.

Looks like to create a custom LLM you need a M365 subscription, we use M365 at work and they have begun building custom LLMs to try and help people at work with troubleshooting.

@colinhoad.com

OMG! [contains quote post or other embedded content]

RPCemu on Windows 11

I’ve had a play on Win11 Pro 24H2, it all seems to work ok. Can’t really say much more than that as I only downloaded it for some nostalgia.

@colinhoad.com

I can almost guarantee that the AI algorithm YouTube uses to decide if a video should be restricted or not heavily favours AI-generated content. I bet that gets a pass every single time. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Web2PDF adds interactive help in version 1.01

An update has been released by Kevin Wells to one of his newest applications, Web2PDF. The purpose of the software is to convert web pages to PDF files, which can then be opened by any PDF reader you have available. It does this by sending the address of the page, using Wget, to a remote application programmer interface (API) provided by API Layer for the purpose, called Web Page to PDF. The API then feeds back a PDF file which shows the contents of the web page, which can either…

A9Home

Load from command line outside desktop and look at register dump?

MemoryI pc-40+60 sort of thing

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here's the BBC Micro version of Ultimate Play The Game's 'Nightshade' assembling from source code. This was recovered from Paul Proctor's original development disks. It uses BBC BASIC's built-in assembler to generate the executable. From a time when games were all written in machine code. #6502

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

An interesting spider find in the house - UK. Not as big as the house spiders that are around at the moment. It's a Noble False Widow. Apparently they can give you a nasty bite, similar to a wasp or bee sting - or a much worse reaction for some people. I took this one to the end of the garden.

@colinhoad.com

Different kind of vintage tech today...

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The ACT Sirius 1 (Victor 9000) was designed by Chuck Peddle, father of the CBM PET. It featured a 5MHz 8088 CPU and 128KB of RAM and ran both CP/M-86 and MS-DOS. However, it didn't claim to be an IBM PC compatible. Launched in late 1981. I recently acquired these manuals, sadly, not the computer!

Impact of storage speed on RISC OS?

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and I build a game I wrote, about 40,000 lines of C.
Building from the SD card takes over 10 minutes, without timing it, building from RAM disk takes maybe a minute.

Something there doesn’t quite sound right to me.

Taking DWCDriver as an example of a thing which is ~36000 lines of C, I compiled that on a Pi 2 which has a no-name micro SD card from the supermarket and on 3 runs I get

• 24s
• 24s
• 25s

Those 36000 lines result in 19 object files being written to the card, and looking at the dependencies which are written to the Makefile there are 591 lines, which I interpret as meaning 591 files were read in order to write 19 object files.

If anything the times would reduce (if bound by processing speed alone, using the same SD card) as a Pi 4 is faster than a Pi 2, so I wonder how the 40000 lines of the game can take 20x longer to build?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

US versus UK fire hydrants – a visual study in Lego. No further questions at this time. Send the PhD to the usual address.

@colinhoad.com

Next step: figure out how John Connor used his to hack an ATM...

@nemo20000.bsky.social

What a staggering waste... a 1999 Skyline with 8,700 miles on the clock! I did 160,000 miles in my Skylines while this one was fading into irrelevance in a collector's garage. $300K they want for it (in the US)! I wouldn't give them £30K. It's 2025 you know. A museum piece and it's never lived. https://www.exoticcartrader.com/listing/1999-nissan-skyline-250636972

More experiments with the Python module disassembler...

This version of the disassembly package has now been released – https://pypi.org/project/riscos-disassemble/ – so you can pip install this and get the most recent disassembly tool.

August 2025 News Summary

I have released a new application called WebShot and updated Web2PDF to version 1.01

@iconbar.com

WROCC September 2025 meeting - Chris Johns talks Filecore and Block devices

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_September_2025_meeting_-_Chris_Johns__talks_Filecore_and_Block_devices/index2234.html

Wakefield's September speaker was Chris Johns diving into the depths of RISC OS filing systems.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The 6502 port of Microsoft BASIC has been officially released under an open-source license ( BASIC M6502 8K VER 1.1 ). This source code was used to generate the BASIC interpreters that were licensed to Apple and Commodore. It includes the 'Easter Egg' check.https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/03/microsoft-open-source-historic-6502-basic/

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

We had a VIC 20 at school and I used it a few times, but preferred using the CBM PET. I wanted to know more about the hardware so bought the official Programmer's Reference Manual ( 1982 ). It's a great book that covers the machine really well - it even has a fold-out system schematic. #Commodore

WROCC September 2025 meeting - Chris Johns talks Filecore and Block devices

Wakefield's September speaker was Chris Johns diving into the depths of RISC OS filing systems.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

LOL. Went on Twitter/X to check my private messages and it appears to have imploded - nothing working. Oh well, glad I don't go there very often.

@colinhoad.com

Drop an old person you're going to turn into in the future [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Hello everyone. I'm back from my summer break and hope to bring you lots of new retro related goodness! I've not really been online much so missed a lot of great stuff. If you have posted something ultra cool that you think I'd enjoy, please reply with a link! Guess what these are for ( picture ).

intro to RISCOS Development

thanks for the list of resources and creating a lot of those by yourself as well – this is impressive.

My pleasure and I am sure also the guys who helped and ROOL will be happy to hear all the resources were useful :)

there are some toolchains allowing for a great cross-debugging experience (also on-target, I used them for Cortex-M variants) that would streamline the process of doing that adaption moonshot needs.

Indeed. I am rewriting my own RISC OS using Rust and I have already reached the stage where I can have live source debugging of the entire kernel and even in tools like VSCode, so in my case (and I am talking about my case only) I don’t have any limitation coming from DDE being old limited. But ROOL is a different beast and I am not associated with them in any form or shape, so no idea what they are planning and how. But I know at least a few of them work in embedded development, so I know they are aware of the modern tools available.

Here is a picture for you:

as far as I know, the SWI interfacing into module code by using some of the ARM registers and bank-switching others should translate into a function call in C like it did back in the days with 24bit code, but I assume subtle differences might need addressing (and to overcome) depending on the ARM core used and depending on the linker.

It’s already possible to write modules in C and by long time, moreover with the transition to AArch64, they will probably need to embrace an interface like CallASWI which somewhat resemble the mechanism in modern OS used to call proper SysCalls; so I think ROOL have already addressed this. Given CallASWI is also a mechanism recommended to use on 32bit, it maybe a functional way to make both ABI and API feels close and somewhat standardised. But again, I am guessing here, ROOL is the entity with the details.

would a simulation of a minimal machine as a ‘proof of concept’ and/or starting point would make sense before switching to real hardware, or does this exist already either intendedly or as an existing product like in the riscos on linux approach?

Not sure what you mean here, sorry. As for my work I debug my own RISC OS (Merlin) using QEMU (as well as real Raspberry Pis), so I use QEMU as the simulation for both 32 and 64 bit . It’s not perfect, but it does a relatively good job.

If I was in charge (and I am not), I’d recommend to use GCC and make sure to produce a symbol file so that future RISC OS can be debugged live and source level using QEMU and the embedded GDB server, makes everyone’s life easier (a looooot easier), and allow also less skilled developers to be able to help.

But people are entitled to their own opinions, so I guess ROOL at some point will start answering these questions, they are probably catching up with the technical requirements people are posting about here and there.

Anyway if you’d like to start a specific topic about the 64bit work please feel free to use the dedicated section of the forum:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/13

Using OS_UpCall to notify deletion of a file

They said this in the first paragraph:

Sometimes a file in a directory within the image will be deleted because of actions elsewhere in the image

Ah, I didn’t interpret that in that way, then I read the example which I took to mean Image.A.1 was being deleted using the Filer yet somehow the UpCall for Image.A.1 wasn’t happening.

Sounds like the image filing system has a “real” file Image.A.1 then a virtual/symlink type of setup where you want “fake” file Image.Mirage.NotReal.A.1 to also vanish from the Filer view. All makes sense now!

@colinhoad.com

Workday, possibly the crappiest of all software-as-a-service platforms, claiming it's going to revolutionise your business with "agentic AI" 😆 This is the thing you use to submit holiday requests or send a change of address to HR, the only thing AI could possibly do with any of that is balls it up.

