Wakefield Acorn & RISC OS Computer Show 2017

Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club are pleased to formally announce that the 2017 Wakefield Acorn & RISC OS Computer Show will be taking place on 22nd April.

This year’s event will be at its regular venue at the Cedar Court Hotel, just off junction 39 of the M1 to the south of Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Access by car is easy, as the hotel can be seen from the motorway junction. For those intending to visit by public transport, Wakefield Westgate station is well served by both local and intercity services from across the UK; the hotel itself is accessible from the city centre by regular local buses. Full travel and accommodation information can be found at www.wakefieldshow.org.uk

The organisers are in the process of booking exhibitors, and details of who will be attending should be appearing on the website over the coming weeks. As ever, we hope that both the RISC OS and 8-bit markets will be well represented – if you would like to exhibit, please get in touch via the contact details on the website.

The popular Show Theatre will be present as usual, and we’re currently putting together a programme of talks: details will be published on the website nearer the date. The Charity Stall will also be returning – looking to add to the £17,000 that our visitors have raised for the local Wakefield Hospice over the years.

The show will be open from 10.30am until 4.30pm, with tickets costing £5 on the door. There will also be tickets for a Prize Draw on sale, with the chance to win some RISC OS-related goodies.

For full details, please check out the show website at www.wakefieldshow.org.uk – and keep an eye out for the latest information as it becomes available.

Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club would like to remind everyone in the RISC OS and 8-bit communities that the Wakefield Acorn & RISC OS Computer Show will be taking place next weekend, on Saturday 22nd April. The event is open from 10.30am until 4.30pm, with admission £5 on the door.

The platform’s premier event in the North is in its regular venue at the Cedar Court Hotel near Wakefield, and there are over twenty exhibitors confirmed as attending. Those from the RISC OS scene include AMCOG Games, Archive Magazine, Chris Hall, CJE Micro’s and 4D, Drag ’n Drop, Ident Computer, Organizer, Orpheus Internet, R-Comp & R-Comp Interactive, RISC OS Open Ltd, RISC OS Developments Ltd, RISCOSbits, Sine Nomine Software, Soft Rock Software and Steve Fryatt. The 8-bit names include ABug, Daniel Jameson, Flax Cottage Educational Archive, Retro Acorn, Retro Hardware and Retro Software.

The popular Show Theatre will be operating from 11am until 4pm, with talks scheduled from Orpheus Internet, RISC OS Developments Ltd, R-Comp, RISC OS Open Ltd, Sine Nomine Software, CJE Micro’s & 4D and AMCOG Games.

All those attending the show will be able to enter the Prize Draw: tickets cost £1, with the chance to win a Raspberry Pi 3 or a Maplin Gift Card worth £15. The Charity Stall will also be present, aiming to add to the £17,000 that WROCC have raised for the local Wakefield Hospice over the years.

Located just off junction 39 of the M1 to the south of Wakefield in West Yorkshire, the venue is simple to find. Access by car is easy, as the hotel can be seen from the motorway junction. For those arriving by public transport, there are regular local buses from Wakefield city centre: details are on the website.

We regret regret that, due to a serious mechanical failure of the venue’s lift, access to the Show – which on the second floor of the hotel – will be via stairs only. We apologize for this inconvenience, which is beyond our control.

Full details of exhibitors, theatre presentations, travel and accommodation can be found at www.wakefieldshow.org.uk

RISC OS Developments Ltd, R-Comp,

Hmmm, developments

Wasn’t RISC OS Developments Ltd the name ROL were supposed to use in the “agreement” they came to with Castle that never got off the ground.

Anyway only 7 days for those of not in the know to find out what it all means.

http://www.wikiwand.com/en/RISCOS_Ltd

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10709520

Every so often you come across another of those wonderous gems of mutually incompatible text in consecutive sentences. The first link is a page with one such:

RISC OS Six is 32-bit-neutral and can be built to run in either 26-bit or 32-bit modes. It runs on the Risc PC and A9home, but it doesn’t run on newer-generation hardware such as the Iyonix PC and ARMini, which do not support the 26-bit addressing used on the older Acorn computers.

