@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A very short video I took at the end of 'FurbyFest' held at Manchester University in 2024 to celebrate the work of Professor Steve Furber following his retirement. If you look closely you can see several key Acorn/ARM colleagues. Seated is the immensely important computing pioneer, Ivan Sutherland.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

This will mean absolutely nothing to everyone else, but it's something I've been working on (on & off) since August 2024, and I'm so glad it's now working.

Total number of people who will find this useful? Probably 1 (me), and yet I've gone to a lot of effort making this a plug-in. Why?

#RISC_OS

PDrivers.

https://github.com/pwombwell/PDrivers

It’s definitely still work in progress, but it generates identical PS output to Acorn’s driver on the limited subset of pages I’ve tested with (mostly just !Draw). It compiles in Norcroft C++, but every file also compiles in clang++ so I assume it could run on any 64bit RO – I have a capture backend module that generates files that are then replayed on the Mac which then generates PDF, PS or DP, so I know at least the generating side of each module runs correctly on 64-bit hosts (under Asan).

I’ve converted the PDriverDP backend too, but it’s much more messy and totally untested. And I have (slightly messy) a direct-to PDF backend that works with the base set of fonts. I started off with PDF, but realised the easiest way to get the drivers going was to make the PS driver match Acorn’s identically. I’ll put them on GitHub when they’re a bit more reasonable.

RLib, RLibX and ROLib (and Core/OS.cpp) will all merge into RLib. They were intended to be different layers of a SWI wrappers, but I’ve decided it’s too confusing. My current (untested) idea is to break down swis.h into each module, then inline type-safe wrappers. Then you get decent C++ type safety but with inline _swix. (this is where I got the XMLPRM idea that gerph had already worked on). MyError is simply so I can search & replace it when I’ve settled on my favourite API for errors. I’m veering towards exceptions.

And I need to migrate more comments from the ARM as it’s actually really nicely commented.

They’re not expected to be tested by anyone yet (it creates a huge file in $.DEBUG), but feel free to criticise or suggest improvements. I’ve strictly maintained the Device.s/ Device.h separation, which I’m not at all keen on as it forces the objects to have an ugly break back into C.

I suppose the biggest objection that most will have is that it’s C++. Pfft. I quit C 20 years ago.

@iconbar.com

ShareFSServer 0.4.0 released

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/ShareFSServer_0.4.0_released/index2331.html

Recently Paolo released version 0.4.0 of his free ShareFSServer software.

ShareFSServer 0.4.0 released

Recently Paolo released version 0.4.0 of his free ShareFSServer software.

ARX and the Acorn Palo Alto Research Centre at ROUGOL, Mon 18th May 2026

The next meeting of the RISC OS User Group Of London is:

ARX and the Acorn Palo Alto Research Centre, presented by Jim Mitchell

Monday 18th May 2026, 7.45pm

The Duke of Sussex

(upstairs in the 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/

For our May meeting Acorn alumni Jim Mitchell will be Zooming in from his home in California. Jim managed the ARM development team and was head of the Acorn Research Centre in Palo Alto. This was where ARX , the originally planned multitasking, multithreaded, multiuser operating system for the Archimedes was being developed.

Very little has ever been heard about what happened there and how far ARX was developed, except from their RISC OS rivals , so this is a unique chance to find out all about it from the person in charge. We are also hoping to be joined by several other members of the development team to help answer questions.

While Jim will mainly be talking about his time at Acorn, before that he worked for 12 years at the legendary Xerox PARC where ethernet, laser printers, file sharing, the WIMP paradigm, and many more computing concepts we now take for granted were first developed. Later he worked for Sun and was responsible for the development of Java. Read his biography on Wikipedia

He has had an amazing career and we are very excited to have him joining us :-)

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/

ARMbook (Pinebook 11.6) without battery

My ARMbook (Pinebook 11.6) battery is EOL and there are no official instructions from Pine how to run it with battery removed (there are official instructions for Pinebook Pro only).

Has anyone tried to run it without battery?

It was suggested to replace the battery by a simulation circuit, so the firmware will start with only the USB 5V charger connected:

HY2113 VDD > Zener Diode (BZX84C4V3) > HY2113 VSS (GND)

HY2113 Battery (+) > Rseries 10kOhm > HY2113 VDD

HY2113 Battery (-) > HY2113 VSS (GND) (this is connected anyway)

But why should this be necessary, the HY2113 has no communication bus, so how can the firmware refuse to start with battery removed and USB 5V charger connected?

Risc OS Install on SSD

A big advantage of this technique is that you can keep a completely unmodified disc image of the version of RISC OS you are using on the SD card to switch to with a *configure if you run in to problems with anything you’ve installed on to your customised !BOOT on the SSD.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS folks May the 4th be with you! Announcing a new Forth Compiler coming to RISC OS for this autumn (will be unveiled at the London Show this October, together with many other things). The cool bits are in the thread below 👇 #Forth #Fth #Compiler #Bytecode #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment

Audio on RISC OS

The ROSSDocument should be at: http://jcgl.orpheusweb.co.uk/temp/ROSSDocument.pdf

Same directory has a copy of PPMjcgl.zip

Alas, the ROSSDocument is now a decade old. In reality it is symultaneously “out of date” but also exposes where RO still remains lacking compared to ALSA on Linux. Never been able to get anyone to truly deal with this issue… although sound via HDMI is useful for AV, gettng ‘out of the box’ HiRes audio a’la ALSA seems something no-one but me cares about.

Bug in Wimp01, OS_Byte 129, or documentation for the last

ByteV is part of the API, and not explaining what’s expected of claimants by very important subsystems (the Wimp!) is not helpful.

I haven’t suggested you don’t explain what’s expected by the Wimp. However, I did give an example where another API documents (in source code) a ‘bodge’ because of (the Wimp!)’s incorrect usage.

The docs are now no longer inconsistent, but it now reads that the Wimp’s incorrect usage is correct and all other callers are wrong. It’s now very explicit that you should check the C flag, when that’s unnecessary (and a pain, in C).

What’s the difference between saying you’re going to break clients if you don’t do this and documenting you should do it?

I’ve no problem with it being documented as relied on behaviour. Though, the Wimp can be fixed easily these days – it was in ROM when the code was written – and then the problem goes away. No one will run a new Wimp on an old kernel, or vice-versa.

However, I have a problem when an API’s documentation is inverted because of one piece of code calling it incorrectly – especially when it was defined to be undefined and the undefined value gives you nothing that the defined value doesn’t.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

These are not tabloids I'm looking for.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

"Why does my vibe-coded app not do what I asked for?"

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R-Comp launch MailPrint (inc CloudPrint mode) at RISC OS North

The printer has been ordered …

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A load of my old Amiga disks. These were freebies when I bought my A500 BITD - nothing worth archiving here!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Paul Proctor's BBC Micro 'Alien 8' development disks. Partially recovered - the source code is safe! Those Control Data and Wabash branded disks are terrible and fill me with dread each time I try to archive them! I shall try them again, but after a good cleaning!

Fonts for Iris

Yes I did all that, I even reinstalled it and tried on another machine, its not picking up any other font, its a strange one. Unlike Netsurf it just uses the Standard !Fonts

@iconbar.com

WROCC May 2026 talk on Wednesday

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_May_2026_talk_on_Wednesday/index2324.html

The May 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 6th May and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom.

WROCC May 2026 talk on Wednesday

The May 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 6th May and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom. This month's speaker is Martin Eastwood

Live Coding with Gerph, (Tomorrow) Sunday 26th April at 1pm UK time

Bit slow in the session today – although the tiling was added pretty quickly, the shading and selection of sprites took longer than I expected. Largely this was due to my simulation of the module private word being … poor.

But we got out some inverted selections and some faded shadings, so that’s pretty nice to see.

I had hoped that this would be the last session, but since we’ve not got things in the module and 64-bit isn’t tested, we will continue next week.

@colinhoad.com

If you fancy digging a little deeper into 6502, this companion video to the first episode of "Thinking in 6502" does just that! 😁 youtu.be/LX20Te9RzP0https://youtu.be/LX20Te9RzP0

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Alan Moult can be seen here working on an animation for a baddie used in the videogame Maximum Carnage. Proper old-school lightbox, paper and pencil techniques you don't see very often. Video taken at Software Creations, late 1993, by @chunwah.bsky.social

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

NES 'GLUG' by Paul Proctor. This game was never completed or released. Recovered from Paul's old development disks and stitched together to make a ROM that would load into an emulator.

!Pacman 404 error

Thanks for the suggestion Chris. My problem turned out to be somethings that was being configured at the same time as I was trying to install a package. I withdrew them all and it all worked fine. Default sources appear to be working fine.

Cheers.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Howard Cheng, Software Manager at SGI, posted this job advert asking for people to join the team that were working on the Nintendo 64 console. He later went on to join Nintendo and became vice president of research and development amongst other senior roles during his time there.

Refreshing the RISC OS desktop

WROCCTALK 6th May 2026 7.45pm

I will be talking about Frosted & Upcoming Dark Mode and Other Theme Projects, a look at bringing a modern visual style to the RISC OS desktop whilst keeping the speed, simplicity, and personality we all love – plus how I got into RISC OS and wanting to do this.

This talk explores the ideas behind the Frosted and Obsidian themes, including:

Modernising the RISC OS look without losing its identity

Light vs dark design approaches

Alpha Sprites and subtle UI polish

Icon updates and desktop consistency

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

What’s possible with theming today and what comes next with the Window Manager’s 5.89 upcoming features.

Whether you are a long term RISC OS user, theme designer, or just curious about refreshing the desktop, this session will show how small visual changes can make a big difference – clean, modern-ish, yet Still very much RISC OS!

Mini 64-bit update

Not a major update, but just a heads-up for few things that were done recently…

• RTR Basic (BASICSDL) for RISC OS 64 has been updated to 0.03 (0.02 being quickly replaced) ( https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-rtrussell-bbcbasic/r…), with…

  • Support for reading Classic BASIC tokenised files (and Textual files, and RTR format files as well).
  • Support for inferred inline filename for SAVE.
  • Support for the -quit, -chain and -load in the same way as Classic BASIC.
  • Support for TEXTLOAD/TEXTSAVE.
  • `SYS … TO … ;flags` now implemented.
  • Support for the sound operations.
  • And a few fixes for crashes and other misfeatures.

• Very flexible PRM-in-XML GitHub action in the marketplace ( https://github.com/marketplace/actions/risc-os-prm-in-…)

  • Supports building the documentation as plain files, and as indexed files, with both Prince XML and Weasyprint PDF generation.
  • (this is a companion to the earlier builder for RISC OS build service – https://github.com/marketplace/actions/risc-os-build-s… – which lets you run builds with simpler definitions)

• Updated shell service with Pyromaniac 0.82 ( https://shell.riscos.online/)

  • Improved launching of the 64-bit shell, and updated BASIC for RISC OS 64 (as above) – https://shell.riscos.online/static/term64.html
  • (and the server was completely rebuilt and has more disc space now)

• Updated build service with Pyromaniac 0.82 ( https://build.riscos.online/)

  • Improved launching of the 64-bit environment and the BASIC for RISC OS 64 is also present (as above).
  • (and the server was completely rebuilt and has more disc space now)

• Updated documentation and details for Pyromaniac 0.82:

  • https://pyromaniac.riscos.online/pyromaniac/ CHANGELOG.html – has the full changelog.

All of which means… easier testing of RISC OS 64 components, as BASIC is now available in the environment and works well enough to run things.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS #ShareFSServer testers, a new build is available for testing: build 0.4.0.

Details on what's new here:https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/20267?limit=25&page=5#posts-163829

#riscos #OpenSource #FileSharing

Need volunteers to start testing my new ShareFSServer

@all alpha testers

A new alpha build, 0.4.0, is available for testing.

What’s new in this build:

1. Proper client updates have been introduced. These behave more like updates in modern protocols, and they work all the way down to the Acorn Archimedes. This is especially nice to see when copying large directories.

2. I finally had time to complete the rewrite of the code responsible for handling copies from RISC OS to ShareFSServer. This should now make copyign files from RO to ShareFSServer a lot faster. It is faster on my systems, but speed also depends on the network, so please let me know how it performs for you.

3. Server-side changes detection and client updates have been added. The client update mechanism uses the protocol mentioned in point 1.

4. Experimental change detection has also been added for SFTP, FTP, and FTPS. I am still testing these, so they may not work as reliably as the local backend and the out-of-band protocol proxying updates yet.

To enable client updates, please check the usual `sharefs.toml.example`. Here is an example:

#######################################################################
# Hot-update (live refresh) settings
#######################################################################
[hot_update]

[hot_update.global]
enabled = true
debounce_ms = 250
idle_unhook_secs = 300

[hot_update.local]
enabled = true
native_notifications = true
poll_fallback = true

As you can see, there are two separate mechanisms to detect changes server-side:

• native_notifications, similar to how SMB and Samba work.
• poll_fallback, which is specifically designed for systems and protocols that do not support system notifications.

As usual, I will send out the emails tomorrow. If everything works well with this build, I think we will have achieved complete coverage of all the features required for file sharing.

Cool bits from this week:

• DDE and GCC seem to be able to compile software on ShareFSServer without issues, although GCC 4.7.4 did start requesting directories that appear to be from Alan’s computer, lol.

• I have started laying the groundwork for a new backend protocol to share the clipboard across multiple RISC OS, Linux, Windows, and macOS systems. This will not only support copying and pasting text, but also images, audio, files, and more. It should become another small tool to make RISC OS more useful and improve workflows on it.

As usual, thank you everyone for helping test this! :)

PhotoDesk workflow for Dwarf Mini images

I’ve put together some notes on a PhotoDesk workflow for processing astronomical images from the Dwarf Mini. Fairly basic, as RISC OS is limited to processing JPEGs at the moment, but a lot can still be done to improve the pictures.

Link: PhotoDesk workflow for the Mini

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Merchants Warehouse, Castlefield, Manchester. Home of Acclaim Studios ( Manchester ) from around 2002 to 2004. Many of the ex-Software Creations staff worked at this studio.

April 2026 News Summary

Updated LanManFS bounty is underway and there is an alpha test phase. https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/8/topics/20350

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

One for all you graphics programmers and artists.

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dead A7000 board

Holy shit, no no no, they didn’t list that seriously?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I've finally caught up with the cool kids and got a Raspberry Pi.

Don't worry - it's going inside a keyboard and will never have RISC OS anywhere near it.https://media.tenor.com/bueidMCNRzwAAAAC/smirk-smile.gif?hh=498&ww=278

Iris updated to release 1.39

It's possibly worth mentioning that this update was actually quite significant in that it sorts out a lot of download issues on many sites including the likes of github, NHS/hospital sites and banking sites.

Capturing standard output from a command

Within the desktop, the most reliable mechanism is to use the TaskWindow command. Obviously, as you noted, you would need to lock out the interaction whilst the command was working.

If, however, you decide that you want to use the direct invocation, the more reliable was to redirect is to use CLI redirection, not C redirection – because it’s not guaranteed that you’ll be using a C-based program. And you ought not to use PipeFS unless you can guarantee that the output that is being generated it smaller than your available space in the RMA – this is what your scrap directory is for.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS #ShareFSServer just got also the server-side notifications working. This means if an object is changed from Server side (aka not from one of the RISC OS clients), RO clients still get the notification and can request an update (this is how ShareFS works). ShareFSServer optimizes this 👇

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

More code wrestling with my old NES source archives. This time I've managed to get version 48 of NES Wolverine running - dated 23rd October 1990. As you can see, we have an elevator mechanic in this early build - very 'Impossible Mission' like! Wolverine and Logan sprite variations too. No claws yet

Random projects...

No, I was referring to the forks — resource forks show up on other OSs as starting with a . and an underscore. Actually it may be a folder/directory that shows up. I’ll make a note of it the next time I come across it.

There was a mention as well with regard to it causing issues on the Spectrum Next.

See https://youtu.be/GoNnP8EKns0?si=Pv2thF-Tb3pZwKwR

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The Sonoff NSPanel2 is looking interesting - Sonoff have been a bit of a walled garden, so this might slot into existing installations easier than the old one.

And the ability to install any Android app /might/ allow the awkward squad (eg Lepro) to be somewhat integrated too.https://homekitnews.com/2026/04/30/sonoff-unveils-nspanel-pro-gen2-with-matter-dual-relays-ha-support/

Using the Dwarf Mini on RISC OS

that looks awesome Chris!

@armbytes.bsky.social

https://youtu.be/JZjNHnYFqOA?si=bTosRfFxUeH5UdyM BBC Micro history.

RISC OS build service back

Hiya,

The RISC OS build service was down for a few hours this evening whilst I rebuilt the machine and hardened against copy.fail. Apologies if anyone was using this at the time – you should find that the service is back now.

Wimp 5.89 Testing with ROOL ThemeDefs!

I’ve got dark text on dark elements when loading the theme directly from the zip, not entirely sure whats happened.

EDIT: I didn’t use the rom as its for Pi, i built it for the Ti

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS folks, finally (after a month of batling) I have finally decoded and sucesfully reverse engineered the way ShareFS handle the distribution of updates to all connected clients! ShareFSServer is now capable of updating all clients and seems fairly reliable too. Stay tuned for next build soon!

Status update for RISC OS 64-bit work

Arrh, the brightness!

The PNGs aren’t honouring dark mode.

@rougol.bsky.social

In space, everyone can hear you scream . . . As long, that is, as you're equipped with a RemLok survival mask.www.elitehomepage.org/dkwheel.htm

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@colinhoad.com

Bram Stoker's Dracula - DOS edition. I loved this game and even managed to complete it. While it's fair to say the 3D FPS didn't compare favourably to Doom etc. I still think it's a really enjoyable game and ties in nicely with the movie.

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@iconbar.com

April 2026 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/April_2026_News_Summary/index2320.html

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

April 2026 News Summary

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

Chris Johnson's versions of my software

Snapper is indispensable

full stop.

It is very flexible with multiple ways to capture screens and partial screens using mouse or a combination of keys and a useful feature showing screen capture coordinates

@colinhoad.com

I like how all the AI bros who, until very recently, were mocking Apple for its lukewarm embrace of generative AI, are now falling over themselves to praise OpenAI for, err, making a phone.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Well they're honest.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A great video you should watch!

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Iris updated to release 1.39

Always good news when a piece of important software such as Iris get updated.

@colinhoad.com

Overheard a young dev wailing about his Cursor token quota being limited... "my innovation is being restricted!"https://media.tenor.com/Nu0Q-F24KycAAAAC/word-do-not.gif?hh=209&ww=498

@nemo20000.bsky.social

And politics.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm reminded of the New Zealand joke: When a Kiwi emigrates to Australia, the average IQ of both countries increases.

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PIC / WD1772 floppy project

I think the last manufacturer made enough in the final production run to last for another few decades, and after that CJE will probably still have some.

QR code generator module v0.04

Hiya,

I finally got around to making the simple command line QR code generator that I ported into a module. Full documentation is included in the release archive, together with the command line tool if need it.

Release is here: https://github.com/gerph/QR-Code-generator/releases/ta…

Screenshot of a created QR code:

Modern printer drivers

I’ve updated mmy IPP printing apps on my web site.

IPPTrnspt is now at version 0.20. It uses PrintJob, rather than CreateJob followed by SendDocument. This version has been more successful in allowing the media source (paper etc. tray) to be selected.

FindIPP is now at version 0.08, and GetIPP is now at version 0.10. They handle “426 Upgrade required” responses. Previously these would have produced a “No usable printer found” error.

If you hadn’t noticed before, the Dumpers zip is now at version 0.04. I fixed a bug in the PDumperURF module that would make a mess of even numbered pages when using duplex with flip on long edge.

As usual you’ll find them on my web site https://davehigton.me.uk in the “IPP Printing” section.

As usual, I plead for you not merely to try them, but also to let me know if they work for you.

R-Pi SD Card troubles

Andrew, Charles, Dave. Thanks for the messages. I do have a rigid backup strategy so all files can be easily restored if necessary. This afternoon I have cracked open a new SD card and am in the process of configuring it now. I guess that I will never know what actually happened. The errant SD card has not had thousands or r/w operations, it has just been powered constantly for a few years. Most of the backups are via the network but the failed system has a USBHDD connected to it as well. This only spins up when it is accessed so it spends most of its time idle. Any more comments or suggestions gratefully received.

@iconbar.com

Iris updated to release 1.39

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Iris_updated_to_release_1.39/index2327.html

The Iris web browser has been updated to version 1.39

Iris updated to release 1.39

The Iris web browser has been updated to version 1.39

FireWorkz 2.33 installation place

The Mac also (by default) has all applications installed in /Applications. As in RISC OS, applications are really directories (with the extension .app). Some apps use “package installers” which place some files in other directories. All apps can create settings files in appropriate places.

The Mac’s launchers have had various forms over the years. Originally there was none. Much later, Launchpad was introduced. Very recent;y, it’s been removed and replaced by an extension to Spotlight search; Command+Space for Spotlight, then you can press 1 to get a grid of applications — much like RISC OS’ Apps, the only difference being that there is an additional top row of “recently used” apps.

On all modern OSs you can start applications by pressing the Windows/Super/flag/Pi key (Mac: Command+Space) and typing the first part of the name. Paolo’s launcher did this but you have to click in the text box/writable icon. You don’t have to do that on other OSs. Is this a limitation of RISC OS, I wonder? But search is bad at one thing — showing you what you have installed.

Linux traditionally stores applications in /usr/bin or under /opt, but with newer forms of package — Flatpaks, Snaps, AppImages — they can be in other places. The menu entries are created on the basis of a .desktop file.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Whilst up in the loft I spotted the guitars from The Beatles ROCKBAND in a corner - I have the dongles for them. The drumkit is there too, looking rather grubby. I'm so tempted to bring this all down and set it up. I worked on PS3 LEGO Rock Band and later bought the Beatles kit.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

JetPac 2 for the NES? Not really, but a very similar game Plasma 0. Unfinished game by Paul Proctor that I managed to rescue from his old, filthy development disks.

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LanManFS update underway

Files starting with “.” on Samba servers are invisible: Samba marks every dot-prefixed filename (.git, .env, etc.) as hidden. LanManFS follows the Windows convention of filtering hidden files out of directory listings, so these files simply don’t appear in the Filer until you run *LMNameMode -IncludeHidden. We’re still deciding whether the default should change for Samba-style servers or whether this is purely a documentation issue.

Change the default to visible, you mean? I have 122 files dot-prefixed files on my Mac. That’d be so frustrating.

macOS Finder has a hidden shortcut, Shift-Command-dot, which toggles their visibility (curiously across all Finder windows, but that’s probably to avoid creating a now-visible .DS_Store file.

Wouldn’t the sensible place to filter be the Finder/Filer/whatnot, not a per-filing system flag? OS_File 5 already has a hidden attribute per file (which I wasn’t aware about until just now!), which matches your description of Windows’ behaviour.

https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Fil…

I wonder what super-hidden means.

Edit: If you want to hide them from the command line too, it ought to be a global setting, not per-FS global. Then it’d be consistent if ShareFS were to honour it too.

@colinhoad.com

A book shop filled with an eclectic mix of fantasy, sci-fi and computing tomes... basically the stuff *I* like to read! Trouble is, I'd probably run it like Bernard Black 😆

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@colinhoad.com

I've been bowled over by the reaction to this video, it's had over 2,000 views since I released it yesterday! Thank you to everyone who's watched it and provided such lovely feedback - there will definitely be more coming, now that I've seen how popular it's been...! youtu.be/MOEmQ79nA38https://youtu.be/MOEmQ79nA38

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS folks, new test release for ShareFSServer available to all the alpha testers. Link with all the changelogs below. To download the new build the link is the same as always. Please let me know if you find any problems.

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/20267?limit=25&page=5#posts-163728

#riscos #FileSharing #OpenSource

FontPrint.

IIRC the font mapping only happens if the font list is declared in the postscript definition for the printer in the choices. There’s basically a table of pre-installed fonts in the list of installed PS printers, with an indication as to how/where it is used. I believe that if this isn’t in use, you won’t get any font mappings, because the PS driver won’t know there are any fonts to map to on the printer.

I recall it being a bit fiddly when doing my auto-install/auto-upgrade stuff for various printer-related software.

Draw error

That JPEGURL is 404.

JSbeeb and Compiler Explorer at ROUGOL, Mon 16th March 2026

Thanks Piers, I’ll have a look as soon as I have a minute.

There’s no reason why you couldn’t build it on RISC OS if you were to rename all the files and write a suitable Makefile. I find the RISC OS filename convention too frustrating, especially when cross-compiling – no file extension means tools haven’t a clue. I noticed Gerph’s tools only seem to support RISC OS convention, which was unexpected. When we cross-compiled using Norcroft at Acorn, we only used unix convention.

Totally agree, we should have had extensions! Anyway, in case you need, I have automated all thiese shenanigans ages ago, there are scripts that I use to do the symlinking to regular unix files and all my code testing and code checking tools on Linux work fine, if you want I can post a link, but everything is in the riscos community on github. I use it all the time and no issues at all.

Release 2 Of Quiz Engine

I have released the second release of my multiple choice Quiz Engine for RISC OS. This release makes quizzes wth single language look better with change of language options hiden. For those that have downloaded the previous version it is recommend to download the following files Quiz Engine and the Misc fles. For first time … Continue reading "Release 2 Of Quiz Engine"

Live Coding with Gerph, (Tomorrow) Sunday 26th April at 1pm UK time

Relatively successful today. We’ve got the first of our sprites turning up, and they appear to be working ok.

We’ll need to do some optimisation later, but next week will be the shaded and selected icons.

The status page has been updated too, so that it has the component listed as a stub, and we have a set of features listed.

Coding on RISC OS fireside chat, Saturday 25th April

A huge shout-out to everyone who made it.

The next meetup is pencilled in for the 13th of June.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A record breaking day in London! 400m! Where's my slice?https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c3dlge7kmdkt?post=asset%3A52ec8ea8-e5d2-4754-9997-130f3ee2670f#post

@colinhoad.com

Here's some 6502 to brighten your Sunday! youtu.be/MOEmQ79nA38

Special thanks to @musicvsartstuff.bsky.social for the amazing backing musichttps://youtu.be/MOEmQ79nA38

The King is in his counting house – in Silver River Kingdom

Initially released at the RISC OS North show last month, the latest title from AMCOG Games has now been made more widely available. Silver River Kingdom can now be purchased via !Store, priced at £14.99. Anyone who purchased the game at the show can – and should, to ensure they have the most up to date version – download the game free of charge from !Store, by using the download code found in the packaging; just input the code in the “Special instructions, promo code, etc.” field in the application.…

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

It's that typical Sunday morning when you decide to wash the car and the neighbours turn up to see what you're up to.

#just_washing_the_car #nothing_to_see_here

@armbytes.bsky.social

Sine Nomine at the RISC OS North show. Maps, language and history. youtu.be/4DACQutVUBshttps://youtu.be/4DACQutVUBs

@armbytes.bsky.social

A huge shout-out to everyone who made it. The next meetup is pencilled in for the 13th of June. #Zoom #Meetup #RISC_OS #Developer #Community #RaspberryPi #ARM #Retro #AcornComputers

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Turning David Pilling's raw source code into git projects

However, the uptime has substantially improved, so maybe I should bung ChatGPT its way to teach me how to use it.

There is ~ 8Mb/s of traffic constantly reading from our GitLab (that’s the entire plaintext of the Encyclopædia Britannica, every five minutes) due to a bajillion LLM training bots all over the world, and blocking them is like playing whack-a-mole.

So this is something we’re looking at (again). We have some new ideas on how to make the experience better for humans who actually want to interact with the git repositories in GitLab and side-step the bots…

Cloverleaf

Please try to be constructive, people.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Another fabulous Software Creations lunchtime pub gathering today on a glorious sunny day. Excellent company, food and drink as usual. I shared the Chip Tune Player website with a few people who hadn't heard of it, including two who created some of the content hosted there.

chiptune.app/browsehttps://chiptune.app/browse

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Retrofest 2026, at the Museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon, is only 5 weeks away. You can find out more about the exhibitors here... www.retrofest.uk/whowhat.php

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

So Mr Wright, you're proposing to build a house... do I have this right... over a waterfall?! - Oh yes, and river. With a flat roof? - Certainly, and extensive terraces. Good ventilation? - It's... in a valley... in a forest. A forest? But somewhere temperate of course? - Oh, ha ha, no. No no no.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Oh oh... I’m seeing followers who aren’t the usual weirdos doing questionable things to modern or retro computers. Is the X thing starting on Bsky too?

Remember humans: I mostly post coding nonsense, retro computing chaos, and bugs that appear sentient.

Follow responsibly.

DDE C++ compatible STL

I’m still learning and certainly don’t profess to be a C++ Guru!

Me too, continuing to learn is the main thing! and C++ is a very good concept, (my opinion).

I just updated a program I started over 10 years ago. The use of classes greatly facilitates rereading and their reuse.

I don’t know how I could have done it without the STL, and the toolbox objects (the program uses the Treeview and Tabs gadgets and CathLibCpp).

I need to update my site page, old version,

just for info

I hope I can use GitHub like you, it will be better….

!IsocUSB & !Isocplayer on RPi4B w/ FiiO Olympus 2

Is the same problem / fix.

I have to play a wav-file with the old player before the swi is working. It is not enough to start the player without playing.

I have load the IsocPlayer module stand alone and run as BASIC

SYS "IsocPlayer_Play","NVMe::NVME.$.Musik.Song/mp3"

With the loaded module I get no error message but no sound.

If I play a wave file before with the old player, it is working.

DiscKnight on 5.31

I’ve just run DK on today’s build (260423) of RO5.31 and it appears fine. RasPi 3B+, usb-connected SSD. I also tried it on the previous build, 260324, and it was equally fine.

@colinhoad.com

I'm old (and weary) enough to remember a time when saying you met someone "off the internet" was considered weird.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Proper radio interview with the Angine de Poitrine duo. There's a degree of Wombles/Mike Batt distinction here, and the separation of public persona from private identity is a very 21st Century consideration.

Bravo to Khn and Klek (and geology & agriculture to the guys, apparently).https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYQq153rLEg

@iconbar.com

Fireside developer chat on Saturday night

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Fireside_developer_chat_on_saturday_night/index2318.html

There is another developer chat on Saturday night (25th April) for anyone interested in a very informal event online aimed at RISC OS developers of all levels.

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

There is another developer chat is on saturday night (25th April) for anyone interested in a very informal event online aimed at RISC OS developers of all levels.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Not many motoring podcasts manage to squeeze in an Acorn Computers reference:

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

BBC journalism, 1922-2026. RIP.