Time for a Qemu port

The whole porting of RiscOS was started by Jeffrey Lee back in the day when the first BeagleBoard came to life and the raspberry pi did not yet exist.
I responded to a post from Jeffrey when he got stuck with Qemu and needed real hardware that was difficult to come by at the time.
As I had the same idea some weeks earlier, I already had a BeagleBoard available and so Jeffrey, being as fast as he was, flooded me with new progress often daily so that I had enough to do with getting the stuff onto the board and reporting on what worked and what didn’t. (Initially I wanted to code as well, but did not want to slow down Jeffrey progress so kept to the role of tester).
So there was some Qemu code written by Jeffrey, but the code never reached the command line prompt afaik.

Archive Magazine Volume 27 Issue 1 out now

Hi Colin, there was supposed to be an issue over the summer but alas. Yesterday, I revised the publishing dates for the rest of the year, I’ll be publishing that on the website soon. Archive 27:6 will now be published mid-September.

You can see covers for all recent issues at https://www.archivemag.co.uk/catalog.html

@colinhoad.com

If you see this post a chef [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

This weekend #ProjectMerlin got support for #Linux Boot Protocol, so now it should work happly with #UBoot and things like #QEMU -kernel when the LBP is activated as a feature at build time. For now it can be tested only on the Pi 2, but as soon as I have time I'll extend it to all other platforms

@colinhoad.com

I approve this message #Sharptember [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Web2PDF Gets Help

I have made a few updates to my RISC OS application to turn web pages into PDF files with Web2PDF taking it to version 1.01 New in this version is the ability to use the interactive help to get help with the application, the other update is to fix a little bug that if certain … Continue reading "Web2PDF Gets Help"

@colinhoad.com

People who post AI slop creations on LinkedIn love putting the version of the AI slop model or AI slop tool they used in the description; bonus marks for listing multiple. I assume they do this because they've seen citations in books or photographers stating their f-stops and think it's the same.

@colinhoad.com

Just seen someone (on another platform) proudly sharing an AI generated video made with something called "banana" that purports to be "exploring Lord of the Rings movies on horseback" and it looked like hot garbage. Comments? "Wow, amazing!", "It's like you're really there!", "So innovative!" 😫

HAL UART Pinebook Pro ( HAL_UARTFeatures )

Hi I’m in the process of writing code for the serial ports on the Pinebook Pro. Am I correct in stating that HAL_UARTFeatures should return the capabilities of the specific port and not the current confugured capabilities ? . For example a port can provide hardware RTS/CTS control so bit 3 should be set irrespectively of how it is configured.

@colinhoad.com

The Very LinkedIn crowd seem to have moved on from the "me as an action figure!" AI slopfest to the "my 80s yearbook photo!" AI slopfest

@colinhoad.com

HIVE MIND: I am on the look out for a good beginner's guide to electronics. Something entry level ("what is a capacitor?" etc.) ideally with some practical examples, geared towards computers for preference. All inputs gratefully received!

@iconbar.com

WROCC September 2025 talk on Wednesday - Chris Johns

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_September_2025_talk_on_Wednesday_-_Chris_Johns/index2231.html

The September 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 3rd September and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

WROCC September 2025 talk on Wednesday - Chris Johns

The September 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 3rd September and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 31st August at 1pm

Live coding today was quite successful, albeit I spent a lot of time fumbling around tweaking bits to *Memory working right – which, if I’d thought a bit more, would have been easier.

Anyhow, comparing against the RISC OS Pyromaniac test results, there were a number of changes to tidy the output up and make it more consistent. The results are pretty good. Of the tests we now have a bunch of passes…

-----------
Pass:      20
Fail:      15
Crash:      0
Skip:      36
-----------
Total run:       35
Pass ratio:   57.14 %
Fail ratio:   42.86 %

Which means that we’re quite consistent. These aren’t automated into the CI yet, so next week, hopefully we can fix a number of them and then automate them to CI.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social Sorry,no DMs, can you ask that again?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Nominative Determinism. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Newshound and Eternal September

Is 1.55 available to download anywhere?

Dutch ABUG event – 3rd to 5th October

There will be an Acorn and BBC User Group (ABUG) event taking place in the Netherlands later this year – the Dutch ABUG 2025, co-sponsored by The Big Ben Club, which will be held from Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th of October at: MFC de Kiekmure,Tesselchadelaan 1,3842 GA Harderwilk,The Netherlands. Anyone who has an interest in the full range of Acorn and related machines (of any native ‘bit’ size) can come along, whether that’s one, two, or all three days – though it will be necessary to book ahead. Details…

WROCC presents a ‘Storage Symposium’ – 3rd September

The Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) will be holding their next meeting on Wednesday, 3rd September, with a two-part talk from Chis Johns on the subject of RISC OS file storage. In part one, Chris will look at Filecore, the standard format used by RISC OS systems, with an explanation of how it all works, and for the second part he will be looking at the BlockDevices system, an attempt to ‘modernise and modularise’ disc access, covering why it was created, and how it works. The start time for…

Virtual RPC adjustSA

Just tried 1280×800 60Hz. Same crash as before full screen. All very odd.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

I opened new release 0.9.6 for #TheCROWler, so please don't forget to submit your bug findings and open feature requests (via email is fine!)https://github.com/pzaino/thecrowler

#ContentDiscovery #Crawling #CyberSecurity #Security #Platform #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment #golang

@colinhoad.com

Apparently, we all went straight from text-based DOS to graphical Windows 95, if this morning's guest on BBC Breakfast is to be believed 🙄

@iconbar.com

August 2025 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/August_2025_News_Summary/index2224.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

August 2025 News Summary

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

@colinhoad.com

I subscribe to 90% retro tech channels on YouTube and the remaining 10% are just random things I saw once and found amusing. I swear the only new video notifications I ever get are from this one guy in Japan posting videos of his parrot.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A note about the misnamed, misused, misdesigned and misimplemented RISC OS “Message_WindowClosed”. This is one for “Programmers are bad at interface design” 101:

@nemo20000.bsky.social

One Brain - national treasure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh7Cxt_PKqw

@colinhoad.com

oh no 🤣 [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Guitar peeps may like this pedal (looking at you, @givvygavvygoo.bsky.social) https://youtu.be/SrkLuin7GhE?si=z749tYanec6V-sjn

@colinhoad.com

Are you a budding fixer-upper of vintage computers? @tnmoc.bsky.social are running a "Mac & Cheese (wedge) Fixathon" on 11th & 12th October, and we're looking for fixers! The focus will be Apple Macintoshes and Acorn cheese wedge units. Sign up link is here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mac-and-cheese-wedge-fixathon-tickets-1614179045979

@colinhoad.com

Sigh. It's a text prediction engine churning out the closest match to the string of tokens you give it in a prompt. It's not a person, it isn't warm or friendly, it doesn't have any capacity for emotion, reflection or understanding. OpenAI need to stop reinforcing this illusory nonsense.

OSLib 64 status

Hiya,

Quick update on the progress with OSLib… I’ve mentioned before the work that I’ve done towards creating the OSLib veneers for RISC OS 64 (and using them for other purposes). These are now complete, I believe – all the interfaces for OSLib should now be converted properly.

Previously, I’d not implemented the non- X-variants of the SWIs, and those calls that spilled arguments on to the caller stack were not generated properly. These issues have both now been fixed – I realised what the ‘!’ means on the def file exit parameters, and these are now set up properly. Together with remembering that I’m working with more registers, the library is now more efficient than previously. Not that that matters really for these calls, but it’s nice not to use as much stack.

