Steve Drain RIP

This morning I received the sad news from his wife that Steve Drain died on the last day of 2022.

We had corresponded about technical RISC OS stuff for over twenty years, and I enjoyed the discussion, interaction, collaboration and even occasional disagreement over those years. We had also met several times at various shows. He had an unparalleled knowledge of how BBC BASIC worked, and how to extract the very best from it – even if his methods were sometimes far too cunning for me!

I will miss his input, and I am sure many others here will too.

Very Sad news. My thoughts go out to all his friends and family.

Wait… as in Kappa? As in Basalt?

Well, bloody hell. That’s a loss. Seems that 2023 is starting well. :-(

Sincere condolences. He will be missed.

Sorry for your loss he will be missed. bad start to the new year.

Echoing what has already been said, a sad loss to the RISC OS community and also condolences to his family and friends.

Indeed it is sad news, condolences to his friends and family. I’m going to miss him being around here.

I never met Steve, I don’t even know what he looked like but I know he made a great contribution to RISC OS and the community. As many have already said, he will be sadly missed.

Remember what he did, remember what he gave, while that exists and is remembered by us then a part of him remains.
Those of us who never met him in life perhaps have a smaller part.

My heartfelt condolences to his family. Over the years I have spent a bit of time discussing different parts of RISC OS with him, and he had always been so very intelligent and helpful.

I spoke to him by email earlier in the year about his excellent work on documenting SpellMod and to ask if he had any other resources that might help my testing a reimplementation. He sent me an archive of related things and people to speak to, as he was not in the best of health, as ever being helpful.

As others have said, a sad loss, and such a shock.

I’m sorry to hear the news about Steve.

Aside from his knowledge of the innards of BASIC, he championed using the Toolbox from BASIC, via Basalt extensions of course, as well as the numerous smaller utilities and comprehensive StrongHelp manuals on his website: my most recent email exchange with him (April) was asking if it might be possible to integrate the VFPSupport SWIs into the main OS one, about which he was very accommodating. CALL!-4

He didn’t participate much in The Other Aldershot, but he popped by quite frequently.
Last visit: 2022-12-30, 12:21 pm.

Damn.

🙋 <- waving goodbye

Remember what he did, remember what he gave

If any of you haven’t yet picked up RFSFiles from his website, do so.

It’s a little fiddly to set up due to how Apps/ResourceFS works ¹², but once you’ve got your apps inside Apps all nicely categorised in directories, it makes the Apps icon so much more useful.

You can keep frequently used things in the main root, then add other stuff that’s less used in directories and it’s just nice, not the cluttered mess that Apps usually is.

¹ If I remember correctly, you need to add an app, then copy it, then remove the original. The help explains.

² Because <Technical$Reasons>, you can’t move the ROM apps.

Film “Remember Me – Coco” :-(

I never met Steve, I don’t even know what he looked like but I know he made a great contribution to RISC OS and the community. As many have already said, he will be sadly missed.

I can’t say anything better than that, so I’ll simply echo those thoughts.

🙁

That is very very sad indeed :(

My heartfelt condolence to Steve’s family.

Indeed he was top notch knowledge of BBC BASIC and I really liked his work to extend it.

He’ll be sadly missed.

If any of you haven’t yet picked up RFSFiles from his website, do so.

That prompted a thought – his website.

That prompted a thought – his website.

Already being thought of. Patience please.

Source code as well… But asides from a quiet “please don’t discard the computers”, it’s way too soon.
As Martin says, patience.

Steve was always positive, always trying to take things forward. A true enthusiast.

All who knew him are the poorer for his passing.

I’m very sad and shocked to hear this. Condolences to his family and friends.

Rest in peace Steve, your magic will be missed.

In September, he created a utility in basic to be able to transform a draw file using a matrix. I use it with my application.
Thanks for his assistance.
I also used the StrongHelp manuals for VFP as well as the examples, which were very helpful.

Condolences to his family and friends.

Very sad news. Condolences to family and friends.

Sad news. It was a pleasure to discuss BASIC with him on his stand at the SouthWest show.
“O quam cito transit gloria mundi”

Very sad news. I didn’t really know him, but we’d interacted on here from time to time. He was friendly, polite, and knowledgeable while being humble about it. A good bloke to interact with.