Starting Out!

Years ago my uncle had an Acorn Archimedes, it was the first computer I ever used and I was disappointed when later I discovered that Acorn was no more.

Years later I discover that Acorn lives on in spirit in the form of riscOS; the ghost in the machine is not dead.

Now I would like to rejoin the ranks of the risc users but don’t know where to begin. Can you help?

What hardware do I need?
What do I need to know before I begin?

Any suggestions or input welcome!

Hardware wise, your best bet is the Raspberry Pi – these can be had for less than £50. You do need to provide your own mouse, keyboard and monitor, but modern TV sets can be used as a monitor. I suggest you go for a Pi 2 or Pi 3 as they are less costly and provide you with the full RISC OS experience. Be sure to pick one with an Ethernet port.

The most full-featured RISC OS release currently available is RISC OS Direct – this is an SD card image that you will need to copy to a microSD card using a utility such as Win32DiskImager or Etcher. Alternatively, ROOL will sell you an SD card with RISC OS preloaded – this isn’t the full “RISC OS Direct” package, but it will get you started.

As for bedtime reading, you could do worse than the RISC OS 5 User Guide, available from the Miscellaneous Downloads page on this site. Online tutorials (etc.) can be found via Introduction to RISC OS.

Hardware wise, your best bet is the Raspberry Pi – these can be had for less than £50.

Even quicker startup into bringing you back up to speed is RPCEmu which you will find details of here: https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/RPCEmu%20and%20RISC%20OS%205%20on%20Windows if you have a PC

Some distance from a perfect emulation, but for someone starting out it’s a simple set of downloads that cost nothing.
Once you have the bug bite you then you will be eager to collect the RPi from the delivery guys hands – because of course you ordered one within hours of playing with the stuff in your RPCEmu install :)

The above are the 2 cheapest ways back to RISC OS, but more machines are available, ranging from full desktop machines to laptops. I should mention just in case, that the latest Raspberry, the PI 4 is not supported yet (they need new USB and Ethernet drivers).

The report, images and videos from the latest show should give you an idea on what can be found.

Find your nearest user group and go along for plenty of friendly advice and to see some of the options in action – https://www.riscository.com/calendar/

Find your nearest user group
– https://www.riscository.com/calendar/

The address for MUG meetings is out of date. We’ve movedto Wychbold.
I have asked Vince to update.

I, too, have just renewed my acquaintance with RISC OS, having bought myself a Raspberry Pi model 3B+, and installed the RISC OS Direct image. Amazing seeing RISC OS on my screen again after so many years of MacOS and Windows. However, frustration set in when i realised i may not be able to use my printer, unless i save files as PDFs and copy them to my PC. Is there a comprehensive source of printer definition files available for RISC OS? Thanks for any help.

A USB connected printer with a standard emulation mode such as PCL5 or ESC/P or Postscript 2 or 3 can use one of the standard printer definition files in Printers. An ethernet connected printer is also OK.

Another alternative (not cheap, but only has to be bought once) is UniPrint. This passes network print jobs (and other things – it does quite a lot) over to a PC on the network for printing (can also be made to work on Mac, and probably Linux, via Wine). This allows any printer at all to be used from RISC OS at high/best quality. Downside is that the PC needs to be on.

Otherwise, most RISC OS users will end up settling on some form of postscript laser, as those tend to be the easiest to get working, and drivers exist for most features (colour, duplex, network etc).

For inkjets, you’ll likely need to use Gutenprint from MW-Software. http://www.mw-software.com/software/gutenprint/supported.html
Last updated 2010, though, so your mileage may vary.

Side note – a number of printers will actually accept PDF files natively now, too.

Downside is that the PC needs to be on.

A pretty big downside if your Pi consumes a couple of watts, and your PC is a big box that consumes a couple of hundred.

most RISC OS users will end up settling on some form of postscript laser, as those tend to be the easiest to get working,

Alternatively, it seems quite a few of the less expensive (ie non-Postscript) laser printers understand PCL data, even if it doesn’t say so on the box or in the capabilities. Clearly this is a case of “ask around, see if others have it working” or “just try it, see if it works” for existing printers.

I have a Samsung SL-M2022W laser printer (connected to my router via WiFi, as is the Pi, no wires here!). It supports AirPrint, it’s own proprietary protocol, and comes with drivers for a PC (with an app for Android, and it just works with iOS).

So no hope for RISC OS right?
Wrong.
It’s perfectly happy with RemotePrinterFS sending it 600dpi prints using the standard HP LaserJet 6 driver.

Sure, the 600dpi is less than the rated 1200dpi, but you’d be hard pushed to tell much difference, and anyway 600dpi from RISC OS is better than whatever the Android driver outputs (not to mention the printer driver’s error diffused dithering is far superior as well, so good results).

Side note – a number of printers will actually accept PDF files natively now, too.

More and more WiFi-capable printers are supporting IPP Everywhere. My Samsung laser doesn’t (too old), but my HP inkjet claims to. Perhaps when IPP Everywhere is more widespread, ROOL or ROD may want to think about viability of supporting it? Because that would open up direct access to a range of modern printers.