----
.section .text.xcolourtrans_set_gcol

.global xcolourtrans_set_gcol

    signature xcolourtrans_set_gcol
xcolourtrans_set_gcol:
    // =>  R0 = colour (OS_Colour)
    //     R3 = flags (ColourTrans_GCOLFlags)
    //     R4 = action (OS_Action)

    // <=  R0 = gcol (OS_GCOL)
    //     R2 = log2_bpp (.Int)
    //     R3 corrupted
    STP     x29, x30, [sp, #-16]!
    MOV     x29, sp

// Prepare output registers
    MOV     x15, x3                             // output gcol
    MOV     x14, x4                             // output log2_bpp

// Prepare input registers
    MOV     x4, x2                              // action
    MOV     x3, x1                              // flags
    // x0 = colour

// Call SWI
    MOV     x10, #1859
    MOVK    x10, #6, LSL 16
    SVC     #0                                  // XColourTrans_SetGCOL (&40743)
    CSEL    x17, xzr, x0, VC

// Store output registers
    CBZ     x15, xcolourtrans_set_gcol_noreg_3
    STR     x0, [x15]                           // output gcol
xcolourtrans_set_gcol_noreg_3:
    CBZ     x14, xcolourtrans_set_gcol_noreg_4
    STR     w2, [x14]                           // output log2_bpp
xcolourtrans_set_gcol_noreg_4:

    MOV     x0, x17                             // Error pointer (or NULL)

    LDP     x29, x30, [sp], #16
    RET

and then there are fun ones like XOS_CreateDynamicArea for the Create (0)
reason code:

.section .text.xosdynamicarea_create

.global xosdynamicarea_create

    signature xosdynamicarea_create
xosdynamicarea_create:
    // =>  R0 = &0 (constant)
    //     R1 = area (OS_DynamicAreaNo)
    //     R2 = size (.Int)
    //     R3 -> base_address (.Data)
    //     R4 = flags (.Bits)
    //     R5 = size_limit (.Int)
    //     R6 -> handler (.Asm)
    //     R7 = workspace (&Void)
    //     R8 -> description (.String)

    // <=  R1 = area_out (OS_DynamicAreaNo)
    //     R3 -> base_address_out (.Data)
    //     R5 = size_limit_out (.Int)
    STP     x29, x30, [sp, #-16]!
    MOV     x29, sp

// Prepare output registers
    // output area_out: arg 8 on caller stack at offset 0 * 8
    // output base_address_out: arg 9 on caller stack at offset 1 * 8
    // output size_limit_out: arg 10 on caller stack at offset 2 * 8

// Prepare input registers
    MOV     x8, x7                              // description
    MOV     x7, x6                              // workspace
    MOV     x6, x5                              // handler
    MOV     x5, x4                              // size_limit
    MOV     x4, x3                              // flags
    MOV     x3, x2                              // base_address
    MOV     x2, x1                              // size
    MOV     x1, x0                              // area
    MOV     x0, #0

// Call SWI
    MOV     x10, #102
    MOVK    x10, #2, LSL 16
    SVC     #0                                  // XOSDynamicArea_Create (&66)
    CSEL    x17, xzr, x0, VC

// Store output registers
    LDR     x10, [x29, #16 + 0 * 8]             // output area_out
    CBZ     x10, xosdynamicarea_create_noreg_8
    STR     x1, [x10]                           // output area_out
xosdynamicarea_create_noreg_8:
    LDR     x10, [x29, #16 + 1 * 8]             // output base_address_out
    CBZ     x10, xosdynamicarea_create_noreg_9
    STR     x3, [x10]                           // output base_address_out
xosdynamicarea_create_noreg_9:
    LDR     x10, [x29, #16 + 2 * 8]             // output size_limit_out
    CBZ     x10, xosdynamicarea_create_noreg_10
    STR     w5, [x10]                           // output size_limit_out
xosdynamicarea_create_noreg_10:

    MOV     x0, x17                             // Error pointer (or NULL)

    LDP     x29, x30, [sp], #16
    RET

All of which is to say… yay! I think I have finally got to the bottom of how the OSLib interface definitions work, and the parser is mostly able to handle them (still doesn’t handle the comments so well… but there’s always scope for improvement), and hopefully OSLib will be useable in some real things soon. I built DrawFile with it a little while back, but it crashed badly, so maybe this’ll help.

OSLib for RISC OS 64 can be found here: https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-oslib

@colinhoad.com

Well, here's a turn-up for the books: yours truly being featured in an article on El Reg! It's all @thelastpsion.com's fault, of course 😆 [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@colinhoad.com

Generative AI. From the companies that brought you the metaverse! blockchain! NFTs! Cambridge Analytica! cyber bullying! electoral interference! products that get worse with each new update! At what point do we all just collectively disconnect from these useless money-drunk idiots?

@colinhoad.com

"Polling released in June found that 30% of the US public believe that by 2034 AIs will display subjective experience" No offence, but considering 37% of the US public are strict creationists [source: 2024 Gallup poll] I don't really feel like that statistic holds a lot of water.

@colinhoad.com

I, too, would love to be the kind of person who "has no money" and yet can afford a massive multi-room, multi-level warehouse with space for an unfathomable amount of retro tech *and multiple cars* Must be a tough life.

@colinhoad.com

On language servers, refactoring code and the joy of Pascal https://www.colinhoad.com/getting-into-the-pascal-groove

Dear RISC OS humans. I have a question.

Am I allowed to make my own OS by forking RISC OS, and calling it my own.
I would do this by renaming the RISCOS.img file to RiskyOS.img
It would be nice to have my own OS on the raspberry pi2.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 24th August at 1pm

It’s only taken me another 10 minutes or so to get the testing code working. It’s shown up loads of little differences that are really quite interesting to see. And probably really easy to fix.

• Many of the *Memory tests show up differences in the case of the hex values that it is decoding (eg we use lower case ‘a0’ rather than ‘A0’). Easy to fix.
• The textual representation avoids using top-bit-set characters, displaying them as ‘.’ instead of the character. That’s not a huge problem, and is an easy fix as well.
• The *MemoryI outputs the hex representation and the textual representation in the opposite order to my other Debugger, which makes everything different.

So at the end of the run we have…

Pass:       0
Fail:      29
Crash:      0
Skip:      23

which isn’t ideal but almost all of those differences are resolvable.
I’ll not commit the code, but leave it until next week and we can investigate the test results and fix what’s needed.

Cherry Bomb revisited in BBC BASIC

A couple of years ago, Jeroen Vermeulen ported Cherry Bomb to RISC OS, a shoot ’em up – aka a ‘shmup’ according to its original developer, Krystian Majewski – in which you control a ship at the bottom of the screen, and shoot down the incoming waves of alien attackers. The original game was developed as part of a tutorial series on a YouTube channel called Lazy Devs Academy, operated by Krystian, and Jeroen’s aim was to learn from those tutorials. He initially brought Cherry Bomb to RISC OS using…

@colinhoad.com

This is all kinds of depressing. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I’ve been updating the RISC OS Hourglass API. • The ability to read the nesting depth; percentage; LEDs; and a bitfield documenting the supported colours, writeable colours and the number of LEDs. • The ability to enable nested use of Percentage by defining the meaning of “100%” for nested calls.

@colinhoad.com

I do very much enjoy that moment on a Friday when work laptop gets put away and fun laptop comes out!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The British-designed Type G is the best power plug/socket, but if you are stuck with a two-pin deathtrap, this is pretty neat: [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@colinhoad.com

Superb! 😆 https://youtube.com/watch?v=PKebn_Ly9T8

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Not an April Fools joke. 😵‍💫 https://www.dezeen.com/2025/08/19/gustaf-westman-ikea-meatball-plate/

WROCC August 2025 meeting - Chris Hughes

Talk is now available on youtube if you missed it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peuEqnLVHnY

@colinhoad.com

You love to see it 😍 [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

New RISC OS release: MenuState 1.01 An esoteric but necessary update – a new SWI to detect the direction of the menu so your interactive help can expand “\R” correctly: menustate.20000.org

@colinhoad.com

With the advent of Excel's new =COPILOT directly inside Excel, I suppose we're now going to have to face the new reality of the Vibe Accountant. Thoughts and prayers.

@colinhoad.com

The symbol for Bluetooth is a fusion of two Norse runes combining the letters H and B, standing for the Viking Harald Bluetooth, former King of Denmark. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

RISC OS 3.1 oversight. RO2 featured interactive help and established that “\R” is short for “Move the pointer right to”. RO3.1 introduced right-to-left menus, which are useful when the pointer is at the right hand side of the screen. Unfortunately, interactive help doesn’t know about them...

@colinhoad.com

Today's vibe

@iconbar.com

August 2025 Rougol report - Mark Moxon

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/August_2025_Rougol_report_-_Mark_Moxon/index2230.html

The August 2025 talk featured the welcome retrun of Mark Moxon, who last spoke in November 2022.

August 2025 Rougol report - Mark Moxon

The August 2025 talk featured the welcome return of Mark Moxon, who last spoke in November 2022.

@rougol.bsky.social

Tonight! Come and join us, we're mostly harmless 😊 [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@rougol.bsky.social

More info on that 32bit machine here https://www.4corn.co.uk/articles/phoebe/ [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This is a gem - a Makro label from before the introduction of barcodes, so this box of wine was bought in the early to mid 70s. The box was made by LINPAC, "Tel. Rawcliffe 331-6", which suggests early rather than late 70s.