Developers’ fireside chat – 25th April

The next online meeting for anyone who is interested in the topic of developing on or for RISC OS will take place online on Saturday, 25th April. As ever, these friendly fireside chats are an informal way for developers and those with a passing interest to get together and discuss the issues that affect them or they feel are relevant. There is no set agenda, so the areas covered by the meeting are steered by those present – meaning you can bring up a burning issue, pose a problem to…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

When games were on ROM cartridges it was essential they were rock-solid and free from any major issues. Of course, obscure bugs could slip through the net. This is before the internet and patching a ROM was not an option. Here's a non-approval we received from NOA for Ken Griffey Jr. presents MLB.

Iris 1.039 (April 2026) released

We’re pleased to announce that Iris 1.039 (April 2026) is now available for download, either via the “Iris Updates” link on the browser’s default home page, or via PackMan (see instructions on RISC OS Developments’ website).

This is a small update that resolves issues when downloading files that are triggered from web forms. This should help with Github, Paolo’s theme download site, and a number of other download sites.

@rougol.bsky.social

What's really amazing is that we went from simple 2D platform games like Chuckie Egg to 3D space exploration, trading, dogfighting Elite in less than a year, *on the same hardware*! elite.bbcelite.com

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

After a lot of coding hackery I've got an early version of the unreleased Tom and Jerry game running. It's VERY broken, probably something I could fix, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort - even though I have the full source code. This game was later known as 'Tom vs. Jerry: The Chase is On!'

@iconbar.com

ROUGOL April 2026 meeting - Paolo Fabio Zaino

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/ROUGOL_April_2026_meeting_-_Paolo_Fabio_Zaino/index2326.html

Rougols's April speaker was Paolo Fabio Zaino, introducing his new Theme Manager.

ROUGOL April 2026 meeting - Paolo Fabio Zaino

Rougols's April speaker was Paolo Fabio Zaino, introducing his new Theme Manager

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Trying very hard to get an unreleased Software Creations SNES game to run. I have source code and data, but no ROM image. I'm assembling the 65c816 code and data ROM banks using our original IDE running under DOS Box. Lots of hackery is taking place to try and get the game to run! Time for bed now..

@colinhoad.com

Haven't seen Akira since I was a teenager, but seeing it tonight at the cinema in glorious 4k, I can confirm it is still epic. What a film.

CardData in !Store

The updated version should now be live.

!Iris and RISC OS Open

@David Pitt @Andrew Rawnsley: Thanks for the hints! I downloaded Iris-March2026.zip via the link – lots of files in there -, and screwed it up somehow. Ok, then I went to the link here, https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20064…, and followed Andrews instructions how to update !Iris via !packman. That did it. Now I’m running v1.038.

I’ve mistakenly assumed that all the installed programs are being updated via the appropriate !packman function like it is in Linux with programs of the debian package world. And the !packman update/upgrade functions I run regularly. So my assortment of saved RISC OS weblinks is ever growing.. as is my “downloads” folder…

@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). The event is on Saturday, 25th April at 7:30 pm (GMT). #Zoom #Meetup #RISC_OS #Developer #Community #RaspberryPi #ARM #Retro #AcornComputers

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A Sky News correspondent just reported that a tsunami wave that hit Japan today was "eighty metres high".

It was 80cm actually. Only two orders of magnitude different. But it did underline that an American journalist would be unlikely to say "feet" when they meant "inch" - and that's only 1 O.O.M.

@colinhoad.com

Had a brilliant time at the @computinghistory.org.uk Bring & Byte today, came away with rather a lot of stuff - too many bargains, insufficient willpower 😆 Really enjoyed chatting to everyone too, a grand day out! Thanks to the volunteers for running such a fun event 🙌

SILVER RIVER KINGDOM V1.01 RELEASED

Available to Buy for £14.99

We are pleased to announce that from the 6th of April 2026

Silver River Kingdom v1.01 is available for download from the :

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

If you bought the game at the RISC OS London Show, please update your copy

via the !Store using your download code which you can enter via “Special

Instructions, promo code etc.” in the !Store app.

Here is a link to the product page on our website:

https://www.amcog.co.uk/srkingdom.htm

A game play video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm604NhFjT8

Silver River Kingdom is an arcade RPG game that draws inspiration and

extends the BBC Micro text game “Yellow River Kingdom.”

OVERVIEW

You are the ruler of a small kingdom by the Silver River.

Each year has 3 seasons : Growing, Harvest and Winter.

Your people plant and harvest rice. They dig holes to protect against

flooding and defend against attacks from bandits.

At the start of the year you must choose how many will work in the fields,

maintain the ditch by the river, defend the villages or harvest rice.

You must also choose how many rice baskets will be planted.

Generally the chief is exempt from this work. But by tradition, one day

a year they are permitted to fight bandits, dig ditches to protect against

floods and harvest rice.

Otherwise your role is supervisory. During that day you may re-assign

villagers as you desire to different roles.

Periodically during the harvest and winter seasons the river is known to

flood. Be careful about drowning. The villagers also tend to panic if the

river floods.

If you survive 24 years then you must retire. But, will your people survive

that long?

Good luck!

FEATURING

• 24 virtual years of play

• Three original high quality music tracks.

• HD graphics

• Sounds effects by RDSP

• Joystick support for RISC OS 5 on the Raspberry PI

  (via Retropie controller)

• User defined keys

• Full source code for use in your own projects

• Save / Load

COMPATIBILITY

Silver River Kingdom is compatible with RISC OS 4.02 on Virtual Acorn and

RISC OS 5 on Raspberry Pi 0, 1,2 & 3,4,400 Beagleboard and Pandaboard based

systems, ARM X6, Titanium and RPCEmu.

Please note that for Raspberry Pi users, a minimum of the Raspberry Pi 2

is recommended.

Updates to Silver River Kingdom are free.

Best Regards,

Tony Bartram

AMCOG

@rougol.bsky.social

Tomorrow evening 🙂

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Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 19th April at 1pm UK time

Fun session converting some Python into C code and being confused about where things I’d written might live.

And a little discussion of Tape Repton Infinity that I made work on the BBC with disc and sideways RAM, plus a short discussion and demo of the ancient BBC game Feud – a 2-player game to fight your brothers with. Found the RISC OS version lying around too, and that worked on RPCEmu.

BBC BASIC - Simple OOP Extensions

From the point of BASIC being the ‘bash’ of RISC OS, the main disadvantage of using BASIC in this way is that it isn’t easy to get at any command line parameters compared to Python or C. And I find that Python3 has been well integrated into RISC OS— you can call a script written in Python by typing its name and pass parameters to it quite easily—which is more than you can do in Windows.

The other thing I like about Python in this context is that it can handle “globbing” (i.e. wildcarded file specs).

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I've been going through my archives for NES Wolverine and have managed to re-assemble my original 6502 game code and create a build from the 1st August 1990. As you can see it's a VERY early demo with the 8-way scroll routine, panel and collision working. No Wolverine sprites yet!

@colinhoad.com

I'll be there!

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RISC OS North R-COMP Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjypbKrnUCw

Video now Live

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS folks, one of the nice things about being free from old development environments is that we can do things like update the #RISC_OSMerlin toolchain to the latest #Rust 1.95.0, and everything builds and tests run smoothly:

#OpenSource #OperatingSystem #SoftwareDevelopment

IconBordersSciFi experiment for a Friday evening

The ancient page that showed off the buttons … https://usenet.gerph.org/IconBorders/

Modern Frosted Theme

Some applications do their own icon rendering, or have text editing areas that are done via the basic SWIs like Font_Paint. How can such applications adapt to the user using a dark mode (or even a blue mode or a purple mode, to think more generally!)?

There’s a new Wimp_ReadSysInfo 30 inspired by how Windows does it, giving 0=light, 1=dark. It’s a good point that it would be useful to be able to read back the actual colours so if your theme is actually royal blue you’d know to fill with that colour and not black.

Quick videos for RISC OS Coding

Last one of this series of videos – they do take a while to make, so I only did 9 in this batch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLwc-sUKnDE&list=P…

In this short video, I’m exploring a few of the tools that are present in the build environment – a whistle-stop tour through a few of the tools that help work with RISC OS code.

Rougol April 2026 meeting on monday - Desktop themes

There has been so much development in this area recently, which has been fantastic to see; literally! Looking forward to this meeting a lot.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Great to see Martin Galway has recently shared his C64 music driver and data for Wizball. For those that don't already know, Martin started his computer music career on the BBC Micro whilst at high school. His first version of YMO's Rydeen was composed on a Beeb!https://github.com/MartinGalway/C64_music

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

An old one, but still makes me smile. I think the defrag hasn't quite finished as the tail needs fixing too.

@rougol.bsky.social

Coming up next month, the ARX team finally get to give their side of the story!https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/jimmitchell.html

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Unboxing NES Silver Surfer. This is the free game I received for working on the game when it was first released back in 1990. It has never been booted up as it's an NTSC version - this won't work on a UK NES console. Hard to believe this was 35 years ago! For once we were credited in the manual.

@iconbar.com

Rougol April 2026 meeting on Monday - Desktop themes

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_April_2026_meeting_on_monday_-_Desktop_themes/index2312.html

The April 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and brings together current desktop theme developments

@colinhoad.com

"Just install the ODBC driver from a local, downloaded package file," they said. "It'll be easy," they said.

Reader, it was not.

Rougol April 2026 meeting on monday - Desktop themes

The April 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and brings together current desktop theme developments

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

SNES Super Double Dragon 'Title Page' art assets - separated out.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

If only I'd FULLY read the webpage detailing the SNES Tile/palette file formats. Embedded Interactive viewers are provided to do what I want! I can't get the animation related one to work, but that's not a problem. The tile and palette loaders are working as expected! Here's a teaser preview...

Redecorating the desktop – ROUGOL meeting, 20th April

If you think your RISC OS desktop is looking a bit bland and in need of a lick of paint, Paolo Zaino has the tool to help with that task in the form of ExtTheme – and he’ll be presenting it to the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) at the group’s next meeting, on 20th April. A theme is a package of graphics and related items designed to give your desktop a particular appearance – and the ExtTheme application is intended make installing and switching between different themes…

RISC OS in a Post-AI World: Could Simplicity Be the Missing Link in Education?

Wouldn't RISC OS's fundamental lack of security be a major problem in an educational context?

RPCEmu on RISC OS

Chris Gransden did a port,

This is exactly the thread. That’s the reason why I post here ;-)

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I'm in search of a Windows utility for viewing old SNES art asset files ( Tiles, Palettes, animations ). If anyone out there has found a utility that can load .CGX, .COL, .SCR, .OBJ files please let me know. I've tried YY-CHR (best), YAZE and SNESTilesKitten but none of them do a great job. Thanks!

New DME ExtTheme and Launchpad available for download and testing

Yep – the intent of my update to this thread was to make anyone who wishes to roll a ROM with the dark mode supporting Wimp in can go get the code, or wait time for me to get back to dealing with the leftover bits.

Sounds good. So here is the plan (for now), I have everything working right now from 5.88 all the way down to the Archies (3.10), so I’ll target 5.89 for the extra bits, also because I want to get back to reverse some of the old Desktop improvments done on 3rd party tools of the time and integrate those in.

I also need to finish the work to have a Task Module portion of ExtTheme, ’cause a bunch of users asked for “live” effects, including background shift over the day and alike.

I have found my old code for the “window’s border sausage”, which basically makes the WIMP capable of creating windows borders like UNIX Desktop can and both Mac and OS/2 could, but as I though (and remember) it’s all ARM assembly, and really want to convert it to C (as the rest of ExtTheme is).

So I am not in a hurry, take your time my friend, and I believe 5.89 is basically the same features as the experimental one you’ve sent me long ago. If so, then, technically, it’s already fully supported. Which means for me the only “work” was to target those features for “589-599” basically, this is how I enable/disable features on ExtTheme.

Example, given you mentioned you loved the idea of enabling features! XD

// Windows
    {"WinBorderFaceColour", "WinHighlight", NULL, "-WindowBorderFaceColour", VAL_HEX, "380-999"},
    {"WinBorderOppColour", "WinShade", NULL, "-WindowBorderOppColour", VAL_HEX, "380-999"},
    {"WinBorderOutlineColour", "WinOutline", NULL, "-WindowOutlineColour", VAL_HEX, "380-999"},
    {"WinBorderOverwrite", "WinOverwrite", NULL, "-WindowOutlineOver", VAL_NONE, "380-999"},
    {"WinTitleTextColour", "WinTitleColour", NULL, "-TitleTextColour", VAL_HEX, "589-599,800-999"}, // RO 5.32+

So to skip RISC OS 6 and 7 I can, for example just skip between “600-799” if RO 6 and 7 do not have the same features as RO 5 with 589.

Maybe it’s of help.

Network Printing / RemotePrinterFS

I unplugged my printer and put the power cable in again so that he started freshly – !FindIPP gets his infos, but “No useful printer found”. Same result after having pinged the Brother and running !FindIPP afterwards.

MuView and rendering PDF pages

My idea from here wont work as you can’t add to the PDF file.

What is needed is an add to an existing PDF file,

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Please, my reginos, they're very sick.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Then I will not listen to it. #GetInTheSeaAIBBC

DeleGate garbage dates.

Rarely… Maybe twice in the machine’s life… It’s primarily a RO dev box…

@rougol.bsky.social

At our next meeting on Monday 20th April we will be looking at how to spruce up the appearance of your desktop with @paolofabiozaino.bsky.socialhttps://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

@iconbar.com

Drag'n'Drop 15i2 edition reviewed

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/DragnDrop_15i2_edition_reviewed/index2323.html

The latest edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine was released at the RISC OS North Show where Drag'n'drop were also exhibitors.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Have I shown this kind of RISC OS Custom Icon before? Type 92 is IFR – just put the filename of some renderable file in an icon and set its validation to “R92”. Hey presto, graphic file cached and displayed automatically. [see alt]

Claiming ByteV

Nope… The paddles are directly connected to a RPi via GPIO… I can provide the source code I have so far, which indeed uses the CModule example from the DDE… Let me know how to get it to you if you want to take a look at what I have so far… I’ve had a demo of the hardware at a couple of shows over the last two years or so… Just struggling to find time (and docs/knowledge) to complete the driver…

ROOL Gitlab

Anyway, that ship has sailed, so let?s not keep on about it.

Indeed, but no supporter of ROOL and the platform generally can regard a system where £20k (25% of total bounty allocations, no less) will be spent duplicating functionality that already exists as satisfactory, or incapable of improvement. Simple question: if and when ROOL’s stack becomes available, how many people will actually use it? I’m sure all the actors involved in this situation were motivated by a sincere wish to do the best for the platform, but the upshot has been a gross waste of resources, as far as I can see. There must be a better way, surely?

Drag'n'Drop 15i2 edition reviewed

The latest edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine was released at the RISC OS North Show where Drag'n'drop were also exhibitors.

RISC PC monitor problem

Thanks Gavin – I wasn’t aware you could do that – that’s very useful.

@colinhoad.com

Finished reading Rob Napier's excellent "Voices From A Future Passed" over the weekend (my review is now on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R1JWU9PD4K4E5P/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8) Feeling like another watch of Micro Men might be on the cards...

Automount additional FAT32 partition on boot

@Chris Gransden: I have a 4G sd-card with RISC OS Open, the Fat32-partition called HardDisk3 is being mounted orderly, the icon is created in the iconbar from your !HardDisk3. In $.!Boot.Choices.Boot.Tasks I have an Obey called MountHD3 with the command you mentioned: “addtinydir Boot:^.Apps.!HardDisk3”.

And I have a 32G sd-card with RISC OS Direct with a larger Fat32-Partition, everything else exactly the same, but does not function like in my ROS Open sd-card. Can you imagine how that comes? My Obey file “MountHD3” is not faulty, it executes well manually. (As an interim I have copied it to the Pinboard and saved the status.)

Another question: Is there a “sprite depot” as it can be found in /usr on Linux?

IDE specs

It’s been a very long time since I engaged with anything to do with IDE so…

I need to replace the IDE cable that connects between the Unipod, a disc drive and a Zip drive in my Risc PC. Do I need to spec anything other than 40 pin/3 way? Are there different types I should be aware of?

@colinhoad.com

Feels a bit "WORK AND CONSUME, YOU PLEBS"

I once had 3 months off work and it was incredibly rewarding; at no point did I find myself "bored" or without things to do. I was in better shape (thank you, daytime gym classes) and wrote a third of a novel.

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@colinhoad.com

Playing 5:2 on hard mode today... fasting in the office 🫥

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Out of context posts are the emergent wisdom of this age.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Vantage was not designed for reverse-engineering keyboard PCBs... but it’s good at it.

What are you doing with RISC OS?

Had the time to work on !Prototype, now V0.03. It can now generate source code to use Null Events and optionally doesn’t need to generate extended object sources beyond the base ToolboxC++Lib classes of the resource file objects, this reduces the number of files generated which are unnecessary to create compilable source code.

PhotoDesk 3.26a update released

This has now been updated again to correctly report 3.26a. I recommend that anyone who already downloaded this, do so again so that it is clear that you’re running the correct build. My apologies for any inconvenience.

KevSoft Quiz Engine updated with release 2 of the skeleton app

Kevin Wells has issued a second release of his Quiz Engine, an application for creating multiple choice quizzes on RISC OS – and which forms the basis of his own two quiz releases, FlagQuiz and MorseQuiz. The main Quiz Engine program remains at version 1.02, with the ‘misc’ file standing at 1.01, but the skeleton application is now at release 2. The main change in this version is that it if you don’t want to make your quizzes to support multiple languages, it’s now an easier goal to achieve. As…

@armbytes.bsky.social

https://youtu.be/C9A15BJ7LOY?si=F3ED4lbvm80Z9z_q #RISC_OS #Code

Official download page for Browse?

When browsing the internet on the RiscPC, I usually use a version of Browse built from the sources on ROOL’s GitLab, since it’s less demanding than NetSurf and works correctly on RISC OS 3.70, while still having modern TLS support that’s all but required for viewing any website these days.

I’d like to be able to recommend it for this particular use case to people new to the RiscPC, but it’s not currently available from the Downloads page – only when building from source. Would it be possible for it to be added so that it’s more generally available?

@armbytes.bsky.social

https://www.youtube.com/live/SCgY-w6ea6g?si=JZnrXv-NGVc3CIHT #RISC_OS #Development #Live #YouTube #Sublime

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Where is the Artemis special edition?

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Python and Pygame

Python3 was in Apps.Developement, and packages were buried deep in PythonSite.Python38.Site-Packages

Why? I dont really understand the logic or how python finds these. Hence my bewilderment

Chris Johns (who ported Python3 and Pygame) described why the packages are placed where they are in an article In Archive (volume 25, IIRC). Basically it’s to make it possible to update !Python3 itself without updating all the packages at the same time. Although in fact Python3 hasn’t been updated for some years now—probably because Chris J. is working on other things (block devices, I seem to remember).

@nemo20000.bsky.social

My face when...

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Software vectors from C.

@ /\* Simple, working version */

Nope, that’s not textile either. Just wrap your content in < pre > and that’s all you need.

But in any case, no… that’s not a working version. Firstly the ‘simple_vector_handler’ has the wrong prototype for any of the CMHG entry points. Secondly, calling OS_WriteC inside a WrchV vector claimant will rapidly crash when it runs out of SVC stack space because you’ve failed to include any flags around it that you are already in the WrchV call. And of course, because you’re trapping WrchV the error report will then crash the first time it tries to print a character – and you have a dead machine.

@colinhoad.com

"You can't hear an image"

The image

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SMB2/3 protocol

FYI, the LanMan conversation thread is moving here.

LanManFS update underway

Just cleaned and built ChangeFSI over LanManFS from a Windows 11 laptop (SMB3), so it’s looking promising…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Just back from the cinema with family. We all enjoyed 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' but thought the first one was better. Some great visuals plus many Nintendo retro characters / references :- Rob, StarFox, Pikmin, Superscope, Game & Watch etc. Stay for the very end of the long credits to see more!

JUnitXML data collection and reporting module

Hiya,

A new module – `JUnitXML` has been created, which will create XML files which describe the results of tests. This is a de facto standard for automated software testing, to report the results in a way that is presentable and recordable.

The module release can be found here: https://github.com/gerph/riscos-junitxml-module-ai/rel…

The source repository contains the code and documentation ( https://github.com/gerph/riscos-junitxml-module-ai), and the example program shows how you might use this…

REM >Example
REM JUnit XML output example
ON ERROR ERROR EXT ERR, REPORT$ + " at line " + STR$(ERL/10)

JUnitXML_Create_FilenameGiven = 1
JUnitXML_Success = (1<<4)
JUnitXML_Failure = (2<<4)
JUnitXML_Error = (3<<4)
JUnitXML_Skipped = (4<<4)

REM Create output file
SYS "JUnitXML_Create", JUnitXML_Create_FilenameGiven, "test-result/xml" TO jx%
IF ERR THEN PRINT "Error creating file: "; REPORT$ : END

REM Create a test suite
SYS "JUnitXML_TestSuite", 0, jx%, 0, "CalculatorTests", "com.example.calc"

REM Set suite properties
SYS "JUnitXML_TestSuite", 3, jx%, "build.number", "42"
SYS "JUnitXML_TestSuite", 3, jx%, "os.version", "3.11"

REM Add passing test
SYS "JUnitXML_TestCase", JUnitXML_Success, jx%, 0, "Calculator", "testAddition"
SYS "JUnitXML_TestCase", JUnitXML_Success, jx%, 0, "Calculator", "testSubtraction"

REM Add failing test
SYS "JUnitXML_TestCase", JUnitXML_Failure, jx%, 0, "Calculator", "testDivision", "DivisionByZero", "Cannot divide by zero"

REM Add error test
SYS "JUnitXML_TestCase", JUnitXML_Error, jx%, 0, "Calculator", "testOverflow", "OverflowError", "Result too large"

REM Add skipped test
SYS "JUnitXML_TestCase", JUnitXML_Skipped, jx%, 0, "Calculator", "testMultiplication"

REM Close the suite
SYS "JUnitXML_TestSuite", 1, jx%

REM Query result counts
SYS "JUnitXML_Result", 0, jx% TO tests%, passes%, failures%, errors%, skips%
PRINT "Tests:    "; tests%
PRINT "Passes:   "; passes%
PRINT "Failures: "; failures%
PRINT "Errors:   "; errors%
PRINT "Skips:    "; skips%

REM Close the file
SYS "JUnitXML_Close", 0

PRINT "JUnit XML written successfully"

@colinhoad.com

"Amid regulatory and energy price concerns," in the sense that those concerns are at the very periphery, with the great big elephant in the centre being "profit, lack thereof".

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I couldn't resist this recent eBay item. On first glance it's a Teletext Adapter 'cheese wedge'. However, it has two ribbon cables coming out of it which is odd. Open it up and you'll find a 6502 2nd processor board sat on top of the teletext PCB. Two in one - a user DIY job! Never seen this before.

@iconbar.com

Archive Edition 28:02 reviewed

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Archive_Edition_2802_reviewed/index2322.html

Archive Magazine 28:02 was released for the North West Show and subscribers should have received your copy in the post recently.

@colinhoad.com

Daily dose of dystopia there from Starbucks. What next, Soylent Matcha Latte?

Archive Edition 28:02 reviewed

Archive Magazine 28:02 was released for the North West Show and subscribers should have received your copy in the post recently

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS I keep seeing people posting that ShareFS does not work on RPCEmu when in NAT also on macOS, that is NOT entirely true 😉

!NetSurf problem?

Over the last few days I’ve ceased being able to post using !NetSurf.

I can still log in with it, but as soon as I try to write anything into a thread I get told I’m “not logged in” !

Now using !Iris and that seems to work, still… or may be luck?

But otherwise has there been an ‘update’ to the code running the forum which has caused it to dislike !NetSurf? Or is the problem oddly specific to my being able to post? Anyone else had a similar problem?

Access to my smb: fileserver; !ShareView

Hello, I’ve been trying around with !ShareView still getting an error STATUS_BAD_NETWORK_NAME. In “Hostname” I gave in the IP address of my homeserver (192.168.178.xx), “Share name” will be the problem: The server’s hostname alone (“asus-pn40”), smb://asus-pn40, smb:\\asus-pn40… do not work. User is clear, me, and “Path” Chris Gransden told me I can leave empty. In “SDFS::RISCOSpi.$.!Boot.Choices.smb2.user/txt” I filled in my Workgroup:username:Password.

With "smb-share-enum smb://stefan@192.168.178.xx/ I get a list of what’s on/in my homeserver. That at least.

WROCC April 2026 talk on Wednesday

And the talk is now up on You Tube. It shows me sharing the screen of my laptop as well as that of my Hydra over RDP and Zoom to demonstrate RiscOSM.

Live Coding with Gerph, *Saturday* 11th April at 1pm UK time

This Saturday – 11th April (UK time), at 1pm UK time – I’ll be continuing the series implementing the `*GOS` command line system. Last week we got the environment handlers working, and added the little bit of assembler glue. This week, we’ll be making that glue work in 64-bit.

Come along if you like – https://youtube.com/live/SCgY-w6ea6g?feature=share – or you can always watch the video afterwards at the same address.

Note: This is a Saturday session, as I’ve got plans on Sunday.

For anyone who hasn’t seen these live coding sessions, this where I share my screen for about 3 hours and code some RISC OS component, whilst talking about what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, and answering questions on the chat.

The features I’ve described in the details are a little light ( https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/wiki/Module_U…) but we’ll no doubt expand those as we do the work.

If you want to watch the whole series, you can follow it through the playlist on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEo2wgt_R2A&list=P…

Alternatively, the series is also available from my Presentations website: https://presentation.riscos.online/live/gos.html (once it has been published).

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 5th March at 1pm UK time

Only now do I notice that I wrote March instead of April. Thankfully people understand which month we’re in!

Paint, Draw, OS_EnterOS and ModuleWrap

But would/will(?) multicore functionality address two particular instances where RISC OS is showing its age

Not really, no. Multicore just makes a pre-empted OS able to do more things at once (and do so more smoothly). But it does make sense to design both at once.

As Paolo says, to fix your woes you’ll need pre-emption and better memory protection. Which comes back to my usual gripe about all modules running in SVC mode when most of them don’t need to. Give a module dodgy data, and it corrupts the RMA. There’s no obvious easy fix for that.

Multi-core CPUs only exist because physics rules out ever-increasing clock speeds. I remember when ~4GHz Pentiums were a thing and you needed a power station to run them. A two-core CPU at a given clock speed will use (very, very approximately) half the power of a one-core CPU at double the clock speed. But rewriting an algorithm so one task can be performed as multiple parallel tasks is tricky – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl’s_law 1

No software engineer would choose multi-core. A thread to handle the UI and a thread to handle the incoming mail processing makes sense – but there’s not a lot else you’d find them useful for.

1 Amdahl’s law states that if an algorithm can be split so half of the total execution time can be executed in parallel across many cores, the maximum speed up you’ll get, even on an infinite-core CPU, is 2.

New CashBook Test Build Available

It’s been a while since I released any updates to CashBook, but some enquiries at RISC OS North prompted me to have a look at the outstanding wish list.

As a result, there is a new test build at https://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/risc-os/cashbook which contains the following improvements:

• The account or heading ident is shown in the title bar of statement views, in addition to the name.
• There is an option to include account and heading idents in all four reports.

As with all test builds, there’s no guarantee that the new features work reliably, or that I haven’t broken other stuff in the process.

This is something of a work in progress, but further releases will depend a lot on my available time.

For clarity, I think at some point there was a test build out from the new development branch, featuring significant internal re-working of dialogue boxes and (possibly) list views. This test build undoes that, and returns us to the 1.4x branch for the sake of getting some useful new features out in a sensible timescale.

TW styles

All that said, is it still not possible to buy an update for EW due to the barmy barriers that now make trade into the UK a PITA? The mention of AW 2 makes me hope/wonder. The versions I have are a decade old.

http://www.mw-software.com/paying.html#ewprices

Having said that you may already have the ‘latest’ TW as I believe v9.12 is the most recent and is dated 2013 !

Filer Changes

This forum needs a like button.

WROCC RISC OS North Show Videos

Not sure whether you intended the link to start the video 5 seconds in and miss out some of your pretty graphics.

Need to remove the “& amp;t=5s” from the end.

@armbytes.bsky.social

Journey to the Far Side of the Moon 🚀🛸 images.nasa.govhttps://images.nasa.gov/

Voices from a future passed

No, there is no VAT on (physical) books in the UK—never has been.

I think VAT used to be payable on e-Books but no longer is.

NVME ShareFS

Totally Random question and i didn’t realise this before, We can of course share CD, SATA, etc via ShareFS via the option from the drive menu, But noticed this option is missing from the Nvme Drive, is there a way of Sharing the whole drive to other RISC OS Machines from Nvme?

@iconbar.com

RISC OS Git client reaches release 0.12

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_Git_client_reaches_release_0.12/index2321.html

ROOL continues to make progress on its mission to bring modern source control to RISC OS with the release of 0.12 of the Git client.

RISC OS Git client reaches release 0.12

ROOL continues to make progress on its mission to bring modern source control to RISC OS with the release of 0.12 of the Git client

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Some of the Carnage sprite frames from the original development disks for "Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade's Revenge"

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Player Control document for the unfinished 'The Invincible Iron Man' game - September 2003.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I have so many unofficial RISC OS font filetypes. Eventually I’ll have to allocate these properly and they’ll all change and break my tools.

Plus how will I ever remember TTF and OTF if they’re not &77F and &07F? The nice thing about anarchy is that it’s very simple.

RISC OS North Show Report 2026

There is an additional show report at https://tantobieinternettattler.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-risc-os-north-show-21st-march-2026.html?m=1

RISC OS in a Post-AI World: Could Simplicity Be the Missing Link in Education?

One of the problems with detailed control of the curriculum from bureaucrats is just this. It might achieve a lowest common denominator of coverage but may not leave much time for inspired teaching.

Filer Action SWIs

To copy some large directories using Filer_Action from a BASIC program I am using the following sequence of SWIs:

Wimp_StartTask FilerAction_SendSelectedDirectory FilerAction_SendSelectedFile FilerAction_SendStartOperation

As I do not want processing to continue until the copy is complete, I am then Polling to wait for the copy task to finish with the TaskCloseDown message &400C3.

This all works fine … but if the Filer Action encounters an error it is displayed with the options to Abort, Skip or Retry.

If Abort is chosen, the copy task obviously ends and the calling program detects that.

However, I have found no way to detect that the copy was aborted, and I do not want to continue the rest of the normal processing.

