About the 26-bit addressing: No. RISC OS 4 (and 4+, which is part of the 'Select' scheme) is firmly tied to the 26-bit addressing mode.
RISCOS Ltd. (the developers of RISC OS 4.0 and 4+) don't seem to think that this is a problem, despite ARM phasing out 26-bit support a long time ago.
And yes. Eidos did use some kind of Replay technology in their Tomb Raider game, and one or two other things... but I'm not exactly sure what that technology was.
Even the latest versions of RISC OS (that are available from RISCOS Ltd.) still use co-operative multi-tasking.
RISC OS is indeed a 'quick ARM port' of the BBC Micro (a 2 MHz 6502 machine!) OS. It was intended as a stop gap, until Acorn released or replaced ARX (their own brand-new OS, described as 'Unix-like', which never saw the light of day).
According to RISCOS Ltd., they have approx. 700 subscribers for Select. I have no problem with these people using such a system (plus those who are still using RISC OS 4.0 and 3.7 etc.).
However, I can't see how the RISC OS platform is supposed to attrack new customers.
Or do you think that the size of the current RISC OS market is absolutely fine?
What killed Acorn was their own stupid self-belief that their products were *so* oh-so-cool that they could forget about 'little' things like:
decent development tools
Internet connectivity out-of-the-box
a web browser
printer drivers
basic proven technology like multithreading and/or pre-emptive multi-tasking
hardware accelerated graphics
32-bit only ARM processors (26-bit mode is dead)
PCI, USB, FireWire etc.
With problems like this (and many more), it's not easy to see why the platform is effectively dead.
Most of the developers seem to have left. Computer Concepts? Sibelius? Eidos? Millipede? They left for Windows.
Quite frankly, Linux, even though it's very weak in some respects, is a much better 'Geek's dream' than RISC OS ever was.
There have been, and are still a few, amazing software packages for RISC OS. ArtWorks and Sibelius have since been ported to Windows/Mac. (Easi/Tech)Writer and Ovation Pro are on their way to Windows/Mac. Is there any reason to use RISC OS these days?
You are incorrect.
It was always possible to enter a fully-qualified pathname into the 'save as' filename field.
e.g. 'ADFS::MyDisk.$.Work.foo'
Even simpler, the keyboard shortcut 'F3' always opens the 'save as' dialogue.
Drag and drop saving is EXCELLENT. I can't understand why other major systems are so backward (in that they don't use it).
I'm a sort-of RISC OS user. I have a 1994 Acorn Risc PC (with a 1996 processor upgrade - a StrongARM running at 200 MHz!) with RISC OS 4 (not 'Select') that I use from time to time.
I'd like to hear what you all think about RISC OS from a technical perspective. Does it sound like a good OS? What interests you? What makes you puke?!
Also, what do you make of the currently available (and 'soon to be available') RISC OS hardware? Now that Acorn are no more (effectively bought up by Pace and Broadcom) it's all down to a bunch of small companies to provide for us. What are your thoughts on reading the product descriptions from the following URLs:
http://www.riscos.com
http://www.castle.uk.co (not a typo!)
http://www.riscstation.co.uk
http://www.microdigital.co.uk
???
For those that have wondered about RISC OS being ported to other ARM platforms... basically, it can't happen. RISC OS is *very* tightly bound to the Acorn-designed hardware that goes along with the ARM CPU in their systems. No-one seems to care about that. Oh, and RISC OS uses the ARM's 26-bit addressing mode, which was killed off ages ago.:-(
Ah well. At least some good stonkingly good stuff came out of Acorn. Sophie Wilson, the mega-genius, co-created the ARM chip (starting back in 1983!) and created 'Acorn Replay', a full-motion video subsystem for RISC OS (round about 1991), which was streets ahead of Apple's QuickTime.
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RISCOS Ltd. (the developers of RISC OS 4.0 and 4+) don't seem to think that this is a problem, despite ARM phasing out 26-bit support a long time ago.
And yes. Eidos did use some kind of Replay technology in their Tomb Raider game, and one or two other things... but I'm not exactly sure what that technology was.
RISC OS is indeed a 'quick ARM port' of the BBC Micro (a 2 MHz 6502 machine!) OS. It was intended as a stop gap, until Acorn released or replaced ARX (their own brand-new OS, described as 'Unix-like', which never saw the light of day).
According to RISCOS Ltd., they have approx. 700 subscribers for Select. I have no problem with these people using such a system (plus those who are still using RISC OS 4.0 and 3.7 etc.).
However, I can't see how the RISC OS platform is supposed to attrack new customers.
Or do you think that the size of the current RISC OS market is absolutely fine?
What killed Acorn was their own stupid self-belief that their products were *so* oh-so-cool that they could forget about 'little' things like:
decent development tools
Internet connectivity out-of-the-box
a web browser
printer drivers
basic proven technology like multithreading and/or pre-emptive multi-tasking
hardware accelerated graphics
32-bit only ARM processors (26-bit mode is dead)
PCI, USB, FireWire etc.
With problems like this (and many more), it's not easy to see why the platform is effectively dead.
Most of the developers seem to have left. Computer Concepts? Sibelius? Eidos? Millipede? They left for Windows.
Quite frankly, Linux, even though it's very weak in some respects, is a much better 'Geek's dream' than RISC OS ever was.
There have been, and are still a few, amazing software packages for RISC OS. ArtWorks and Sibelius have since been ported to Windows/Mac. (Easi/Tech)Writer and Ovation Pro are on their way to Windows/Mac. Is there any reason to use RISC OS these days?
Virtual A5000 certainly is Windows-only.
However, try this on Unix, Windows or RISC OS itself (!)... http://arcem.sourceforge.net
It's pretty cool.
You are incorrect. It was always possible to enter a fully-qualified pathname into the 'save as' filename field. e.g. 'ADFS::MyDisk.$.Work.foo' Even simpler, the keyboard shortcut 'F3' always opens the 'save as' dialogue. Drag and drop saving is EXCELLENT. I can't understand why other major systems are so backward (in that they don't use it).
(first ever post, so please be kind!)
I'm a sort-of RISC OS user. I have a 1994 Acorn Risc PC (with a 1996 processor upgrade - a StrongARM running at 200 MHz!) with RISC OS 4 (not 'Select') that I use from time to time.
I'd like to hear what you all think about RISC OS from a technical perspective. Does it sound like a good OS? What interests you? What makes you puke?!
Also, what do you make of the currently available (and 'soon to be available') RISC OS hardware? Now that Acorn are no more (effectively bought up by Pace and Broadcom) it's all down to a bunch of small companies to provide for us. What are your thoughts on reading the product descriptions from the following URLs:
http://www.riscos.com
http://www.castle.uk.co (not a typo!)
http://www.riscstation.co.uk
http://www.microdigital.co.uk
???
For those that have wondered about RISC OS being ported to other ARM platforms... basically, it can't happen. RISC OS is *very* tightly bound to the Acorn-designed hardware that goes along with the ARM CPU in their systems. No-one seems to care about that. Oh, and RISC OS uses the ARM's 26-bit addressing mode, which was killed off ages ago. :-(
Ah well. At least some good stonkingly good stuff came out of Acorn. Sophie Wilson, the mega-genius, co-created the ARM chip (starting back in 1983!) and created 'Acorn Replay', a full-motion video subsystem for RISC OS (round about 1991), which was streets ahead of Apple's QuickTime.