RISC OS for a real newbie

Hello,

Laurent from France,
first sorry for my english

I hate Windows, hate Linux… and want a real easy OS for a little computer for less than 50$/£. is RISC OS the real solution ?

1. Which computer should I buy ? Rasp PI ? PandaBoard ? BeagleBoard ? Another one ?

2. I have seen that we can boot direct to BBC basic whith RISC OS PICO. That’s great ! Retro & easy, i Love !
It is possible to do the same thing with some other applications like emulators ? I don’t want to go to the windowed OS but go direct to the emulators when I switch ON the computer, i a few seconds. Possible ?

Thank you if you can help

Best Regards
laurent

Your budget limits you to the Raspberry Pi.

Salut Laurent!

Au première, désolé pour mon mauvais Française.

Le moins cher? C’est le Rasp Pi. RISC OS est très bon sur le Pi (j’écris cet message sur un Pi!).

Mais, il y une question à poser: pourquoi? Vous anticipé de faire quoi avec votre petit ordinateur?
Le plupart des choses marche sur l’environnement graphique. RISC OS n’est pas difficile, et c’est bien vite. Vous peut écrire les logiciels en BASIC sur BASIC (comme les années 80!), mais si vous prendre le temp pour essayer de faire même avec Zap ou StrongEd, c’est beaucoup plus agréable; surtout quand vous pouvez mettre le code source et les docus côté à côté. :-)

Rick (dépt. 35/44).

ok thank for your reply and good french !

- ok, I will start with Rasp Pi ! So the others are more powerfull ?

- I will try the graphic OS of course, but in the same time I try a make a personal retrocomputer wich can boot direct to basic (like RISC OS PICO) or emulators. I know that with Archi Linux we can have a very fast boot for example.

New question :

Can we find a all-in-one keyboard for Rasp Pi, or Panda, Beagle… to look like a Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum ?

Laurent

So the others are more powerfull ?

The Pi is a bit backwards. It has a “slow” and “old” ARM under the control of a very nice and damned powerful GPU. That said, an ARM11 core at about 800MHz¹ is nothing to ridicule.

The Beagle (original) has, if I remember correctly, a Cortex-A8 clocking about the same as a Pi with TI’s rather mediocre graphics capabilities.

The Beagle xM runs a Cortex-A8 at 1GHz, it is quite a nice setup which is let down again by mediocre graphics. It doesn’t like my monitor (1024×1280), it doesn’t like my HDMI→VGA dongle (lots of fiddling before I can see a 1024×768 display), it doesn’t like switching screen mode (usually goes into sulk of darkness)²…compare to the Pi where I just configure it to be “this sort of display” and plug it in and stuff just works.

The Panda? Don’t recall the specs but it is a later OMAP so expect better CPU and faster (1.5GHz?).

Can we find a all-in-one keyboard for Rasp Pi, or Panda, Beagle… to look like a Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum ?

Not that I’m aware. The problem is the keyboard interface is USB, so to build this yourself you would need some sort of microcontroller (PIC? AVR?) that can scan the keyboard matrix, work out what keys are being pressed, then fake being a USB HID (keyboard).

You might also run into problems due to the C64/Speccy keyboards having rather fewer keys than are expected these days. Do either have an F12 key? How about Ctrl? Alt?

¹ Can be altered in the CONFIG.TXT file.

² Although, in TI/HDMI’s defence, it is possible that RISC OS is doing something weird like clocking the modes in a way that made sense in the late eighties, but not so much nowadays…

Can we find a all-in-one keyboard for Rasp Pi, or Panda, Beagle… to look like a Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum ?

I have build this one but the parts I used (without Rasberry Pi) already cost around 100,-€. With a little bit time, I can build more.

Maybe the Raspberry Pi Fuze is an alternative.

thanks Rick for your great reply

Raik, your personnal keyboard is impressive !. How to you have made the case&keyboard ? With an old PC keyboard ??

The case is a modifyed keyboard case for industryal use.
The wireless keyboard I disassembled is from Pearl and also aviable in france, a hub, any cable and any handmade parts.

My forum (GAMOPAT in France) want to produce a PFGA computer for about 100 machines (a MSX machine)… And we are looking for the best solution to include the little PCB inside a keyboard.

We cannot find a “kit” do to that.

Don’t know if you can help with a good solution for 100 items ?

No ;-) Do not kill a MSX-Computer. I’m a MSX junkie. I have my old working VG8235 here.
Maybe I can help. Please send a mail via the contact form of my http://riscos.openpandora.org. But note, I’m not at home the next few days. So I’m not very fast with a answer.

done for the mail

Another newbie question : What is the best website for download RISC OS games & emulators ?

Not sure about websites, but take a look at !PackMan and !Store, these a store/package manager applications which come with the standard RISC OS install on Raspberry Pi.

I use a Pi and have considered going to Pandaboard for a bit more speed, but really, the Pi is plenty, and I find it works so well with a HDMI screen. It’s an incredible amount of computer for the money.

What is the best website for download RISC OS games & emulators ?

Google.
(^_^)

Start here: http://forums.jaspp.org.uk:9000/forum/

thanks again

What does mean : "To run the game use “Boot floppy” from the ADFFS Filer"

What is ADFFS ?

Does it mean that we can boot direct to the game without launching the full OS ?

No, it means you ‘mount’ the disk image in the RISC OS Filer, then press MENU over the ADFFS icon and choose ‘boot floppy’. This simulates whatever the loading instructions were for the original game (some were SHIFT/BREAK, some were running an app or random executable file).

This simulates whatever the loading instructions were for the original game

Or not… All I get is an inability to find the command GOJITARM3.

:-( Guess I won’t be playing Populous then.