Any suggestions how this could be achieved?

How to detect Wget?

I use the following command on my apps that use Wget:

SYS"Wimp_StartTask","X wget fff -o “scrap$”.test"

Then count the filesize and if it is less than 1 Wget is not present.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

Yes, I'm sorry I'm late with my obligatory photo of Archive magazine, but I've been away and only just got back¹. But it was nice to find this waiting for me.

¹ I'd have posted a day earlier if the airline hadn't delayed the flight by 24 hours.

#ArchiveMagazine #RISC_OS @archiveriscos.bsky.social

ARM Wrestling

There’s a new ROCoding entry on the ROAST blog. As a change from graphics, this time I’m looking at the ARM’s SIMD instructions.

Link: ARM Wrestling

It’s pretty basic, as these instructions are all new to me! Comments and suggestions welcome.

There are also some posts with recent results from my Dwarf Mini smart telescope, such as this, the globular cluster M13 in Hercules:

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Indeed it was the ability to incorporate any other processor that led Acorn, through trying the best of what was available, to develop the ARM instead.

It's not just how this is possible, it's why it's possible to watch a video about it on the Tube.

(Do you see what I did there?!)

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Apparently we're not socialling correctly here?

Well OK you've got me there, fair enough.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS: antoher tough piece of work for Merlin, an extended and fully multi-core VDU driver. It's working and cores can do VDU requests who are being rendered correctly on the screen.

And yes it's ugly 😂 I need to make a video of the tests, but I have so many things to do that I don't know...

RISC OS in a Post-AI World: Could Simplicity Be the Missing Link in Education?

double-post

RISC OS in a Post-AI World: Could Simplicity Be the Missing Link in Education?

It goes even further, unfortunately, to IT suppliers into schools and those setting the curriculum and goalposts.

Printing

I’ve updated the PDumperURF module again, this time to fix a bug that only showed up in certain circumstances. You’ll find the new Dumpers zip, version 0.04, on my website, http://davehigton.me.uk in the “IPP printing” section.

Updated map data for RiscOSM

The full set of new map data for RiscOSM is now available on the Sine Nomine Software website.

(And this is being sent from a PineBook connected to Transport for Wales Wifi on a train approaching Shrewsbury! It’s a first time for me connecting to the forum from RISC OS while on the move.)

@armbytes.bsky.social

May the Forth be with you. 🚀🕹️🛸 #riscos #raspberrypi #acorn #forth #computer #language

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@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Files to accompany the 'RISC OS and Forth' article in the latest issue of Archive Magazine are now available to download. www.archivemag.co.uk/2802

Archive is the magazine for RISC OS users, available in both printed and digital formats.

#riscos #raspberrypi #acorn

Archive Magazine Feb/Mar 2026

Files related to the Forth article in the new issue are now available for download.

https://www.archivemag.co.uk/2802/

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Acorn really dropped the ball when it came to RISC OS Path Vars (like Run$Path) by using a valid chr as separator (“,”) when there was an obvious alternative – space.

Though FileSwitch is therefore gimped we could have done better... but it’s HARD:

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The first, and last, LEGO STAR WARS videogames I worked on - released in 2005 and 2022. I helped port the original videogame to PC and was a member of the render technology team for Skywalker Saga. Amazing teams to work with.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm sorry Dave I can't email that.

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RISC OS Wimp running on four cores of a RPi3

Yeah i never realised the wimp was actually functioning with multicore, so seeing !Alarm using different cores was impressive, how is the testing going with other apps? are they responding well or causing you headaches lol

@colinhoad.com

Latest new toy... a fully working, refurbished Psion netBook! What a beauty 😍

@nemo20000.bsky.social

It's not PenIsland but did nobody ever consider?

@colinhoad.com

Never thought I'd get a chance to buy a new album on cassette in 2026 😆 I @garynumanofficial.bsky.social clearly knows his audience 🤘

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I've just been told by an LLM that my RISC OS work is "Infrastructure for a future that hasn't arrived" so I'm going to have a bit of a lie down in a dark room.

New UK Bin Recycling Laws: Introducing !Recycle4 to Help Risc OS Comply

I did want to do a Welsh version but didn’t get anywhere with it. Then again, I never feel like I am getting anywhere when I am restricted to 20mph.

Well at least going so slowly you can wind down the window and ask someone walking alongside you what unpronounceable collection of random consonants a formerly world renowned tourist attraction has been renamed to this week.

Cymru – cadwch allan!

@colinhoad.com

I'm now witnessing, in real time, AI being used to not only review existing code repos, but then auto-generate backlog items which AI then works on, submits PRs for, and merges back to the repo.

It's a complete lobotomisation of the software engineering process. I cannot see how this ends well.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

The Artemis II mission to fly to the moon, but not land on it.

A similar mission concept was often adopted by my parents in the '70s when I was growing up. We would go *to* a historical stately home, but not into it, as that was too expensive – we could look at the outside. #Artemis_II

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS Simon's PR is always quite minimalistic, so let's make this to spread please. He is working on one of the few projects to reimplement RO in a more modern fashion and today he shared that his work has finally achieved WIMP running on multi-core!!! video:https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20328

@armbytes.bsky.social

RISC OS using all four cores Source: https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20328?limit=25&page=1#posts-162769 🚀🕹️🛸

@nemo20000.bsky.social

If you’re going to get it wrong, at least get it definitely wrong.

@colinhoad.com

Excuse me while I pick up my lower jaw from off the floor 🤯

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!ThemeDefs

Does anyone know if the Themedef package works on either RISCOS 4.39 or SIX? is it cross compatible? Can’t seem to find any information as to what its requirements are, I would assume it is just RISCOS 5

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Sky News being very negative about Nasa - they kept talking about this "crude mission". 🤔

Took me an appreciable time to realise they were saying "crewed" - because they're so terrified of saying "manned". 🤦‍♂️

Someone buy them a dictionary, this is ridiculous.

@colinhoad.com

I won't have a word said against Mr & Mrs Crunchy.

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WROCC Meeting - Mapping Railway History with RiscOSM - 1st Apr

After a rehearsal on Monday one of my intended demonstrations failed miserably so I rewrote it. I was trying to demonstrate how much easier it is now to obtain a map of a specified area in RiscOSM without lots of trial and error, panning and zooming, but the programme relied on INKEY to see which keys were pressed and thus would not work in an RDP client (server?) on my Windows machine. It is now a proper application, !OpenAMap, so should work on the Hydra over Zoom/RDP to display the RISC OS desktop.

@iconbar.com

Double your impact on the RISC OS 'Moon mission'

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Double_your_impact_on_the_RISC_OS_Moon_mission/index2319.html

ROOL (RISC OS Open Limited) is working on its most ambitious project to date: moving RISC OS to a 64-bit architecture. It's a major undertaking, and right now your donation goes twice as far.

@colinhoad.com

Not managed to spot any April Fools stories on BBC News front page. Maybe the real news is too grim for prank stories...

Double your impact on the RISC OS 'Moon mission'

ROOL (RISC OS Open Limited) is working on its most ambitious project to date: moving RISC OS to a 64-bit architecture. It's a major undertaking, and right now your donation goes twice as far.

RISC OS in a Post-AI World: Could Simplicity Be the Missing Link in Education?

That's a very interesting read.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Driving music.

@iconbar.com

RISC OS in a post-AI world: Could simplicity be the missing link in education?

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_in_a_Post-AI_World_Could_Simplicity_Be_the_Missing_Link_in_Education/index2317.html

In an age dominated by artificial intelligence and platforms engineered to maximize attention, a counter-question: What if progress means stripping back rather than adding more?

@colinhoad.com

Sometimes an article comes along that just... clicks. Well worth your time.https://bigthink.com/the-long-game/it-was-never-about-ai-we-are-not-our-tools/

RISC OS Developments at RISC OS North - Firewall and Iris

I tries a little bit the new version of Iris yesterday and encountered an issue while viewing merge request from the RISC OS gitlab. The page usually displays partially then remains unchanged with the indicator that it still loads the page. The cancel or back buttons don’t work. Sounds like is it his stuck in the Javascript trying to load the changes.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The 2nd part of the series 'How to Write Machine Code Game' was published 41 years ago in the March 1985 issue of The Micro User. In this article I explained Exclusive OR ( EOR ) and how to use it to plot, and erase, software sprites on a BBC Micro. It used 6502 machine code for performance reasons.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The Phloopy drive was an alternative solution to disk drives on the BBC Micro. Whilst it boasted relatively fast load times compared with cassette it was nowhere near as quick as floppy disk based systems. Inside the disk is a huge loop of magnetic tape, rather like a Sinclair Microdrive cart.

RISC OS in a Post-AI World: Could Simplicity Be the Missing Link in Education?

In an age dominated by artificial intelligence, algorithm-driven content, and platforms engineered to maximize attention, a counter-question is gaining traction: What if real progress sometimes means stripping things back rather than adding more layers?

@colinhoad.com

A seat? On this commute?

Ah. School holidays!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Wendigo + Wolverine model renders. You get a better idea of how huge Wendigo is. From 'X-Men 2 : Wolverine's Revenge', found on my old development archive DVD.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Cyberpunk 2077 for the BBC Micro.

Using RiscOSM to track railway history – WROCC meeting, 1st April

The next meeting of the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) will take place on Wednesday 1st, April, and the club will be playing virtual host to Chris Hall, who will be talking about RiscOSM in the context of documenting and illustrating railway history. Chris will explain how essential Sine Nomine’s OpenStreetMap-based mapping application has become to him in the task, serving as a digital cartography tool that allows him to dispense with the ‘trial and error’ of older approaches to mapping. He will show how he uses it in…

ScummVM 2026.2.0 released

Benefitting from a new, more frequent release cycle, another new version of ScummVM is available – version 2026.2.0! The software was originally developed to games written using a particular system – LucasArts’ Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion – to be played on modern systems. However, the software has expanded way beyond that and now supports a range of game engines, and as a result a whole host of games. There is a team of developers maintaining it, with Cameron Cawley keeping the port to RISC OS in line with…

@iconbar.com

WROCC April 2026 talk on Wednesday

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_April_2026_talk_on_Wednesday_/index2310.html

The April 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 1st April and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom. That's after 12 o'clock so no April Fools....

ARM now making its own Silicon

It rather worried me, to be honest. I always felt that ARM have been so successful precisely because they didn’t manufacture anything – their partners don’t need to be worried about competition from their own licence provider (who by definition don’t have to pay for a licence themselves). I worry that licencees may become a bit antsy if they think they may be undercut by their own supplier…

March 2026 News Summary

MorseQuiz released a Morse Code quiz using my Quiz Engine.

C, DDE & OSLib Wimp Programming Tutorual Updates

Hi, thank you for your Wimp Programming In C series, We learn a lot about RISC OS and especially that we can build our own applications with DDE.

I was able to build your examples from chapter 28 to arrive at a version with messages file, internationalization (UK and France) and help file, French version.

Like you, I use OSLib, and your SLib library is very useful. I have a StrongEd ​​Manual for it, you have well documented your library it would be a shame not to take advantage of it.

I use the same structure as you for the development folder. I had no problem using my Diderot app. Note: In this one I made a modification which allows with the RES button to open the Res or Templates file.

The application also allows you to kill the current task using an adaptation of your TaskKill program. but for it to work correctly, there must be an item: _TaskName:Example App in the messages file

Good luck, your tutorial should attract new programmers….

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I just received my shiny new Greaseweazle V4.1 from Keir - the designer. I decided to go with the funky cased version designed by Tom Dalby. It only cost £24.99 + £1.99 delivery to the UK.

Beta Git client and SSH keys

GitClient.0.12.zip seems to be available.

@colinhoad.com

I see that Bluesky "Attie" AI account is just 9 days old and has already been blocked by over 100k users 😆https://media.tenor.com/R5gi51Vxx_8AAAAC/jack-nicholson-yes.gif?hh=396&ww=498

@colinhoad.com

Genuinely amazing how a few simple notes with the appropriate synth sound can instantly evoke memories like this...

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The amazing chiptune.app player can be found on GitHub. For me, probably the best JS code ever created! Thank you, @mattmontag.bsky.socialhttps://github.com/mmontag/chip-player-js

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Thanks, I guess.

And yes, it is.

@colinhoad.com

Done.

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WROCC April 2026 talk on Wednesday

The April 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 1st April and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom.That's after 12 o'clock so no April fools....

@riscosopen.bsky.social

Matching doubles up your moonshot contributions.https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2026/03/30/matching-doubles-up-your-moonshot-contributions

Matching doubles up your moonshot contributions

Announced at the recent RISC OS North show, money pledged to the Moonshot for a 64-bit RISC OS will be matched 1-to-1 until ROOL’s 20th birthday.

General consideration

@Martin Eastwood: I must confess that audio-wise I’ve had plugged in a FIIOUSBDAC into my RPi400. I’ve read User Guide p.102 Audio setup, in my case I couldn’t change anything, no sound on my stereo equipment via RPi/ROS via the USBDAC. BUT!: it is capable to make “beeps” via hdmi and a ttf monitor connected. Just after my post and your reply I’ve learned that ROS is not into USB DAC’s. Okay, it is sound, of sorts.

Re: WI-FI. With the User Guide I’ve not been able to understand how to configure the wifi driver for the RPi BCM43 chip. Having downloaded the “On board WiFi drivers” from the Raspberry Pi link and having printed out and read the “ReadMe.txt”, I’ve configured my RPi WiFi. Important to know (ReadMe.txt tells you): Not both are working at the same time – cable network and WiFi, but only one of them. In any Raspberry Pi Linux you can have both of them at the same time!

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 29th March at 1pm UK time (BST!)

Went quite well, and we have a regular C application which runs that input loop, with some stubs for the environment handlers. Next week, we’ll try to work this into being more like the original assembly implementation with a completely separate entry point.

Planed short-form videos for RISC OS Coding

Damn this thread needs a cold shower! Anyway back on topic….

Creating a GitHub project.

Installing the RISC OS Build environment.

A short tour around using the build environment.

Using CI with RISC OS repositories.

Creating skeleton command line tool.

How to create a basic module.

Maybe Linking Templates to BASIC Runimages another one? (Creating Basic Wimp Applications)

These i think would be very useful especially for new people trying to get into it more. Hopefully it hasn’t de-railed your initial plans.

SD-Card usage on RPi400

For instance, C.B. enlarges the fonts and everything very much so that on video the watching user can reckognize everything.

We have plenty of videos made like that, check them out. However, videos are also provided by voluteers, we made suggestions on how they should record them, but that doesn’t mean people must strictly adhere to those.

As for the story of the limit, again, with standard formatting RISC OS can use up to 256GB.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A new SWI for the prototype RISC OS FM4 FontManager: EnumerateString, which allows callers to step through a Paint/Scan string one element at a time without knowing the format (it’ll be extended over time).

This code is calling it in single-shot mode, but a callback can be provided – much faster.

@armbytes.bsky.social

A huge shout-out to everyone who made it! The next meetup is pencilled in for the 25th April.

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Today's recommended website is chiptube.app. If you love chiptune music/SFX then head over for a huge slice of nostalgia. A massive catalogue of SID, NES, SNES, N64, GENESIS music awaits, plus lots more. Volume up to 11. chiptune.app/browsehttps://chiptune.app/browse

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Sky News just said they can't describe Artemis as "Manned flight" because there's a woman on board ("and also a Canadian!").

Will someone PLEASE explain to these numbskulls the etymology of "manned". For all mankind. Before there's a manslaughter. Somebody call the ombudsman. Oh, the humanity!

ScummVM 2026.2.0 "Railmonicon" sees the light

Great work Cameron and good to see RISC OS as one of the few fist ports to the latest version.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Which allows me to point out that the superb Radio Garden is available worldwide EXCEPT for the UK, where it is hobbled to ONLY play UK stations.

This is because of the effective monopoly enjoyed by PPL PRS Ltd over the collection of music licencing fees, which it persues highly aggressively.

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@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS Folks: New #ShareFSServer Alpha 0.2.0 available to all the testers to give it a go. Let me know how it goes.

Change logs here:https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/20267?limit=25&page=4#posts-162609

#riscos #FileSharing #Linux #WIndows #macOS #BSD

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The ARM Evaluation System 2nd processor for the BBC Micro is a rare beast. Steve Furber said he believed less than 100 were produced. I have no idea how many survived, but they do come up for sale occasionally. One appeared on eBay in 2011 and sold for £2,850! Cheap as they cost £4,500+VAT when new.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

A bit more detail about the infamous FAX that Software Creations received when we were working on SNES 'Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge'. I'm very doubtful $40Million of royalties would have come our way. They usually paid developers a flat-fee for each game.

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Our resident dog, Luna, is not impressed with this weeks' visitors. First, there's a local cat that likes to chew our car radio aerials and yesterday Winnine the hamster arrived for a week while her mum and dad are on holiday. Sulk mode has been engaged as the hammy is getting way too much attention

@iconbar.com

Fireside developer chat on Saturday night

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Fireside_developer_chat_on_saturday_night/index2316.html

The next developer chat is on Saturday night (27th March) for anyone interested in a very informal event online aimed at RISC OS developers.

@iconbar.com

March 2026 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/March_2026_News_Summary/index2305.html

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

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

The next developer chat is on saturday night (27th March) for anyone interested in a very informal event online aimed at RISC OS developers.

March 2026 News Summary

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

@colinhoad.com

Lord Vetinari

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@colinhoad.com

These continue to be fascinating! The memory heatmap visualisations and how they correlate with tile generation is properly 🤯 stuff

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Neee naaa neee naaa.

In full jam sandwich livery, this Polestar 2 looks even more like a scaled-up toy car than it usually does.

An all-time classic shape.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

I'm at the game. #go_Leafs_go

Coding on RISC OS fireside chat, Saturday 28th March

Join us around the “Coding on RISC OS” campfire this Saturday, 28th March, at 7:30 p.m. (GMT) for another one of our friendly and informal fireside chats.

Whether you’re looking to get started, need assistance, want to help others, or share a project or current challenge with the group. You’re all welcome! No experience necessary.

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.

Developers’ fireside chat – 28th March

If you have any interest in programming on or for RISC OS, and would like to chat to other developers, then the next ‘friendly fireside chat’ – held online, with actual fires entirely optional – will take place on Saturday, 28th March. These meetings, which take place roughly every four to six weeks, provide an ideal opportunity for developers of every level to get together and discuss anything related to the topic of RISC OS programming. That could include problems they have encountered and with which they need help, or…

Brush up on your Morse code

Following his FlagQuiz and Quiz Engine releases, Kevin Wells has now made another quiz available, this time to allow people to test their knowledge of Morse code. The application, MorseQuiz presents the user with a series of ten multiple choice questions, each of which has four possible answers. The program comes equipped with English, Dutch, French, German, and Italian translations of all its messages, etc., and supports the interactive help system. The source for the Morse (!) used by the program was a website called Morse Code Translator, and Kevin…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Why me? Why is it always me? Why is it only me?

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Ultimate Play The Game's 'Cookie' for the BBC Micro. Visually ported by Paul Proctor but not released. However, a copy of the game was leaked at some point and the game became public! Here's Cookie assembling and running from Paul's original development disk - 6502 M/C. Music/SFX by Martin Galway.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I might want a RISC OS equivalent. Hmm.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The other day I had to translate an exclaimed sentence containing a quote, "Like this."!

Google Translate moves the exclamation INSIDE the quote. This seems to be LLM-poisoned-by-American-typographic-illiteracy.

Confusion over what is and is not part of the quotation is a common US typo.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

RO5, in a nutshell.

[IMO. YMMV. E&OE. Chacun à son goût. etc]

@colinhoad.com

The Aussies know. Be more Aussie.

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RISC OS North - March 21st 2026

I was at the ROOL stand and they demonstrated the ability to rename in a zip (on sparkfs) – bravo! this will be a very well used feature on the occasions when fingers don’t type what the brain intended. New version downloaded and installed already

@colinhoad.com

Thoughts and prayers for all the sloperators and AI bros out there waking up this morning to the news that they will no longer be able to make 15 second slop videos of Iron Man vs. Pikachu and proclaim the death of Hollywood.https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/24/openai-ai-video-sora

Linux Port

The PineTab2 comes with a keyboard. This is working well also the touchpad. Left corner = select, right corner = adjust, tap with three fingers = menu.

You can use the Linux virtual keyboard but not al keys are working but maybe it is a configure problem. I have not spend time on it. I use one of the RISC OS virtual keyboards, if i need.

Portrait

Landscape

The tool for the Pinephone are also working on the PineTab.

I have made a small Launcher with “App-Button”. It flip if I rotate the Phone…

Second tool is a Mouse-swapper. Swap select to menu if I “press” more than 1,5s…

With both tools it feels a little bit like a SM-Art-Phone.

But it is the 20/80 problem. With 20% effort you complete 80% of the project and the remaining 20% of the small things drive you crazy. ;-)

So both tools are unfinished and more of an attempt to find out what is possible with my limited programming skills.

Pinephone landscape/portrait (OS zoom 200%)

Flip is the App-Launcher. If the screen resolution or the orientation will be changed, the Flip-window adjusts automatically.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A significant consideration for the phones-on-wheels that the modern car has become: What happens when the manufacturer gets bored of updating your "old" car, or just goes bust?

I'm not a fan of help-me-get-this-to-work open source, but I am a fan of if-all-else-fails, so this is all good.https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/Beyond-Infotainment-Extending-Android-Automotive-OS-for-Software-defined-Vehicles.html?m=1

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Two old console games I worked on are being re-released soon as part of 'Marvel: Maximum Collection'. NES 'Silver Surfer' and SNES 'Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge' are being let loose on a new generation of gamers. These games are 35 years and 33 years old! They forgot Wolverine!

Territory Manager in C

Hiya,

On the Iconbar’s notes from the show, they said that there was a C conversion of the Territory Manager ( https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_Show_20…). However, I don’t see this in the repository; https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/Internat/… has no additional commits, or branches present, and the only PR is an old one for cross-compilation (well, assembly, I guess), which I had assumed had been done years ago.

Of the forks on the GitLab repository, there are only one by Andreas Skyman ( https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/askyman/TerritoryManager…) and one by Ben Avison ( https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/bavison/TerritoryManager…), but neither have any C-like branches.

I’d hoped to update the riscos64-status with the details for these, and ensure that they work in 64-bit, but can’t find them.

Can ROOL say where to find the source, or provide an update for the riscos64-status details to reflect the state.

@rougol.bsky.social

Me too! 🙂

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@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

I can't make this meeting as I'm away, so don't chat about anything interesting without me. I suppose chatting about is OK, just don't be too horrible!

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@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). The event is on Saturday, 28th March at 7:30 pm (GMT). #Zoom #Meetup #RISC_OS #Community #RaspberryPi #ARM #Retro #AcornComputers

Desktop magnifier

I’ve hardly ever used CloseUp but yesterday, I needed to see the exact pixel that the pointer was selecting because my code seemed to be 1 pixel out. Modern monitors are too good and I can’t see the individual pixels when I’m more than a foot away from the screen. CloseUp at a zoom of 8 worked fine.

So I have to say, “No, Andrew, CloseUp is great”

PCEmu

DOSBox-X can run Windows 98 — at least I had it running on a 2020 (Intel) MacBook Air. There are instructions on how to go about this on the web site.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

How busy is an ice cave, usually?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I’ve made a new version of the ObeySupport module that was supplied with Zap (and is not ubiquitous I was shocked to realise – ought to be).

I’ve added a few new commands and fixed the ones that were broken. Are there any other *IFs that people would find useful?

[ALT for syntax]

@colinhoad.com

This guy is doing his level best to outdo Sam Altman in the insufferable idiot stakes. What a ridiculous thing to say, of course we haven't achieved AGI. Not even close.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Iron Man concept art and render previews for Genepool Software's unreleased 'The Invincible Iron Man' game from 2003. I'm 99% certain these were created by the amazingly talented Han Randhawa. Recovered from my old development DVD backups.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

'Slavebot' concept art and textures for the unreleased 'The Invincible Iron Man' game. Started in 2003 by Genepool Software this game reached prototyping and was then cancelled.

@colinhoad.com

I know it's passé to dump on Adobe, but honestly... the absolute state of this

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RISC OS North Show Report 2026

Thanks for the show report and latest from the show presentations too.

RISC OS 64 project - Thanks!

That’s really good to hear. Personally I haven’t watched anything live (I’m on the other side of the world so they’re in the wee hours for me) but it’s great to hear that there’s interest. I haven’t made many comments on the 64-bit front as I’m happy to let smarter people work things out, but I figured that this thread was a good place to break my silence :)

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Oops I accidentally

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I’ve wanted this construction for decades, but the syntax (and more importantly the mechanism) just occurred to me – ten minutes later we have un-forked single-line IF.

This is called “Functional THEN(” – I’ve highlighted the new syntax in cyan. How useful is that?!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

For those at the RISC OS North Show on Saturday I spoke to about character code assumptions, here’s that “difficult” CP437 Alphabet; the VDU sequence to display a verbatim chr code; and nemoBasic just being awesomely convenient:

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The immensely talented artist Philip Castle died recently. He created the posters for A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket as well as album artwork for the many great bands. Retro gamers will know him for his work on the original Elite box artwork. RIP.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Less haste, more speed

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

🤭

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Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 22nd March at 1pm UK time.

Thanks Andrew!

Hope that people from the show learnt a little about the project :-)

Live Coding is starting in about 30 minutes, and anyone interested in the project is invited along as I’ll always take questions through the coding work.

@iconbar.com

RISC OS North Show 2026 - pictures

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_Show_2026_-_pictures/index2314.html

Here is a selection of pictures to show you what this year's event was like...

@iconbar.com

RISC OS North Show 2026 - Notes from the talks

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_Show_2026_-_Notes_from_the_talks/index2313.html

Here are my notes from this year's talks. Any mistakes or omissions are mine.

@iconbar.com

RISC OS North Show Report 2026

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_Show_Report_2026/index2315.html

After the success of 2025, RISC OS North show was back for 2026, bigger and better.

Being locked out

Not sure if this is the correct part of the forum for this, however…

In the last few days I keep finding that trying to log in to the forum fails. I type in my details, and they get rejected. I check what I typed, then try again ensuring what I type is correct, and it fails again.

If I take a break and try again, it then may well work. Same input from me.

Today I was briefly ‘locked out’ as the system decided my re-tries were the sign of me being a malign intruder. Was a pest as I wanted to discuss something on a particlar thread of interest.

RISC OS North Show 2026 - pictures

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

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

We've just had the spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, which neatly links to the game of the same name. A sequel to Software Creations' original NES game Solstice. Designed and created by John and Ste Pickford for the SNES. @breakintoprogram.co.uk gets a mention in the credits too.

R-Comp powers up printing at RISC OS North

Today is RISC OS show-eve, which means tomorrow is RISC OS show-day – and the show in question is RISC OS North – and as ever, exhibitors have been beavering away to bring get updates and/or new products ready. In the case of R-Comp, there is always a wide range of goodies, but in particular Andrew Rawnsley has announced some new software: R-Comp is pleased to announce a new program for RISC OS to enable printing to many modern inkjet printers direct from RISC OS. The new software is called…

@riscosbits.co.uk

Remember to pop and see us at tomorrow's #RISCOSNorth Show - here's just a few of the reasons why:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20288?limit=25&page=1#posts-162475

#riscosnorth #risc_os #acorncomputers

@riscosbits.co.uk

RISC OS Remote comes to RISC OS North (and stays at home - all at the same time!).

Experience RISC OS on your laptop, smartphone, tablet - anywhere.

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20288?limit=25&page=1#posts-162472

#riscosremote #risc_os #transporting_riscos #acorncomputers

RISCOSbits at RISC OS North 2026

Launching RISC OS Remote: Take Your Desktop Further Than Your Desk

Ever wished your RISC OS machine could stretch its legs? Now it can.

RISC OS Remote is a delightfully compact hardware device that lets you access and control your RISC OS computer from anywhere with an internet connection. Home, office, café, train, or that suspiciously comfy settee — your familiar desktop is just a browser tab away. No emulators. No complicated setup rituals. No fiddly software installs on your RISC OS machine. Simply connect RISC OS Remote to your computer and enjoy your very own desktop, live and in real time, as if you never left your chair (even if you absolutely did).

Your RISC OS. Your Desktop. Anywhere.

RISC OS Remote captures your machine’s video output along with keyboard and mouse input, securely presenting your desktop through a responsive, browser-based interface. That means you can run your usual applications, keep your carefully curated pinboard exactly as you left it, and work within your established environment without missing a beat pixel.

Optimised for smooth, interactive control rather than bulk data transfer, RISC OS Remote focuses on what matters: using your machine, not wrestling with it. Files stay exactly where they belong – safely on your host system.

It even supplies its own EDID, ensuring reliable display behaviour. Because remote access shouldn’t require remote guesswork.

Some keyboards lack the ability to provide those wonderfully RISC OS-specific combinations, but RISC OS Remote steps in neatly here. The device supports custom shortcut keypresses, allowing essential commands such as Alt-Break and Ctrl-Shift-F12 to be sent directly from the web interface. Resets, break operations, and other system-level actions are therefore entirely practical, even when using laptops or compact keyboards that don’t normally offer those keys. There’s also the option to type ordinary text and paste it directly to your RISC OS system, through an over-the-air clipboard.

For longer sessions, background processing, or unattended tasks, RISC OS Remote includes a built-in mouse jiggle function. This feature generates subtle, periodic mouse movements to prevent the host machine from entering screen blanking or power-saving states. Whether you’re monitoring a process, running a lengthy job, or simply keeping an eye on your system from afar, your desktop stays awake and ready.

RISC OS Remote also carries audio from the host machine to the client device, enabling remote audio playback through whatever you are using to connect. System sounds and application audio remain part of the experience, rather than something you only imagine happening.

Installation has been designed to be refreshingly painless. RISC OS Remote connects without requiring manual port forwarding or complex firewall configuration, avoiding the sort of networking gymnastics that typically accompany remote-access solutions. The device is equally comfortable on home broadband, office networks, or mobile connections.

Access is provided through a built-in web interface or custom app, compatible with PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Setup is straightforward, and once configured, RISC OS Remote functions as an always-available bridge to your machine. Your desktop, your applications, your workflow — available from virtually anywhere in the world.

Key Features

• Remote access to a live RISC OS desktop via web browser (Iris not supported)
• No software installation required on the RISC OS machine
• Custom shortcut key support (including Alt-Break and Ctrl-Break)
• Mouse “jiggle” function to prevent sleep or screen blanking
• Audio playback on the client device
• Works without manual router firewall or port-forwarding configuration
• Compatible with PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones
• Designed for interactive control rather than file transfer

See it live at the RISC OS North Show, and at RISCOSbits HQ – at the same time! Visitors are invited to try it first-hand and experience just how liberating remote RISC OS can be.