If it said the source was 32-bit neutral but no 32-bit version has been built it might be more accurate (assuming the source is clean – I’ve seen various stuff claiming that status incorrectly)

If it said the source was 32-bit neutral but no 32-bit version has been built it might be more accurate (assuming the source is clean – I’ve seen various stuff claiming that status incorrectly)

It must have been more-or-less 32bit clean, because it ran on the A9home, which is ARMv5.

It must have been more-or-less 32bit clean, because it ran on the A9home, which is ARMv5.

Indeed, the “more-or-less” does rather come into play though:

Although the A9home was officially released for purchase by end-users, its custom version of RISC OS 4 remained unfinished. As of 2013, RISCOS Ltd closed after failing to release any information in 2012 about when or if the OS will become feature complete.

Just think what could have been if two parties had actually talked. Here we are with people doing new things but also re-inventing the wheel on certain bits.

The A9home was indeed a 32 bit version of RO Six, however to my knowledge the whole machine was a beta (some might say Alpha!) and it was never actually finished, nor is it ever likely to be.

A post in the NetSurf bug tracker says The OS is known to be flaky and unfinished, and introduces controversial changes that break compatibility with a lot of things. so it is perhaps worth clarifying exactly what and how much of RO Six is actually 32 bit.

Converting an entire OS (mostly written in assembler) is hard, and the fact that many sources indicate the unfinished nature (and the bugginess) makes me wonder exactly how much is “32 bit neutral”.
There’s the marketing spiel, and there’s reality…

Hmmm, developments

All we need now are Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!

Sorry, I’ll go get my coat…

Converting an entire OS (mostly written in assembler) is hard, and the fact that many sources indicate the unfinished nature (and the bugginess) makes me wonder exactly how much is “32 bit neutral”.

There’s also the situation where the developer actually thinks recompiling a module with a new header marking it 32 bit and the compiler set for 32 bit output will magically convert those embedded bits of 26-bit cleverness into 32 bit compliant code. Mostly down to lack of real interest in the 32 bit machines.

Of the A9 – what was the parentage of the disk drive interface? I know of one source that, incorrectly, labelled the driver software as 32 bit. That’s just an amateur twiddlers investigations of stuff “out there”

Mostly down to lack of real interest in the 32 bit machines.

Oh well, their loss… I mean, 26 bit mode was an anachronism in the first printed ARM ARM, wasn’t the writing on the wall large enough to be read from a different county? Okay, granted, there are still people clinging on to their older machines.

But, you know, 40-200ish MHz, single ARM core, modes that top out a little above SVGA, maybe 256MiB sensible maximum, ~100W consumption at 230V, and you’re stuck with legacy IDE or SCSI harddiscs, or trying various IDE-CF adaptors, last OS update a minor eternity ago with no more ever, perfectly runs all the legacy apps but may or may not run modern apps, plus extremely limited compatibility with modern devices (I wonder how many have 100mbit networking, given the extremely limited I/O speed) and as for ubiquitous USB……

Versus, oh, I dunno, around 700MHz (Pi1) to a gigahertz and a half, potential multiple cores (which one day might do interesting things), HD displays no sweat and maybe even 4K, 256MiB base (Pi1), more on more advanced boards (and you can use it all, no 28MiB app limitation), Pi1 with PSU lug claims around 5W at 230V, easy interface with USB flash memory, SD cards…, last OS update last night and another tonight, doesn’t run most legacy apps natively (Aemulor may help) but can be expected to run modern apps without issues, limited compatibility with ancient devices (no Econet, no floppy disc), and of course USB is just expected these days…..

To me, it’s a no brainer.

Zap and Ovation(Pro) made the conversion to 32 but. Those were my “killer apps”, but to be honest I’d have left them behind if they had remained 26 bit only. You know, my Pi is always on. http://heyrick.ddns.net/ The device is efficient enough that I can just leave it (and the Vonets) running. Such a thing would have been unthinkable with the a RiscPC for two reasons – the first being that the electricity consumption would add up over the course of a year and for what? The second? The Pi is utterly silent. My RiscPC, not so much.
Sometimes I leave my PC running to rip DVDs, with it auto-hibernating when done. There’s a fan in the PSU, plus one each side of the CPU. I can tell when the ripping is done, that’s when I actually manage to get some sleep. :-)

Plus, the cost of a Pi and the fact that it can kick the RiscPCs butt in just about every direction, I struggle to understand why there are people refusing to make the transition. Because of polarised politics a decade and a half ago? However, it was a battle ultimately lost before it began. 26 bit was obsolete. Acorn failed to transition when the market was vibrant, but clinging on to legacy was not a viable path for the future.

