A short book on RISC OS on the Pi

Well I have written a short book on how to use RISC OS on the Pi. I’ll, no doubt, add to it once the release candidate for the SD card image appears over the horizon. Meanwhile it is short, simple and cheap.

A preview of the book is here

? I can see an 8 page book listed, but it carries a price of €7,68 (would be €8,08 but there’s some sort of reduction).
Is this correct?

I’m afraid lulu charges an absurd amount for P&P (£2.99) plus a lot for the wholesale price of an all-colour book (£3.17) and there is just a tiny markup for me (£1.50). Once the full official distro is out I’m thinking of doing it as a B/W inners and making it a bit bigger. That way I could make it 24 pages and knock £1 off the price. I could do it as a download but then once it has been downloaded people will copy it around and stop buying it.

I have stopped making my welcome guide, since the official one turned up, and instead have been modifying it to be a more general introduction to “getting stuff done with RISC OS” (obviously it’d need a catchier title than that).

I plan to drop it on Amazon’s Kindle for something in the ballpark of a fiver (no idea what that makes me, it’s just a little reward for the work). It would be released (at the same time or maybe a short while later?) as a PDF most likely CC BY-NC-SA (source in OvationPro format).

But don’t hold your breath, it was a good animé season and I’ve been doing coding too, so…
What I can say is I’m fairly confident it’ll be available in Q3. What I’m less confident about is which year. (^_^)

@Rick,
How about “50 Shades Of RISC OS.”
Theme seems to be selling quite well recently. Punters may be thirsty for more!
Might need to develop some extra modules and hardware though!

On a more serious note, Re. Official distro, please make sure things like “!Director” either work out of the box, or at least there is an obvious disclaimer. First example that came to mind. If I’m trying to sell this to friends as a really nice environnment to use, I don’t want their first experience to be negative.

Are there tips on how to get older software running, e.g. Impression Publisher ,OakPCB, SimCity 2000, Melidi spring to mind that I still use. Plugging in the Yamaha DB50XG card might be an issue though!

An idiots guide to using some of the stuff available from !PackMan might be a good idea. I’ve managed to get the latest ROM and firmware updates after following Theos’ instructions with no problem, even cottoned on to the backup option, but not everything else seems to work.

I appreciate this is still a work in progress and I’m trying to be constructive with my comments. Admire the work you’re doing and would love to see RISC OS thrive.

Are there tips on how to get older software running, e.g. Impression Publisher ,OakPCB, SimCity 2000, Melidi spring to mind that I still use.

For people using a Beagleboard or Pandaboard the answer is Aemulor free version http://buyit.spellings.net/products.php?cat=2
However you mention using the latest Packman based updates which suggests you have a Pi and I don’t think Adrian has done a version for the Pi at present.
Impression does seem to work under Aemulor on 5.18 on the Iyonix. I use Ovation Pro (not tried it on the beagle yet)

Aemulor isn’t a mgic wand though and some software is just not compatible even with assistance.

I use Ovation Pro (not tried it on the beagle yet)

Works fine without assistance.

Of Ovation Pro:

Works fine without assistance.

Mr Pilling really is a star. People should use his software more often.

How about “50 Shades Of RISC OS.”
Theme seems to be selling quite well recently. Punters may be thirsty for more!

I think that was an interesting look into hype and consumer fickleness. I heard that the various Fifty Shades books redefined the word awesome, and weeks later I heard pretty much the opposite. Given that Wiki’s first paragraph on the original book says “It is notable for its explicitly erotic scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism”, I don’t think I’ll bother reading this one for myself. I’m more a Haruhi Suzumiya (novels, not manga!) man. Though you might have guessed that if you recognised the little picture on the left. (^_^)

On a more serious note, Re. Official distro, please make sure things like “!Director” either work out of the box,

I think the eventual idea would be to have stuff work “out of the box”. As you say, newbie would be dissuaded by problems, especially as they might not have the know-how for fixing problems.
Case in point – the hassle I had to go through to get my Linux to play my videos. I needed to apt-get some bunch of “tainted” codecs, but finding out that information was more bother than it should have been.