Mark Moxon to talk to ROUGOL about networking Elite – 18th August

Note, that’s ‘networking Elite’ and not ‘THE networking elite’ At the next meeting of the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL), on Monday, 18th August, Mark Moxon will be joining everyone in the pub to talk about the things he’s done since the last time he visited, almost two years ago. His main focus will most decidedly NOT be on people who consider themselves to be elite, and how they network amongst themselves, and instead on how he has added network – specifically Econet – support to Elite, beginning…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Genuinely clever bit of origami: https://share.google/RsolE9eJ47GkIf2nN

Screen grab websites with Webshot from Kevin Wells

Kevin Wells has released a new application, called Webshot, which aims to take screen grabs of web pages. However, what it doesn’t do is simply save the screen (or browser window), which you could achieve anyway using Paint’s snapshot facility, or a third party application such as Snapper. Instead, you give it the address of the page you want a snapshot of, and using Wget, Webshot sends that information off to the application programmer interface of a website called Screenshot API, and what the site feeds back is an image…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

What?! Why? Where's the commonality? Perhaps I should launch a combination oven/floss dispenser? Or maybe a Blu-ray/popcorn machine. https://share.google/jQhoa8EkJFlM96Pzu

@rougol.bsky.social

At the next ROUGOL meeting on Monday 18th August we will be joined in the pub by Mark Moxon @markmoxon.bsky.social to talk about how he added network support to Elite on the BBC Micro, Electron, and Archimedes https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

@iconbar.com

Rougol August 2025 meeting on monday - Mark Moxon returns

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_August_2025_meeting_on_monday_-_Mark_Moxon_returns/index2225.html

The August 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 18th August. It sees the welcome return of Mark Moxon.

Rougol August 2025 meeting on monday - Mark Moxon returns

The August 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 18th August. It sees the welcome return of Mark Moxon

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"You're making a face I've never seen before" 😼 [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

I see people still confusing concurrent and parallel tasks, they are not the same. I think one source of "misinformation" is the original OS multitasking design, a timeshare of a single CPU. Probably that is what's confusing. The term MT used on books describing a concurrent tasks scheduler.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

This keeps me sane. You couldn't pay me enough to be inland.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

😲 [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"How could that man have been elected?" The electorate: [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Good video from @davefarley77.bsky.social about vibe coding. I am extremely skeptical about vibe coding TBH, I cannot see an AI being able to produce code out of a "thin" spec, but even in the case it could, the nature of SWE and incrementalism will collide badly with the way current GenAI works.

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

New Application WebShot

I have released a new RISC OS application that takes a screenshot of a web page which is called WebShot and it is at version 1.00 WebShot allows a screenshot of a web page on the internet to be taking based on the Chrome browser, with the screen shot can be viewed as a PNG … Continue reading "New Application WebShot"

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A stimulating thread, with some quibbling. Language defined by language is a little like those rubber-sheet physics props that demonstrate gravity... using gravity. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@iconbar.com

Iris updated to 1.37

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Iris__updated_to_1.37/index2228.html

There is a new version of Iris with lots of new features and bug fixes. So let's dive in...

@armbytes.bsky.social

A big shout-out to everyone who made it. The next fireside chat is pencilled in for the 20th September. #OpenSource #RISCOS #Community #Code4Fun #Zoom #Meetup #RaspberryPi #ARM #Rockchip #Retro #AcornComputers [contains quote post or other embedded content]

Iris updated to 1.37

There is a new version of Iris with lots of new features and bug fixes. So let's dive in...

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I used an Epson FX-80 printer every day when I worked at 'The Micro User' magazine. It was a great workhorse, so I couldn't resist this cheap one when it came up for sale. Not had chance to check it out yet, but was surpised to see an Electrical Safety sticker on it which has only just expired!

@riscosbits.co.uk

A bit of a wasted afternoon, but I managed all this with two CM4001008s (and a completely unnecessary 256GB NVMe drive).

#overkill #frugal #RISC_OS

The rest of the year mapped out by ROUGOL

Well, in the context of ROUGOL, anyway. If you regularly attend the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meetings – whether in person or online – you’ll know when the meetings will take place each month; it’s easy enough to remember, being – unless circumstances force a change – the third Monday of each month, with December often being an exception because of the proximity to Christmas. What you usually won’t know until much closer to each meeting day, though, it’s what the meeting subject will be. Well, for…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

An occasional reminder: Don't use SJP for anything. They "miscalculated" my father's investments for years; tried to fob him off with a box of wine before a lengthy battle resulted in an £8K settlement; sent him a "wealth report" without numbers, withholding how much money he had for 20 months. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Had a wonderful pub lunch today with some of my old Software Creations colleagues. This time we were also joined by Matthew Cannon who I haven't seen for about 30 years! Matthew also worked at Ocean Software during the very late 1980s and early 1990s. Great to have a catch-up after so long.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

So, if you want to know what's going on this weekend with #MerlinOS (a brand new #RISC_OS redesigned from the ground up), check this blog post of mine:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2025/08/08/merlin-os-building-trust-in-risc-os-merlin-with-formal-verification-methods/

#OperatignSystem #rustlang #rustproof #kernel #SoftwareEngineering #CodingLife #rust #programming

@rougol.bsky.social

ROUGOL dates for your diary. We have lots of exciting events already planned for the rest of this year. Join us in person or online 😃 https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/19973

@iconbar.com

August developer 'fireside' chat on saturday night

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/August_developer_fireside_chat_on_saturday_night/index2220.html

The next 'fireside' chat of 2025 is on 9th August (this saturday). 7:30pm UK time kick-off and the event is on Zoom.

@iconbar.com

WROCC August 2025 meeting - Chris Hughes

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_August_2025_meeting_-_Chris_Hughes/index2226.html

Wakefield's August speaker was Chris Hughes, telling us all about some RISC OS software he uses

August developer 'fireside' chat on saturday night

The next 'fireside' chat of 2025 is on 9th August (this saturday). 7:30pm UK time kick-off and the event is on Zoom. As always, stay for as long or as short a time as you like.

WROCC August 2025 meeting - Chris Hughes

Wakefield's August speaker was Chris Hughes, telling us all about some RISC OS software he uses.

@rougol.bsky.social

Chat to Mark about all his Elite projects at the next ROUGOL meeting on Monday 18th August https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Please everyone, do NOT send me private messages. There is a bug in @bsky.app right now due to age verification. They forgot to allow us to disable private messages. So your messages won't be read. My apologies on behalf of the Bsky team who has still to catchup on the issue I think. #bsky #bug

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Started sorting out my home computer library yesterday. Some of these old books are becoming harder to find at a sensible price. I have a huge stack of computer magazines too which are slowly being organised. Fabulous reference and so interesting to read today. Technology has come a long, long way!

July 2025 News Summary

I have released a new app called Web2PDF which will create a PDF file for a web page also my site now is sucure with https://kevsoft.co.uk

Streaming Video in 1994?

In 1994, Acorn Computers, through its Online Media division, played a central role in one of the earliest practical demonstrations of video-on-demand over a broadband network. The Cambridge (UK) Digital Interactive Television Trial, developed in collaboration with Anglia Television, Cambridge Cable (now Virgin Media), and Advanced Telecommunication Modules Ltd (ATML), anticipated many of the features that would later become standard in streaming media.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

When will a technology company finally invent an algorithm, AI or supercomputer powerful enough to correct American misspellings back to English? 🙄 My tolerance for undoubled consonants is diminishing at an alarming rate. I have a hardwired prompt in Gemini: I am British, spell English correctly.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

This weekend I forgot to post about the progresses on project #MerlinOS, sorry it has been a busy weekend. However lots of things, so check the thread for details, here is the current progress: 👇 https://riscoscommunity.org/projects/risc-os-merlin/

@riscosopen.bsky.social

RISC OS on Arm is community-driven with deep roots & real potential. We want to evolve it from historical curio to a lean, modern OS for the future. #OctopusVentures #CamInnovations #AmadeusCapital #IQCapital #InvestHeritage #ScaleUp Support @riscosopen.bsky.social https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

WROCC August 2025 talk on Wednesday - Chris Hughes

The August 2025 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 6th August and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom

@armbytes.bsky.social

Are you interested in coding on RISC OS? Want to learn more? Join our friendly fireside chat on Zoom—DM for credentials (unchanged). If you are a developer, come and connect. The event is this Saturday, 9th August, at 7:30 pm (GMT+1). #OpenSource #RISCOS #Community #Code4Fun #Zoom

Developers’ fireside chat – 9th August

The next friendly fireside chat for people interested in RISC OS software development will take place at 7:30pm on Saturday, 9th August. Taking place online via the Zoom video conferencing service, these meetings are intended as an informal way of allowing RISC OS programmers, and anyone interested in the subject, to get together online to discuss relevant matters. With no specific topic planned, discussions are steered by what people bring up, so that could be their current works-in-progress, development of RISC OS itself, the tools available, and so on –…

A software variety at WROCC – 6th August

The Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) will be holding their next meeting on Wednesday, 6th August, at which the club’s own Chris Hughes will deliver “an off-the-cuff talk exploring various software topics”. The specific subjects he wants to cover include Pinboard2 features, overlooked aspects of web browser Iris, and a look at Lock Screen software. He also wants to share some general hints and tips and, if possible, he’ll go into setting up Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) from RISC OS. The start time for the meeting is 7:45pm, and…

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Why not run a low carbon footprint operating system called RISC OS? Just one creative example of how you can make efficiency savings for @earthshotprize.bsky.social from your armchair. #ArmPowered Support @riscosopen.bsky.social in its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

Yet more skimmers! But where there are small ones, the bigger ones will follow! #waitingforamonster #LakeDistrictFishing #DayAtTheTarn #GoneFishing

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

When your Twitter post is liked by the real Mark Hamill you know it's been a good day.