Because RISC OS shouldn’t be grounded.

R-Comp and RCI news thread for RISC OS North

We’ll have Fireworkz 2.33 CDs available – this isn’t technically a new release as it came out for London last year, but it may well be new to RISC OS North visitors.

Out tomorrow - Drag N Drop

Out Saturday 21st March 2026 (RISC OS North) – Drag ’N Drop 15i3

Drag ’N Drop is a quarterly magazine for RISC OS users, mainly the Raspberry Pi series of machines but much will be relevant to all users and programmers. It comes in PDF format (download).

Drag ’N Drop is an accessible publication focusing on having fun whilst learning how to program with your RISC OS machine.

It costs just GBP4.50, or GBP5.50 with a Zip file of programs typed-in and ready to run. You can try before you buy with free sample editions available for instant download.

Volume 15 Issue 3 is out at RISC OS North, with the issue being emailed out to subscribers shortly afterwards. If you are one of those subscribers we’ll put it directly onto your memory stick if you have one and are coming to the show!

In this issue:

• News and Apps. All the latest in the world of RISC OS with details of where you can get new and updated free and commercial RISC OS software.

• Beginner‘s Pages. New to RISC OS? Don‘t know your adjust from your select? Wonder how to type in a BBC Basic program? Check out our newbie pages.

• Cover Story. Can you collect all the jewels from the hyper-maze before the robots get you? Find out in this exciting type-in RISC OS game brought to you by AMCOG. Full listing with procedures/variables commentary.

• 8 Bits. Even today, talented programmers are at work writing games for the BBC Micro. We take a look over the last year of releases.

• Coffee Break. Bubble universe – a deceptively simple type-in program in BBC Basic that creates infinite variations on a circular cosmos.

• Big Dummies C. Making inroads to programming Wimp applications on RISC OS. We get to grips with character arrays, macros and error blocks.

• PDFs with FPDF. You shop online, check out and have an instant order summary in PDF. Have you wondered how it’s done? All it takes is a little PHP and the free FPDF library. All on RISC OS.

• RISC OZ. Pesky considers how to get icons with multiple lines of text in them for his RISC OS Wimp applications.

Sample and buy your copy of Drag N Drop at www.dragdrop.co.uk.

RISC OS North Show 2026 preview

Train times for Warrington Bank Quay

@colinhoad.com

So much to enjoy here, but probably the best part is knowing how desperate Altman is to be popular, to be loved... and at the Oscars, surrounded by precisely the people he probably *most* wants to be loved by... this happened.

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@riscosbits.co.uk

Ready to Roam with RISCOSbits?

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20288?limit=25&page=1#posts-162454

#laptopconversion #riscoslaptop #riscosnorth #RISC_OS

@colinhoad.com

*learns about the existence of an "Art of Tron" book*

*gets very excited*

*finds out it's over £100 second hand*

Oh well.

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Archive Magazine 28:2 is out now. Digital editions are on their way, and printed copies will be dropping through letterboxes around the world shortly. It's not too late to subscribe, see www.archivemag.co.uk. Archive - the magazine for RISC OS users.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Oh look, a Cellular Automaton.

Would you like to see the nemoBasic program that produces it?

@riscosbits.co.uk

Come and see a real novelty, but still useful, device at the RISC OS North Show on Saturday.

We've used our little used blog to tell you a bit about it to whet your appetite: https://riscosbits.blog/2026/03/19/the-k3-keyboard-screen/

#riscosnovelty #niche #reallyquiteuseful #funwithriscos #risc_os

@colinhoad.com

Some good news, for once!

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@riscosbits.co.uk

RISCOSbits to launch RiscDOCK Lite Editions at the RISC OS North Show

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20288?limit=25&page=1#posts-162429

#lapdock #portablerisc_os #riscoslaptop #multios #risc_os #acorncomputers

@colinhoad.com

Superb little indie game here from Square Mezzmer, playable directly in your browser! Really fun to play, check it out:https://square-mezzmer.itch.io/sheepdog-adventure

What’s on the RISCOSbits RISC OS North RISC OS menu?

The RISC OS North show now only two (count ’em) days away, and another announcement has bounced into the RISCOSitory inbox from RISCOSbits: Visitors to the RISC OS North Show on 21st March will find the RISCOSbits stand packed with hardware options for almost every kind of RISC OS user – from powerful desktop machines to compact modular systems and flexible DIY kits. Whether you’re looking for performance, expandability, or a hands-on project, there will be plenty to explore. Performance Systems: FAST Range At the high-performance end of the range…

@colinhoad.com

Post a gif of who you wanted to be as a kid

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@riscosopen.bsky.social

Spring starts at Warringtonhttps://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2026/03/18/spring-starts-at-warrington

Spring starts at Warrington

No sooner has the sun made it all the way to the equator, marking the spring equinox, then it’s time for the first show of the year: RISC OS North, in conjunction with the WROCC user group. Align your chronometer for Saturday, 21th March, 2026.

Templates and Outline Fonts

Had no joy using Iris or Netsurf, so had to try firing up Win11. That was better, but could find no zip to download for us simple souls.

There isn’t one, yet. Building WinEd still isn’t quite as automated as building my own software, so I didn’t get around to it yesterday. The test build that I sent off didn’t have updated documentation or other niceties like that.

I think that is really a spurious message, as the number of times the same font/size is used in one window is not limited by the Wimp, so I do not think WinEd should warn. It perhaps should warn if the number of uses of a specific font/size in all the windows in a Template file exceed 255, as then the application would have to use a word array to keep track of them all (if it did not use a byte array per window).

I’m confused now…

I thought that we had established that while the number of icons wasn’t limited, the Font Manager and the Wimp between them limit us to 254 fonts in a template file? And that WinEd probably shouldn’t crash out and take the desktop font with it when trying to add font 255.

Or did I misunderstand that?

The FindFont will be done by LoadTemplate, but when you subsequently change an icon’s font you may have to do it yourself.

WinEd doesn’t use Wimp_LoadTemplate when it loads a file into memory for editing, so far as I can tell. It instead uses this lot:

/*
   Load Templates Process
   ---- --------- -------

   Templates are loaded using the following functions. Errors and messages are generated as the loading
   proceeds. If one function returns anything other than load_OK, then it's calling function will
   terminate or truncate the loading of the template, as appropriate. Within each function, bad results
   can be dealt with and then the load_result reset to load_OK.

   browser_load - returns nothing interesting
                - calls browser_close if gets FALSE back from:
     browser_getfile - returns BOOL based on load_result. Calls fopen, fclose.
                     - Issues user total failure messages based on load_result from:
       calls browser_load_from_fp - returns load_result based on results of browser_load_templat. Loads complete file.
                                  - issues partial failure messages based on load_result from:
         calls browser_load_templat - returns load_result based on window contents. Loads individual windows.
                                    - issues rename errors info which still allows the window to load
*/

That said, I can’t work out where the fonts are getting found and lost, but earlier you said…

I think somehow it keeps track of the fonts used in each open window, because for each icon with a font the usage of that font is increased (with a FindFont) even if it is a duplicate font/size. It is decremented (with a LoseFont) if the font is removed or changed. So no fonts become ‘lost’ which is good.

…from which I took it that you had seen it doing the “right thing”.

More digging through the source code required, I think. There are a lot of source files, but it doesn’t seem to be very modular… :-)

New Application MorseQuiz

I have uploaded a new RISC OS application for testing your knowledge on Morse code called MorseQuiz It displays some Morse Code and gives you four options to pick from and ten questions in all. You just have to pick the right answer. It is built on my Quiz Engine which was released recently, and … Continue reading "New Application MorseQuiz"

RISC OS North Frosted & Obsidian

RISC OS North 2026 – Frosted & Obsidian Themes

RISC OS North is just a couple of days away!

This year I’m exhibiting for the first time, and I’ll be proudly showing off the brand-new Frosted theme which will be ready for general release on ThemeDef! for RISC OS 5.30 and above.

While stocks last, I’ll be handing out FREEUSB sticks packed with everything you need to install and try the new theme straight away.

You’ll also find themed versions of other popular apps, plus custom softload ROMs for Iyonix, Titanium, and ROM’s for RPCEmu and Raspberry Pi already included on every stick.Plus,

I’ll also be giving a sneak preview of the upcoming Obsidian Dark Mode theme (still in development). Come and see what RISC OS looks like when it goes full dark and mysterious!

Can’t wait to see everyone there — come and say hello!

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

There should be a new Iris in time for the show – not too many changes, but I thought it worth mentioning on this thread. It should be available via both PackMan and the upgrades site mentioned on the home page. It has a few bug fixes, and a couple of small features requested by users.

@riscosbits.co.uk

RISCOSbits to bring a full range of systems to the #RISC_OS North Show on Saturday 21st March

https://riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20288?limit=25&page=1#posts-162408

#risc_os #AcornComputers #riscosnorth

RISC OS North is THIS WEEKEND!

With RISC OS show-eve almost upon us (that’ll be Friday, folks – the day before the show), Andrew Rawnsley and Richard Brown, who jointly organise the RISC OS North shows, have sent out an announcement/reminder about the upcoming event: We’re now only a few days away from the first big RISC OS event of 2026 – the RISC OS North Show in Warrington, Saturday 21st March 2026. The show takes place at the Village Hotel in Warrington, from 10.30am ’til 4.30pm. The hotel has food and drink available from its…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Well this is very pleasant. 🌞

String things will have to wait.

@colinhoad.com

ABUG South was a blast, here's what we got up to! youtu.be/wtths_J-XvUhttps://youtu.be/wtths_J-XvU

Theatre programme announced

The schedule has now been finalised for the show theatre, with four exhibitors lined up to give talks, show off hardware, or demonstrate their software: RISC OS Developments/Orpheus Internet, R-Comp, RISC OS Open Ltd, and Sine Nomine

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I was in two minds whether to reveal this new 𝒏𝒆𝒎𝒐𝑩𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒄 feature before the RISC OS North show at Warrington on Saturday 21st March, but I am 𝐒𝐎 excited about it I’m going to tease it here without explanation.

It’s a game-changer not only for a BBC Basic, but for programming languages in general. 😲

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Spot the problem...I've just received this handy adapter for standard Shugart 34-pin floppy connector to 26-pin ( Amstrad / Spectrum +3 ) 3" drives. Now got to go through the hassle of sending it back, at my expense, or fix it myself - I dumped my soldering iron a while back. Maybe it'll work!

@iconbar.com

RISC OS North Show 2026 preview

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_Show_2026_preview/index2308.html

The RISC OS North show takes place this Saturday (21st March 2026) at Village Hotel (Warrington) from 10:30am-4:30pm

@colinhoad.com

Yet another "let's shovel gen AI into something that really, really doesn't need it"

Quite apart from anything else, it's disrespectful to the artwork and design produced in the original game, turning it into weird, uncanny valley Franken-slop.

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

RISC OS North Show 2026 preview

The RISC OS North show takes place this Saturday (21st March 2026) at Village Hotel (Warrington) from 10:30am-4:30pm

Risc OS armTex

Thread to ask people who use GCC well, if it would be possible to recompile !Tex.

This the version of Tex I am using https://github.com/llewelld/armTeX?

@riscosbits.co.uk

Come and see one of these in action, running #RISC_OS, on Saturday at #RISCOSnorth Show!

https://thepihut.com/products/argon-one-up-laptop-shell-for-cm5

@iconbar.com

Discover your 'Dark side' at RISC OS North Show

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Discover_your_Dark_side_at_RISC_OS_North_Show/index2311.html

Martin Eastwood will be at www.riscosnorth.uk RISC OS North to showcase his new Frosted Theme.

This site

I’ve finally managed to update !Iris using Packman. Not helped because I needed to update Packman first and — even though it was already shown on the list as being installed — it placed the new version in a different place. I also had to allow for the fact that the previous !Iris wasn’t installed via Packman. But after an additional restart, I now have the new version and it is working fine with the ROOL site.

2026 floorplan published

The floorplan for this year’s show is now online, so if you are planning to visit the show and have any exhibitors in particular whose stand you’d like to visit, you can now see where they should be on the day.

ShareFS goes cross platform

I totally understand why you would want/need to distance yourself from anything original on this.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I recently recovered the missing disk side of Amstrad CPC6128 New York Warriors from the original development disk. The game's author, Fred Williams, has now kindly given permissions for the game to be shared in all its glory!

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is the unreleased Iron Man game Overview document - dated 2003. It gives an overall idea of the gameplay, mechanics and flow.

Gradgrind update ... and a Galaxy Quest

Gradgrind — a gradient/palette editor for RISC OS — has been updated to version 0.93beta. Better support for GIMP palettes, and some general improvements.

And after a clearish night, I’ve got some more pictures and processing examples from the Dwarf Mini. Galaxies this time.

All available from the ROAST site

Discover your 'Dark side' at RISC OS North Show

Martin Eastwood will be at RISC OS North to showcase his new Frosted Theme.

ShareFS goes cross platform

There are no protocol specs. It's something sort of encoded in the sources and has evolved slightly over the years.

A Breaking Change to DeskLib?

On a more housekeeping note, as this is the first time that I’ve poked DeskLib in several years and I struggle to remember how to drive Subversion these days, I might look at moving the repo over to GitHub, alongside WinEd. I’ve had a Git version of the repo privately since 2020-ish, but up to now I didn’t think that it had diverged from RISCOS.info’s SVN repo1. It would be a shame to lose that work.

Having gone to look, I see there’s already a DeskLib repo over at https://github.com/riscos-dot-info/DeskLib – which is almost but not quite the same as mine1 but already has a couple of PRs against it from Cameron. It also has the word EXPERIMENTAL writ large in the description.

How to sort this one probably needs a bit more thought, and some emails – so probably won’t happen until after Warrington. :-)

1 I don’t think there are any content changes, but some of the metadata looks a bit different and so the commit hashes aren’t the same. Oops.

Any ARM Debuggers Ported to RO5 ?

Updated version of !ARM_Debug is at:

https://www.fladda.riscos.fr/

I’ve also included the module source code (with some comments) for the first time in ‘break_169.txt’. I guess that Rick will be interested in this.

One bug I fixed today probably was also a bug in Theo’s original 26bit version of !ARM_Debug. Bug was with the Branch (‘B’) instruction, and some

branch addresses were calculated incorrectly. Despite my trying I never found the root cause of these crashes.

So I asked the Chinese LLM DeepSeek the following question:

Please generate ARM 32bit assembler code to calculate the new value of R7 (initially 0×0111B2E4) based upon the differential value from ARM branch instruction 0xEAFECAE5.

Deepseek responded:

LDR R0, =0xEAFECAE5

AND R1, R0, #0×00FFFFFF ; Get offset

TST R1, #0×00800000 ; Check sign

ORRNE R1, R1, #0xFF000000 ; Sign extend if negative

MOV R1, R1, LSL #2 ; Multiply by 4

ADD R7, R7, #8 ; PC + 8

ADD R7, R7, R1 ; Final target

So the new R7 value would be approximately 0×010CDE80.

I commented out Theo’s original code (at Ba100) and copied in the new code. Changed the format for ARMBASIC. The new code appears to have eliminated this bug :-)

I was impressed…

Ralph

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 15th March at 1pm UK time.

It feels like the end is in sight for this bit of work, and I think it is really imporant – a RISC OS 5 Window Manager incorporating C elements from RISC OS 64. That’s pretty huge in terms of having something that people can actually see progressing, and even install on their computers.

That said, it has really reinforced to me how many subtle nuances there are to the assembler which are so easy to miss at first glance, or when going from a spec sheet. Even when things seem right, applications may be using things (legitimately) in ways that weren’t immediately apparent.

Combining assembler elements and C routines in one module is also making this portion of work more complex/time consuming, although I think it is time well spent as it lays foundations for other larger modules where you’ll need to test portions of code before the whole thing can be C-ized.

ShareFS goes cross platform

Hi Paolo,

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

An early, unused 'Iron Man' splash screen and logo.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is the Mission Design Document (MDD) for the un-released and un-finished title 'The Invincible Iron Man' (working title). Very much a work in progress document that was being worked on in-house at Genepool Software. We had the tech in place and were ready to go, then the whole studio was closed

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Galaforce 2 was also later released as a stand-alone budget title. Perhaps you got it from that?

Matt Godbolt talks JSbeeb, Compiler Explorer, and more at ROUGOL – 16th March

The next meeting of the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) takes place on Monday, 16th March (tomorrow), and the guest speaker is Matt Godbolt, who is fitting the group in during a visit to London from his home in Chicago. Matt started out programming on a Sinclair Spectrum before shifting to the much more powerful (and more relevant to Acorn and RISC OS folk) BBC Master, then the even more powerful Archimedes. He has written for Acorn User magazine, produced games for the BBC, as well as software…

RISCOSbits introduces a slimmed-down Chimera for RISC OS North

It’s now less than a week until RISC OS North, which takes place on Saturday, 21st March, and another announcement from RISCOSbits has landed in the bunker: On the back of the hugely popular Christmas Cracker, RISCOSbits is pleased to introduce Chimera Lite, a streamlined and highly accessible version of the popular Chimera system, making its debut at the RISC OS North Show. Chimera Lite has been designed for users who want a fast, modern RISC OS machine in a simple, ready-to-go configuration, while still retaining the flexibility that has…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Imagine if Electric Car owners left these strewn about every time they charged their car. Imagine the headlines. The Daily Mail and the Telegraph would be FURIOUS. There’d be a CAMPAIGN. We’d be hearing about BANS.

But for petrol & diesel? Normal. Fine. Nothing to see here.

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@riscosbits.co.uk

Update on what we'll have on offer at the #RISCOSnorth next weekend:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20288?page=1#posts-162303

#chimeralite #RISC_OS #acorncomputershttps://riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1…

_kernel_oserror*

Since you’re updating the libraries for 64-bit anyway, you might as well update the SWI calls functions to return a “const _kernel_oserror*”.

ShareFS goes cross platform

Dear Richard,

Status update for RISC OS 64-bit work

I’ve also updated the Wiki with an archive of all the update posts, so that there’s an easy place to find them.

https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/wiki/Updates

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I've just completely rewritten the Wimp's text formatting from scratch and it worked first time. 😵

I'm tip-toeing away before it explodes.

[Required for seamlessly coping with UTF-8 - the RO5 code is total nonsense]

More on using the Dwarf Mini with RISC OS

Er … not sure what you’re getting at here. The Dwarf Mini is a telescope/camera, and the only !NightSky I can find is a rather elderly star map program. Which doesn’t appear to work on modern RISC OS machines. The Mini does have a built-in star atlas (and a rather good one, too), which I’ll cover in a later post.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Due to an undetected issue in the build pipeline last night this weekend #RISC_OS ShreFSServer alpha builds did not get on the distirbution server, my apologies to all the testers.

The issue is now resolved and build 0.1.3 is available for testing using the usual URL.

Thanks.

Entry prices held for 2026 show

With the ever increasing cost of living, we are pleased to announce that we have been able to avoid increasing the entry prices for this year’s show. The price of entry into RISC OS North 2026 will be £7, with free entry for anyone under fourteen years of age.

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS ShareFSServer testers, changes for this weekend build here:https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/20267?limit=25&page=3#posts-162293

Build should be available tomorrow morning.

#FileSharing #Linux #Windows #macOS #BSD #RISCOS

ShareFS goes cross platform

Just for completeness, it's like busses. Nothing for decades, then two in the same year!

@iconbar.com

Rougol March 2026 meeting on Monday - Matt Godbolt

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_March_2026_meeting_on_monday_-_Matt_Godbolt/index2304.html

The March 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and has an international flavour.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here are some pages from the Game Design Document for the abandoned 'Iron Man' game I worked on at Genepool Software in 2003. The demo we created was looking great, but sadly it was canned and we all lost our jobs. Life as a videogame developer is not always great!

Rougol March 2026 meeting on monday - Matt Godbolt

The March 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and has an international flavour

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS Merlin is officially fully multi-cores! All #RaspberryPi 2 cores reach Kernel Idle Threads and can process both IRQs and SWIs, a picture of a test session using QEMU to measure everything that was going on.

So what's going on here? Thread 👇

@iconbar.com

ShareFS goes cross platform

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/ShareFS_goes_cross_platform/index2309.html

ShareFS has been a key technology for RISC OS users for as long as I can remember.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I've uncovered more amazing material for the abandoned 'Iron Man' game that I was working on at Genepool Software. During mid/late 2003 we created a demo of the game for PC, XBOX and PS2 before it was canned. I have just found the Game Design Document, Mission Design Document and much, much more!

@colinhoad.com

Ahhhhh! Been waiting for this for ages, what an amazing treat for ABUG Eve 🤩

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@colinhoad.com

A new project, and a new blog post...https://beeb6502.com/blog/the-infinite-beep-of-doom/

@colinhoad.com

Woohoo, it's ABUG Eve! 😁 I shall be engaging in the time-honoured tradition of deciding what to pack, and ending up bringing far too much stuff than I will have time to use...

ShareFS goes cross platform

ShareFS has been a key technology for RISC OS users for as long as I can remember.

@rougol.bsky.social

Surely the £50 note should have an Acorn Archimedes on it 🙂

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Another great deep dive into BBC Micro 'Sentinel' by Mark Moxon. Geoff Crammond's extraordinary programming skills are explored further.

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@colinhoad.com

Ay caramba, it's getting worse! Infinite beep of doom and a white flashing screen now 😬

New release of docker images for RPCEmu

Hiya,

Recently Andrew Timmins created a variant of the RPCEmu emulator which provides debug functions. In last week’s live coding I lamented not having had the time to integrate this variant into the emulator I was using to test the WindowManager – as it would probably have helped. Before I had even finished the stream, David Ramsden had built a docker image with Andrew’s RPCEmu in!

He posted the PR and a couple of other improvements, and I’ve happily merged these and pushed a built version up to Docker Hub. I’ve not had the opportunity to build the ARM variant, so it’s AMD only, but it’s up there anyhow.

If you want to use the extended version with debugging:

• `docker run -it —init —rm -p 5901:5901 gerph/rpcemu-3.7:debug`
• `docker run -it —init —rm -p 5901:5901 gerph/rpcemu-5:debug`

Then connect to display 1 (localhost:1 or localhost:5901 depending on your client). The password is `password`.

For more details, on Docker Hub:

• https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/gerph/rpcemu-…
• https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/gerph/rpcemu-…

For more details, on GitHub:

• https://github.com/gerph/rpcemu-docker

Many thanks to Andrew and David for these recent contributions (and, of course, the usual thanks to the RPCEmu developers).

@colinhoad.com

My Beeb is still not well, but I have at least found a solid, consistent test that proves it's broken... Zalaga! @nickpelling.bsky.social 's masterpiece delivers the results in a dazzling firework display of burst pixels, every time...

RISCOSbits preview for the North show

You know it’s the final countdown to a RISC OS show when the announcements from individual exhibitors begin to land – and so it has begun; the first announcement regarding RISC OS North has come from RISCOSbits. Here’s what Andy Marks had to say: With just under two weeks to go, RISCOSbits are pleased to be able to attend, and briefly wanted to preview just a fraction of our offer for, the upcoming RISC OS North Show. Evolutions We’ll hopefully be demonstrating an update to our FAST SATA-based RISC OS…

@colinhoad.com

Paging @edzitron.com https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/09/revealed-uks-multibillion-ai-drive-is-built-on-phantom-investments

Release 10 of RCI NVMe Drives (plus other news)

We’re pleased to announce the release of version 10 of our high performance NVMe drivers and !NVMeTools software. This is quite a major release with lots of new functionality. In no particular order, users can expect to see…

1. Support for Namespaces and (by extension) multiple drives

Namespaces are an NVMe feature found on higher end drives which allow the device to be split at a hardware level into multiple sub-drives. A drive with Namespaces actually presents itself as multiple devices to the OS allowing each to be formatted and handled completely independantly.

In many ways, this is like the partition support we’d already implemented in previous versions, but drives that support Namespaces can do it at a hardware level, actively separating the disc space into separate parts. This differs from partitions which are handled at a software level.

In practise, we’d expect most users to continue using normal GPT partitions as they are cross-platform and work on all drives. However, for some use cases, you may prefer the physical separation offered by Namespaces.

2. Extensions to S.M.A.R.T disc health

Release 8 introduced S.M.A.R.T health support via !NVMeTools, but this has been expanded in release 10. By testing with a wide range of drives, we’ve been able to improve manufacturer compatibility and add new features such as…

3. S.M.A.R.T health check

This feature allows you to run automated disc health checks as part of the S.M.A.R.T system. Both short and extended tests are available, and they are run by the drive firmware to internally validate the drive’s health, with results reported via !NVMeTools.

4. Hardware and software Verify

Some NVMe drives support a hardware verify system, and this is now supported. For drives that don’t, a traditional block-by-block verify is implemented in software.

5. The BlockDevices interface has been tidied up and extended, with much more info visible via *blockdevices (etc) commands. This allows users to see the hierarchy of drives, partitions, namespaces etc.

6. Partitions can be hidden based on their type

the partition system now has some understanding of the different formats and types of partitions that exist, allowing it to be selective over which partitions to assign icons to on the iconbar. There are several benefits to this:

• you don’t waste iconbar icons on partitions that RISC OS can’t currently handle (eg. Linux ext4, NTFS)

• by extension, you can’t then accidentally format the NTFS/Ext4 partition on a drive which is shared between two OSs.

• Windows creates “protective” tiny FAT partitions at the start of all GPT discs. These aren’t intended to be used, but exist to protect the GPT disc from damage caused by non-GPT-aware disc tools. By being aware of this type of partition, we can be sure not to allocate it a superflous icon on the iconbar.

7. New (g)parted command line tool for interacting with disc partitions and types on RISC OS. This was created as part of the testing of feature 6 above, but has evolved into a useful tool in its own right.

8. Compatibility and the odd bug fix

Whilst nothing major in this category, a few (non-threatening) bugs have been squashed and a few routines updated based on testing a range of additional NVMe drives. For example, some Samsung drives are fussy about reporting S.M.A.R.T info, and this has now been accounted for.

We have also experimented (successfully) building ROMs with BlockDevices built-in, although our feeling is that the flexibility offered by loading the drivers at boot is still advantageous as it allows users to run R-Comp, ROOL (nighly beta) or ROD (RISC OS Direct) ROMs interchangeably.

As usual, this will be a free update for anyone with a suitable computer (N.Ex.T, Hydra, mini.pi or Pinebook Pro). The software should be available around the time of RISC OS North (21st March).

Given the high performance and large feature set of the NVMe driver (not to mention the !NVMeTools software), we’re aware that many folks without RCI computers would like to use it (eg. for DIY builds etc). We’ve offered it free with NVMe drives at shows previously, but the sky-high price rises on storage make this less appealing than it was last year. We’re evaluating the best way to handle this going forwards – perhaps keep an eye on !Store?

Readers should be on the lookout for a possible new R-Comp project too, which may surface at the RISC OS North Show. There will also be a PhotoDesk update, and probably NetFetch 6.01 health permitting.

Finally, we note that our competition has now embraced this BlockDevices technology we’ve been championing for our NVMe drivers for the last couple of years, for their SATA computer. The technology was made Open Source to allow all RISC OS users to benefit from its modern, forward looking design, and we welcome them to the party :) We hope that other companies will join us as the C-based, 64bit-aware nature of BlockDevices makes it ideal for things like MoonShot.

BlockDevices allows our NVMe drivers to post benchmarks over 600 MB/s (sometimes faster than RAM disc!) which we believe is a record. We’re pleased to see that other companies want to take advantage of the tech too.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

32-bit ( signed ) Bentley I spotted outside our work offices a few years ago!

Show time looms – RISC OS North, 21st March

Two weeks from now, it’ll all be over. By this time on Sunday, 22nd March, I’ll probably be either home or possibly driving back towards the bunker, having enjoyed the previous day. But what about you? Will you have been there, or will you have missed it? I am of course talking about the second RISC OS North event, which will take place on Saturday, 21st March, at the Village Hotel Warrington. As ever for a RISC OS show, the main hall will be filled with a wide range of…

@riscosbits.co.uk

What will we be up to at RISC OS North 2026? Here's a brief preview...

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20288

#riscosnorth2026 #risc_os #acorncomputers

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 8th March at 1pm UK time.

Lots of debugging, to work out where things went wrong… as expected the majority of the problem was in the assembler code, though there were some dumb bits in the C implementation too…

Assembler integration errors:

• `OS_Find` was always returning failure due to a mix up in `VS`/`VC`.
• `OS_GBPB` wasn’t being called (copy and paste error where `OS_Args` was used instead)
• `OS_BGet` wasn’t working because I was passing in the file handle in R0, not R1.
• SWI entry points weren’t being handled properly, because the R1 value is passed in `userptr`, not R1. Although R1 is commonly the right register.
• Division problems with the `__rt_udiv` function wasn’t implemented right (not sure why; I thought my DivRem use was fine, but apparently not… pinched the version from SCL’s RTSK).

Interface errors in the C code:

• Failure to check errors in a couple of places.
• Misimplementation of the read size interface meant that some calls were not handled properly.

So now it loads and works mostly fine (still something odd with NetSurf), but ONLY if the debug is left enabled. So there’s still something odd in there.

The bulk of the issues (and the hardest part of debugging) came from the integration into the assembly code.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Please take a look at the great stuff Andy has made. If you do decide to buy a MicroBeast it helps him fund new, cool projects. Feel free to share! Thanks.

[contains quote post or other embedded content]

@riscosbits.co.uk

While I wait excitedly for the next impending issue of @archiveriscos.bsky.social , I'll have a bit of a read of this tome and see how to perfect those interviews!

@iconbar.com

RISC OS North show is less than 2 weeks away

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_show_is_less_than_2_weeks_away/index2307.html

The RISC OS North show 2026 is taking place on Saturday 21st March, which is less than 2 weeks away.

RISC OS North show is less than 2 weeks away

The RISC OS North show 2026 is taking place on Saturday 21st March, which is less than 2 weeks away.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Exciting and oft-requested nemoBasic functionality incoming.

[By which I mean twice, and OS functionality, but nemoBasic will have syntactical support]

@colinhoad.com

Well, this wasn't something I'd have anticipated doing even as recently as last year! Reflowing the solder joints of my Beeb's video ULA...!

