RISCOS Ltd.’s managing director Paul Middleton has this month told Foundation readers that his company will continue by “adapting to change and seizing new opportunities as quickly as possible”. As well as sketching out a RISC OS 4 road map, Paul also revealed some surprisingly unreported facts.
RISCOS Ltd. “Adapting to Change”
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Some years ago I looked at RISCOS in my first attempt to move away from Windows. I got a demo of the OS from a local reseller of hardware and software and it was all very impressive stuff. Bear in mind that compared to most other IT retailers, RISCOS is run by hobbyists and enthusiasts so the demo was in the guy’s spare room.
At that time it seemed obvious to me that the capabilities of the OS were ahead of the available hardware. The promise of new hardware running on XScale was ‘just around the corner’. In the responses to the article I still see references to the unavailability of Omega that was one of the systems under wraps ‘way back then’.
It is now a few years on and I don’t really see much of a change. There still seems to be a gap between the hardware and software capabilities and the world of RISCOS seems to have become even more of a niche.
In the end, I decided to go for BeOS 5 and loved it. That shows how good my judgement is!
I have to agree with the above post, I have always liked RISC OS, in fact I own an old Acorn A4000 which I occasionally dig out for reminiscing.
But the hardware is not going anywhere and the OS is in my opinion stagnant, certainly as far as it supporting the latest hardware goes.
It is a great shame as it was and still is a great example of how to write an OS.
That Europe has done so much to have an independant aeronautic industry, an independant spatial industry, and quite nothing to preserve an independant IT industry. After having been ahead of his time and promising, RiscOS has become a niche OS, and is on the path of becoming a hobby OS (or is it already there?), when it could have beneficiated of some of, or the same attention that has been so generously dispentiated on other projects.
“…and quite nothing to preserve an independant IT industry..”
How much did the French governement spent to keep afloat the huge POS Bull was, is and always will be?
By the Way Bull has not given the money back yet.
Why do you think German local government are so keen in ivesting in Suse Linux rather then RedHat?
Nothing technical here. It is pure European subsidized way of doing thing.
Phil
My first machines were all Acorn (Atom, BBC B, BBC Master, Archimedes A310, A3020) and then it stopped.
I gave up because Acorn had so fully screwed it up. They had the world at their feet, the best OS bar none, the fastest personal computer on the planet, one market sewn up (education in the UK) and didn’t build on it. They produced world leading tech (ARM) and fell asleep at the wheel.
It hurt back then. Really. Badly.
Now I just feel saddened to see RISCOS (RISCOS3… what an awesome system) kicking around with second rate companies owning it. I wish it had not died but I moreso wish the mad scientsts would stop reanimating the zombie to parade around before an uninterested world.
About Bull: you’re right. I had forgotten that one. But given what it was, one wants only to forget about it. It was a huge mistake, and all that “investement” would have had a better use elsewhere.
This is exactly the kind of comment one refers to when one says meaningless feedback. It is like the comments about news on the Amiga front “Stop kicking a dead horse!”. If you are so emotionally attached to the old days, you are welcome to remain there, but I, personally, find it intriguing that they continue tech from the past. Like many other continued technologies (the computer for instance, was abandoned for nearly 100 years since it’s invention in england!), each one has a fair chance of doing a difference some day, and we should not be oblivious to that, and let our emotions guide our way, especially other companies’ ways. Think about it.
“Why do you think German local government are so keen in ivesting in Suse Linux rather then RedHat?
Nothing technical here. It is pure European subsidized way of doing thing. ”
Probably because:
– They said “Yours was the only distribution we found in the shops when we were at the very beginning of our search for a new software system supplier”
– They said “Many of our technical people say that they use your products and contribute to them, so we have a built up knowledgebase and skills base with your products”
– They said “we want to migrate our Exchange systems, firstly with open clients, then open servers”. SuSE said “We can do both of those”.
– They said “In the long term, we’d like advanced groupware tools we can extend, which keep data in an Open format, so we always know we can get it out again”. SuSE said “We can do that too”.