I struggle to understand why there are people refusing to make the transition. Because of polarised politics a decade and a half ago?

A decade and half ago it may have been because of the politics, I suspect now it’s just “because” with the origin forgotten.
The legacy software is a small hook to hang “because” things on.

If an ARM on ARM install ran on a second core providing access to said legacy software on the cheap modern hardware maybe even the “because” must surely fade and die.

If an ARM on ARM install ran on a second core providing access to said legacy software on the cheap modern hardware maybe even the “because” must surely fade and die

A plague on your house and wash your mouth out with even saying such statements.

Of course there will be other things that stop people changing, i.e the costs as I need a new monitor/keyboard/mouse and the Pi is expensive when you add in the SD Card etc.. I can just hear all the negatives repeated yet again. Lets face it some people will not change and sometimes we should just embrace change and if people don’t want it then fair enough.

Personally I would welcome ARM on ARM on another core along with perhaps a version of Linux running on another core which gave access to wifi/printers/scanners etc. Might be a pipe dream but who says we can’t stretch things..now if we could only stretch a few developers then it might happen :-)

The legacy software is a small hook to hang “because” things on.

:-)

maybe even the “because” must surely fade and die.

If the “because” doesn’t, the hardware itself surely will.

i.e the costs as I need a new monitor/keyboard/mouse and the Pi is expensive when you add in the SD Card etc.. I can just hear all the negatives repeated yet again.

I’m sure all of that would be nice.

Let me see… in my case…

• Monitor – cost about €5 from a boot sale for 1280×1024. My other monitor (1440×900 used with the PC) cost me €3!
  Thing is, these older analogue only LCD monitors are being flogged off for pocket change these days as they don’t work with stuff that only outputs digital signals.
• Keyboard – actually a friend got me the keyboard, but that’s only because I hate AZERTY with a passion. The instructions were simple – go to a supermarket or something and get the cheapest one. Because the fancier the keyboard, the more likely it’ll mess up on anything that isn’t Windows… Price? €5-€15 depending on where.
• Mouse – I rescued an optical mouse with a frayed cable from the bin at work. Opened it up, hacked off a few inches of the cable, soldered it together. Job done. Cost €0, just some time and know-how. However, like for the keyboard, you want the cheapest thing you can find that has a scroll wheel (and hence a middle button). If you’re looking at eighty euro gamer mice with eighteen buttons, you really need to stop! :-)
• Power supply – originally an EeePC but random SD corruption told me it wasn’t quite up to it. So I then used a mobile phone charger. I’ve since splashed out on a dual-output USB charger (€14,99) because I don’t fancy cheap Chinese crap having hooked my ’scope to one that was supposed to be outputting DC but instead was outputting something that looked more like a waveform from a Nightwish song.
  More recently, I picked up a branded (Belkin?) five-output charger in the winter sales for €10. That ought to power everything.
• HDMI to VGA? Got it from Amazon…or was it eBay? I forget. Anyway, it cost about €12. I cannibalised a USB lead to make the thing self-powered instead of trying to draw ~250mA from a ~50mA source within the Pi. Add a couple of euros for a dinky adaptor from the Pi’s socket to the adaptor’s smaller plug.
• WiFi? Vonets. From Amazon. I think I paid maybe €15 or so for it?
• SD card. Originally recycled from my phone. They were kind enough to supply it with a ClassDon’tAsk 2GB card. My music collection amounts to quite a bit more than that! Later, I got SystemDisc (what is that, a tenner or so?) so I could format a larger disc correctly. Thus I bought a… 8GB? 16GB? I can’t be bothered to turn on the monitor and look… anyway, cost about €12 and was mind-blowingly quicker, being a Class10.
• USB hub – €0, had one in a drawer.
• A dinky orange case, €5 from Amazon.