Exhibitor list almost finalised

With the show now just two weeks away, the exhibitor list is close to being finalised, with almost all of last year’s exhibitors having confirmed they will be at the 2026 event, and at least one new exhibitor booking a stand. If you are one of the remaining exhibitors from last year who wants to […]

@colinhoad.com

Big fan of the UK Eurovision entry for this year 😁 Best of luck, Samhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XR2RvfZ-68

Site Certificate

RISC OS Opens Certificate seems to have expired, access on riscos seems okay, can’t get on via a mac it just point blank refuses

3440x1440 on Pi

It wont on a Pi2, the GPU isn’t powerful enough. I used a 2560×1440 monitor with a Pi 3B+, but it struggled, so I would say a Pi 4 would be needed.

@colinhoad.com

Soak testing the Beeb after replacing a suspected faulty 6502... and now we play the waiting game! Thrust is a good test as it's demo mode keeps the chip active (and it reliably crashed every 20 minutes or so before with the old 6502...)

File path length

I’m pretty sure it was only the CLI length that increased; I don’t think that the filename length changed, however, because of the limitations of the wimp messages, as others mentioned I believe 230-ish it probably about the limit. Outside the wimp, you’ll probably find that things work a little longer, but don’t forget that filename lengths can be modified by the path variables, so you might find yourself working with longer filenames than you thought.

@rougol.bsky.social

Perfectly timed arrival for #WorldBookDay - Voices from a Future Passed by Rob Napier, the history of Acorn Computers, ARM, and the BBC Computer Literacy Project

Printing via Mac OS

Thanks Dave excelant work. My Epson ET-2720 has printed everthing i have sent it and i do a lot of printing. JPEG prints, PDF Unsuported.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Design!

Pay no attention to the puddle.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here's a brilliant book for anyone who has an interest in Acorn Computers, The BBC Micro, ARM or technology in the UK around that time. A collection of stories by the people who made it all happen. Whilst I have only quickly skimmed the contents since it arrived today, I know it's a 10 out of 10!

File renaming

(Martyn) But because you will be renaming files in the directory, which will change the directory, it could couse problems if you continue to read the directory

I will be doing that. Rather than go down the recursion route, with the associated traps, and in BASIC the need to predefine array sizes, I’m scanning for directories and subdirectories first, and making one array of paths. Then I search each path in that list for files, into a second array. Then use the contents of that array for the rename. As I said I’m not over concerned about efficiency, as in the end I only expect to use this once or twice, but I need it to work as expected first time.

Set filenumber to 00001
For each path in the directory path array array
  Call OS_GBPB 10, PICT*/jpg
  Build file array
  when array completed
    Use directory leaf name as the prefix
      replace any spaces with hyphens
    For each entry in file array
      rename file to <prefix>-<filenumber>
      increment filenumber
    clear file array

For structure:

A
B->C
B->D->E
B->F
G->H

Directory pointer is always at first free slot
				Path array holds
Top Scan returns A,B,G		A B G
Scan of A returns none
Scan of B returns C,D,F		A B G C D F
Scan of G returns H		A B G C D F H
Scan of C returns none
Scan of D returns E		A B G C D F H E
Scan of F returns none
Scan of H returns none
Scan of E returns none

Directory paths - full path stored
File Names - leaf name only

extASM assembler and the StrongHelp Assembler manual updated to ARMv8

Terje, hopefully you’ve received my email with the merged changes. If not, check your spam.

@colinhoad.com

Heh heh heh...

https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-gets-major-backlash-banning-microslop-in-forums-11606934

@nemo20000.bsky.social

#2 is mind-blowing. 🤯

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File not found

I’ve just come across what appears to be this error. I’m using DRest to restore a backup (taken with DBack) on a NAS drive using Omniclient, and every time it tries to do a BASICOPENOUT operation on a file whose leafname begins with a dot (in real life) or slash (when translated), the OPENOUT fails with “File not found”. It’s failed twice with “.gitconfig” files and once with an “.htaccess” file so far.

OK, so it’s a hidden file, but why should that cause the OPENOUT to fail?

And is there anything I can do to make it work without failing?

I’ve been able to work round the problem by creating an empty file of the correct name in the correct place, but the restore has to start again each time it fails.

Drag 'N Drop 60th Edition

I misinterpreted what you said, Derek — indeed the blue bar next to the “Go” is a menu once you tap it. Only realised this when I looked at the page on Netsurf under RISC OS when the menu symbol appeared with 5he pointer over said blue bar. Never seen any other website work quite like this!

@rougol.bsky.social

At our next meeting on Monday 16th March come chat with @matt.godbolt.org in the pub (or on Zoom if you must) about JSbeeb, Compiler Explorer, and more! Free entry, but you have to buy your own drinks 😛https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I blame the Vikings. Coming over here...

@colinhoad.com

New post: https://beeb6502.com/blog/exploring-the-text-completion-method/

@iconbar.com

WROCC March 2026 talk on Wednesday - Setting up Messenger Pro and NetFetch/Hermes

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_March_2026_talk_on_Wednesday_-_Setting_up_Messenger_Pro_and_NetFetchHermes/index2297.html

The March 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 4th March and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom. After last month's AGM we are back to the usual format/link.

@iconbar.com

Rob Napier's book on Acorn published

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rob_Napiers_book_on_Acorn_published/index2306.html

Rob gave a preview of his book at the Decemeber Rougol meeting.

Setting up and Using Messenger for email – WROCC, 4th March

The next meeting of the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) will take place on Wednesday 4th, March, at which the club’s own Chris Hughes will be delivering a talk on email and usenet access. More specifically, this is a follow-up talk to the one given by Martin Avison back in November, showing how to set up Pluto and Anti-Spam for accessing email. Chris will therefore be showing how to do the same using the commercial software available from R-Comp – Messenger Pro and Netfetch/Hermes. He will cover its set…

@colinhoad.com

Had some fun getting my blog migrated across to self-hosting via Hugo, which I must say is a lovely content management generator! This is now the companion site for my more 'serious' projects: beeb6502.comhttps://beeb6502.com/

WROCC March 2026 talk on Wednesday - Setting up Messenger Pro and NetFetch/Hermes

The March 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 4th March and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom. After last month's AGM we are back to the usual format/link.

Rob Napier's book on Acorn published

Rob gave a preview of his book at the Decemeber Rougol meeting.

Acorn biographer at ROUGOL, Mon 15th Dec 2025

Ordered!

WROCC Meeting - Messenger Pro and NetFetch/Hermes - 4th Mar

Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club

Meeting on Wednesday 4th March at 7.45pm

Messenger Pro and NetFetch/Hermes

At our November 2025 meeting, Martin Avison demonstrated the setup of Anti-Spam and Pluto software for email access.

As a follow-up, Chris Hughes will present the alternative option of configuring Messenger Pro and NetFetch/Hermes to send/receive email, access newsgroups (Usenet), and utilize the available spam filtering 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 info2026@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 3rd March (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 info2026@wrocc.org.uk or visit the Club’s website at https://www.wrocc.org.uk

@rougol.bsky.social

You can watch the author Rob Napier talking about the book and his time at Acorn here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N5yvbB-rqfI

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@riscosopen.bsky.social

C BASIC update: https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2026/03/01/putting-the-c-into-bee-bee-cee-basic

Putting the 'C' into bee-bee-cee BASIC

An important first exploratory step to the moon is underway – creating a whole new BASIC interpreter, this time written in the high level language ‘C’. BASIC has been identified as one of nine significant parts of RISC OS which will need addressing for a future 64 bit world, and what a historic place to get started!

Why choose this approach?

We took a long hard look at the 24,000+ lines of carefully tuned Arm assembler and decided that a literal translation, function by function, was not appropriate in this instance – the results would be just as difficult to understand and maintain. A survey of other implementations of BASIC (such as Brandy BASIC and BBCBASICSDL) also ruled those out on licensing or compatibility grounds – a great deal of care and attention is needed to match the subtleties of the RISC OS Arm BBCBASIC interpreter – with a back catalogue of tokenised programs as far back as 1981’s seminal BASIC I the aim is to match nuances to the maximum extent possible.

The opportunity has also been taken to consolidate what are currently three separate copies of the interpreter in RISC OS 5 (BASIC, BASICFPA, BASICVFP) into a single module, reducing code duplication and wasted space.

@colinhoad.com

Who decided the colourscheme for resistors? Good grief.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 1st March at 1pm UK time.

Live in 15 minutes.

@armbytes.bsky.social

If you're unsure about the Acorn Computers Biography, here's a great news article, that provides some insights into the book:

https://www.riscository.com/2026/voices-from-a-future-passed-available-1st-march/

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The Telegraph have a funny way of spelling "Brexit" and "immigrant".

@colinhoad.com

A reminder that Rob Napier's history of Acorn, the BBC and ARM is available to buy now! Do spread the word, as he's also donating a percentage of the royalties to various computing museums, including @tnmoc.bsky.social 😀 Link to order here: amzn.eu/d/00BQj8tzhttps://amzn.eu/d/00BQj8tz

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Calm down Tenzing, that's not cold.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT PUFFIN ISLAND ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE

Kevsoft’s Quiz creator released

When Kevin Wells released FlagQuiz in late 2025, along with a couple of subsequent updates, he said that his plan was to make it possible for people to create their own quizzes using the software – and he has now met that goal with the release of The Kevsoft Quiz Engine. As well as two files that can be downloaded (although it appears only one – the skeleton ‘MyQuiz’ is needed until and unless the Quiz Engine itself – which is currently at version 1.02 – is updated), the page…

@colinhoad.com

Ah yes, the military. Straight out of the Elizabeth Holmes Theranos playback.

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@colinhoad.com

This is now on sale! A history of Acorn, written by Rob Napier (of Barson Computing) and with contributions from all the major people involved at Acorn and the BBC: amzn.eu/d/06qvLzW8https://amzn.eu/d/06qvLzW8

@iconbar.com

February 2026 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/February_2026_News_Summary/index2295.html

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

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS, what this weekend update contains you have read it on the ROOL's forum post, but how does it looks like Screenshots! 😆

RISC OS 3.10/3.7/5 Using very long file names, and getting #MacOS , #WIndows, #Linux and #BSD Unicode translated (where possible) to Latin1, now how cool is that?

@armbytes.bsky.social

Do you remember Acorn Computers? The company designed and delivered the first ARM chip and the BBC Micro. Want to know more or catch up? The RISC OS North show, is on Saturday 21st March, in Warrington, UK. riscosnorth.uk #RISC_OS #Event #Warrington #RaspberryPi #ARM

@nemo20000.bsky.social

geLLMan amnesia.

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February 2026 News Summary

TrainTimes has had a little updgate and I have released Quiz Engine has had it's first release allowing people to create their own quizzes.

@colinhoad.com

Off on a work trip for a few days, but thanks to @danrolfe.bsky.social I can still bring a Beeb with me 😁

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

'Search for the Lost Orb' is a text-based adventure game for the BBC Micro that I found whilst going through my disk collection. So far I have been unable to find out who actually wrote it. I asked the people on stardot, but had no luck. I think it could be Andy Bray (RIP) who I knew well BITD.

@colinhoad.com

“Friends” is a beloved American sitcom that aired from 1994 to 2004, following six young adults—Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler [out of shot], Joey, and Phoebe—living in New York City. The show explores their friendships, romances, careers, and personal growth over ten seasons.

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@@alephspace.bsky.social

💚https://media.tenor.com/geZPoFUgBEMAAAAC/shaun-of-the-dead-simon-pegg.gif?hh=498&ww=498

February 2026 News Summary

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

Quiz Engine First Release

Want to create your own quizzes for RISC OS now you can with the first release of my Quiz Engine as used by FlagQuiz. On the Quiz Engine web page you will find the instructions on what to do as well as a skeleton application called MyQuiz. Hopefully the instructions are clear and easy to … Continue reading "Quiz Engine First Release"

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS community: Update for the folks helping testing new #ShareFSServer for this weekend:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/20267?limit=25&page=2#posts-162048

#Windows #Linux #MacOS #BSD #FreeBSD #riscos

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is Amnesia, a game I developed for the BBC Micro that was never published/released officially. As you can see it's a work in progress tech demo with programmer graphics ( my own ). I think I worked on this for about 5 or 6 weeks and decided to devote my time to other projects.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Morning Live was pure filth today! Here's Esther Rantzen's daughter being rather rude. I nearly spat my tea out. We didn't have this kind of crudity in the 1970s when That's Life was broadcast, just vegetables that looked like body parts. LOL.

Obey alias - *Set if not already set?

I’m cleaning up some old RISC OS code and I’ve hit a bit of a ShellCLI gremlin I don’t know how to fix…!

There’s this chunk of code in the !Boot which sets up a basic operating configuration, but it’s intended that this be overridable from outside too:

Set Alias$Set If "<%%0>" = "" then %Set %*0

Set IServer$Dir        <Obey$Dir>
Set IServer$IBoardSize #200000
Set IServer$IDebugSize #200000

Unset Alias$Set

I can see what the intent is here, but it doesn’t work. The “Set” is always run, so whatever values I set outside !Boot get overridden. This is on RO 3.11.

Does anyone have a “set if not already set” ShellCli/Obey pattern that they could share?

@colinhoad.com

I am reminded today of just how amazing the Tron Legacy soundtrack by Daft Punk is. Every track pulses with electronic glory!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I used to work with a lady who could navigate anywhere in the city, but only from one particular roundabout. So every journey involved driving there first and then on to the destination, even if it was back the same direction.

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Rougol February 2026 meeting on monday - Retro YouTuber Colin Hoad

Video now available for those that missed Colin's excellent talk, or want to watch it again! https://youtu.be/Igljzw4o71U

Retro YouTube at ROUGOL, Mon 16th Feb 2026

The meeting page has been updated with a download of the slides and a link to a video of the meeting.

Elliptical and annular gradients

So far the series is concerned with bitmaps, not Draw. But I do plan to do some posts about Draw objects — mostly the posts so far have been prompted by their use in the solar panel app I’m working on, and that does indeed use draw objects as well as sprites (for thickening and dotting lines, for instance).

NAS devices

I now have the Synology DS124 NAS with a Seagate 4TB disc inside mentioned in my earlier post, but am having a nightmare configuring the NAS. It seems to have a lot more features than my old Buffalo Link Station, but the content of the web interface is bloated and repetitive.

I have managed to set up a shared directory and transferred a file into it, but not much further. I can only access the disc by LAN IP address, not by name, and this is an address in the DHCP pool which fortunately is the same every time I try. How do I give the NAS a fixed LAN IP address and get it to be accessed by name as well as IP address?

Orange Pi 6

I don’t mean to be overly pessimistic, but I struggle to see any significant benefits to running RISC OS on Linux at the moment. The Raspberry Pi 4 is still widely available and at least until 2030, it offers a native experience. In contrast, the Linux port feels far from ready for everyday use, I’ve experimented with it myself, and it’s quite fragile, prone to breaking with minimal effort. It definitely needs input from more skilled developers to enhance its stability and performance. That said…. the only noticeable upside seems to be a slight boost in speed. I’m optimistic that it will evolve into a more practical option over time.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

"If you think you need JavaScript you probably only need CSS".

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@colinhoad.com

El Reg headline writers are 👌🏻

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@rougol.bsky.social

Even though I was there, I really enjoyed watching this again! Well worth a view 😃

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Browsing the Texture assets from the development disk for Dreamcast Wetrix+. They are stored in Dreamcast PowerVR Texture format ( various compressed format variations ).

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I have just received a very interesting find from @bone6502.bsky.social who worked at ZED TWO. It's a disk containing the source code for PS2 Aqua Aqua and data for Wetrix+ ( Dreamcast ). It's great to see this being preserved, especially as it came of a ZIP 100 disk which don't survive very well!

@colinhoad.com

My talk from last week's ROUGOL meeting is now up on my channel: youtu.be/Igljzw4o71U

It was a fun evening, and I really enjoyed it! @rougol.bsky.socialhttps://youtu.be/Igljzw4o71U

@colinhoad.com

There's so much that's wrong with this, but for me the worst part is he probably thinks he's said something insightful - rather than borderline sociopathic.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

What's the word for retrospectively envious?

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Draw_FillClipped / Draw_StrokeClipped

It seems clipping was enabled when fixing an unrelated bug:

https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/Video/Ren…

Does any app use it?

Unless I’ve missed something, the API doesn’t seem very sensible in that the clip path is recalculated on every call, so if you want to clip a 500-item DrawFile to a circle, you need to process the clip path 500 times.

I also disagree with one of the comments in the Clipping text file: “In an ideal world, the clipping code would take two paths and clip them against one another to generate a further path that would be the one that was plotted.” – I don’t believe that’s how any vector path renderer (as opposed to vector editor) works as it would cause problems with antialiasing, wouldn’t work easily with sprites, and would be slow.

I’m not suggesting any changes, but I think a better API would be for an opaque ClipRegion object be calculated by Draw, and somehow passed between subsequent calls. That object would be the scanlines. Looking at the GDraw SWI APIs, I suspect that’s what it may do (GDraw_ProcessClipPath, SetClipRegion, etc…).

Many years ago, I wrote a vector library for STBs, largely based on Draw, and it only generated run-length encoded scanlines, to save memory. Its font cache was actually RLE scanlines, rather than bitmaps. It’s sort of obsolete now as that doesn’t work with GPUs. Thinking about it, it’s also how Replay 3 worked – it maintained a set of scanlines representing the window, minus any overlapping windows (via Wimp filters), so could redraw off an interrupt.

(I only found it because I was playing around with the printer drivers which don’t seem to implement it.)

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 21st February at 1pm UK time.

Thanks for coming along today.

I think this is the last of the sessions on this component. The truncation with ellipsis is working, and we’ve got the additional SWIs implemented. There’s still some work to do on the flags, which I’ll make some notes about, but it’s largely working, and I’m quite happy with it.

Next time, I’m planning on doing a slightly different part of the RISC OS 64 project, to demonstrate how to integrate C and assembler code. As you know, the RISC OS 64 project is intended to make it easier to produce 64-bit versions of components. The way in which this is being done is by creating new implementations in C which can be used in 32-bit systems, or 64-bit systems – and I’m testing in the 64-bit system as I go, but the 32-bit versions can be used right now.

The intention is that the things that are being built will be very easy to use within existing systems, or built into parts of the ROM if required. That means that they have benefits to anyone who wants to use them. Plus, demonstrating the way in which things are built may encourage others to get involved.

So, what I’m going to do in the next sessions is to take the Template loading code that I have in C, which seems to be functional and quite usable, and to build it into the existing WindowManager. Interworking C and assembler is generally a relatively easy process, but you do need to be aware of certain limitations. Back in the very dim past, I wrote a small guide on how to do this – the `Super-Quick guide to writing code to use from other languages in C`. Catchy name, I know… http://usenet.gerph.org/CGuide/ if you’re interested.

Anyhow, that’s my intention. It will almost certainly require a bit of thought and some jumping through hoops, but I’m sure it’ll be interesting.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Great result. 36 year old game finally sees the light of day after being 'lost'.

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Voices from a Future Passed – on sale from 1st March (updated 18th March)

The official Acorn biography, Voices from a Future Passed, put together by Rob Napier, will be available to buy from 1st March. The book outlines the history of Acorn Computers Ltd – the company that brought us the BBC Micro home computer, amongst many others, and designed the original ARM processor. The ARM first became the heart of their next generation of computers before going on to dominate the world when it came mobile and low-power processing; there are now many times more ARMs in the world than there are,…

Grok your railway stations in TrainTimes

A new version of TrainTimes (2.09) has been released by Kevin Wells, featuring the ability to link to a second online encyclopaedia to look up information about railway stations, as well as a small fix for using the first. TrainTimes is an application that makes use of Wget to allow people using RISC OS to look up railway timetables and related information from online resources, without using a web browser (which on RISC OS might not entirely work, and may mean resorting to another platform). In this case those resources…

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Another great Software Creations lunchtime meetup today. As ever we discussed all that's wrong in the world, technology and our time at Creations. Tim mentioned a guy that analyses his NES/SNES music and here's a video of him tearing down some of Tim's well known workhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh-rYtmC0Y8

Stardot down (agian ?)

Would it be possible to inform the stardot admin that the forum is down ?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I've just noticed that the reason you can't configure the MouseStep to be negative (in the absence of my PreciseMouse module - on the website) is because of a perma-bug in the Kernel in every version of RISC OS since 2.0!

Negative numbers get corrupted! They would be allowed, but for the bug.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I am unreasonably pleased with this...

The chances of having to get your point across in EBCDIC are pretty slim in RISC OS, but not zero! nemoBasic has you covered:

Update for my hourglass modules

Hiya,

One of my users has requested that I recolour one of the hourglasses so that it fit better with their theme (and to make it easier to extract the hourglass modules!), so I’ve updated my cog hourglasses to have a blue variant. Video here:

https://github.com/gerph/riscos-hourglass-maker/issues…

This is downloadable from the releases section as version 0.05 as usual:

https://github.com/gerph/riscos-hourglass-maker/releas…

I’m also trying to add support for more general colour changing, but that’ll come later.

The release contains 5 hourglass styles, which have different variations which may be interesting to people.

The ‘standard’ hourglass I use for RISC OS Pyromaniac is the green cog, but tastes differ, so there are a few styles there. If anyone has any other interesting images to make into hourglasses, particularly if they’re already animated GIFs, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Fortunately my MMK keyboard handler for RISC OS doesn’t actually support the EBCDIC Alphabet, or I wouldn’t be able to switch back again!

MacRoman is a useful stress test as its hard-space isn’t 160 (it’s 202), but EBCDIC doesn’t even have space=32 (it’s 64) – hence the wall-of-hex that’s mostly 20

Last call for Archive 28:2 - and a new button!

Hi Gavin. I’m down with the flu at the moment, and struggling to get much work done. There’s a bit of news for you if there’s time, but not sure if I can get it to you this week. Will see what I can do.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I love these old Atari 8-bit programmer reference manuals. They detail eveything about the Atari 400/800 8-bit systems. There's a fully annotated source code listing for the Operating System so you see understand exactly how the computer works. I do miss these kind of manuals.

@colinhoad.com

The joy of discovering leftover birthday cake in the fridge 😋

@nemo20000.bsky.social

nemoBasic continues to have all the breaks.

[some of these are literally hundreds of times faster than the alternative]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

MC400 absolutely can do QR though. Graphics is actually the weakest part of this OS (or at least this version of OPL). Love the MC400.

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Frosted at RISC OS North 2026

I’m going to be exhibiting this year at RISC OS North and showing off the new Theming for RISC OS 5, Select and Others

From Theme Variants for RISC OS !ThemeDefs or !ExtTheme, There will also be Custom ROM’s for the Ti and Pi and for RPCEmu

I’ll be demoing the new Theme running on various hardware and handing out USB sticks with all that you need to test it out.

See you there!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

R. Fred Williams' old 3" game development disks, batch 2, have now been archived. These are on their way back to Fred so he can go through the contents. They contain a mix of development source code, utilities and binary game images. The big find so far is the lost side 'B' of Amstrad NY Warriors.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The highest allowable technology in the Dune universe.

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@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

#RISC_OS folks, time to start helping me to test this new big project, which fixes file sharing issues on RO once and for all. Only for folks who wish to help testing a pre-alpha quality ShareFS for #Windows #Mac #Linux and #BSD , details here:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/20267

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Today’s new RISC OS nemoBasic feature: CASE/ENDCASE finally gains a ‘finally’ – THEN !

CASE...OF WHEN... WHEN... OTHERWISE... THEN.... (always happens) ENDCASE

[Actually there’s lots of nemoBasic-exclusive syntax here – functional LET, functional IF, polymorphic VDU, as well as CASE...THEN]

@colinhoad.com

It is maddening how little people seem to understand about how LLMs work. They are pattern matchers, they produce strings based on the statistically most likely string to follow on from the preceding string. Why would anyone think that would be a good basis for generating secure passwords?

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@colinhoad.com

Hahaha brilliant!

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Odd BASIC error messages

To be more technical: comparisons are not associative. You cannot string multiples comparisons together, eg answer=1<2<3=4. Shifts “look like” comparisons and the evaluator is too deep down when it’s found it’s got to a shift operator, and is incapable of rewinding and dumping everything to go back up and let it be associative. So: shifts and comparisons are not associative*, full stop.

(*that’s probably the wrong term, the property that “a op b op c” is allowable.)

As always, with any evaluation, brackets are your friend. Do you mean a AND b OR c or do you mean a AND b OR c ?

Grokipedia Comes To TrainTimes

My UK train time table application for RISC OS called TrainTimes has been upgraded to version 2.09 New in this version is that Grokipedia an online AI powered encyclopedia has been added to options for getting information about stations. Grokipedia is not the finished article at the moment so some URLS do not work properly. … Continue reading "Grokipedia Comes To TrainTimes"

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

Incoming!https://riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20266

#riscos #opensource #magazine

@nemo20000.bsky.social

#SorryWhatPardon

@colinhoad.com

(hat tip @markmoxon.bsky.social for this one!)

@nemo20000.bsky.social

👀

Iyonix and the rest of my Risc OS collection

I would argue that most general purpose computers are fragile. The general purpose computers build for the military could be an exception

@rougol.bsky.social

Tonight!

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@colinhoad.com

CJEMicros getting back up to speed and need your help

Best prices paid

@colinhoad.com

This is today! Hope to see you there :-)

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

It was just over 8 years ago that I attended an ABUG event in Manchester and met up with some of the most dedicated Acorn computer enthusiasts in the universe. It was also nice to chat with Prof. Steve Furber. Over the years he has given up so much of his own time attending events like this.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Part 2 of my milestone birthday celebrations today. So impressed with the cake my amazing wife managed to source with custom themed decorations - LEGO STAR WARS figures, a Lancaster bomber and walking boots. Inside is a lovely chocolate sponge. Time to sit down and recover now.

Bluetooth development

Again an update again on github . Important items are:

- Worked quite extensively on LibProp and I really had to do a few steps back because it was going nowhere. So at this moment only functions are in which are used in the BT stack. Empty functions so they have to be implemented over time.

- With LibProp compiling I could continue on the btdevctl application. The LibProb lib is now linkedin and now the focus can be on the other items which are not linking at the moment.

Indeed we see that BSD is often used by ROOL and ROD and it would be for the future good to see if one and other can be brought into a more standarized libray but for now I’m focussing on my own.

If all went well all the ‘o’ files are gone so Leo can be happy…

NAS problem

Starting and stopping mechanical drives are the hardest part of a drives life and will shorten the drives lifespan for sure, NAS based mechanical drives are designed for long term operation and are best left running. Otherwise whats the point? and i would say generally Mechanical drives are less likely to fail over a flash drive.

And always have spin up and spin down disabled. this too will shorten the drives life cycle.

Thanks

I just wanted to say Thank you! to everyone here. I wish I could contribute with something, but as it is now I can’t. It has been several months since I did any RISC OS coding..

I hope I can find joy in coding again ,, Atm I don’t code at all.

Anyway½ Tanks again! And I love all your projects!

@iconbar.com

CJEMicros getting back up to speed and need your help

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/CJEMicros_getting_back_up_to_speed_and_need_your_help/index2303.html

We are really pleased to hear from CJEMicros who have emailed us to let us know that they are recovering after the fire at their premises last year.

CJEMicros getting back up to speed and need your help

We are really pleased to hear from CJEMicros who have emailed to let us know that they are recovering after fire at their premises last year.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

In a similar vein, I can't believe I've spent the last 5 hours trying to track down a ZeroPain bug. Haven't found it yet! And I think there's another lurking. I've been staring at numbers all day, not understanding any of it.

Maybe it should be a topic for a RISC OS programmers fireside chat.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

RISC OS Teletext, but Level 3.5 colours.

The fun but is that though this API is naturally 24b colour, L3.5 Teletext only supports 4096 colours, so it’s quantised internally (and currently colours 16-31 are ignored because of the Kernel implementation).

@nemo20000.bsky.social

That's no age. 😿

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Today's I-can’t-believe-I-spent-the-morning-doing-this RISC OS module: Teletext35.

Updates the MODE7 Teletext emulation to Level 3.5 with attribute modification!

• Put characters on top of control codes • Freely modify colours of any cell • Modify the attributes of any character

@colinhoad.com

Linux rite of passage this evening! Managed to boot into an older kernel and resolve things, turned out to be a stale version of Virtualbox preventing various crucial dependencies from upgrading. Fresh install of Virtualbox, sudo apt upgrade and back in business again 😎

rustc, ELF, ld...

Here here:

I can connect to my network wirelessly (using ROD stack) and get decent performance – can ‘just’ view a video playing on the Pi via a VNC client on Linux – refresh is not great but it does work

I can now use RISC OS to browse the Web (acknowledging the limitations) using IRIS.

I can now print to some modern printers using Dave Highton’s IPP software tools!

We have a professional graphic designer amongst the active developers (thanks Martin) with new RO Theming + there are further activities in this realm with Clarity and Paolo’s theme manager !

and anticipate, hopefully, 2026 to have significantly improved network file sharing – with Paolo’s work on ShareFS

Plus there are some apps still being developed / maintained and people are working on 64bit.

Wouldn’t have picked this 10 years ago.

@iconbar.com

Rougol February 2026 meeting on Monday - Retro YouTuber Colin Hoad

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_February_2026_meeting_on_monday_-_Retro_YouTuber_Colin_Hoad/index2298.html

The February 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and features Retro YouTuber Colin Hoad

@colinhoad.com

I'd rather ARM steered well clear of AI. They could well end up coming out on top once the bubble bursts.

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@colinhoad.com

Claude's programmers tell it to do something and it does it, then act surprised that it did the thing they told it to do.

Colour me shocked.

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Rougol February 2026 meeting on monday - Retro YouTuber Colin Hoad

The February 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and features Retro YouTuber Colin Hoad

@rougol.bsky.social

At our meeting on Monday 16th February @colinhoad.com will be bringing some of his collection of palmtops to the pub and talking about his retro computing YouTube channel. Come and have a listen and play!https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

The BBC Micro version of Ultimate Play the Game's Lunar Jetman had only 9 bytes of free memory. Paul Proctor managed to squeeze the game into the Beeb's 32K RAM with some very clever programming. He was able to reclaim a big chunk of memory by shrinking the screen window.

@colinhoad.com

Fancy some mid-afternoon Beeb game silliness? youtu.be/6Mtl5vua9t4https://youtu.be/6Mtl5vua9t4

So What Now?

I take the points made. Although, the impression I have of what ROOL are intending is to pay for developers to reimplement the existing modules in C, and at some time they could be recompiled in 64-bit mode. It seems to me unlikely that the estimated sum of £2,500,000 is ever likely to be raised in any case. The slide might say that they aren’t going to mandate a particular approach but that’s not what the website suggests— at least to me.