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Arm's processors power billions of devices. Help us to power the preservation of RISC OS, the platform that made it all possible. Let's keep Britain's computing story alive. #Arm #Legacy #Moonshots Support @riscosopen.bsky.social in its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Last time I visited the Northwest Computer Museum I spotted this Atari ST running Bubble Bobble. I started working at Software Creations just as this was being completed. A fact that I'd forgotten is that Mike Follin wrote the 68000 music driver for his bother Tim who did the music for the game.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Ashby Computers & Graphics Ltd. ( Ultimate play the Game ), then later RARE Ltd, now have their own Blue plaque! You can see it on the wall of their first building in Ashby de la Zouch. We need more of these paques to remember the early videogame studios. https://www.instagram.com/grantkirkhopecomposer/p/DMxs6fdxq49/

Kevsoft Goes Secure

This is a short post to inform people that the software site at Kevsoft has at long last got the https attached to it. If you have a link to my site without the secure bit you may want ot alter it. Thanks.

@riscosopen.bsky.social

How did RISC OS begin? A Risc by THURsday (Arthur). Read more... https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/23/how_risc_os_happened/ @theregister.com #RISCOS #TechHistory #RetroComputing #AcornComputers Support @risc_os in its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Sad to hear the news that videogame musician Pete Clarke passed away today after a long illness. He worked for Ocean Software and Software Creations in Manchester during the early/mid 80s and created music for the BBC Micro and C64. RIP Pete. https://remix64.com/news/peter-clarke-1958-2025.html

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Have you tried RISC OS? Comment below! Support @riscosopen.bsky.social in its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Don't forget to show some love to your friends. Thanks to everyone who has backed us over the past 19 years! #WorldFriendshipDay #InternationalDayOfFriendship #FriendshipDay2025 Support @riscosopen.bsky.social in its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Remember the Acorn Archimedes? Help us preserve the legacy that inspired a generation. @ComputingAtSch #RISCOS #RetroComputing #UkEdChat (Image credit PaulVernon1974) Support @riscosopen.bsky.social. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@iconbar.com

Drag'n'Drop 14i4 edition reviewed

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/DragnDrop_14i4_edition_reviewed/index2222.html

The Summer edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine is now out (with a suitably loud cover).

Drag'n'Drop 14i4 edition reviewed

The Summer edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine is now out (with a suitably loud cover). This edition is 51 pages of news, reviews, tools and lots of code (on yellow pages no less)! As the final edition of Volume 14 (where has the time gone), it includes an updated index including back issues. As it is a PDF you can read it on just about any system (I read it on my IPad).

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Search engines empower billions of people. Find your way to RISC OS and help us to grow our Open Source project. #Infrastructure #OpenSource Support @riscosopen.bsky.social. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Congratulations to the Lionesses 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 A demostration that real hard work, passion, and determination can lead to great achievements! https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/jul/28/triumphant-lionesses-squad-to-be-honoured-at-downing-street

@riscos.bsky.social

Today's fun fact: Browsing the web on an Archimedes (real hardware, not emulated) with ArcWeb is very much still possible!

(Bonus hat-tip to @actionretro.bsky.social for creating FrogFind to make pages usable on old systems!)

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Proud to wear the England shirt? Here’s another way to support British legacy: preserve our computing heritage. @englandfootball.bsky.com @englandft.bsky.com #Lionesses #Euro2025 Support @riscosopen.bsky.social in its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Investing in British educational computing heritage means investing in our future innovators. @Raspberrypi.com #BritishTech #STEM Support @riscosopen.bsky.social in its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

July 2025 News Summary

Iris 1.036 was also released. Existing users can click the "Iris updates" link on the front page to get it.

July 2025 News Summary

Sarah Walker ports 'Another World' to RISC OS; https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=459630

@riscosopen.bsky.social

@techuk.bsky.social RISC OS on Arm is a British innovation story and part of our national computing heritage. Help preserve it for future generations. #BritishInnovation Help @riscosopen.bsky.social continue its mission. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@iconbar.com

July 2025 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/July_2025_News_Summary/index2216.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

July 2025 News Summary

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

@riscosopen.bsky.social

@education.gov.uk The roots of British tech run deep. RISC OS on Arm powered the dreams of a generation of British engineers and developers. Help preserve and advance this legacy. #BritishTech #LegacySystems Support @riscosopen.bsky.social in its mission:https://www.riscosopen.org/content/documents/risc-os-moonshots

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Last year I took some old friends to the Northwest Computer Museum. We don't see each other very often, but it seemed like only yesterday that we were developing BBC Micro games. Whilst we were there we played a few of our old games. Here's Andrew Farrow and Paul Proctor enjoying Galaforce 2.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I kid you not when I say this was my first attempt at the loading screen for Galaforce on the BBC Micro. It demonstrates why most programmers should NOT attempt to do graphics themselves. Fortunately, my schoolfriend Paul Proctor came to the rescue and produced a much better screen for me!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

My Borland Turbo Assembler install disks - from around 1993. Before 'C' took over, many PC applications, tools and games were written in assembly language - 80x86. By 1996, almost everything was written using C/C++. The compilers were more efficient and robust by this time.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Happy 40th Birthday to the Commodore Amiga! It was packed with advanced custom graphics and audio ICs by the amazing Jay Miner. Jay worked alonside Robert Mical and Dale Luck on the Amiga hardware which became the MUST HAVE computer that year. I still can't believe the Amiga is 40 years old today!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A Nintendo 64 Press Release from Peter Main, Executive Vice President - January 1996. Announcing the N64 launch date, price point along with details of the writable Disk Drive Unit with additional expansion RAM.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

From a time when games carried a warning about being 'unsuitable for black and white TVs'. Acornsoft's Snooker for the BBC Micro, 1983.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

RIP, Ozzy! A legend.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Is there anyone here that DOESN'T know how to use one of these to make a call? How many of you had one of these at home with a lock fitted to stop mis-use!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Great to see the ZX Spectrum Next Issue 3 Kickstarter being fully funded in a matter of minutes. I was tempted to get one, but can't justify £300ish on something that I'll probably not have time to use. Don't get me wrong, the £300 price tag is good value, but only if you are going to use it lots!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Some new additions to the Acorn Archimedes programming book section. Most of these were published by Dabs Press and written by established writers with previous work in Acorn related publications. Mike Ginns' Archimedes Assembly Language book is a great read for ARM 2 related programming.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

So true. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@iconbar.com

RISCOSbits releases new ECOS systems for Windows, Retro and Fileserving

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISCOSbits_releases_new_ECOS_systems_for_Windows_Retro_and_Fileserving/index2223.html

RISCOSbits have announced some new systems in their EOCS range (we have previously looked at the Linux version)

@riscosbits.co.uk

ECOS11 is a new Windows #Companion for #riscosfast and ITX cases to integrate #RISC_OS and Windows into a single system.

But it isn't just a sidekick to FAST, it can also fly solo whilst working in formation with #RISC_OS!

#risc_os #ecos11 #windows11

riscosfast.co.uk/ecos.htm

Two new ‘companion’ computers from RISCOSbits

If you’re on certain social media websites, you may have noticed a couple of polls run by RISCOSbits recently. These formed a part of the company’s research and development, as they decided exactly which direction to take for some new kit that was in the works – and that new hardware can now be revealed: There are two shiny new toys in the range, both of which are ‘companion’ systems designed to work alongside existing RISC OS computers – with one version of one of the two machines actually intended…

RISCOSbits releases new ECOS systems for Windows, Retro and Fileserving

RISCOSbits have announce some new systems in their EOCS range (we have previously looked at the Linux version here).