Total? Maybe €100 or so. Of course I couldn’t really afford that, so I got things in bits. Originally I did without any connectivity, and originally I used the composite video output. Things were added. Like the OLED panel. Or the USB serial lead (USB end plugged into the Pi, for weather forecaster) or the other USB serial lead (TTL serial plugged into Pi, for debugging). The case came later, as well. Given cats and loose paperclips, I prioritised the case. ;-)

Expensive? Well, pop over to CJE and look at the price of spare parts for a RiscPC.
How much a replacement mouse, for instance? I can shove in any cheap mouse I buy at the supermarket. RiscPCs require a very specific type of mouse. Or an expensive interface.
What about if the onboard storage gives up the ghost? How much a PATA drive of a size that isn’t going to make the machine pee in fright? Me? A basic rule of thumb for French pricing used to be that a decent SD card will cost about a euro per gigabyte, though the price of larger (16/32) devices have been coming down.
How about of a surge (or repeated brownouts) cooks your power supply? How much a PSU for a RiscPC, plus how long to get it? As a stop-gap, both the Apple and Samsung chargers can output enough juice to run the Pi until I get a replacement…which can come from any supermarket for something in the region of €15.

Obviously all of these prices can be slashed if you are the sort of person who trawls through AliExpress. I’m not, I’ve seen enough snake oil in my life to know that a USB charger for a single solitary pound is an easy way to get my ugly mug in The Daily Fail with a story like “my phone blew up in bed and sizzled my <beeep>”.

Rick, the points you make would have more validity if everyone using old technology were your age and with your ability to tinker and mix-and-match. You’ll probably find that, more often then not, those who appear unwilling to change are of my age (give or take) – that is, into their seventh or eighth or even ninth decade. What appears obvious to you, might not appear so to them. As you age, which, with any luck, you’ll continue to do, you might find that as the flexibility of your body decreases, so does that of your mind.

Although I have a Pi1 and a Pi2, I’ve never made them my primary tool. I don’t have old hardware but I do have a 26-bit system in the form of VRPC running RISC OS 4.39. Thanks to Andrew Rawnsley, I have a lovely 3840×1080 RISC OS desktop spread over 2 screens. I shall miss it when I finally change.

I also have an ARMX6 and when I can afford (or rather, when my wife lets me buy) one of those lovely curved, widescreen Dell monitors (other manufacturers’ monitors are available), I will make the change to a RISC OS 5 system.

There’s another point you might have overlooked. Some older users might take the view that there’s no point in investing in a new system which might outlive them.

John

All we need now are Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! …

I’ve just emailed Barry Kauler (of Puppy Linux fame). We’ll see what comes of that!

I am now 78, creaky in mind and body, but the Raspberry Pi has been my only platform for RISC OS since it came out. The hulking great Iyonix box that sits sulking under my desk has not been used since I moved to Rpi2. I also have an Rpi3 with Raspbian. Not much point in using RISC OS on an Rpi3 until it can use wifi. Slowly I learn more about Linux, and marvel at it. I used to have an Advent Windows notebook for use with websites that NetSurf could not tackle, or for printing. But I can do all those things now with Raspbian, so the Advent may well join the Iyonix under my desk.

One thing I would like to see – the ROX desktop and filing system with Raspbian. Not young enough to attempt that, but no doubt somebody will do it.

the points you make would have more validity if everyone using old technology were your age and with your ability to tinker and mix-and-match.

I’m grey haired now, you know. ;-)

As for tinkering ability, I feel this is something the millennials missed out on. The generation when computers were just complicated boxes and tinkering was mostly just adding an upgrade or two.

What appears obvious to you, might not appear so to them.

I used to hear that a lot here, in the context of “I’m too old to learn French”. You are never too old to try new things, only old enough to choose to give up.

you might find that as the flexibility of your body decreases, so does that of your mind.

My mind has always been on the verge of crashing. ;-) I’m sure my mind could do so much more if I was able to concentrate from one end of a thought to the other…

Some older users might take the view that there’s no point in investing in a new system which might outlive them.

Hmm… that only makes sense of the use by date is fixed and preknown…

Some older users might take the view that there’s no point in investing in a new system which might outlive them.

Some might. Others of us might take the view that having a new system that outlives us is a good deal better than spending one’s last few years without one – or, alternatively, having to invest in a new and even more difficult-to-get-to-grips-with system even later in life.