A pretty big downside if your Pi consumes a couple of watts, and your PC is a big box that consumes a couple of hundred.

It is on my list of thinngs to do – put a power meter onto the PC supply.

But in the meantime, I have removed the power hungry (and VERY NOISY) videoo card and replaced the power hungry (and also noisy) spinning rust with solid state. It certainly feels a lot cooler than it did and I can only just hear it.

I only use it over remote desktop from a RO Ras Pi.

Ok Cool. Thanks for that. Now I’m just wondering how connectable a risc raspberry pi is, Will I be able to plug in USB hard drives for example?

My RPi2 issue 1 has 2 USB HDs connected via a USB hub, one reporting as 460Gb separately powered and the second as 932Gb powered through the hub.

Will I be able to plug in USB hard drives for example?

I now only use filecore formatted USB hard drives (in my case SSD or mSATA). The SD card(s) now only contains the half dozen or so files need for the Pi to boot.

My RPi2 issue 1 has 2 USB HDs connected via a USB hub

I probably should have added that the drives are FAT formatted and are read by Fat32fs – makes no practical difference except that their contents could be read by an alternative OS in case of disaster, need, or whatever – I have loads of MP3 files, for example, which are (possibly?) more salvagable on a FAT disc?

I didn’t really think it through, it more-or-less just happened that way!

Anyway, the end-of-the-world is just around the corner (see threads on Aldershot).

for example, which are (possibly?) more salvagable on a FAT disc?

Perhaps, so long as you don’t use Microsoft’s chkdsk to try to fix the structure. In my experience it has a habit of throwing data away and replacing random stuff with sectors of zeroes. As you can imagine, this doesn’t work so well in executables.

It probably depends upon how the failure happened – a non-responsive disc is toast no matter what format.

I have loads of MP3 files

Me too, and MP4. Not to mention a tonne of photos. For the video, I have several USB harddiscs and some stuff is copied on multiple drives. For MP3 and photos, there are multiple drive copies and copies on DVD-R.

The best prevention against failure or corruption is multiple copies on different devices.

Anyway, the end-of-the-world is just around the corner

Isn’t it always? :-) No, I’m not being flippant – between wars, economic crises, infectious lurgies, and insane dictators, there’s always something that could bring about “the end of the world”. Problem is, we’re all going to freak out over the COVID-19 thing and the stock market chaos that’s happening as a result of it, so we’ll completely miss the bus-sized lump of rock that’ll slam into Austin, TX at half five next Friday…

he bus-sized lump of rock that’ll slam into Austin, TX at half five next Friday

That’ll be quite exciting for Texans and interesting for the rest of us, but bus-sized isn’t end-of-the-world stuff.

True. I had to start with a 100 metre lump of iron to get something that would be sort of bus sized by the time it makes it through the atmosphere (45 degree, 32km/sec). Vaporises four kilometres, and creates a 6.4 earthquake at a distance of 25km. But then there’s the thermal radiation to deal with.

Drop that in Texas, I’m sure it’ll have big repercussions.

Will I be able to plug in USB hard drives for example?

Yes. The caveat concerns the format to use.

I use a SanDisk SSD (SATA interface, via SATA-USB adapter bought from eBay) with my RasPi. Since the drive is dedicated to RISC OS, it’s Filecore formatted. That’s the natural RISC OS format, so everything works beautifully. Spinning rust is equally successful.

No other format works quite that well. For interchange with other OS’s by moving the USB device from computer to computer, the only other format realistically is FAT32, which you can access on RISC OS with FAT32FS, but you’ll find that some filetype information may not transfer between systems. The file data will all be there, just not necessarily the filetype.

the only other format realistically is FAT32, which you can access on RISC OS with FAT32FS, but you’ll find that some filetype information may not transfer between systems. The file data will all be there, just not necessarily the filetype.

Sorry – in my experience it all just works within RISC OS.

Under what circumstances might this present itself as a problem?

Are you speaking from experience?

Thank you very much for all your help. And sorry to keep bothering you with further questions. I am not particularly competant with the inner workings of IT systems or computers and I am nuturally used to everything being plug-and-play. I will learn as I go on of course but at this moment I am somewhat naive.

If for example I used a Pi Zero with an accessory such as this: https://www.reichelt.com/gb/en/raspberry-pi-zero-network-converter-3-port-usb-hub-white-r-rpiz-multi-hub-p223619.html?&nbc=1&trstct=lsbght_sldr::222531 would I be able to connect to the internet and used the USB ports?

And will this work?

https://sixfab.com/product/raspberry-pi-4g-lte-modem-kit/

would I be able to connect to the internet and used the USB ports?

Unfortunately, that particular one uses the Realtek chipset, which RISC OS doesn’t support.

A full list of supported Ethernet chipsets can be found here from which you should be able to extract chipsets such as AX88772, AX88172, SMSC75XX and so on.

The AX88772 chipset is readily available – I’m not sure if the others are still current.

I can’t comment on the LTE HAT, sorry.

Thank you Stuart!

It’s too complicated for me. I think I’m just going to buy a 3B+! 😂