RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well
- Reference: 1655832613
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/21/risc_os_35/
- Source link:
In June 1987, Acorn launched the [1]Archimedes A305 and A310 , starting at £800 ($982) and running a new operating system called Arthur. At the time, it was a radical and very fast computer. In his [2]review [PDF] for Personal Computer World, [3]Dick Pountain memorably said: "It loads huge programs with a faint burping noise, in the time it takes to blink an eye."
Arthur was loosely related to Acorn's earlier MOS, the BBC Micro operating system but looked very different thanks to a prototype graphical desktop, implemented in BBC BASIC, that could charitably be called "technicolor."
[4]
Renamed RISC OS, version 2 followed in 1989 – the same year that Sun started selling its new SPARCstation 1 (a snip at [5]£7,500 c $9,200) and DEC launched the MIPS R2000-chipset-based DECstation 3100 (for [6]£8,800 /c $10,800).
[7]
[8]
RISC OS has had a rather convoluted history, partly due to Acorn spinning out [9]Arm , eventually pulling out of the computer market, rebranding as Element 14 and [10]being acquired by Broadcom , where [11]Arm co-designer Sophie Wilson still works today. And partly due to drama over the ownership of the OS post-Acorn at one point.
One fork of RISC OS still supports Acorn-era Arm's odd [12]26-bit mode, meaning that today it mostly runs on the commercial Virtual Acorn emulator.
[13]
The other branch, designed for the 32-bit mode of more recent Arm chips, is now owned by RISC OS Developments, which [14]made it fully open source back in 2018. Development and maintenance is done by the team at [15]RISC OS Open Ltd – ROOL for short – which offers downloads for a variety of current Arm hardware, such as the Titanium desktops.
[16]
RISC OS running in RPCemu ... Click to enlarge
If you don't have suitable kit but fancy playing with 21st-century RISC OS, there's also a FOSS emulator called [17]RPCemu , which can run modern versions.
Meanwhile, RISC OS Developments offers a special Raspberry Pi distribution called [18]RISC OS Direct , which runs on all versions of the Raspberry Pi (except the Pico). It's based on ROOL's latest stable version, 5.28, plus various extra apps.
[19]SpiralLinux: Anonymous creator of GeckoLinux puts out new Debian remix
[20]Unbelievably clever: Redbean 2 – a single-file web server that runs on six OSes
[21]Ubuntu releases Core 22: Its IoT and edge distro
[22]Not a GNOME fan, and like the look of Windows? Try KDE Plasma or Cinnamon
RISC OS Developments are still working on new functionality for the OS. Notably, it recently [23]released a new TCP/IP stack, derived from OpenBSD. Right now, the main benefit is IPv6 support. A feature more significant to most users is still in development: Wi-Fi support.
Also still under development, but available to paid backers, is a new RISC OS web browser, Iris. RISC OS does come with a choice of browsers – [24]NetSurf and [25]Otter – but the plan is that the new Iris browser will be a native app, with the RISC OS look and feel, but using the WebKit engine for better compatibility with the modern web.
The main remaining limitation is SMP. As an OS from the 1980s, long before the 21st-century technology of mainstream multicore processors, RISC OS practically only supports a single CPU core. Various experimental efforts are under way to address this. One has got NetBSD [26]running on another core, and another has the experimental [27]Genode OS [28]running alongside RISC OS. Another effort is working on [29]adding SMP support into the RISC OS kernel itself.
The only other OS that The Reg FOSS desk can think of from this era that's still around, actively maintained, and runs on modern hardware is NeXTstep – or, as Apple calls it today, macOS. Amusingly enough, the latest versions [30]also run on Arm kit , in the form of the [31]Apple Silicon Macs . ®
Get our [32]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2012/06/01/acorn_archimedes_is_25_years_old/
[2] http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Mags/PCW/PCW_Aug87_Archimedes.pdf
[3] https://sites.google.com/site/dicknewsite
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YrI-hWRQkX3kh62OVAU1xgAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/9000_sparcstation_1_headlines_suns_product_blitz
[6] https://techmonitor.ai/technology/dec_claims_wipeout_for_sun4_with_3100_europe_will_have_its_own_ms_dos_machines
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YrI-hWRQkX3kh62OVAU1xgAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YrI-hWRQkX3kh62OVAU1xgAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/27/arm_35_year_anniversary/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2000/10/14/broadcom_eats_element/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2012/05/02/unsung_heroes_of_tech_arm_creators_sophie_wilson_and_steve_furber/
[12] https://www.riscos.info/index.php/32bit
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YrI-hWRQkX3kh62OVAU1xgAAABE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/23/risc_os_open_source/
[15] https://www.riscosopen.org/content/
[16] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/06/21/riscosdirect-rpcemu.jpg
[17] https://www.marutan.net/rpcemu/index.php
[18] https://www.riscosdev.com/direct/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/spirallinux_new_debian_remix_from/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/redbean_2_a_singlefile_web/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/17/ubuntu_core_22/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/16/new_versions_of_both_cinnamon/
[23] https://www.riscosdev.com/projects/
[24] https://www.netsurf-browser.org/
[25] https://otter-browser.org/
[26] https://twitter.com/QtARM/status/1242144824406523905
[27] https://genode.org/
[28] https://genodians.org/mickenx/2021-09-23-genode-and-riscos
[29] https://gitlab.riscosopen.org/RiscOS/Sources/Programmer/SMP/-/merge_requests/1
[30] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/16/riscv_world_domination/
[31] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/10/apple_silicon_debut/
[32] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Some features i would like today
File meta data id rather than everyone+dog deciding to grab all the common 3 letter extensions for themselves (looking at you autodesk)
On my A310 with 1Mb of RAM being able to drag memory usage limits around in realtime to give my program more memory at the expense of screen resolution or font cache.