I’m impressed by the image shown above of RISC OS running full-screen on a Mac.

Emulation is only a secure route if the technology that the emulator relies on is still available, or if the finances or will exist to adapt to changes that happen. The Mac version of VRPC will not work on recent versions of macOS which no longer support 32-bit applications and I also suspect this would involve a complete rewrite anyway as many of the underlying technologies of the time it was being developed no longer exist (CarbonLib, for instance). Even the Windows version of VRPC relies on a library (DirectDraw) whose use was deprecated before VRPC had finished development.

RPCEmu uses a cross-platform GUI library (Qt) having abandoned its previous interface (Allegro) when substantial breaking changes were made to it. The last time I tried the Mac version of this, it didn’t have a full screen mode and had reduced functionality compared to the other versions. And development of this version has ceased.

When I was comparing RISC OS to MacOS and Windows, I was thinking of those OSs as they were back in the 1990s when, from a user’s point of view, they seemed to have roughly similar capabilities to RO. MacOS, for example, was not a pre-emptive multi-tasking system, and an application could take the OS down with it, as can still happen with RO today.

I’m sure there is a lot of not wanting things to change in the RISC OS world — especially perhaps at ROOL, where their documentation production remains locked in to FrameMaker, and there was the odd situation a few years ago when they couldn’t release PDF copies of documentation because the font licenses didn’t permit it. In the end CJE paid for the licence to be upgraded, but why did ROOL not simply change the fonts?

You’re right that versions of the Amiga operating system have been developed by small teams. I’m not sure that’s a good example to follow, as there are several different versions and a lot of confusion as to who has the rights to what. Amiga OS was, I believe, pre-emptively multi-tasking but IMHO the GUI was terrible.

@rougol.bsky.social

Very off topic for this account, but this is important research 😛

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Toolbox_RaiseToolboxEvent

The xxxStat modules hook in to various system vectors and increment counts in RMA space, so very little overhead. AppStat also reads the system timer, so is a few more instructions. Having the front ends displaying slows things down displaying all those bars.

Retro YouTube, and pocket computers – ROUGOL, 16th February

The RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) will next meet up on Monday, 16th February, and the guest speaker – who will be visiting the group in person – will be Colin Hoad. Colin runs a YouTube channel, which focuses on Acorn-centric retro content, particularly related to the BBC Micro, and includes retrospectives and reviews of games for the 8-bit systems, features on events he has visited such as the 2024 RISC OS London Show (unfortunately, Colin couldn’t make it to the 2025 event), and he even forced himself…

!Family

I’ve used ROOTS by Alex Waugh, it stopped working on the PI4 some time back but, it still runs on the Iyonix. The output has these 4 lines at the start:-

0 HEAD

1 SOUR Roots

2 VERS 1.18 (28-Apr-04)

2 CORP Alex Waugh

@colinhoad.com

Today's vibe.

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I really need this SGI Indy briefcase! Imagine rocking up to a meeting or inteview with this. Totally awesome.

@colinhoad.com

I'll be speaking at the next @rougol.bsky.social (RISC OS User Group of London) meeting at the Duke of Sussex pub next Monday 16th February! Details available here: https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Here's a great video of the Retro Computer Festival 2025 event that @computinghistory.org.uk hosted last year. Myself, and lots of other game developers were there and you can see what we were showing the visitors!https://youtu.be/v5CJwTemw-Q?si=nlkhqLHY4UhhoIyW&t=895

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I'm still reeling at the price of RAM for a new PC. I wanted to install 64GB in my development machine. Ouch! That RAM will now cost more than the decent video card I had my eyes on. Apparently a lot of it is to do with AI. Please can everyone stop generating AI junk so I can get more RAM. Thanks!

Family tree software -- possibly Ancestor+

TLDR: Do you have any family tree software? What’s it called, and how does it save its data? I am trying to unearth a family tree I made years ago on my dad’s RO machine.

I previously asked this over on Stardot, and it was suggested there that I ask here.

I’m trying to dig up a family tree I (with a lot of my late father’s help) put together years and years ago. The problem is that all I have is a pile of full-drive backups, no RO machine to inspect it all with, and no strong memory of what the software was called or where the file might have been saved or what it might look like. I can search for filenames, and for filetypes as long as I know the hex number of the filetype in question, and for strings in the contents of files. Unfortunately I don’t even know if the files will be in the backups, so as such I want to make the search as exhaustive as possible.

A good first clue would be the name of the software I was using. Then I could hopefully gather some information on how it stored its data, so I know what to search for. I think it could have been anywhere between 1994 and 2002, which I realize is quite a range. I found a list of family tree software but rather depressingly every single one of its links is dead. And unfortunately none of the names of the pieces of software especially ring a bell. I wish I could see screenshots of them; that might help. Is there any other software not listed which it could have been?

My best guess is that it was Ancestor+ ( here is the best info online I can find about it), and that’s because it’s the only one of those which appears in the spreadsheet we put together when trying to inventory everything after dad died. It’s still only a guess, though, since there was certainly other software — things from compilations, things which were downloaded, things which were lost…

Here’s what I can remember:

• It was definitely software specifically for family trees; it wasn’t a general-purpose database
• It was a GUI; I wasn’t editing any data files manually
• It was capable of displaying different parts of the tree, for example I could have it show my mother’s side or my father’s side
• It was capable of storing information further than just names and position on the tree: I was entering birthdays and dates of death, and I wish I could remember what else. I entered this information in a separate floating window, I think.

I doubt that narrows it down much, but worth a try.

So: does anyone have any idea what software it might have been? Does the above sound like Ancestor+? If you have Ancestor+ or any other family tree software which might be a match, could you tell me how it stores its data? What’s the 3-hex-letter code for any relevant filetypes it saves? Any other clues that might be useful in searching for its files? I can search filenames or I can search by string in file contents.

With any luck I’ll find the files, and then hopefully I’ll be able to figure out how to parse its data format myself, or perhaps I will be able to persuade a kind community member to extract the data for me.

System ID.

Hi All, I'm wondering if there is a listing of which model motherboard belongs to which model of Acorn? I've seen listings of motherboard for sale that are described as Acorn RISC or Archimedes but they never say what chassis it goes in, ie RISC PC or A7000 etc, that's just an example.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Bluesky is having a bad day isn’t it?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Apropos of nothing, I was reminded the other day that I should clarify that just because your BBC/Acorn/RISC OS machine is running your (Basic) program, this doesn’t mean the filing system syntax is “FS::Drive.root.dir.dir.dir.file/ext” – strictly speaking you have to check OS_Byte,0,1 to find out:

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt be given reason to say it again, but I’ll repeat: Developers are *bad* at interfaces.

And RISC OS developers are particularly bad at RISC OS interfaces.

@colinhoad.com

It was ABUG North (Leeds) this weekend, here's a video of what we all got up to...

youtu.be/LHq_Y8MNEmwhttps://youtu.be/LHq_Y8MNEmw

@armbytes.bsky.social

A huge shout-out to everyone who made it! The next meetup is pencilled in for 28th March – a week after RISC OS North.

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@iconbar.com

Drag'n'Drop 15i2 edition reviewed

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/DragnDrop_15i2_edition_reviewed/index2301.html

The latest edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine is now available sporting what it claims is the worst ever cover. Do you agree?

Iron Dignity 2020

Just wondering has there been any updates on Iron Dignity, Magnetoids or any of the raytracing stuff mentioned here. Also possibly new stuff from the Iron Dignity team.

I don’t think anyone could deny having these apps or even new stuff updated for modern systems would be very desirable. I for one would pay decent money for at least updated and complete versions of ID and the raytracing stuff including a full editor.

Hope there has been positive movement in recent years.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Why am I nearer "Pokemon content creators" than @givvygavvygoo.bsky.social?

Note to self: Be less Pokemon.

bluesky-map.theo.io

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Speaking as an uber-woke net-zero rejoinerist I'm delighted to finally be represented.

Drag'n'Drop 15i2 edition reviewed

The latest edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine is now available sporting what it claims is the worat ever cover. Do you agree????

URI Launch Sometimes Fails

Yes, the browser is looked at. It works on a freshly reset machine before I have run any other applications. The question is why the URI_Dispatch process subsequently stops working. I’ve not reproduced the problem again yet. I’ve not actively sought to, as I’d rather be developing software, but if it happens again I will try to spot any patterns.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 8th February at 1pm UK time.

Going live in about 10 minutes.

ScummVM 2026.1.0 "Like a Version" is finally released

Great news and really appreciated!

Having ScummVM 1.3.1-3 available on PackMan at the same time is a bit confusing though.

Coding on RISC OS fireside chat, Saturday 7th Feb.

Next meeting Saturday 28 March – a week after RISC OS North.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

@rougol.bsky.social are you going g us tonight for the meeting?

PhotoDesk 3.25 crashes when trying to create new layer

Just a quick “heads up”… The programmer has now fixed this, so if anyone wants to test the new version, drop me an email.

For a more general release, Francois has reported several other issues privately, so I’d like to get a few of them looked at – hopefully with a full new release in time for RISC OS North.

Pi500 painted like a Beeb KB

Saw this on The Register this evening… Pi500+

https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/06/summoning_the_s…

more info here on pi news:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/beige-is-back-remembe…

Window to Window

Or how about selecting a sprite in the spritefile window and dragging it over the Draw file window and releasing it – just like copying a file from one filer window to another?

That works too!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I was browsing new PCs and didn't think it would be a problem finding what I wanted. I visited a few recommended sites with good Trustpilot ratings including Scan, Overclockers, PCspecialist. I fell at the first hurdle - the case. All I want to do is add internal DVD/Blu-Ray drives - for archiving!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm beginning to think Bluesky needs Community Notes. 😕

Developers’ fireside chat – 7th February

Saturday, 7th February offers people involved or interested in software development for RISC OS the opportunity to once again to meet up online and discuss the issues and problems they face, seek help, offer advice, demonstrate what they’re working on, or just generally chat about the things programmers like to chat about. The meetings take place using the Zoom video conferencing software, which is available for most platforms. They are wholly informal and don’t follow a set agenda – those present steer the conversation as the evening progresses – and…

HardDisc4.5.30.zip

I’ve tried around with “HardDisc4.5.30.zip” but had no luck either, decompressing it & copying it into hostfs, or complete as zip-file. sk

HardDisc4.5.30.util - is the file faulty?

I followed “RPCEmu from scratch” renaming “HardDisc4.5.30.util” to “HardDisc4-util,ffc” and copying it to ~hostfs. When trying to extract it later on, I got a window with letters etc, !edit being opened in the icon bar. Everything worked fine with the “nightly” HardDisk4.util! So, is the file itself somehow faulty? Greetings, Stefan

@iconbar.com

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Fireside_developer_chat_on_saturday_night/index2294.html

The next developer chat is on Saturday night (7th February) for anyone interested in a very informal event online aimed at RISC OS developers.

@armbytes.bsky.social

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/beige-is-back-remembering-the-bbc-micro-with-raspberry-pi-500-plus/

@iconbar.com

MUG celebrates 20 years

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/MUG_celebrates_20_years/index2302.html

Midlands User Group (more commonly known as MUG) is celebrating its (first) 20 years of operating!

VNC access to Pi400

Thanks Steve.

I looked at that 2019 thread and remained confused :-( though I did get to specify ‘VNC password’ (as opposed to the default ‘UNIX password’) in a RealVNC setup dialogue which is supposed to be significant.

Now, however, I’ve reverted to the previous RPi OS (Debian Bookworm) and got VNC to work via the IP address DHCP gives to the Pi. Attempts to use a manual IP address seem to fail, though messages such as the one I quoted above no longer appear. Obviously a minefield! — but it’s working.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Oof. Bad news for UK ™️ holders.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Another rat dashing to the far right?!

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@colinhoad.com

Want

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@colinhoad.com

Honestly, who comes up with this rubbish

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

The next developer chat is on saturday night (7th February) for anyone interested in a very informal event online aimed at RISC OS developers.

Rasberry Pi - which is best in 2026?

Brilliant – thank you all. I had noticed the extension on the image file was a compression, but as etcher happily took it in I assumed it was ok with that (and I didnt realise this was not usual). Pi imager worked perfectly (v2.0.6).

MUG celebrates 20 years

Midlands User Group (more commonly known as MUG) is celebrating its (first) 20 years of operating today!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I’ll probably regret this. Pre-incremented is probably safe, but post-incremented is bound to fall foul of something. After all, A%-----B% is then valid.

@colinhoad.com

@loudscotsbloke.bsky.social Hello, me again! I'm looking at peripherals for the Aquarius (hoping to borrow one from a friend this weekend) and wondered if you'd had much success with the Maxduino or other tape emulators? Any recommendations would be most welcome! :)

Gareth McCaughan's `mkdrawf`/`decdrawf` tools on GitHub

Yes, just tested

Draw: 1 Warning: Unknown object type

I tried with other editors:

Artworks: ok, no warning

Vector: ok, no warning

Draw PLus: 6 Warning: Unknown object type

Note: If with Draw we save the selection, no problem in the decode file.

Ok to put information on the repository, I just need to find the instructions, and I would like to know how to do it.

The draw file is very easy to create, it’s just a rectangle then save.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Sacrificed on the altar of growth.

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@colinhoad.com

Aa of this morning's weigh-in, the Christmas kilo has been lost! 🥳

Status update for RISC OS 64-bit work

We’ve had a month and a half since the last status update on the 64-bit RISC OS work, so here we go…

• Kernel introspection calls were given some stubbed entry points as part of the live coding work. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-kernel-introspection for details.

• Fixes for the Hourglass Maker have been applied (it seemed to always turn the pointer off!). See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-hourglass-maker for details.

• Wimp text rendering was started as the live coding sessions. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-wimp-textrender for the details.

• The Wimp text rendering is using a library I created a long time ago which abstracts the graphics operations into logical routines. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-gcontext for details of the library.

• Contributed to Matthew Godbolt’s TBAFS archive extraction tool, to improve some of the features. See https://github.com/mattgodbolt/tbafs.

• Released updated versions of Gareth McCaughan’s `mkdrawf`/`decdrawf` tools to create and decode RISC OS Drawfiles. See https://github.com/gerph/garethmccaughan-mkdrawf for details.

  • Released under MIT license, as 32-bit safe.
  • Updated to run on 64-bit Ubuntu as well.

• Updated my `lessfilter` tooling. See https://github.com/gerph/lessfilter for details.

  • Support for listing RISC OS zip archives.
  • Improved frontmatter recognition in markdown.
  • Improved colouring in some `decaof` output.
  • Use `objdump` for 32-bit ARMELF files.
  • Support showing Drawfiles with `decdrawf`.
    • Screenshots here: https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20222
    • Video here: https://asciinema.org/a/768154

• RISC OS Build service (and shell) updated to the 0.79 version of RISC OS Pyromaniac. See https://shell.riscos.online/ and https://build.riscos.online/.

  • Added `picoc` to the tools that are present, allowing testing with simple C scripts in both 32-bit and 64-bit configurations.

• RISC OS language server for SWI calls created. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-swi-language-server for details.

  • Videos for SublimeText here: https://share.gerph.org/s/tFGhUkZ9T5UVYsO https://share.gerph.org/s/jcfYJUgD02efYi5
  • Video for VSCode here: https://share.gerph.org/s/znYmnFhyG3bZTNy

• Port of the `wren` language to RISC OS 64. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-wren for details.

  • Video here: https://asciinema.org/a/762898

• Port of `MicroQuickJS` to RISC OS 64. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-mquickjs for details.

  • Video here: https://asciinema.org/a/764232

• Port of `MicroUI` to RISC OS (both architectures). See https://github.com/gerph/microui for details.

  • Video here: https://share.gerph.org/s/w8UEFpWZZcXvB4K

• All GitHub repositories updated.

  • Automation has been added to make updating dependencies less time-consuming.
  • PR and issue templates have been added to help guide users to give better reports on issues.

• Released the UUID module in case anyone needed it. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-uuid for details.

• Created example repository for using timed events in applications. See https://github.com/gerph/riscos-timed-events-example for details.

• Updated the build environment with the latest tooling. See https://hub.docker.com/r/gerph/riscos-build for details.

• Started sponsorship programme on GitHub. See https://github.com/sponsors/gerph for details.

The overall status of the components can be found in the RISC OS 64 Status repository: https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/wiki

You can always follow the repositories to see what’s being done. The RISC OS Status repository also has a `Discussions` section for general discussions on the progress of 64-bit work.

The sponsorship programme is something that GitHub offers to allow people to provide contributions towards the RISC OS 64 project. If you like what’s being done, and want to encourage more, feel free to sponsor.

And of course, if you want to get involved in working on any of the conversion to C of components, please speak up.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Having fun with John Pickford's Spectrum Sprite Editor - as found on one of Fred's dev disks during my archiving testing process. I doubt anyone has used this since the early 1990s! It's really good and very typical of the tools we used for home computer game development in the late 80s/early 90s.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

No RISC OS announcements at the moment because I’m deep DEEP in the weeds. Doing three or possibly four significant things to PROCFNs and it’s all very easy going oh yes /s

ScummVM 2026.1.0 released

With support for a dozen new game engines, and with them a raft of additional games, ScummVM has seen a new release. The original purpose of the software was to make it possible to play games on modern computers that were originally written using a particular system – LucasArts’ Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. Since its original release, ScummVM has expanded far beyond that and now supports a range of similar engines, and therefore a plethora of games. It’s maintained by a team of developers, and here in the…

Qercus

Agreed. But looking at the few copies of Quercus I’ve come across, they will not be easy to scan and get a very readable result. There is quite frequent use of black text on grey and patterned backgrounds. Still, once scans have been produced, they could be processed as necessary.

Hard Disk support

It uses HostFS rather than a disc image. [and please ignore the bot content above]

@iconbar.com

WROCC February 2026 talk on Wednesday - AGM

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/WROCC_February_2026_talk_on_Wednesday_-_AGM/index2296.html

The February meeting will be the Annual General Meeting, starting at 7:45pm on Zoom. This is a members only meeting so a special meeting link will be sent out beforehand to join

@nemo20000.bsky.social

/Slightly/ discernible discrepancy between those who live there and those who only hear about it in propaganda.

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WROCC February 2026 talk on Wednesday - AGM

WROCC February 2026 Meeting - AGM on Wednesday 4th February

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Whilst archving some disks I found a sprite editor for the ZX Spectrum by former Software Creations colleague John Pickford. This was used at Binary Design and other Manchester based game devs back in 1986. No idea how to use it! Maybe his brother, Ste,remembers @stepickford.bsky.social

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Today’s nemoBasic feature: PROCs & FNs should know what they’re called – FN$.

Also useful for error handling: ONERRORLOCAL:PROCerror(FN$):ENDPROC

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

More old game development disk rescue and archive work underway. The latest batch of 3" disks have had fewer errors than previous ones I've worked with. Fingers crossed it keeps that way!

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 1st February at 1pm UK time.

This week…

• System fonts using the WimpSymbol font character were implemented properly.
• NVRAM configuration of the font name was implemented (and the correct fallback sequence used).
• A test module was created with an initial hook up of the Wimp_TextOp calls.

Thanks for watching!

Next week, I’ll try to complete the TextOp calls, adding in the split/truncation code, and maybe the other system calls.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

How many of you can remember this iconic scene from 1970s TV ( UK )?

@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). The event is on Saturday, 7th February at 7:30 pm (GMT). #Zoom #Meetup #RISCOS #Community #RaspberryPi #ARM #Retro #AcornComputers

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Watch at 2x speed if you're short of time, but watch.

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Handling Unicode

I have now implemented receiving Cerilica_EncodedText and Cerilica_Styled_text (with some limitations) in our application library, so support will gradually appear in our software. The first to be updated is Nominatim – the search box obtainable by clicking on the iconbar menu is one part of the application which will now respond to these two messages.

Testing has been very limited, because I had to generate the messages myself and may not have thought of all the edge cases. I’ll try to fix anything that is brought to my attention.

(Apologies to Nemo: the Nominatim application relies on the RUfL library and so it scans all your fonts when it first runs. You may wish to test on a machine with few extra fonts.)

Spread the word by displaying a show banner

If you want to help publicise the 2026 show, there are now a selection of banners available for you to display on your own web pages. Displaying a banner, with a link to this website, can help spread the word about the event to anyone who visits your own site, and in turn can help […]

Realtek RTL8152

Coming back to this after a very long time (and having missed your last reply, Thomas), I’ve since bought a different USB to Ethernet device using the Realtek 8152 chip and it ‘just works’ out of the box. It sets a MAC address and my router recognised it immediately.

A bit more poking with the old one without the MAC address, I did discover it worked completely as expected on the local network only if I set the IP address manually. ShareFS worked (as previously mentioned), as did VNC, plus several other apps – as long it was local traffic, and used IP addresses, rather than hostnames. Netsurf and Iris did not work to browse web pages.

So I’m concluding that Thomas was right – the vendor was saving a few (fractions of) pennies by not including any hardware to push a MAC address when asked, and was leaving it to the OS to make one up. Cheapskates. RISC OS does not do this, it seems, and maybe rightly so.

MUG marks its 20th birthday

On Wednesday, 4th February, it will have been twenty years to the day since the Midlands User Group (MUG) held its first meeting, and will be getting together in a pub on the day to celebrate that anniversary. On the 4th February, 2006, a small cohort of RISC OS users in the Midlands area gathered together in the home of one – Robin Edwards of Serious Statistical Software, who is sadly no longer with us – and decided to formalise the group and hold regular meetings – initially settling on…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

BBC journalism 101: Fly-tipped cardboard boxes are "electric vehicle" boxes, but fly-tipped tyres are not "petrol vehicle" tyres.

Recovering a RiscOS Disk

Just for future reference. All the issues I was seeing with the RiscPC boot were due to the monitor I was using failing to sync to the RiscPC video output. It simply showed a blank screen.

I got round this using an old multi-sync monitor that could sync down to the 640×350 that the RiscPC seemed to be defaulting to. It could also cope with 56Hz screen refresh that seems to get set at 640×400, again something my modern LCD panel would not sync too.

Once I got a signal I was able to configure the monitor and sort out the various disk issues. As others have said before the absence of !Boot doesn’t stop the machine booting.

@iconbar.com

January 2026 News Summary

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/January_2026_News_Summary/index2292.html

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

@riscosbits.co.uk

New RISC OS laptop? Running @riscosopen.bsky.social RISC OS 5 very quickly!

#RISC_OS #ArgonOneUp #fastest #thinkso

RISCOSbits becomes a VENOMoid

Although it was introduced only a few short years ago, being announced shortly before the 2024 South West Show, the VENOM computer from RISCOSbits is now being discontinued. According to RISCOSbits’ Andy Marks, the last VENOM system left the company’s base of operations earlier this week. He went on to eulogise the range, noting that “it has been our most successful machine to date, selling more than any other system we’ve produced, although our FAST NVMe systems are hot on the heels.” “This has been especially surprising,” he added, “given…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Interfaces! Interfaces interfaces interfaces.

"Systems" is about architecture and interfaces, and after 40 years in the industry I can be definitive:

Developers are terrible at interfaces.

I mean we're bad at QA and documentation too - for the same reasons - but particularly bad at interfaces.https://dev.to/narnaiezzsshaa/why-we-suddenly-have-developers-who-cant-think-in-systems-gpj

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

R Fred Williams' 2nd batch of game development disks have arrived and are now queued for archiving. These look much more interesting and may have one or two of his 'lost' games on them, along with source code for other titles. New York Warriors and several Dizzy games are written on the labels.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

No amount of PR-speak can disguise the fact that somebody entirely unqualified has made an excruciatingly laughable error in the most public and officious way, so feels unable to retract their misguided edict now they've been confronted by facts.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98pn910e9jo

January 2026 News Summary

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

20 Years of MUG - 4th February 2026

Midland User Group (MUG) – 20th anniversary celebration.

On Wednesday 4th February 2026 MUG will be celebrating 20 years since the first meeting of some RISC OS enthusiasts was held in Robin Edwards home in Blackwell.

These included, in addition to Robin Edwards, Dr Pete Borcherds, John Rickman, Doug Webb, David Mullard and Chris Dale.

At that first meeting it was decided to set up MUG and to to hold meetings every other month of the year.

The group quickly expanded to hold meetings at the Methodist Hall in Blackwell.

At the end of 2006, MUG helped the ARM Club with its Christmas show at Featherstone.

Over the course of the last 20 years MUG have held some 16 RISC OS based shows, including that first one, at various venues.

These include the first show run entirely by the club at the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon in 2007.

MUG shows have also been held at Birmingham University Guild of Student 2008 – 2009, Kenilworth 2010 – 2014, at the Recursion Fairs 2015-2018, virtually from 2022-July 2023 and the last, to date, in person MUGRISC OS Xmas Market in December 2023.

In addition to those events many MUG members have been regular trippers to the other RISC OS shows that have been held around the UK over the years.

MUG would like to thank members past and present, remember those who are no longer with us, and to thank the many RISC OS related companies and individuals that have made the last 20 years of RISC OS so memorable.

To commemorate the event MUG will be holding a celebratory meal in Kenilworth.

On behalf of the MUG membership.

More information about MUG

@colinhoad.com

In honour of the big man's 30th, tonight's gaming had to be.... #DukeNukem3D #ComeGetSome

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Another day, another bug in RISC OS BBC Basic [again, by code inspection].

@colinhoad.com

Happy 30th birthday to Duke Nukem 3D! What a game.https://media.tenor.com/SwZwutecbnkAAAAC/duke-nukem-intro.gif?hh=280&ww=498

@colinhoad.com

I think I've found my new browser

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@colinhoad.com

This sounds utterly horrifying. It was only days ago that we had AI churning out CSAM on demand.

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@colinhoad.com

I just got a Google news alert on my phone and when I tapped it, it automatically took me into Google AI Mode (which I have never enabled and always dismiss when prompted). They're so desperate for us to adopt these tools, they're now tricking us into using them. Wild.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'm enjoying the language options on this random website. Yes! All the Englishes!

@iconbar.com

RISCOSbits updates its Computer range and prices

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISCOSbits_updates_its_Computer_range_and_prices/index2300.html

RISCOSbits has discontinued their VENOM premium NVMe RISC OS computer system, according to a press release issued this week.

RISCOSbits updates its Computer range and prices

RISCOSbits has discontinued their VENOM premium NVMe RISC OS computer system, according to a press release issued this week.

@rougol.bsky.social

You can also get more info on the contents and register your interest in Rob's book, plus suggest a charity to receive a cut of the profits, here - www.doitonce.net.au

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RiscPC freezing with Unipod

Remember that the UniPOD has a small and socketed PLA (I think it was a PLA from memory), which is responsible for which functions are active.

Mine never had one of these, and worked fine. It may have been a dealer-only version, I have no idea.

RISCOSbits Stock News

RISCOSbits must announce the immediate discontinuation of their highly successful VENOM premium NVMe RISC OS computer system. The last remaining machine left HQ earlier this week, to a new home.

As part of the eulogy for VENOM, it’s worth noting that it has been our most successful machine to date, selling more than any other system we’ve produced, although our FAST NVMe systems are hot on the heels. This has been especially surprising given its relatively short lifespan, but has been due, in no small part, to our excellent FreeNVMe drivers, developed in conjunction with RISC OS Open and Stader Softwareenwicklung.

To mitigate the loss, we’ve introduced a couple of new systems to our website, to make amends. Well, more like one and a half!

The PLUSFIVE is an add-on for the DIYTHREE to add a very capable Linux board to the system. Using the modular nature of the DIYTHREE case, the PLUSFIVE literally builds onto the existing system to add a Compute Module 5, running at 2.3GHz, with a base spec of 4GB RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage (NVMe is also available as an option). This can then be used to create a very powerful interconnected hybrid RISC OS/Linux system in a particularly small and expandable modular machine. This will be available to existing DIYTHREE users for £169.

The is a full kit and caboodle of a DIYTHREE and a PLUSFIVE is now also available, in the form of the new STACKERDIY kit. For just £369, you get the whole machine in one super compact case. For an extra £30, we can put it all together for you, with no DIY required!

Please check out our DIY pages for details of what the PLUSFIVE and the STACKER can do. There’s a user-written review and build article in the current issue of Archive too.

As part of the process of updating the RISCOSbits website to reflect this, we have also taken the difficult decision to begin to reflect the current changes in memory prices that are hitting hard across the whole computing world. As an example, 1TB NVMe drives have more than doubled in price in the last few months, and even the Raspberry Pi Foundation have had to increase the price of their boards and drives as a result. For several months, we have been able to use existing stock to offset and absorb the price increases, but stock is dwindling and the cheaper suppliers are running dry.

We are proud to be open and honest about our prices and publish them on our website for all to see, allowing customers to get an idea of the excellent value of our systems when making a decision about their next RISC OS machine, so the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that we’ve had to change some prices over the festive period. But we still managed to offer a highly successful Christmas Cracker to quite a few new customers!

If you’re in the market for a new RISC OS machine, sometimes the early bird catches the worm! If you’re holding out for the next round of Show Prices, we may not be able to offer the high discounts you’ve come to expect.

The good news on NVMe pricing is that we’re trying to hold our prices as low as we can, and are managing to absorb some of the price rises, or ‘split the difference’ where we can’t hold them fast. But this won’t last for long and forecasters are currently predicting prices may continue to rise, possibly well into 2027.

Rest assured that the most up-to-date prices shown on our website will always be the best we can offer, without hidden surprises.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Paul Proctor wrote this BASIC program to display the MAP for his BBC Micro version of Alien 8. The start positions and locations of the various objects and Cryonaughts are all shown. I recovered this whilst archiving his old development disks. As you can see, the map is in the shape of a spaceship.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

'Wake me up before you Go-Go' by WHAM! on the BBC Micro from 1984.

@colinhoad.com

Quite apart from how ugly and inefficient the code must be, these kinds of stories just make me despair at how little self-respect and care for the craft people like this must have. Take a look at yourself in the mirror, seriously.

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@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Hi. I know you don't frequent the ROOL forums these days, but there's a thread about handling unicode that you may be able to help out on regarding a Cerilica message question.https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/20238

@iconbar.com

RISC OS North Show is only 2 months away....

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/RISC_OS_North_Show_is_only_2_months_away..../index2299.html

Time to make plans - RISC OS North returns on Saturday 21st March 2026 at the Village Hotel Warrington.

@iconbar.com

Working with Git client on RISC OS

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Working_with_Git_client_on_RISC_OS/index2264.html

I have been getting back into programming RISC OS in BBC BASIC to scratch an itch and for a challenge. This also gave me an excellent way to try out the RISC OS Git client. So here are my experiences.