@riscosbits.co.uk

NEW! ECOfile. Using ECOS technology to create the ultimate file store for RISC OS (and Windows, MAC, Android, iOS, Linux...). Made for RISC OS. Is it a NAS? No, it's so much more than that...

#LooksToDieFor #NotForHiding #RISC_OS

www.riscosbits.co.uk/ecos.htm www.riscosfast.co.uk/ecos.htm

@rougol.bsky.social

Andrew is teasing that he will be sharing something "never seen on RISC OS before" at tonight's meeting 😃 https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/19946?limit=25&page=1#posts-158232 [contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here are some of the level 'script' files for NES Silver Surfer. These control the spawning and behaviour of the objects within the levels. This example is taken from Firelord Horizontal. It uses a simple programming language that is interpreted at runtime. These were manually typed in - no editor!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

August, 1985, and 'The Micro User' magazine published my file recovery program for the BBC Micro. If you accidentally deleted a BASIC file from your disk you could use this utility to recover your program. Written in BBC BASIC and 6502 machine code. 40 years ago!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Software Creations had a development studio off Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester, where many of our SNES, Genesis and N64 titles were created between 1992 and 1997. Here's what it looks like now, compared with back in 1993. It's lunchtime and everyone is heading off into town for some food and drink!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Apparently, this image of the Acorn Development Team can be found in the RISC-OS 3 ROM. I believe there is a special way to get it to display.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

ZX Spectrum Next Issue 3 campaign started few weeks ago and already passed £ 1M, this is the 3rd campaign which passes it. Great to hear that! Side note: someone should definitelly remind #RISC_OS users and ROOL that RISC OS ain't a ZX Spectrum... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectrum-next-issue-3-0?ref=ksr_email_mktg_auto_user_new_project_from_creator_youve_backed

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The Gold Plated BBC Micro auction has ended - item no longer available. My guess is that it was a standard Oak case, new and sealed in the box that the owner never used. Perhaps the seller ( who aquired it from the original owner ) googled Oak cased BBC Micro and the Gold-plated one popped up first

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Someone is trying to sell a Gold Plated BBC Micro on eBay - the one given away as a prize by The Micro User. This is in the Science Museum, London AFAIK - and they've used a picture of it. They are claiming to have a brand new, sealed one that they've had since the mid-80s. Why am I suspicious?

Rougol July 2025 meeting on monday - R-Comp talks New 5tuff

Fixed!

Rougol July 2025 meeting on monday - R-Comp talks New 5tuff

Erm, that's Monday *21st* July!

@iconbar.com

Rougol July 2025 meeting on monday - R-Comp talks New 5tuff

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_July_2025_meeting_on_monday_-_R-Comp_talks_New_5tuff/index2214.html

The July 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 18th July. It will feature R-Comp's Andrew Rawnsley talking about new 5stuff (and I expect some older stuff as well).

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Browsing through a CBM PET user manual this evening. This one is really good and covers BASIC programming, hardware overview, peripherals, memory map and machine code programming. I have fond memories learning 6502 machine code on this machine using its built in machine language monitor.

@riscosopen.bsky.social

More RAM? https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/07/18/pi-memory-freed-from-its-32-bit-shackles

Pi memory freed from its 32 bit shackles

The period between stable releases is the perfect time to try out some experimental changes to RISC OS. If you’ve bought one of the top-of-the-range Raspberry Pi 4’s with 4GB or 8GB of RAM the good news is that that extra memory can now be unlocked by dropping the Beta RPi ROM (8GB Support) onto your SD card.

R-Comp 5erving up info about new kit to ROUGOL – 21st July

R-Comp recently announced two new systems, both based around the Raspberry Pi 5 compute module – the 5idekick, and the Pi5erve – and on Monday, 21st July Andrew Rawnsley will be talking to the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) about these machines and other recent developments and updates. Andrew plans to begin his talk on the subject of NVMe and the block drivers, venturing in the direction of the multi-headed Hydra systems available from R-Comp, and that will in turn bring the talk around to 5idekick (which in…

R-Comp launches the 5idekick and the pi5erve

Hear all about R-Comp's new 5ystems at this month's ROUGOL meeting on Monday 21st July...

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

A note on my #UltimaVM for #RISC_OS users: when coding on Ultima, we don't care at all about RO multistasking, we just code like on Windows, Linux or macOS. If we want to run an Ultima App in the desktop we just use the `--mt` option in the command line, everything else is handled by Ultima itself:👇

Web2PDF – a new application from Kevin Wells

Kevin Wells has found another remote application programmer interface (API) to make use of for the benefit of RISC OS users, and as a result has released a new application: Web2PDF. Like a lot of Kevin’s software, Web2PDF makes use of Wget to relay information input into the program’s RISC OS window to the remote API, and then feed the results back to the user. Usually those results are presented to the user via the application itself, but this time there is a subtle difference. The remote API used by…

ArcMouse shrinks into a v2 form

Some time back, Karl Clark released ArcMouse, an interface that could be plugged in to the mouse port on Archimedes-era ARM-based computers from Acorn and allowed a more standard USB mouse to be used. Karl has now improved on the design, and has launched ArcMouse version 2. The new design is that at just 12mm wide, it’s notably smaller than the older version, which makes it more compatible with the ‘all in one’ style of RISC OS computer from Acorn (such as the A3000, on which the mouse port is…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A rather interesting article about Sound Synthesis that appeared in Compute magazine, January 1983. Bob Yannes, who create the SID chip, talks about his original design and how he wanted to be able to make the three oscillators work in unison to create a single voice. @realmartingalway.bsky.social

Web2PDF New Application

I have released a new RISC OS application that converts a web page into a PDF file called Web2PDF which is at version 1.00 To use simple enter the URL of the web page concerned and after a short while a PDF file will be created which then can be run or saved. It does … Continue reading "Web2PDF New Application"

WROCC July 2025 meeting - RISCOSbits

Talk is now online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX9cVpzgDvU

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Some of my development notes for Crazee Rider for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. These two pages detail how the tracks are constructed using simple fixed curves. I hand built each circuit by typing in the data using the encodings shown on these pages. Very primitive. I did plan to write an editor

@iconbar.com

R-Comp launches the 5idekick and the pi5erve

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/R-Comp_launches_the_5idekick_and_the_pi5erve/index2218.html

R-Comp has released two computers based on Pi 5 technology - the 5idekick and the pi5erve

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

This weekend I had some time to continue working on Project Merlin, so progress tracking update!: https://riscoscommunity.org/projects/risc-os-merlin/ #RISC_OS #riscos #kernel #rust #rustlang

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Unreleased NES title Plasma0 ( Plasma Nought ) by Paul Proctor when he was a freelancer developer. I managed to recover enough data from Paul's original development disks to patch together a ROM file that worked. Aculab development machine. As you can see it has game play elements from Jetpac.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Plasma0 for the NES developed by Paul Proctor. He developed this for RARE when he was a freelance programmer before eventually joining them to work in-house. The game was never released, or finished. I recovered the data and images from his old development disks - they were in very bad condition.

ECOS5 from RISCOSbits 'previewed'

The only thing I found missing from the version of the manual I had was to set the IP to a static value (so it does not change). Here is a tutorial on how to set

@iconbar.com

RISC OS Coding double bill weekend

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Coding_double_bill_weekend/index2219.html

This weekend you are in for a treat if you are interested in RISC OS coding. And you don't even have to leave the house...

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

My XBox bootable demo of the un-released 'The Invincible Iron Man' game from 15th October 2003. It used totally new tech, nothing taken from X2: Wolverine's Revenge. We worked on this game for about 6 or 7 months IIRC and then the game was cancelled and we all lost our jobs.

@iconbar.com

WROCC July 2025 meeting - RISCOSbits

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_July_2025_meeting_-_RISCOSbits/index2217.html

Wakefield's July speaker was Andy Marks, from RISCOSbits, telling us all about ECOS5.

Live Coding with Gerph session on Sunday 29th June

On Sunday this week, I'm thinking of tidying up some of the code that isn't quite working right, and making the Debugger build for 64-bit. It probably will hit a few problems, but I expect it to be relatively doable.