And if only everyone else had adopted "." as the separator in directory paths we wouldn't have had 40years of escaping bloody "\"
Re: Some features i would like today
So many updates since then in other operating systems ... is anyone still running Windows 2.0? I'm not complaining about updates, I updated CP/M to ZCPR back then :-)
Re: Some features i would like today
And if only everyone else had adopted "." as the separator in directory paths we wouldn't have had 40years of escaping bloody "\"
Or if DOS/Windows had standardized on / instead of just adding support for it. Or if Unix and a lot of others had dropped /. I'd also contend that / is better than . for separation because even by then, the . was commonly used in filenames for extensions or merely for separating components. Given that we're already escaping lots of other characters depending on what we're entering into, maybe it's not so bad to accept that it's going to happen.
This brings us to your other suggestion, about file metadata fields. That often doesn't work. Any file can contain any data, so you'd need some mechanism to ensure the metadata fields always stay with an object when you move it. The problem with that is that you'd either end up with metadata fields with no meaning or ones that aren't useful. For example, you could use them for the same purpose as extensions, which appears to be your concern, by storing something like the MIME type in it. When a new format comes along, you wouldn't have a type for it and would get stuck until someone added it. If they didn't, someone would eventually include their own data in there, which would break things if the eventually-assigned ID was different or if anything else used the same identifier. Maybe you'd use it for the OS to associate programs with files, which would work fine on your computer, but as soon as you transferred the file to something that didn't have the program identified, the field would stop working. This would be a problem for file portability. Essentially, you would probably end up with all the problems that extensions have but, instead of an OS's explorer program, your cludge to implement it would now have tendrils in the filesystem, all file-based programs, and multiple parts of the OS itself.
Re: Some features i would like today
Still think dot works, we use it in internet addresses. Dos used \ to avoid accusations of copying CPM
The metadata on RiscOS was IIRC a 32bit ID. 16bit assigned to the software vendor and a 16but field for them to use internally. Rather like MAC addresses
Re: Some features i would like today
It was always the font cache that took up all the ram
Acorn, Apricot, ACT ...
all went into the West Midlands IT mafia for the next 25 years. I worked at one place that was spun out of ACT while the company the floor above had as well, and so had the company the floor above that. They all used to gossip at smoke breaks.
I worked for the outfit that built a financial package that ACT decided "wasn't their thing" ... LSS that had a brief plc life as WMS.
Just downloading now
Tried it on the original Pi when it came out - fast fast fast , but not much software. Hope it comes wit a development suite - all hell will break lose if it does.
Seems development is there - alas no 16GB spares. Tomorrow!
The 24th June is the anniversary for me
From my daybook: Wed 24-Jun-1987
4 hours Monotype
3.5 hours Acorn
ACORN 0060.7
RISC Machine 1st Word+
[Porting from the Atari ST / DR GEM]
[1][2]
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Word/1st_Word_Plus
A few snippets:
'Only 1 "short slower than int message'
'sscanf corrupts its 1st arg"
'Bug in the linker: cannot create non-contiguous files'
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Word/1st_Word_Plus
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Word/1st_Word_Plus
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Word/1st_Word_Plus
Re: The 24th June is the anniversary for me
Do you still have the code? Would love to see it running on contemporary hardware.
I think I've still got an Archimedes somewhere. If so, it's buried at the bottom of a box. I did find the BBC Micro, and that worked last time I plugged it in, but not powered up the Archimedes for at least ten years.
Happy to read about this. I’ve been using RISC OS on a Raspberry PI 400, as the Direct version comes with useful software bundled, which it was necessary to pay for before. I use it when I want to do distraction free writing, but I also like the nostalgic charm.
Long may it continue to develop with the SMP etc, I wish I had the time and chops to help.
Guess what I'm using to read this
X ;)
Before the Raspberry Pi appeared, it was such a sad environment for RISCOS. The main emulator VirtualRPC was full of DRM and the Iyonix was almost impossible to get hold of. The port to BeagleBoard was also too immature at that point.
Things are better now, especially Peter Howkins's RPCEmu (and great work on CDE btw!), however in many ways I am avoiding re-engaging with RISCOS in case things dry up again.
My high school had a computer lab of Acorns back in the late 80s and early 90s and at that point i had only every seen the odd X86 PC in offices and on TV, no one i knew had one at home, it was all Amiga's Atari ST's or a few had Acorns.
So when i left school to go to college and their labs had PCs running Win 3.11 it felt like a step backwards compared to the slick RiscOS of the Acorns I had been using at school for 5 years.
Lucky for me there were a couple of Archimedes in the corner of the college lab and so i would jump on them to do my work if the tutor would allow me to.
But the second year of the course they were replaced with 2 more Windows PCs and I never go to use RiscOS again after 1993, so I might look at firing it up in a VM to play around with after reading this article.
Gone industry
Why we no longer have much of semiconductor industry...
My dream would be to have in the UK something like JLCPCB but for ICs. You could submit your masks and week later receive your own shiny chips.
It still has that special place in my heart considering the A3010 was the first computer I used. I really should recover it from my parents loft. The modern version could do with adding a few modern features like being able to resize file browser windows