There’s also the situation where the developer actually thinks recompiling a module with a new header marking it 32 bit and the compiler set for 32 bit output will magically convert those embedded bits of 26-bit cleverness into 32 bit compliant code. Mostly down to lack of real interest in the 32 bit machines.

Given who ROL’s developer(s) was (/were), that seems a little unlikely in the context of the A9home’s OS.

I don’t have enough time (got to force-feed grandchildren with chocolate, don’t you know) to answer each and every point raised by Rick, Gavin and Clive. Suffice it to say that my main point was that other people’s decisions shouldn’t be criticised through the prism of one’s own experience.

I think I used enough conditional statements to allow for some – if not many – of us wrinklies to follow and take advantage of the trajectory of current developments.

@ Rick. My father’s hair turned grey in his early 20s. The use-by-date doesn’t have to be either fixed or [pre]known for the condition implied by ‘might’ to be invalidated.

@ Clive. As you say, “some might”, which I agree with and your following point is something I agree with too.

@ Gavin. I agree with your opinion of Linux but I have it dual-booted with Win7 on my main desktop machine – not on either of the Pies. When I have my ARMX6 fully operational, Win7 will gradually be replaced as the non-RISC OS arm (no pun intended) of my computing experience.

other people’s decisions shouldn’t be criticised through the prism of one’s own experience.

That is logical. One’s own experience cannot count for every situation, one can only extrapolate from things they know. Example? I have no idea what it is like to be a girl (really obvious reasons…). Likewise everybody has their own reasons for using what they use.

However, the logical counterpoint is that the older machines are in their twenties, use parts that are harder/more expensive to maintain, consume much more power, and are running a version of the operating system that will never ever <Trump>never ever ever-ever</Trump> be updated.

In short, there are plenty of reasons why new is better…

I mean, 26 bit mode was an anachronism in the first printed ARM ARM, wasn’t the writing on the wall large enough to be read from a different county?

February 1996? By then, I think, the writing was already on a very different wall…

After the A5000, Acorn barely had enough resources to keep RISC OS relevant and current, let alone make it 32-bit and bring the developers along for the ride. The only reason that Pace did it was that there was no other choice for modern hardware, and for their intended usage the applications didn’t really matter (or could be worried about later on, in the context of what actually appears to have happened).

From a pragmatic, businesses perspective, ROL’s approach (keep it 32-bit and emulate the last really popular hardware platform) was the only sensible one. Even that was significantly limited, though, because — as I think even Justin found — there are limits to what you can improve or fix in the OS if most of your applications (eg. Eureka) are locked in aspic. Sort out the Global Clipboard? Add text selection and cut/paste to writeable icons? Oh, look: things have broken and the users aren’t happy…

These days, the reality is that the market is polarised into two extremes: those users who actually want to see RISC OS develop further, and those who just wish to carry on using what they’re familiar with. The latter are happy to hang on to the former’s coat tails where practical, but as soon as improvements don’t work on their system (whether that’s RISC OS 5, 6, 4 or even 3) and with the applications that they need to use, they’re not interested.

The problem is that the work is still being done by a small minority. But now, they’re often an unpaid minority, who are doing what the do in their spare time and for fun. Which is where issues like ZPP come in: I can see the arguments against High Vector ROMs, but as a passive user you don’t have much of a leg to stand on if the people developing your OS for you — for free — decide that ZPP is interesting for them to work on. It’s the same with a lot of software development, and is the reason why I move from project to project as things catch my interest.

It’s a tricky one, but I’m not sure that there’s an easy fix unless the users suddenly get some very deep pockets and RISC OS developers wish to do this as their day job…

It’s a tricky one, but I’m not sure that there’s an easy fix unless the users suddenly get some very deep pockets and RISC OS developers wish to do this as their day job…

Or some developers reach a certain age where they are semi retired and it brings in some additional money.

It is a difficult one and I think the discussion about ARM on ARM makes good sense in that you don’t have to throw things away and indeed you may gain depending on what applications you have and the current machine limitations. It also then makes sense as to why the work has been done for towards multi core use.

Still we can all dream and perhaps RISC OS Developments Ltd have a part to play..speaking of which back on thread less than a week to go to the show so why not go along and see what the ROOL epic announcement is all about and what part RISC OS Developments Ltd have to play in the future.