@iconbar.com

WROCC July 2025 talk on wednesday

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_July_2025_talk_on_wednesday/index2211.html

The July 2025 WROCCInfo talk is on wednesday 2nd July and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom

@iconbar.com

June 2025 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/June_2025_News_Summary/index2206.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

@iconbar.com

Live Coding with Gerph session on Sunday 29th June

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Live_Coding_with_Gerph_session_on_Sunday_29th_June/index2215.html

If you want to learn from an expert doing some RISC OS coding, you are in for a treat this weekend!

@iconbar.com

Orpheus Internet kills off Intel

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Orpheus_Internet_kills_off_Intel/index2213.html

If you have chatted to Richard Brown at recent RISC OS Shows you will know that he has been planning to migrate the servers Orpheus Internet uses from Intel Xeon systems to pure ARM. This has now been completed...

@iconbar.com

June 2025 Rougol report - Hugo Tyson

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/June_2025_Rougol_report_-_Hugo_Tyson/index2212.html

The June 2025 talk featured ex-Acorn engineer Hugo Tyson talking about 'My Time at Acorn'. There was a nice gathering in the room and online.

@iconbar.com

Rougol June 2025 meeting on monday with Hugo Tyson

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_June_2025_meeting_on_monday_with_Hugo_Tyson/index2207.html

The June 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 16th June. This months speaker is Hugo Tyson and his talk is called "Everything I did at Acorn".

CardInfo gets Two More Logos

My RISC OS application for displaying basic information about bank cards called CardInfo has been upgraded to version 1.03 The main addition in this release is that both American Express and Enroute cards will now display their respective logos. Another update is because there was a slight change in the code sent by the data … Continue reading "CardInfo gets Two More Logos"

@iconbar.com

ECOS5 from RISCOSbits 'previewed'

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/ECOS5_from_RISCOSbits_previewed/index2208.html

We recently persuaded RISCOSbits to let us have a pre-release copy of the new ECOS5 upgrade for their FAST systems....

@riscosbits.co.uk

ECOS5 - RISC OS and Linux Made Easy. Together.

Check out our new ECOS5 - a Linux add-in or add-on for your RISC OS system. Available now. Read all about it:

www.riscosfast.co.uk/ecos.htm www.riscosbits.co.uk/ecos.htm https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/19888

#risc_os #Raspberry_Pi #ecos5 #bestofboth

@riscosopen.bsky.social

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/06/04/moonshots-rocket-is-fuelling-up https://media.tenor.com/v9XIZ3ZgKvEAAAAC/moon-earths-moon.gif?hh=498&ww=498

Moonshots Rocket is Fuelling Up

Back in March the Moonshots Initiative outlined an ambitious plan to migrate the source code of RISC OS away from hand crafted assembler to reach a 64-bit destination before all the 32-bit chips run out. Already the initiative has generated a number of people asking to be involved, promising leads in the areas of focus, and we’re grateful to have received some financial donations from the community already.

@iconbar.com

WROCC June 2025 talk on wednesday - ROOL

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_June_2025_talk_on_wednesday_-_ROOL/index2204.html

The June 2025 WROCC talk is on wednesday and starts at at 7.45pm on Zoom.

@iconbar.com

May 2025 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/May_2025_News_Summary/index2202.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

@iconbar.com

May developer 'fireside' chat on saturday night https://www.iconbar.com/articles/May_developer_fireside_chat_on_saturday_night/index2200.html The next 'fireside' chat of 2025 is on 31st May (this saturday). Usual 7:30pm UK time kick-off and the event is on Zoom. As always, stay for as long or as short a time as you like.

@riscosbits.co.uk

I may be up to something.... #redfunctionkeys #acorn #RISC_OS

@iconbar.com

RISCOSbits upgrades FAST ROM image https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISCOSbits_upgrades_FAST_ROM_image/index2203.html One of the attractions of the FAST systems is the fact that you can update the system. It still needs a custom build but luckily RISCOSbits provides up to 4 custom builds a year. The latest has just been released!

New Application KHolidays

I have released a new application for RISC OS that list public holidays in multiple different countries called KHolidays which is at version 1.01 This application displays the date and name of public holidays for 115 different countries for the current year, p;us fives years in the past as well as five years in the … Continue reading "New Application KHolidays"

@riscosbits.co.uk

Rougol May 2025 meeting on monday https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_May_2025_meeting_on_monday/index2197.html The May 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 19th May. The action which kicks off at 6.

@iconbar.com

Rougol May 2025 meeting on Monday https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_May_2025_meeting_on_monday/index2197.html The May 2025 Rougol meeting is on Monday 19th May. The action which kicks off at 6.30pm in the Duke of Sussex and online at 7.30pm on Zoom (usual link or contact Rougol for one).

@iconbar.com

eXperience Show report 2025 https://www.iconbar.com/articles/eXperience_Show_report_2025/index2205.html TIB spies were at the RISC OS eXperience and this is what they reported back....

@iconbar.com

Big Ben Club eXperience this weekend https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Big_Ben_Club_eXperience_this_weekend/index2201.html The Big Ben club is running its regular show this weekend

@riscosopen.bsky.social

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/05/06/set-sail-for-the-risc-os-experience

Set sail for the RISC OS eXperience

Why not pop along to the Big Ben Club’s annual day in the Netherlands?

The show is on the 10th May 2025 from 10am to 4pm and is located in Koog aan de Zann. It’s easy to reach being only a short distance north of Amsterdam by car, public transport, or even by bicycle.

RISC OS Open will be travelling to the Netherlands, equivalent to 0.106% of the distance to the moon, and expanding on 2022’s theatre topic of the path to 64 bit.

@iconbar.com

WROCC April 2025 talk on wednesday - Graeme Shrimpton https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_April_2025_talk_on_wednesday_-_Graeme_Shrimpton/index2191.html The May 2025 WROCCInfo talk is on wednesday and kicks off at 7.45pm on Zoom

@iconbar.com

RISC OS North charity stand raises nearly 1,000 pounds for charity https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_charity_stand_raises_nearly_1000_pounds_for_charity/index2199.html While WROCC may no longer be running the Show, they are still very actively organising the Charity stand

CardInfo Goes To Version 1.02

I have updated my RISC OS application for giving basic information about bank cards called CardInfo to version 1.02 Their are a few updates in this version with the main one being that interactive help has been added, also on the Edit/Add API key window if you hit the cancel button now it will ignore … Continue reading "CardInfo Goes To Version 1.02"

Charity stand results

We hope everyone enjoyed the show as much as we did – and a big thank you to everyone who either donated to or purchased anything from the charity stand, along with those looking after it. The amount of money raised as a result of the day’s efforts was an impressive £865. That money will […]

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Just published! The new issue of Archive, the magazine for RISC OS users, is out NOW! We have news, reviews, programming tutorials, indepth articles, gaming, 8-bit Acorn, and quite possibly more! #riscos #acorn #raspberrypi #opensourcewww.archivemag.co.uk

@riscosopen.bsky.social

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/03/28/moonshots-initiative-to-secure-the-future-of-the-os

"Moonshots" Initiative to Secure the Future of the OS

Cambridge, UK – 28-Mar-2025 – RISC OS Open Limited (ROOL) is calling on the global technology community to support a bold new initiative to secure the long-term future of RISC OS. The company today announced the launch of its Moonshots programme – a strategic shift away from incremental development, towards large-scale engineering efforts aimed at modernising the operating system for next-generation Arm architectures.

RISC OS, originally developed alongside the first Arm chips in Cambridge, remains a uniquely simple and efficient desktop operating system. It has found renewed interest in recent years thanks to its availability on the Raspberry Pi and its open-source licensing model. However, the platform now faces an existential challenge.

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

TOMORROW! Join Archive and many other exhibitors at the RISC OS North show in Warrington. We'll have a brand new issue hot off the presses (possibly literally). More info here: https://riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/19764 #acorn #raspberrypi #opensource #magazine

And there’s more!

Over the last week or two, the exhibitors falling into a number of broad areas have been explored – but there are some that either don’t fit in any of those areas, or who only do so in a small way. Here are a few of those: While Chris Hall has a few items of […]

@riscosopen.bsky.social

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/03/27/were-off-to-visit-ron

We're off to visit RON

ROOL is proud to be attending the RISC OS North show in Warrington, UK. As a part of our commitment to the future of RISC OS, we will be introducing our “Moonshot” projects by giving an overview of the motivations behind them, how we’re planning to drive them forwards, and how the community can get involved.