@colinhoad.com

Spare me from people enthusing about how much more productive AI has made them in programming languages they don't know.

RISC OS North Show is only 2 months away....

Time to make plans - RISC OS North returns on Saturday 21st March 2026 at the Village Hotel Warrington.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

In 2022 I was finally able to reunite Paul Proctor with his BBC Micro development disks that he left with me back in 1986. He'd moved home several times and we completely lost touch. These contained the source code for Knight Lore, Alien 8, Lunar Jetman and Nightshade. All safely archived.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

“How much of nemoBasic is new?” I sometimes get asked.

The answer is “I’ve written more than I started with”:

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The problem with defining a new flag in the RISC OS window definition is suddenly coming across a window behaving oddly because it, erroneously, ALREADY HAD THE BIT SET.

At some point a few years ago a default window got some flags randomised and neither !TempEdit or the Wimp noticed.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

nemoBasic is all about removing boilerplate from BBC Basic programs – this sort of thing. So obvious! Why wasn’t it always there? eg

IF STR$~filename$ = "" THEN ...

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Mike Webb - programmer and co-designer of NES Solstice. I worked with Mike at Software Creations in the late 80s / early 90s. He was the Technical Director and genius who reverse engineered the NES, created his own dev kits for NES and SNES and wrote much of the early development software.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 25th January at 1pm UK time.

Coming up in about 40 minutes if anyone wants to come along…

RPCEmu riscos 5.31 beta ROM

Thanks. That worked.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This video shows how we developed games for the NES at Software Creations. PC-ED was our in-house IDE that we used to edit/build/deploy/debug our game code on a PC. This demonstration shows me loading up the 6502 source code for NES Wolverine - May 1991. Object code deployed to NES target dev kit.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Some great news from R. Fred Williams about his missing game development disks - he's found them! Hopefully these include some 'missing-in-action' games that he worked on along with original source code for other titles. Looking forward to seeing them and hope we can extract all the data!

UUID Generation

Perfect lets see if we can use that within the BT stack.

Coding on RISC OS fireside chat, Saturday 10th Jan.

Thanks

Ti board in RPC

Has anyone tried fitting a Ti Motherboard into a RiscPc case?

ROAST update

A new ROCoding entry is now available, this time on Circles, which is a bit more complicated and interesting than rectangles.

Available here: ROAST circles

!Switch - where can i find it?

Hello Community

I can’t find a site anymore where to download the !Switch desktop utility, allowing to get a list of open windows and easily switch between them.

Does anyone has an url?

Thank you for your help.

François

@colinhoad.com

What a ridiculous new system Ebay now has for postage. Someone's bought two items from me and requested combined postage, quite naturally. But there is no way to do it, the button is greyed out and from what I've since read, Ebay has removed the facility and insists you use individual prepaid labels

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I've finished recovering and archiving R Fred Williams' development disks - Einstein, Amstrad & Spectrum. Unfortunately, we didn't find the 'missing' source code and games that Fred was looking for, however, he may have more disks hidden away! Many of the disks did have errors, which is quite common

@colinhoad.com

Got a few books up for sale on ebay, mostly IT related (and one very not, don't ask...)

www.ebay.co.uk/usr/colin_hoad

@nemo20000.bsky.social

For how many years have I been saying we need RISC OS to support on-screen keyboards properly? All of them?!

Turned out to be quite easy:

Impression-X

Hello

I know this is a very old thread, but I am wondering whether there are any chance to see an evolution of ImpressionX in the future. Is the development abandonned (it seems, but I still asks :) ). I am stuck with verion 5.779Dev I bought some years ago :)

Thank you for any information.

François

WROCC January 2026 talk on Wednesday - Elesar

Talk is now on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3mqvDp2PAM

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Wow! Saw this today on eBay...must resist bidding! This takes me back to my childhood when kids were allowed a box full of chemicals and a meths burner to play with! I had this exact set in the mid 1970s. I spent most of the time throwing iron fillings onto the burner. Meths not included!

Contacting Dave Hitchins

I’m trying to contact Dave Hitchins but he seems to have discontinued his old email address. If either Dave or someone who knows him could contact me privately, that’d be great. Thanks :)

@colinhoad.com

They were still up?

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@colinhoad.com

Cold call sales people... do they get trained to try and keep you on the phone even after you've made it clear you have no interest in what they're selling? I employed the "I am terminating this pointless conversation now" strategy.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Pick up the nearest book. Turn to page 42, post the second sentence.

"The castle, then, was a Norman importation into England."

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Working with Git client on RISC OS

I have been getting back into programming RISC OS in BBC BASIC to scratch an itch and for a challenge. This also gave me an excellent way to try out the RISC OS Git client. So here are my experiences. What is Git

@nemo20000.bsky.social

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

We’ve been stuck with line numbers in RISC OS BBC Basic for a very long time.

File copy icon retained

I’ve noticed recently that when moving one file after another the first file’s icon is shown on the second transfer.

Just now I installed an update of PipeDream. I then downloaded and installed today’s beta ROM. As the ROM file was copying to Loader, it was presented with the PipeDream icon. On completion the icon was a ROM one as expected.

Both transferred from Zip files via SparkFS.

RISC OS 5.31, RaspberryPi 4B

[OvationPro] Anchor text frame in another text frame

Hello Community,

Is there a way to anchor a text frame (the child) within another text frame (the parent), so as if I add text obove the child in the parent, the child frame just moves to keep its relative position in the text of the parent?

Thank you for your help…

François

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Look. Guys. I mean. Come on now.

Multi headed systems at ROUGOL, Mon 19th Jan 2026

The powerpoint slides from the presentation are available here

There was a question about my book production using RISC OS – no article has been published but the information is here

Any possibility of Bush IBX settop (Lazarus) being released?

Hi. I’m new here, and to RISCOS. I know this is a very old post to be replying to but I’m at my wits end trying to get to a desktop on a Bush IBX 100 set top box. I followed the instructions at the link that Rick Murray posted here and that I’ve found I believe on Chris Sawer’s website. I see it worked for you Rick but I’ve been going around in circles and whilst I’m almost there, I just cannot get the filer to run. I have pics of what I’m seeing but I don’t seem to be able to add them to this reply. The box is booting off the zip drive but as it boots I get the following messages:

File Filer:Templates not found

File Pinboard:Messages not found

File Filer_Run not found (presumably because the filer module has not loaded correctly so it doesn’t know what Filer_Run means)

I then get to a desktop with the task manager (the green acorn icon) and the display manager showing on the taskbar (pinboard?) but no filer window open and no drive icons showing. I can get to the command line by pressing the menu button on the acorn icon and choosing commands but if I try "filer_opendir IZIpFS::ZIP.$.Apps for example I just get “use *Desktop to Start the filer”. So it seems the filer module just does not load even though some things like the display manager do. I extracted the modules from the OS 3.7 roms running on an emulator on a PC using !zap. I then zipped them up with !zipEE, transferred them to a raspberry pi running risc OS which can read acorn formatted zip discs with a USB zip drive, transferred them to the drive that way, and then I use a parallel port zip drive to boot the IBX box. Phew! As I say I have pictures if there’s an easy way for me to send those. If anyone has any theories as to why this isn’t working for me I’d be eternally grateful. I followed the instructions at this link:

https://heyrick.eu/assembler/resources/stbgadt.html

Cheers,

Andrew.

Repeat: Bad alignment request

I’m also getting “Bad alignment request”, but in an entirely different context: I’m using an ioctl to set an IPv6 address in an interface.

A web search for the phrase seems to find your posting as the only occurrence in the world!

The associated error number I get is 279.

How to we find where this error is generated?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

The chances of having to build Nvidia FP8 single-byte floating point arrays in RISC OS BBC Basic is very small but non-zero – so can be represented by a float, and getting the rounding of E4M3 floats right has taken me a day longer than it should have. Yes I’ve done E5M2 too, that’s quite different.

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 11th January at 1pm UK time.

No live coding this week. I’m not feeling too well, so I don’t think it would be an especially good session.

Next week, I’ll try to do one.

Dynamic menu entries

I’m trying to add menu entries dynamically using the equivalent of:

menu_add_entry

from the toolbox.

flags is set to 0

menu is set to idBlock→self_id

at_entry is set to -2 (add at end)

*entry_description is set to a quoted string

And last:

*new_entry is set to an address for returning the id of the new entry.

What happens is an entry is created but it is blank, the text passed in entry_description is absent. All the parameters appear to be correct and there is no error.

Any clues? Thank you in advance.

@colinhoad.com

Vote No voteyesornoai.com/vote/nohttps://voteyesornoai.com/vote/no

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

These are the original Spider-Man sprite frames for SNES 'Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge'. Recovered from my old development disks. Back then, in 1992, all of these frames were hand-drawn, pixel by pixel. No 3D modelling software was available to simplify this work or animate Spidey.

@rougol.bsky.social

The next ROUGOL meeting on Monday 19th January will feature multi headed systems, featuring RISC OS and Linux in the same boxhttps://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/index.html

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Back in the early 90s at Software Creations I designed a Portable Assembly Language ( PAL ) with the intention of using it to develop games for 32/64 bit consoles. The ideal being that this pseudo assembly would generate native code for multiple processors. You only needed to write the game once 1/2

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Look at the size of that disk icon!

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@colinhoad.com

Windows 95: My Computer Windows 7: Computer Windows 8 (to now): This PC

I do feel that says a lot, consciously or otherwise, about Microsoft's attitude!

@iconbar.com

Rougol January 2026 meeting on Monday - Chris Hall and his multiple heads

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Rougol_January_2026_meeting_on_monday_-_Chris_Hall_and_his_multiple_heads/index2293.html

The January 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and features Chris Hall. His contribution to the TIB advent calendar may give you an idea of his topic.

Chris Hall brings three (count ’em) heads to ROUGOL

Zaphod Beeblebrox, eat your heart out. The next RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meeting will take place on Monday, 19th January, with a presentation by Chris Hall, joining the group via Zoom, about multi-headed systems. Chris has been using a Hydra system from R-Comp, with two of its Pi-based ‘heads’ running RISC OS, and a third one running Linux, and he has had an article published in the latest issue of Archive Magazine (28:1) detailing his first impressions of the machine, with this presentation being a follow-up and…

@archiveriscos.bsky.social

The new issue of Archive Magazine is out now! The Dec/Jan 2026 issue is absolutely packed with all sorts of RISC OS awesomeness. It's not too late to subscribe and get a copy. www.archivemag.co.uk #riscos #acorn #opensource

@colinhoad.com

Calling all Mattel Aquarius fans! I am getting more than a little obsessed with this machine, but have never owned one... does anyone here have one and, if so, know how easy/hard/impossible it is to hook one up to a modern monitor? VGA, SCART, HDMI, any of these?

Time to express an interest in the official Acorn biography

December’s RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meeting featured Rob Napier as the guest speaker, on the subject of the book he has been working on. Titled “Voices from a Future Passed”, the book is the official biography of Acorn Computers, and Rob went over various aspects of the book and that biography at the meeting. The book is planned for release as a paperback at the start of March, with an expected price of £19.95 in the UK, and corresponding amounts in other currencies/parts of the world. It…

Rougol January 2026 meeting on monday - Chris Hall and his multiple heads

The January 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and features Chris Hall. His contribution to the TIB advent calendar may give you an idea of his topic.

Clarity Theme ko-fi

WindowOutlineOver not set

Does that mean it’s not being set for you either, David?

ROUGOL Meeting on Monday 19th Jan 2026

Thanks for posting Chris. I got your second send attempt, and have replied to that. In case there are problems with that too – Yes, I’ll see you on Zoom tonight 8pm ish!

RiscPCB Version 1.02

Did anyone put Terry’s demo on their site?

@colinhoad.com

Not my house but I know my way around

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Gemini continues to impress me with its deep and accurate RISC OS knowledge. 🤭

Paint sprite dragging

Ok, so it’s an option. It’s still stupid, because it means that you’re going to get crashes unless the theme author is continually keeping up with what is in the ROM. The user is forced to choose between turning an option on and having crashes when they upgrade or at random times because a theme author missed something. If a given user who was using one theme happily switches to another that they downloaded, the system may crash in odd places just because a sprite was missing in the older theme.

There’s really no justification for that sort of behaviour. If someone can explain why an option which is actively dangerous to unaware users exists, I’d love to hear it, but I genuinely cannot think of one.

Updating Submenu Dialogue Boxes

I have a feeling that I might be missing something obvious here…

I have a dialogue box as a submenu (a program information window), which has a toggle size icon so that the user can expand it to read additional details about the application. This works fine.

However, it would be nice if it could always open in the small state, to be a little bit tidier. With a normal window, this would just be a case of fiddling with the visible extent before calling Wimp_OpenWindow, but as a submenu, I can’t see how to do it.

I can set the submenu warning flag and catch Message_SubmenuWarning, but as far as I know that gives me the window handle and not the Open Window block. Similarly, Wimp_CreateSubmenu doesn’t take anything but the handle, so I can’t mess with the visible area before creating the dialogue on screen.

Sitting on Open Window events for the dialogue suggests that the application doesn’t receive one until the window is moved, not when it initially opens – so that doesn’t appear to help either.

Is there any way to achieve what I’m trying to do? Or is it a case of “I wouldn’t start from here”, and I need another approach to displaying the additional info (or just live with the toggled state persisting between visits)?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social Is this a form of bot-defeating obfuscation requiring human error correction or Fat Finger Syndrome?

I'll send you a new version of !RMA.

git switch not replacing files

So I imagine your need to update the equivalent of ~/.ssh/known_hosts

I have tried this in both Choices:WWW. and Choices:ssh. but this did not help

anayway thanks for the sugestions

@colinhoad.com

Genuinely fascinating Drum Tower podcast from @economist.com on the sad demise of Lapsang Souchong tea. It was one of my grandma's favourite teas and the aroma of it reminds me of her. I've even enjoyed the odd cup. That Twinings have discontinued it for supply reasons feels like an 'end of an era'

@colinhoad.com

Fujitsu should be banned permanently from any public sector work after what happened with Horizon.

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@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

Another interesting meeting. Very enjoyable. My thanks to everyone who took part.

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@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

My ShareFSServer for #RISC_OS is getting better and better, in the picture sharing a large PDF (more than 10MB) over #OpenVPN !!! Linux Server at home running the ShareFS server and picture on my RPCEmu from my favorite Cafe runnign on an Apple M1 and connected via OpenVPN. Progress!!!

@colinhoad.com

Be kind to your site administrator 😊 Genuinely lovely to read a little paragraph like this in my 1995 guide to the internet - advice we should all continue to follow!

@colinhoad.com

One thing that gives me a sense of job security is how generally poor I find juniors to be at debugging. "This failed, I don't know why" is increasingly common, and when I ask "did you read the logs?" they often look blankly at me, like logs are some kind of esoteric grimoire...

'Mailbox is full' phishing puzzle

I received an email yesterday saying:

==>

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its

recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

info@theworkshopseries.co.uk LMTP error after RCPT TO:< info@theworkshopseries.co.uk >: 552 5.2.2 < info@theworkshopseries.co.uk > Mailbox is full / Blocks limit exceeded / Inode limit exceeded

Reporting-MTA: dns; s3161.fra1.stableserver.net

Action: failed

Final-Recipient: rfc822; info@theworkshopseries.co.uk

Status: 5.0.0

….

<==

It is lying, because my message did get through to the intended recipient, who said that his mailbox

was certainly not full. Now I have heard of these ‘Mailbox full’ phishing scams. But the links in this

message appear to be harmless. I presume that the scam’s method relies on inserting malware into a

computer to take note of the sender-addresses of emails arriving in the inbox. I had used Plusnet’s

webmail to send my original email, using the Chrome browser, so I do not think there is any malware

inserted at my end. So no harm done. But is my diagnosis correct? Should I be warning

info@theworkshopseries.co.uk that his computer may have been compromised?

Sharing Directories Between Windows 11 and RISC OS

For the record I used LanMan98.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Every time I look at the BBC Basic interpreter code a bug jumps out at me. Yet another “BBC Master International Character Sets Didn’t Make It To Basic” bug: [there’s so many]

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Thanks to @armbytes.bsky.social for reminding me of the RO2-era BBC Basic “LOCAL DATA” foul-up. I’d dealt with it in nemoBasic by allowing READ as a synonym for DATA after LOCAL/RESTORE, which avoids the ancient tokenisation problem (duplicated in editors like Zap of course).

But I fixed it.

@colinhoad.com

The front cover of the BBC Micro 6502 second processor user guide is one of my all time favourites, the photograph is just *so* evocative. I adore this guy's setup, it perfectly captures the spirit of 1980s home computing.

@armbytes.bsky.social

A huge shout-out to everyone who made it! The next meetup is pencilled in for 7th February.

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DHCPv6

I’m in the very early stages of writing a DHCPv6 app to work with the ROD IP stack. I’ve got as far as getting two IPv6 addresses assigned by the router to me (one global, one local), but I can’t see how to add them to my machine. All my experiments so far with the “route” command have failed, mostly complaining of a bad address. (I’ve only tried adding the local address so far.)

Does anyone know how to issue a command to add an IPv6 address to RISC OS?

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Had a great post-Christmas lunchtime get together with Software Creations friends today. We talked about Z80 code optimization techniques, Gameboy development - including 'Wide Boy', Isometric games, Unreal, NES Solstice, CRASH Live, Tatung Einstein, RARE's RAZZ board and lots more!

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@colinhoad.com

A spot of late night memory testing on the Beeb... nasty suspicion one of my DRAM chips is banjaxed 🙃

Sponsorship for 64-bit work

Hiya,

There’s been a little bit of discussion about how people who are not technical can contribute towards work. One of the ways that has been suggested has been to provide donations towards people or that work. To try to provide a mechanism for this, I’ve decided to use the GitHub Sponsorship button.

On many of my GitHub projects, including the general `riscos64-status` project ( https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status), there is a Sponsor button. This will take you to https://github.com/sponsors/gerph/ where you can provide a sponsorship.

Providing sponsorship will encourage more development and tools for this project.

If you feel that the things that I’m doing and the work towards RISC OS 64 is valuable, please feel free to sponsor me!

@colinhoad.com

I agree, but it's also incredibly insulting that the UK government continues to use X for all of its official communications.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c99kn52nx9do

@iconbar.com

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

https://www.iconbar.com/articles/Fireside_developer_chat_on_saturday_night/index2272.html

The next developer chat is on Saturday night for anyone interested in a very informal event online.

@colinhoad.com

Apparently generating CSAM is ok, provided you pay Elon for it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c99kn52nx9do

Telematic Iyonix Reference CD

anyway i screenshot the thread and sent it to the provider hopefully they can shed some light on it.

Oooh, test info. Support staff like that1 – information is always useful if it’s even vaguely relevant.

1 That’s a big step up from the “incident” reports I’ve seen over the years, and those have already had a lot of “it’s broken” dross removed.

Fireside developer chat on saturday night

The next developer chat is on saturday night for anyone interested in a very informal event online.

Weird issue setting up printers

In case it matters, StrongED on the working machine is 4.68f12, while on the newer one it is 4.70a15, Has printing changed there?

Firstly, do you mean 4.68f2 (last version of 4.68) or 4.69f12?

I’ve compared the printing code in 4.69f14 vs 4.70a20 and there aren’t that many differences. There’s some changes to how headers and footers are handled, and changes to make the print dbox override of the mode font height/width work.

If you’re using headers/footers then try turning them off and see if that helps.

ISTR an earlier report of PS3 issues but I can’t find that right now. Anyway, try printing with the PS2 driver, if possible. That will show if there is an issue with PS3 or if it’s a more generic problem.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is the book I used to learn Z80 machine code programming on my Nascom 2 - so well written. I spent countless hours thumbing through this. I didn't have the luxury of a Z80 assembler to use so I had to hand-assemble the code and type it into memory in hexadecimal. Thank you, Graham Wilson.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

I found these AI generated images from about 4 years ago. I was trying out the latest craze. I hate to think how much power has been wasted over the years generating this stuff. I guess it helps tech companies stay 'relevant' and keeps share prices high. I do wonder how long before the bubble bursts

@colinhoad.com

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46275138

Resharing this old story from 2018 for no reason at all.

*stares*

@colinhoad.com

https://www.traffic.gov.scot/gritter-tracker

Scotland, I salute you! These snow gritter names are incredible 😆

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

In December 1987 'The Micro User' magazine was helping Acornsoft off-load surplus stock. Games and Languages were sold off at very reasonable prices.

@colinhoad.com

BBC News report on sick men using Meta AI glasses to film women in public without their consent and then post the videos online for clicks.

"We contacted Meta, who said users should not use the AI glasses in this way."

Oh, so that's ok then?

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Those RISC OS users coping with the traumatic loss of 32b ARMs (after the traumatic loss of 26b ARMs) by pitching their hopes on 64b ARMs should raise their gaze slightly nearer the horizon. Things change like Hemingway said - gradually, then suddenly.https://markets.financialcontent.com/wral/article/tokenring-2025-12-26-risc-v-hits-25-market-penetration-as-qualcomm-and-meta-lead-the-shift-to-open-source-silicon

@colinhoad.com

No spoilers, but as someone who adored Stranger Things all the way through, I found the finale very satisfying. Great piece of television, one of the best series Netflix has ever put out.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

If you ever developed for the Sony PS2 this book will bring back happy memories!

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

Two more great books to add to the library.

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

My French teacher said my 'mind was constantly on other things - computers'. Yep, it sure was, and still is! Sorry, Miss Nicholls. Anyone else out there with memorable school reports?

Developers’ fireside chat – 10th January

The opportunity has once again come around for people involved or interested in software development on, for, or even of RISC OS to gather together and discuss matters relevant to the topic. The next friendly fireside chat is scheduled to take place on Saturday, 10th January. The meetings – which are held online, using the Zoom video conferencing system – don’t follow a set agenda. Instead, the discussion topics are down to those people present, and what they wish to bring up or ask about. For example, at the last…

@colinhoad.com

How is it that HMRC can know you've completed your tax return, know that it resulted in tax to pay, but *not* know that you've already paid it? Constant gaslighting texts and emails "reminding" me to pay are really not conducive to good mental health...

@colinhoad.com

As many others have noted... if even DELL are admitting this, that bubble is looking pretty bursty right about now...

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@colinhoad.com

"Powerful Copilot prompts from Satya Nadella!" screams the Microsoft email in my inbox this morning.

Get. In. The. Sea.

Pre-order Voices From A Future Passed

For those who enjoyed Rob Napier’s talk at ROUGOL last month, and those who missed it but were also excited to read the full history of Acorn, here’s a message from Rob about progress on publication of his book:

Over the holiday break, VOICESFROM A FUTUREPASSED has moved toward publication.

I am cautiously confident that it will be released on 1 March online through Amazon and through some bookshops and possibly some museum shops.

I have set up an information site at www.doitonce.net.au . It gives an outline of the book and a campaign to donate part of the sale price to museums. Please visit the site for details.

If you would like to pre-order or to contact me, just send me a message from there. I try to respond to everyone within one business day.

My HTML skills are a bit rusty and I’ve not managed to get too excited about current web design trends. If anyone has any comments/feedback, I’d be happy to receive your advice. That said: Please be gentle.

All the best

Rob Napier

-———-

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A belated Happy New Year to my RISC OS friends.

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve completed the nemoBasic feature I teased before Christmas.

This new functionality is really exciting for many reasons, so I’ll show you before I describe it: [I’ve coloured some strings here to clarify]

@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). The event is this Saturday, 10th January at 7:30 pm (GMT). #Zoom #Meetup #RISCOS #Community #RaspberryPi #ARM #Retro #AcornComputers

@colinhoad.com

I see OpenAI are now "betting big" on audio. Once again a tech company is claiming voice-to-text will replace the keyboard. It won't. It's for bigshot CEO types dictating their bullshit into the ether. Voice-to-text is, and will forever remain, a frustrating medium for any kind of detail work.

App locations inside !Boot

I’m beginning to delve into the murky innards of !Boot, with a view to extending the Clarity theme to the various default apps within it, including Configure. Presently, the sprites in the Clarity theme are installed with a simple Boot merge, with the new files all added into !Boot.Resources.!ThemeDefs.Themes.Clarity. This ensures that the sprites used by the Wimp, plus the icons used for the ROM Apps, are replaced.

If I also want to replace the icons used for the various !Boot apps (!Scrap, !System, etc), then I’m assuming that I can use the same Boot merge to add the required sprites into their various application directories (ie, !Boot.Resources.!System.Themes.Clarity, etc). This does assume that those application directories never move around – is that something I can rely on?

Similarly, the icons for the Configure app aren’t all in the same place. On RO5.31, most are in !Boot.RO500Hook.Res.Configure, but the Internet configuration seems to live in !Boot.Resources.Configure. Again, can I rely on these locations staying consistent, and use a Boot merge to add new sprites into their respective app directories?

I’m aware that there are theme manager applications in development, such as ExtTheme, that will probably be able to handle all this with a bit more aplomb, but I’m hoping to keep the basic distribution of Clarity as simple as possible – just an iconset that can be copied over !Boot with the various components dropped into the right places.

@colinhoad.com

A very kind colleague brought this into the office today for me, as he reckoned I might enjoy it - he was not wrong! The internet of 1995... almost 30 million users 😅

@colinhoad.com

As I was *exiting* a trampoline arena, I jumped off the last trampoline, forgetting there were no more trampolines to land on. So instead I landed on the hard floor of the perimeter and bent my ankle around on itself. Massive sprain, couldn't walk for weeks. Total idiot.

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@iconbar.com

WROCC January 2026 talk on Wednesday - Elesar

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2269.html

The January 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 7th January and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom.https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2269.html

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

On Christmas Day we lost another gaming legend - David Rosen, Co-founder of Sega. He was responsible for the huge success of the Sega arcade games and the Mega Drive console. Thank you for your amazing work. RIP.

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How old are you

With ref to ‘Archive.org’

Do you have to prove your age?

@colinhoad.com

Fairly certain that regex bug I just fixed was a result of AI-generated code...

Kids! Learn your regular expressions. They will never not be useful to you.

@riscosbits.co.uk

Early preview of the new 15.6in RiscDOCK. Bigger screen, bigger battery, same flexibility!

#RISC_OS #RISCOSLaptop

@colinhoad.com

If only the world's journalists were still on Twitter to report on this MASSIVE story about Musk's AI slopbot generating child porn on demand. Too bad they all left the platform, I guess.

@colinhoad.com

I had, up until yesterday, kept my dormant Twitter account (not posted anything or logged in since December 2023), the justification being "I don't want someone pretending to be me" over there. This latest Grok horror show has prompted me to login and deactivate said account.

WROCC January 2026 talk on Wednesday - Elesar

The January 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 7th January and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom.

RISC OS - Flight Simulators

(I’m unsure how to quote people on this forum, I tend to use StarDot.)

Like that ;-)

See the easy guide at the bottom of the page and the linked https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/For…

Celebrate ten years of the Titanium with WROCC – 7th January

Back in October 2015, there was a surprise announcement something visitors to that year’s London Show could expect to see – a new motherboard, designed by Rob Sprowson, with RISC OS in mind; the Titanium. The board itself became available through Rob’s company Elesar Ltd in December of that year, allowing people to build DIY machines around it, and it wasn’t long before there were complete Titanium-based computer systems available from both R-Comp and CJE Micro’s. That was a touch over a decade ago, and Rob Sprowson will be taking…

Archive magazines available

Just for future reference – all spare magazines were collected just before Christmas. I’m still on the lookout for 2009-2022 magazines, but not in any rush :-)

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 4th January at 1pm UK time.

A bit of a scattered day today. I had fixed PicoC so that it could handle the _IN() and _OUT() macros, but somehow broke _OUTR() so the testing got a little distracted. However, the SWIs all seem to work on RISC OS 64, and so I moved on to replacing the data blob for the CPU registers descriptions with one that can be generated. We now have some Python code that builds the data that these tables use, which will make it a lot easier when we need to replace them with a different platform (or update them!).

Hopefully that was interesting to people. I also showed off the hotkey lookup in the editor as well – pressing shift-ctrl-h opens a Chrome Window with the relevant RISC OS documentation in. Pretty simple to do with all the other work that’s gone before, but I finally got around to doing it.

With that, I think I’m done on what I want to do on the Kernel Introspection for now – it’s stubbed well enough. I think next week, I think I’m going to have a look at FSCommands, unless anyone wants to jump in and ask for one of the other components…

Most of Phase 1 is complete ( https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/wiki/Phase-1) but Phase 2 has lots of things in it ( https://github.com/gerph/riscos64-status/wiki/Phase-2).

Is there an XEyes-like tool for RISC OS?

Please accept my apologies for my somewhat delayed reply. My very sincere thanks go to Simon for the modifications to the original program and the helpful explanation regarding changing the BASIC file. Many thanks to David for the fix!

The Desktop Eyes have now found their place on my Iconbar and are happily keeping a close watch on my mouse pointer — simply perfect!

Many thanks once again, and with very kind regards

Berny :)

@nemo20000.bsky.social

You can have too many steering wheel buttons...

@colinhoad.com

It's the New Year's Postbag, 2026! youtu.be/fn87-LmMlDYhttps://youtu.be/fn87-LmMlDY

@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

More great work from Mark Moxon. This time it's BBC Micro Sentinel that has been disassembled, annotated and made into buildable source code. Deep dives coming soon too. Looking forward to reading through all this. Geoff Crammond's code has been thoroughly dissected after almost 40 years!

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NetSurf site dead?

It looks that a few github repositories to build Netsurf are also down.

PicoC RISC OS version 0.02 released

Hiya,

Just a little note to say that the PicoC tool that I’ve been using for some of the verification of 32-bit and 64-bit components has been released. PicoC is an interpreted C, which you can use at the command line or with files. It’s handy for writing small things in which just exercise a few SWI calls.

It is even passing its almost all the original tests that were supplied with it (those not run are largely for time).

• The source can be found here: https://gitlab.com/gerph/picoc
• The release can be found here: https://gitlab.com/gerph/picoc/-/releases/v0.02

@colinhoad.com

This is utterly hilarious. As anyone who's tried to use Pinterest recently will know, the site/app is completely swamped with AI slop. If Altman thinks he can use it for more image training data, he's going to be in for a surprise.

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Using EX0 and EY0 for higher definition

There are a quite a few things that don’t take into account the screen scaling when using EX0 EY0. The mouse pointer is one of them.

The OS does scale the mouse pointer for the eigen factors, witness changing to a EX1 EY2 mode. The issue is that a number of APIs assume no more than 32×32 hardware cursor (probably arising from VIDC, but I think some other graphics controllers have that limit too) so for example when you try to scale ptr_default which is 22 pixels high at EX1 EY1 you’d get 44 pixels at EX0 EY0 and the bottom 12 pixels are cropped off. The hourglass with percentage is taller still.

