questions about risc os pico

Hello all! First of all I apologise for listing questions as I have done below. But I just wanted to ask a few questions about risc os pico. But here goes!

1. Will there be any new versions of risc os pico?

2. Is it possible to play a sampled sound (e.g. a .wav file) in risc os pico (I did try to look this up, but it looks complicated).

3. Is there any way to directly write characters to the screen other than using PRINT commands (e.g. by using the ‘?’ to write data to memory locations). The problem I’m having is (for example) if I use PRINT TAB to write to the screen at the bottom right of the screen (even if I follow the PRINT TAB with a ‘;’ the screen scrolls; I’m trying to write to that part of the screen without any scrolling).

4. If I type ‘*STATUS’ in risc os pico, it displays something called ‘FontSize’ which is set to 256K. But can this be used at all for displaying different fonts? (As far as I’m aware, risc os pico does not use the GUI, so no fonts)?

Thanks

ljones

3) You need to stop the cursor going onto the next line

MODE 28
COLOUR ON 1
CLS
PRINT TAB(79,59) "h";CHR$(8);
REPEAT UNTIL GET$ = "a"

Alternatively you can place text on the screen by using print after invoking VDU5 which allows you to print at the graphics coordinates eg

MODE 28
VDU5
GCOL ON 1
CLG
MOVE 100, 100
PRINT "h"

Note this version doesn’t move the cursor so doesn’t cause scrolling.

4)

To use outline fonts you need to use Font_Paint which is slightly more complicated as you have to Font_Find and Font_Lose any fonts you use.

I think we had another thread on sampled sounds. It isn’t easy “out of the box” (unless you convert them to RISC OS “beep-style” sound modules which probably limits you to 8bit mono. However, there are various add-on modules such as PlayIt, DataVox, DigitalRenderer etc that offer this kind of functionality. I’ve used PlayIt myself and it can play most sample formats in one command. However, if you need to do more complex things than just “play a sample”, you’ll want finer controls, in which case you’ll want one of the other solutions.

Also, more recently, Amcog’s new audio module does this, I think, and integrates nicely with BASIC from what I’m told. No first hand experience of using it, mind, but look here http://www.amcog-games.co.uk/rdsp.htm

VDU5 text is quite a bit more complicated. Isn’t there an OS_Byte or VDU call that controls what happens at the end of the line? [writing from my phone at work, else is look it up]

1. Will there be any new versions of risc os pico?

I think ROOL have said in the past that it was a one-off thing for BASIC’s 50th anniversary and they didn’t have any long-term plans to support it.

An ordinary Raspberry Pi ROM image can easily be configured to run in a Pico-like manner:

*opt 4,0
*configure language 13
*configure mode 7
*unplug bootfx

(Those instructions are now a few years old, so let me know if they don’t work anymore)

To use outline fonts you need to use Font_Paint which is slightly more complicated as you have to Font_Find and Font_Lose any fonts you use.

The problem there is that the font manager isn’t included in the Pico ROM, so those SWIs won’t be available.

Follow up: text scrolling behaviour (and loads of other stuff) is controlled with VDU 23,16… Using that is the only reliable way to put a character at the bottom right of the screen without the screen scrolling up (in standard VDU4 mode).