Kit yourself out!

If you’re looking to upgrade your hardware to something new – or perhaps you’re just exploring the world of RISC OS and are thinking about buying your first bit of hardware – there will be something for you at the show, with at least two exhibitors offering hardware on which to run the operating system. […]

Come along and play

If you enjoy playing games on your RISC OS computer, there will definitely be something for you at the show. AMCOG Games will be exhibiting, and will have a plethora of games for you to try and buy. AMCOG’s range is extensive, and there will be a new title launched at this show: Morphix. which […]

Retro exhibitors at the show

It’s not all about modern computing at RISC OS North – you’ll also be able to explore older systems, and perhaps even obtain something to keep that old kit running. Retro Hardware, for example, will be able to help you if you have an Acorn Electron in use, or if you’re planning on resurrecting one […]

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Four days until RISC OS North - is everyone ready? www.riscosnorth.uk https://www.riscosnorth.uk/

Software of all kinds

There will be a variety of things to see and discuss at the show, as this series of posts demonstrates, and probably one of the biggest (next to hardware) is the wide range of software available for the operating system. Almost every exhibitor will have software of one form or another available. You’ll be able […]

User groups at the show

As well as coming along to shows like RISC OS North, a good way to support the operating system is to attend your local user group – and a few will be represented at this event. Some groups hold regular online meetings that you can join from anywhere – you don’t need to be local […]

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Last call for items for the next issue of Archive. The next issue of (Archive 27:5) will be launched at the RISC OS North show on Saturday 29th March. If you have any news, articles, or any other bits and pieces for publication, please send them in as soon as possible!

Read all about it!

If you want to keep up with the latest news about RISC OS, there are two publications you need to check out – along with a user group. Archive is a long-running magazine, with a subscription running for six issues, with options to receive it either as a PDF delivered by email, or as a […]

Finding out about RISC OS

If you’re a seasoned RISC OS User, you’ll know all about the operating system’s history, and you’ll be familiar with the people that look after it today – but if you’re a new user or are thinking of trying it out, you’ll want to find out more. In both cases, we have you covered at […]

PhoneVal Goes To Version 1.01

I have updated my RISC OS application for displaying basic information about telephone numbers from around the world called PhoneVal to version 1.01 Their are a couple of new features in this update which are if the F3 key is pressed when their is something to save then the save window will appear and also … Continue reading "PhoneVal Goes To Version 1.01"

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Highlights of recent changes to Paint, SparkFS, the Git client, and SSH-KeyGen. #riscos #opensource

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@riscosopen.bsky.social

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2025/02/21/four-apps-come-to-the-fore-for-you

Four Apps Come to the Fore For You

You may have blinked and missed a few application updates over the last few months as they scroll past on the Recent changes section of the home page. Don’t worry though! We’ve been keeping a watchful eye and, skipping over the smaller fixes for now, can bring you the main highlights.

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

The latest issue of Archive is now on sale! 52 packed pages of RISC OS and Acorn goodness, including a tutorial of TWimp, the latest from RISC OS Developments, reviews of the RiscDOCK and official Raspberry Pi monitor - and much more! Subscribe now at www.archivemag.co.uk

@@alephspace.bsky.social

Q for @dannyrobins.bsky.social re. the visuals in the TV episodes - do the witnesses have chance to sign these off to confirm that they are a fair representation of what they perceived, or are they more an artist's impression?

(Incredible episode last night btw - I feel so sorry for Julian!)

@@alephspace.bsky.social

Kudos to #TheLastLeg for canning their Twitter account - despite being a pillar of their live audience interaction. Excellent decision!

Now just to get 'em over here :)

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Hello to everyone on #BlueSky. RISC OS Open is pleased to have created a presence here. We'll be posting more on this in the coming days and weeks.

New Application PhoneVal

I have released a new application for RISC OS called PhoneVal which is an international phone number validation application. Once a phone number has been entered and the country selected the application will give some basic information about that number, which can be saved as either a plain text file or as an HTML file. … Continue reading "New Application PhoneVal"

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Let's take one more look at Archive Magazine 27:3 before the new issue appears! \* We welcomed Compo back, plus had a CompoScript tutorial. \* Think you know everything about Draw? Wrong! \* Sprow's show report from The Netherlands. \* We interviewed Acornsoft's Paul Fellows! ...

@@alephspace.bsky.social

In our house, @dannyrobins.bsky.social has now replaced 'Ghostbusters' as the go-to answer to the question 'Who ya gonna call?'

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

INCOMING! Archive 27:4 is out this week coming, and its 52 pages are packed to the gills with RISC OS and Acorn awesomeness. Archive is the magazine for RISC OS users with readers in 18 countries. Don't miss out, subscribe! #opensource #riscos #raspberrypiwww.archivemag.co.uk https://media.tenor.com/bq0dfohxcNAAAAAC/ready-siap.gif?hh=259&ww=498

Sponsored by WROCC

We are pleased to announce the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) as sponsors for RISC OS North. Club members should keep a close eye on their inboxes for further news about this. WROCC will also be exhibiting at the event, as well as running the charity stand. You’ll be able to sign up as […]

Currency Gets A Bug Fix

My currency exchange application for RISC OS called Currency has had a little bug fix taking it to version 2.06 The bug was introduced in the previous version in when checking for World Bank Data if the data was downloaded then it would error has now been fixed. It does require a working internet connection, … Continue reading "Currency Gets A Bug Fix"

@@alephspace.bsky.social

Not impressed #BBC -.-

@@alephspace.bsky.social

Who was the first person to decide that virtues were a *bad* thing to signal?

CardInfo Gets Logos

My RISC OS application for getting basic information about bank cards called CardInfo has been upgraded to version 1.01 The only new feature in this version is that the logos of the card scheme has been added. The following logos are: I want to add more logos but I first must have details about themi.e … Continue reading "CardInfo Gets Logos"

@@alephspace.bsky.social

youtu.be/ahzNnXex5fYhttps://youtu.be/ahzNnXex5fY?si=6mFy8FIw6dPOuNHe

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

TONIGHT! Graeme Shrimpton presents the new T-Wimp dev tool at this month's ROUGOL meeting. Join in person at The Duke of Sussex in London, or online via Zoom. Details at https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/19650

Want more? Check out the upcoming issue of Archive for a T-Wimp tutorial! #riscos #opensource

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Have news or any other items for inclusion in the next issue of Archive Magazine? The deadline is this Monday evening! #riscos #acorn #raspberrypi www.archivemag.co.uk https://www.archivemag.co.uk

@@alephspace.bsky.social

Required viewing - as always.

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@@alephspace.bsky.social

Absolutely phenomenal!

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@@alephspace.bsky.social

One I came up with a few years back :)

Merry Christmas #Linux users /admins!

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@@alephspace.bsky.social

The gospel according to Donald?

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@@alephspace.bsky.social

Yes. Yes it is.

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@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Out now! It's the new issue of Archive, the magazine for Acorn RISC OS users. Check out the contents and subscribe today - it's quick and easy, and it's not too late to get the new issue. archivemag.co.uk #riscos #raspberrypi #opensource

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Hello, Bluesky! We are Archive, a magazine dedicated to the open source operating system, RISC OS. We have been publishing since 1987 which may make us the longest running computer publication in the world. Gosh.

Check us out at www.archivemag.co.uk. #acorn #raspberrypi #opensourcehttps://www.archivemag.co.uk

@@alephspace.bsky.social

Well, I know where I'm going on holiday next year!

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@@alephspace.bsky.social

A good old friend of mine - it's encouraging to know that he'll be able to bring his practical, forward-thinking and transformational visions to central government!

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London show roars again

After a short interlude, the London show is back in a new venue this Saturday the 26th October from 11am. The organisers have lined up an impressive list of exhibitors, all bringing the latest software and hardware developments in the RISC OS world for you to explore.

A metric tonne of RISC OS improvements

This is one for the all developers out there! We love celebrating significant anniversaries and milestones, so it didn’t escape our notice that the source code to RISC OS has just reached one thousand accepted merge requests since being migrated to be held in Git back in 2019.

An ePic reshuffle

ePic is a single SD card combining both the official RISC OS Pi release plus a huge bundle of commercial applications (previously called NutPi) totalling almost £600, had they each been bought individually.

@riscos.bsky.social

@riscos.bsky.social

London double-decker bus racing in 1982. Sponsored by Acorn Computer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SlO5_ykips

(Hat-tip to @tomscott.com's newsletter for the link)

@riscos.bsky.social