Impression Publisher

Isn’t Impression still being sort-of updated? I though somebody took on Impression and Artworks…

OakPCB

We might need the likes of aemulot (or maybe an emulator?) for that.

SimCity 2000

Ditto.

The problem is that not only are we looking at the rather clear split between 26 bit and 32 bit worlds; but there is also the issue of unaligned loads and how the behaviour differs on later processors. My advice all along has been “don’t”, but I guess there are those who thought it would be a useful shortcut for some stuff. I can’t help but think of the undefined opcodes in the 6502 and how all the stuff that used them failed on the 65C02 (where they were varying lengths of NOP).

The most common fix is to just recompile stuff, and patch up the bits that still don’t work (like assembler veneers that return the old-fashioned way). But, you know, the hard part is often getting at the sources to do such fixes…

Hi Stephen,

What did you have trouble with with the packaged software? The repository is rather large and it’s difficult to test everything, so feedback of things that don’t work is appreciated.

Isn’t Impression still being sort-of updated? I thought somebody took on Impression and Artworks…

Nope. It looks like Impression is a dead project. There’s a nice looking site here full of promise:
http://www.xat.nl/en/riscos/sw/imp/index.htm

But it says, and I quote: “Work on the 32-bit conversion of Impression-X is commencing well, although we haven’t been able to spend as much time on the project as we had hoped.”, posted as latest news on the 8th of May 2006. That’s over half a decade ago. I wonder if the people who took this on underestimated the difficulties of working with a massive heap of assembler!?
Shame, as while I’m an Ovation man, Impression was quite capable and certainly had its followers.

Artworks. Looks to be coming along well.
http://www.mw-software.com/software/artworks/artworks2.html

That’s over half a decade ago. I wonder if the people who took this on underestimated the difficulties of working with a massive heap of assembler!?

Possibly, but there is also the aura of negativity created by the ROL spat. Why make a major effort on something that relies in something an OS developer is busy killing?

Expect nothing RISC OS related from X-Ample Technology anymore: “In the past, we’ve also supplied hardware and software for the RISC OS platform.”
http://www.xat.nl/en/

In the past…

I guess that’s how Impression died.

Sad.

Expect nothing RISC OS related from X-Ample Technology anymore: “In the past, we’ve also supplied hardware and software for the RISC OS platform.”

Maybe they could be tempted back by a decent market. But if not – OvPro works nicely and Mr. Pilling has expressed an interest in future development of various items if the demand is there.

Well I have written a short book on how to use RISC OS on the Pi. I’ll, no doubt, add to it once the release candidate for the SD card image appears over the horizon. Meanwhile it is short, simple and cheap.

A preview of the book is here

Book revised (now 15 pages) to match the official distro – will be released (hopefully) at the London show. Currently embargoed until the official disto is announced.

Book revised (now 15 pages) to match the official distro

and now available here

Book revised AGAIN (now 79 pages) to match the updated (RC8) official distro

available here

More pages, same price (£5). Should be on sale at Wakefield.

Will the author be signing copies for purchasers? ;-)
Also, if we wait longer before purchasing will we get more pages? …… at the same price?

Also, if we wait longer before purchasing will we get more pages? …… at the same price?

The cost price of printing a 79 page book is over £3 and the postage for 30 copies in a single parcel is £21. So any bigger and the price would have had to go up. Other than at the show, it can be purchased through lulu.com but they charge nearly £3 for postage on a single copy (so you would end up paying £7.49 that way).

I wonder whether Chris might make the book available as an e-book? Particularly as updates are being made to it, and it would cut out printing and postage costs.

As David R.Lane says, when do you make the decision to buy it? The last thing you want is something that’s going to be out of date fairly quickly. :-)

I now intend to keep the book as it is and to update the link http://www.svrsig.org/Beta.htm – as and when I get the time.