So your options are:

• Live with the cropped pointer. Result: at least it’s proportionally the right size compared with everything else
• Fudge it by using the 12×22 pixel pointer sprite in the Wimp’s Sprites11 file, this is what Castle opted to do with the Iyonix and that’s spread to some of the other themes. Result: at least it’s not cropped, just a bit teeny tiny
• Roll up your sleeves and ripple the planned API changes through all the bits of low level graphics drivers which assume 32×32. Result: not cropped and correctly scaled on hardware that can do bigger overlays

Bluetooth Again

The TCPIPLibs looked indeed nice but will give issues. But it is good to see it confirmed by several people. So I only use CLib. I have also worked on more automatic building so the Obey file ‘Mk’ in the root should do the trick. I’m using the netbsd source ( and file structure ) to make the libs. I use the source for version 10.×.

I do indeed concentrate on btattach for the pi because the firmware needs to get in first ;-).

I’m not sure for the seperator

Thanks for the help !

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

New Dark Mode Theme release for #RISC_OS DME ExtTheme! (remember to let me know if you have any issues)

Go grab your copy for free here: riscoscommunity.org/shop/

#riscos #Desktop #Themeing #DarkMode #OpenSourcehttps://riscoscommunity.org/shop/

FlagQuiz 1.02 released

Kevin Wells has released another new version of FlagQuiz, his application that allows users to test their knowledge and recognition of national flags. Version 1.02 addresses a fairly basic issue in the program, whereby the sprites file containing the various flags used by the program were loaded into the WIMP sprite pool. Unless a program specifically needs its sprites held there, this is bad practice because it risks an application’s sprites being used in place of ones used by the system. Kevin has therefore updated FlagQuiz to store its sprites…

WROCC Meeting - Titanium at Ten - 7th Jan

Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club

Meeting on Wednesday 7th January at 7.45pm

Titanium at Ten

Rob Sprowson of Elesar will celebrate the Titanium, the fastest RISC OS computer that’s been in production the longest. He will wind the clock back to the project’s origins, examining what worked and what didn’t. He will then spotlight several ideas for tapping into the currently unexploited processing power inside every box.

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 6th January (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

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Ok, found that bit, but where's the rest of it?!

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

2025 has been a great year for me in coding, thanks everyone for all the stars. I hope 2026 is going to be another stellar year! I'm thrilled to be ranked in the top 1% of devs, and if I can do it so can you. Just keep on coding, don't give up, forget the hype about AI, keep digging and learning!

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Hi! I'm a complacent disregard for weather reports plus the most dangerous mountain in Wales.

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List of modules in C

It relies on parts of the C library, which makes it problematic. StubsG is available as a binary and works – it should be usable as-is. Is there a particular issue you have found with the library?

The C library’s Apache licensed, so as long as you’re willing to make your code have a compatible licence it should be fine.

If it’s of interest, I have a (macOS/Linux) Makefile that fetches the source for stubs and builds three variants – 26bit, 32bit and vfp. The latter is a 32-bit stubs, patched automatically. It uses a python (extended) implementation of decaof to rename certain symbols in the symbol table in the .o files, and includes in the library veneers. These veneers export the original function name, and call the renamed functions. And they’re all made into a library with a python reimplementation of libfile. It sounds like it works very similarly to StubsG?

December 2025 News Summary

FlagQuiz the world wide flag quiz for RISC OS has had a few upgrades in December.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Amazingly, BBC Basic never really had a limit on the number of dimensions an array can have. The 8bit Beeb could have had up to 126, though the line length limit restricted you to 116. Dimensions were 16b which was more than enough in less than 64KB...

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

Happy New Year! 🎉 🥂 I’ve released a new theme manager for #RISC_OS (DME ExtTheme) and a beta update for LaunchPad, the application launcher. Early beta testing is open now. Full details here:https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/1/topics/20199

#RISCOS #RetroComputing #OpenSource #DesktopComputing

USBDriver vulnerability

Hi Matthew, happy new year!

That sounds annoying. Please do

*Set Debugger$AnnotatedFile $.excdump
*Set Debugger$DumpOptions -file annotated

and then after the crash you should find an excdump file which tells you which function 5b18 actually is in your USBDriver plus a backtrace. You could either post it here or attach it to a bug report in the bugs section of this website.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

Happy New Year to all my RISC OS chums.

@armbytes.bsky.social

Happy New Year!🚀🥂

@armbytes.bsky.social

┏━━┓┏━━┓┏━━┓┏━━┓ ┗━┓┃┃┏┓┃┗━┓┃┃┏━┛ ┏━┛┃┃┃┃┃┏━┛┃┃┗━┓ ┃┏━┛┃┃┃┃┃┏━┛┃┏┓┃ ┃┗━┓┃┗┛┃┃┗━┓┃┗┛┃ ┗━━┛┗━━┛┗━━┛┗━━┛ Try #RISCOS this year.

Ambiguous Disc Name - with only one disc!

FYI: Next time you can copy everything off with DiscKnight, expand it’s window and use the Backup option to copy all or part of a disc elsewhere. It does re-tries for failing rusty media, but wont make any difference with flash based stuff.

@colinhoad.com

Just seen someone claiming the Amiga was "better than any PC In those days" in response to a post about Windows XP and early 2000s computing. I, err, don't think it was, old chap.

Help Needed setting my Internet

I am with Plusnet and had New Router. I cannot remember Network Settings Network Configuration.

@givvygavvygoo.bsky.social

Arrived this morning – perfect! #RISC_OS #Archive #ArchiveMagazine

@colinhoad.com

Sydney, that was epic! Proper fireworks display, they know how to do it #nye

@iconbar.com

December 2025 News Summary

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2270.html

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2270.html

@colinhoad.com

Over Christmas, we were reflecting on family memories and one in particular for which I had a vivid recollection but nobody else could recall (even though they were in it!) This morning I found a photo in an album (pre-digital!) that confirmed it and I realised what a privilege it is to have (1/3)

December 2025 News Summary

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

KeyboardUtil v0.01 released

KeyboardUtil is an on-screen keyboard utility for use on RISC OS computers. It currently requires RISC OS 3.5 or later.

It can be downloaded from here, and the source code is available on GitHub.

FlagQuiz Version 1.02 Released

I have made another little update to my RISC OS world flag quiz application FlagQuiz taking it to version 1.02 New in this version is that the question sprites are local to the application itself rather than being placed in the WIMP sprite pool. This should avoid conflicts with other application that use sprites with … Continue reading "FlagQuiz Version 1.02 Released"

RISC OS today and tomorrow: understanding behaviour and trade-offs

I modified QEMU to load the “bios” (RISC OS ROM image) at 0 instead of 0×8000/0×80000. So it behaves like kernel_old=1 in config.txt (iirc).

#define FIRMWARE_ADDR_2 0 // 0x8000 /* Pi 2 loads kernel.img here by default */
#define FIRMWARE_ADDR_3 0 // 0x80000 /* Pi 3 loads kernel.img here by default */

Plus a bunch of excessive logging, but that’s another matter.

If I were them, I’d have gone for a -preload file,address option, myself, to cover all eventualities like bios, kernel, inird, etc..

Just out of interest, do you do anything with ATAGs? I leave a gap, they’ll be readable, but I don’t scan them yet.

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Iain M Banks was right. In no time there'll be giant Minds roaming space with various sized retinues of human pets, getting into skirmishes with each other and consuming all the energy in the cosmos...

@colinhoad.com

I think this means I have to be Susan, Death's granddaughter...

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

I don’t think dogs have the right temperament to be shopkeepers, they’d want to please the customer. Only a cat could insist on no credit; no trying the merchandise; indifference to flattery.

👨 Who’s a good boy? You are! You’re such a good boy! 🐱 It’s still £9.99. And we’re closing.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

A lot of new nemoBasic syntax is about avoiding repetitive boilerplate. For example, you can tell it to ignore file handle zero by preceding the # with IF – e.g. PRINTIF#handle.

As nemoBasic allows statements to span multiple lines, this is more involved than you’d think:

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Nobody:

“I wonder where the STRACC string buffer is in RISC OS BBC Basic?”

BBC Basic:

@colinhoad.com

I've been playing a lot of Doom 3 recently, and it is very clear how much of an impact Half-Life must have had on the game's development. There are an awful lot of "bring the reactor back online" style missions, along with a greater emphasis on fighting armed troopers compared with Doom/Doom 2.

@colinhoad.com

In 2007, I was on the 172 bus heading towards Waterloo, on the upper deck, and saw Kevin Spacey crossing the road outside the Old Vic theatre. He did not see me.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Don't give them trinkets, give them their full compensation and throw Fujitsu in the sea.

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@colinhoad.com

How I'm walking out of 2025

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@colinhoad.com

Apparently Jared Leto is going to play Skeletor in a live-action Masters of the Universe movie. I'm not as negative about him as some (more indifferent tbh) but I do feel Mark Hamill ought to have got the gig after his incredible voice acting in the semi-recent Netflix 'Revelation' animated series.

@colinhoad.com

@nemo20000.bsky.social

I finally got around to fixing a bug in RISC OS Basic that is actually from BBC Micro Basic in 1982 – neither tokenises “FORx=1E1TO2E2” correctly!

The reason is some there’s-only-16KB-so-that’ll-have-to-do code which was dutifully carried over to the actually-there’s-more-than-that-now ARM version.

@colinhoad.com

Dune 3: Tokyo Drift

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@kevedwardsretro.bsky.social

This is the first time I've seen the Japanese manual for NES Solstice. I really like it. One of Software Creations' best know titles. Created by my former colleagues Mike Webb and Mark Wilson. Music and SFX by Tim Follin. Crafted in lovely 6502 assembly language.

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@colinhoad.com

This guy continues to be a mental vacuum. Nobody is afraid of Copilot, mate.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/ai-jobs-microsoft-mustafa-suleyman-automation-copilot-chatgpt-b2891475.html

@colinhoad.com

No.

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@colinhoad.com

After spending several enjoyable days engaged in Pascal coding for hobby projects, my first day back at work has mainly been running Python code, wondering why it doesn't work and then realising I'm using := and semi-colons all over the place 🤣

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 R-Comp's new USB charging software

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2291.html

Many thanks to Andrew for sharing the latest software release with ushttps://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2291.html

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 R-Comp's new USB charging software

Many thanks to Andrew for sharing the latest software release with us

@nemo20000.bsky.social

All technology, forever...

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GitLab timeouts

@ James

No idea if you are around today (27th of Dec 2025), but it seems ROOL GitLab is timing out again :(

@colinhoad.com

Re-reading "Hogfather" and have just come to the bit where it refers to an "Anthill Inside" sticker on the side of Hex, the Unseen University computer - little details like that are why I will always love Terry Pratchett 😁

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Excellent.

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Is the system heap meant to be writable from BASIC?

I was just thinking about somewhere safe for privileged code to write to for user mode code to read from and thought perhaps the system heap, since that’s where I thought the system variables are stored (and R3 returned from OS_ReadVarVal points to).

So I tried:

SYS"XOS_ReadVarVal", "*", 0, -1, 0, 0 TO ,,,V%

V% is set to &303FF7CC, in the system heap, not RMA (&20000000) and printing the string there shows “7backup$Dir”, as expected. What I wasn’t expecting was V%?5=42 to work, let alone change the name of the variable to “7back*p$Dir”!

Is this a limitation of recent MMUs?

@rougol.bsky.social

If you want to see how Gavin produces books on RISC OS watch his recent talk at ROUGOL https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/2025/sep.html

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

I'd have paid a negotiable amount of money for that in 1987. I remember lugging a Beeb plus Zenith CRT in a shoulder bag around South Wales' rail network whilst at my first engineering job. I left the M128 in the flat cos it wouldn't fit.

I've been walking in large circles ever since.

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@colinhoad.com

This is what happens when search engines give way to LLMs.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crklrnv5yn4o

SerialUSB causes zero page access

RO 5.31 is een development version do you also have this issue with the ‘normal’ RO version 5.30 ?

@iconbar.com

Archive Edition 28:01 reviewed

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2289.html

Archive Magazine 28:01 arrived this week, just in time for the holidays, and it's a cracker!https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2289.html

Archive Edition 28:01 reviewed

Archive Magazine 28:01 arrived this week, just in time for the holidays, and it's a cracker!

Route: route already in table: File exists

Thank you, removing the Gateway setting got rid of that message. As to those suggesting that I set the IP address manually, that is not an option as I am setting up the machine for use in an environment where I do not control the network, so DHCP is the best solution unless I talk really nicely to the network administrator.

@armbytes.bsky.social

RISC OS turns up in the strangest places: Acorn Computers' Online Media (Om) media. 🚀🛸🕹️

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~djg11/fromkoo/cambridge-itv-trial/

Made file source in subdirectory

Hi Paolo thanks now I know what went wrong. I now copied the lib and header files to the app directory. Sorry for the perhaps stupid questions but I have been out of sw development for a long time and that was with MS Visual studio…

@iconbar.com

RISC OS Christmas interview 2025

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2277.html

Many thanks to Paolo Fabio Zaino for taking the time to answer our questions and give us some really interesting updates on his projects.https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2277.html

RISC OS Christmas interview 2025

Many thanks to Paolo Fabio Zaino for taking the time to answer our questions and give us some really interesting updates on his projects.

To Everyone in the Community

And to you, Martin :) Happy RISC OS-ing, and may you have Frosted (desktop-theme) windows on Christmas morning :)

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Gavin Crawford's RISC OS publishing system

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2290.html

Many thanks to Gavin for sharing his desktop with us - something of a powerhouse...https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2290.html

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Gerph's update on 2025 RISC OS projects

Also, I did a quick port of MicroQuickJS last night, just to see how easy it'd be...

@colinhoad.com

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring except maybe this game from Cascade! youtu.be/hvgzOO3BWfwhttps://youtu.be/hvgzOO3BWfw

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A “big” update to RISC OS nemoBasic.

ON ERROR is a class of declaration I was hoping to significantly expand before Christmas, but the special surprise I have is still defrosting with the turkey, but in anticipation of that mystery meat I have implemented this:

Large ON ERROR blocks:

Happy Christmas and New Year from all at R-Comp and ROD

Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a super, RISC OS-filled 2026. Thankyou to eveyone for being part of the community this year, and for all your RISC OS related activity, support, developments, purchases and forum posts etc.

I’m now finishing for Christmas (well, it is nearly 4pm on Christmas Eve). The intention is to take a bit of a longer Christmas break as I’m absolutely exhausted from a non-stop year. I’ve been working weekends since the summer, and still not found time to celebrate my birthday from back in October! We’ve more-or-less cleared the decks in time for Christmas, so the plan is to take a rest until early Jan.

My intention is to return to work properly on Jan 12th, although I may well be checking email from the 7th onwards – if you can avoid sending tech support emails until then, it’d be appreciated.

In the meantime, Plingstore will continue to operate, although please be patient as I’ll likely only be approving orders every few days.

Christmas cards – I’m afraid we simply haven’t had a chance to do the usual Christmas Card send-out this year, so if you were expecting one and haven’t received, please don’t take it personally. Hopefully normal service will be resumed next year. I may try and slip a few out whilst listening to “Carols from Kings” this afternoon, but it is a wee bit late now.

Warrington Show (RISC OS North) is on Saturday, March 21st, 2026 – see www.riscosnorth.uk for more info. We’ve been slow on getting exhibitor invites out this year, but please pencil this date into your diary (the show has been paid for, so it is definitely happening). We hope to see you there if possible :)

I hope you all have a really nice Chirstmas period, and have exactly the balance of fun, friendship, food, relaxation and RISC OS that you wish for :)

Best wishes to everyone,

Andrew & all @ R-Comp and RISC OS Developments

@armbytes.bsky.social

Wishing you all a Merry RISC OS and a cogtastic New Year! 🎄🚀🕹️🛸

The IconBar advent calendar needs your help

All the entries for our xmas calendar are now live at https://www.iconbar.com/articles/advent/

Many thanks to everyone who contributed – I really appreciate your efforts and ingenuity. Some especially bad puns this year!

It is always one of my favourite items on TIB as we get a really interesting selection of news, opinions and real life things people are doing with RISC OS.

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Gavin Crawford's RISC OS publishing system

Many thanks to Gavin for sharing his desktop with us - something of a powerhouse....

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Gerph's update on 2025 RISC OS projects

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2288.html

Many thanks to Gerph for a detailed RISC OS in his pocket. I have found his Sunday coding sessions really interesting.https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2288.html

Disabling scroll wheel on mouse

Is it possible to configure RISC OS somehow so that the scrolling aspect of the mouse is ignored across the whole operating system, but clicking the scroll wheel still works as the Menu button?

I tried configuring the scroll speed to the slowest setting hoping that would disable it, but it just scrolls very slowly.

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Gerph's update on 2025 RISC OS projects

Many thanks to Gerph for a detaled RISC OS in his pocket (I have found his sunday coding sessions really interesting).

BASIC and LOCAL DATA

In PDP11 BASIC it took just one extra instruction to fix LOCALDATA:continue tokenising:

jsr  pc,TokenSearch	; Search token table
;...
bit  #2,r2		; Are we at the start of statement?
bne  TokenWord1		; No, enter token/char
bit  #16,r1		; Is this a pseudo-variable?
beq  TokenWord2		; No, enter unchanged
add  #&40,r0		; Convert token to command token
.TokenWord1
bic  #&40,r2		; *EXTRA* Middle of statement, don't turn tokeniser off
.TokenWord2
mov  r1,r2		; Copy new flags to current flags
;...

It looks to me that the ARM code would be similarly simple to update. I’ll have a look at it over Christmas.

GCCSDK Built with Nix!

I’m pretty sure that I am the only person using GCCSDK via nix, but I’ve got some updates!

Firstly, I’m using it to compile for RiscOS from an Apple Silicon Mac! It will also definitely work on windows using WSL! So if you are using any of those platforms, great news! This will work a charm!

Next, I’ve managed to create an initial cross stdenv which means that it is much easier to use nix as the build system. The example flake is here:

https://github.com/yobson/riscos-nix/tree/main/example

Next steps will be building OSLib and others this way and move some things over from the auto builder. I also spotted the nordsoft compiler on GitHub (I don’t think it’s the one ROOL uses but will work for risc os), so I may give that the same treatment.

Either way, this is turning out to be a very nice way to bring building for risc os to 2025.

Prophet 4.15 brings mobility

Or, at least, the ability to keep in touch with someone on the move! A new version of Prophet has been released by Elesar. The software – originally published by Quinten Pain’s Apricote Studios, and now looked after by Rob Sprowson’s company – is an accounts and stock management package, designed to handle all the financial record keeping needed by a business, including the ability to submit VAT returns under Making Tax Digital (MTD) requirements. The key change since version 4.14 is the addition of a field for a mobile…

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

As questions about the previous post on #RISC_OS today's and tomorrow start flowing, I posted a new article with some answers to some of those. Please remember this is an open discussion, so if I have made errors please send me the corrections, thank you!

https://riscoscommunity.org/understanding-risc-os/what-happens-to-risc-os-applications-if-we-introduce-preemptive-multitasking/

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Elesar Festive teaser

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2287.html

Many thanks to Sprow for a festive teaser for 2026...https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2287.html

@colinhoad.com

A huge thank you to everyone who has chosen to subscribe to my Acorn nonsense on YouTube, there are 2,250 of you now, for which I feel immensely honoured. Thanks for all the likes, comments and goodwill, all of which keeps me wanting to make more videos. Have a lovely Christmas!

@colinhoad.com

It's Christmas Eve Eve! youtu.be/lrPXzz_jNqMhttps://youtu.be/lrPXzz_jNqM

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Elesar Festive teaser

Many thanks to Sprow for a festive teaser for 2026...

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Very strong contender.

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@nemo20000.bsky.social

Quite a bit of floppy swapping...

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@colinhoad.com

Getting in the Christmas spirit at the Barbican carols singalong 🎅🌲🎵

Push code to my own github

Well today it went really bad RISC-OS had frozen, reboot and after that no more push possible due to some strange error. So delete folder and checkout again…

@nemo20000.bsky.social

A trio of nemoBasic updates I’ve added in December. Firstly a trivial one: Press any key!

Being able to just GET without storing the result is surprisingly useful (and optimises something I’d already implemented – the statement form EVAL GET which evaluates its expression but ignores the result)

@paolofabiozaino.bsky.social

New big post about the present and future of #RISC_OS. Open for corrections. First focus the kernel.

@lproven.bsky.social , @nemo20000.bsky.social , @taynappe.bsky.social and anyone who wish to provide corrections please let me know, thx!

https://riscoscommunity.org/understanding-risc-os/risc-os-today-and-tomorrow-what-would-really-benefit-the-platform/

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Raik Fischer has RISC OS in his pocket

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2285.html

Many thanks to Raik for showing us how he keeps RISC OS in his pocket (It's not too late to send us yours).https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2285.html

@colinhoad.com

With just three more sleeps until Christmas, can Cascade redeem itself today 😆 youtu.be/9111DeU81yIhttps://youtu.be/9111DeU81yI

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Raik Fischer has RISC OS in his pocket

Many thanks to Raik for a showing us how he keeps RISC OS in his pocket (It's not too late to send us yours).

Archive Dec/Jan 2026 now on sale

I read the Jeffrey interview. It is a really nice piece, and a big thanks to him for the shout-out to the RISC OS Community on GitHub! :)

Also, a huge thanks to Jeffrey for mentioning the importance of introducing test automation if people are serious about porting RISC OS to 64-bit systems. Let’s hope his words will be heard. ;)

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Inspired to go out for a leisurely drive... #WheelieYellowhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmvJwfYvlwQ

Live Coding with Gerph, Sunday 21st December at 1pm UK time.

Gerph is Live!

FlagQuiz updated to version 1.01

Kevin Wells has released an update to his new FlagQuiz application, a piece of software that you can use to test your knowledge of flags from around the world. The program works by displaying a randomly selected flag, along with four options of which nation it might belong to. You then make your choice of one of those four, and you’ll be told if you got it right or not. Unfortunately, there was a silly bug in the original release, whereby it was possible for the four options to not…

Font Assistance

Which NVMe drivers are you using?

Yours. It’s a Fast system.

Rectangles ... and more

I’ve added some PRM references and more examples. A C version will have to wait :-)

Cheers! And happy holidays, everyone.

@colinhoad.com

Day 21! youtu.be/FzmeG8u4oqUhttps://youtu.be/FzmeG8u4oqU

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Damn you Sainsbury's, this is your fault. 🤤

RISCOSbits Christmas Cracker

Just to say thank you, Coming from using a Raspi Pi 4 using Risc OS on a SD card. I have received my Chimera box and RISC OS is certainly blazing fast and zippy on a NVME drive. Apps like Netsurf just browse pages like a snap of the finger and playing Doom is very buttery smooth. :-D, Merry Christmas.

CRamFS

I finally got around to trying this out on the RiscPC (using a StrongARM and RISC OS 5.30), and have got some initial numbers from m1time:

RamFS 2.33 (23 Nov 2020):

Save 1M * 1000: 8539 csec

Load 1M * 1000: 6131 csec

CRamFS + memmove:

Save 1M * 1000: 9370 csec

Load 1M * 1000: 7028 csec

CRamFS + BlockMove:

Save 1M * 1000: 9517 csec

Load 1M * 1000: 6346 csec

I’ve added a bunch of comments on the merge request of things that might help, but I currently don’t have any tools for getting more detailed benchmarks on the RiscPC. That said, it should be possible to get the performance roughly equivalent in C – the BlockMove function seems to be the only part that’s doing something complicated that would require assembly code for performance.

@iconbar.com

ROOL updates DDE to DDE32b

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2286.html

ROOL have released a new version of the DDE which is now DDE32b.https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2286.html

ROOL updates DDE to DDE32b

ROOL have released a new version of the DDE which is now DDE32b.

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 19 and this one comes with a warning: contains extreme flickering images... youtu.be/CC3jJBctL68https://youtu.be/CC3jJBctL68

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - ROOL festive brain teaser

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2284.html

Many thanks to ROOL for some suitably cryptic challenges to keep our brains sharp (It's not too late to send us yours).https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2284.html

FlagQuiz Goes To Version 1.01

My RISC OS application for testing peoples knowledge on world flags called FlagQuiz has had a little upgrade taking it to version 1.01 One was a bug fix in which it was possible for no correct answers were available to be picked, which has now been fixed with the help of Reporter. The other changes … Continue reading "FlagQuiz Goes To Version 1.01"

@colinhoad.com

Ahh yeah, this is my vibe 😍https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwbxpc7dFDU

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 18! Beam me up, Cascade... youtu.be/PXkPT23KHHkhttps://youtu.be/PXkPT23KHHk

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - ROOL festive brain teaser

Many thanks to ROOL for some suitably cryptic challenges to keep our brains sharp (It's not too late to send us yours).

@nemo20000.bsky.social

Don't use UrbanVPN:

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@colinhoad.com

Isn't it remarkable how people with frontend dev skills think AI-generated code needs careful checking, re-checking and multiple iterations of fixes to get it right, but that it does a perfect job of the backend, first time. And vice versa.

@colinhoad.com

This chonky boxset

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@colinhoad.com

I don't know if it's the @chinnyvision.bsky.social effect but I just spent my lunch break watching old "Christmas Day TV Line-up" trailers on YouTube from the late 70s and early 80s 😅

@colinhoad.com

If you have a YouTube channel, you can use the adblock plus browser extension to block those incredibly annoying "AI suggested replies" in YouTube Studio, just add these two filters:

studio.youtube.com###comment-smart-replies studio.youtube.com###comment-smart-replies-disclaimer

@colinhoad.com

I find myself coming back, again and again, to game music from the 90s and early 2000s - it really was a golden age for highly original, distinctive game scores and themes. It's my go-to music for having on in the background while I work. This selection, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoWDrS2b9eM

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 17 and I've lost the plot! youtu.be/TUDKQqRHVgghttps://youtu.be/TUDKQqRHVgg

Iyonix SCSI Card Support

Partis Computing seems to deal with the SCSI Acorn cards – they may do a 32bit version- Ask – they might have tested it on the Iyonix -work/notwork!

I wonder if they would do a version for PCISCSI cards Iyonix / Ti.

@iconbar.com

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Colin McMurchie Christmas coding project

www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2281.html

Many thanks to Colin for bringing some festive antics to our RISC OS desktops (It's not too late to send us yours).https://www.iconbar.com/comments/rss/news2281.html

VNC-linke software or screen recorder for RISC OS

Here is another way. Run VNCServ on RISC OS. On Mac or Windows or Linux connect to RISC OS via RealVNC client. Start Zoom. Share RISC OS session and switch on Zoom record.

Most of the MUG YouTube videos were made this way.

Obscure wimp sprites

Some more thoughts on Paint, having been using it very heavily over the past few weeks:

• The various bugs that used to affect various tools in the Sprite window seem to have been very effectively squashed. I don’t think I’ve had a single crash from that source over many hours of use.
• The new outline font tool is great, as is the much better Paintbrush interface. Very nice work.
• There’s a bug report (ticket 520) open on the file dragging/selection in the Spritefile window. This issue would be great to look at – it’s pretty annoying to drag a sprite into a file window and have it replace whatever is currently selected, even if the sprites have different names. When dragging dozens of files around, it’s very easy to overwrite stuff by mistake this way.
• Relatedly, if you try to rename a sprite in a Spritefile window to one that already exists, Paint silently fails to rename it, rather than telling you why.
• The only crashes I’ve had came when deleting a sprite from a Spritefile window. Annoyingly, I can’t reproduce this reliably. If I can find some way to reproduce this, I’ll file a ticket.

I’m not sure if the Bounty work is still current. If it is, then taking a look at some of these issues in the Spritefile window would be really useful. I think possible fixes here would be to:

• Mimic the Filer’s selection behaviour, so that selecting sprites in one Spritefile window clears the previous selection in another window
• Alternatively (or in addition), don’t overwrite selected sprites with different names when dragging sprite(s) into a Spritefile window, but just add the new sprites to the Spritefile
• When a sprite or selection of sprites is dragged to a Spritefile window containing a sprite(s) with the same name, or the user tries to rename a sprite with a name already existing in the file, query the decision. Either halt it, or offer to skip/abort/overwrite.

In any case, congrats to Andy for all his hard work – the app has been really transformed.

@colinhoad.com

It's Day 10! (That's 16 for you decimal folk) youtu.be/1EFpyBTzwJMhttps://youtu.be/1EFpyBTzwJM

RISC OS 'Advent' Calendar 2025 - Colin McMurchie Christmas coding project

Many thanks to Colin for a very bringing some festive antics to our RISC OS desktops (It's not too late to send us yours).

RPCEmu NAT fail.

Following the recent DDE update to DDE32b this issue is fixed in the IOMDROM of 14-Dec-25.

From the changelogs :-

Fix for loads of halfword values not making use of unaligned LDR instructions when they are permitted by -memaccess +L41. This resulted in the halfword being formulated from two LDRB instructions which the register allocator did not expect, and R12 being wrongly reused in some small leaf functions.

Accessing ROOL Via Three Broadband

You’re most likely on IPv4?

Very definitely on both IPv6 and IPv4. I was surprised when I tried a Three SIM and found it gave me an IPv6 address (not to be confused with what WiFi gives me!). The IPv6 support is the primary reason I moved (just a few days ago) from O2 to Three.

The killer test, which I’ve just repeated, is to access one of my IPv6-only sites from my phone after turning WiFi off. The web page and the site’s log both show the Three IPv6 address of my phone, which has a very different prefix from that given to me by WiFi.

@colinhoad.com

I love this 😄

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

Yes, times posted on this site are invariably using UK local time. I’ll include that note in the future, but you can always find out the timezone relative time by going to the YouTube link which should be accurate (unless I schedule stupidly). All my sessions have always been at 1pm UK time.

The session yesterday went quite well, despite feeling a little unwell through it. Implementation of the stubbed functions is progressing well. OS_Byte calls are stubbed, although I went back and forth on their naming, as they seem to be given different names in different places. OS_ReadSysInfo has about a third of the calls stubbed as well. We’re only getting a skeleton right now, so it’s not especially complicated.

Tests have been ported from RISC OS Pyromaniac and look ok – they will need to change as we update the implementation.

Next week I’ll look at the OS_Platform calls and probably the memory calls as well.

@colinhoad.com

So... Perry in Scrubs, then.

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@colinhoad.com

This is *TONIGHT*!

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@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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@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.

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 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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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?

@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.

@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. :-)

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

@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