– They said “We need to be able to discuss our needs with someone high up in your company to make sure our vision matches yours”. SuSE said “Great! Our offices are down the road. When would you like to meet the CEO?”
– They said “We need your developers to visit our sites and understand the technical problems and the solutions we need.”. SuSE said “Not a problem. Where and when? We can keep coming back every week, if you need us to.”
– They said “We need 24/7 high-quality support services”. SuSe said “Not a problem. Even better, we can support you with the actual developers who wrote a product. They can just hop on the Autobahn and be there promptly, whenever you need.”
– They said “We need some technical training too.”. SuSE said “Not a problem. We can visit your sites, or they can visit us. They can be taught by the people who know the software best.”
– SuSE said “As an added bonus, if you buy from us, we will employ more local people, train them up and improve the quality of the local workforce, while returning some of what you spend back to you in tax. Not only that, but the process will develop the level of the local computer science industry and help out education and the economy of the region in the longer term.”
… Any more sweeping generalisations and fits of Euro-phobia you wish to raise?
… I would love to try one, but it is an OS in a ROM… I need the hardware too. I guess all I can do is drool
There’s numerous RISC OS emulators you can try:
Red Squirrel (free Windows emulator – needs ROM images)
VA5000 and VA_RPC (commercial Windows emulator with ROM images)
ArcEm (free emulator for X11, Windows, and Mac OS X – needs ROM images)
and perhaps others too.
unfortunatelly ROM images require a license to use — also..finding them on the net (in the less-than-legal-way) is a pain
Admiral
I bought an Acorn Archimedes 305 in 1987. It had its operating system, Arthur 0.2, in EEPROM. The A305 had 512 kbytes of core memory, which I thought was a lot since the computer I was using at the time had only 48 kbytes of RAM. Within one week, I upgraded my Archimedes to 1 megabyte because half a meg was just unworkable.
When RISCOS 1.2 was released in ROM (512 kbytes), Acorn asked to send the Arthur 0.2 EEPROM back to them. I did so, paying international stamps to send it to the UK. At least, one would expect Acorn to send a little note to thank the people who sent the EEPROMS back, but they didn’t. So, I guess this is partly why Acorn screw up. Yes, they had the best technology, wonderfull hardware and amazing software, but outside the UK (and maybe some Commonwealth countries) they never got a real user base because their customer relations just didn’t exist at all.
If you want a quick go of RISC OS, a second-hand RiscPC can be had for sub lb50 (GBP), if you decide you like it, then you can upgrade that with RISC OS 4 for a recent OS, StrongARM for a massive speed increase over the ARM 610 or 710, and a Viewfinder card for modern screen resolutions.
http://www.google.com/search?q=riscos31.zip
There was alot of local computing infrastructure in Europe, but they all messed up. It was the same time after time. Superior development, clueless business skills. They went down one after one because they didn’t know how to run a company.
I’ll have to second your observation, and even add that it’s not just in Europe.
Look at all the wonderful (at the time) operating systems and environments there were (my favorite was OS/2) back in the 80’s and early 90’s. All of them (with very few exceptions) have been smashed by Microsoft.
Not Microsoft bashing here, just making a point. Microsoft has a marketing department that knows how to market their software.
IBM had OS/2 out long before Windows 95 was released. What stopped them? They were clueless about marketing.
“Not Microsoft bashing here, just making a point. Microsoft has a marketing department that knows how to market their software.”
Exactly. Spot on. Microsoft had ruthless marketers up front and continue to do so.
Acorn were a *true* innovator. I mean, c’mon, the first ARM chips could actually run only on the signal strength going through them; no need to power them! (Now that’s a low power consumption CPU…)
They brought RISC to the main market, a multitasking GUI, things that have been oft-since copied (the taskbar for instance) and still the best RAMDISC implementation of any OS ever. If you’ve used RiscOS you will know what I mean…
Ach, this is depressing. :