Pricey hobby, and can't use Windows

So the Mrs wanted to play a game that teaches you to think like a programmer so I fired up my gaming box. To my horror, I kept middle-clicking out of habit and getting frustrated context menus weren’t opening up! It was extremely frustrating.

RO has more charm than Windows, but it does make using Windows more of an effort, it seems.

I have easily sunk £260 this month into RO and I’ve not made a dent in my RO shopping list. T.T
If it wasn’t for the NutPi, that number would be a lot higher.

Ovation Pro is incredible. David Pilling has created a programmatic work of art, and I am quickly seeing RO becoming my preferred platform for writing and document creation. Got my network printer set up no problem too. Opted for the built-in postscript driver and using r-comp’s !lpr utility. Super easy to set up. Whole thing took 5 minutes, and I’m a RO5 novice. (although I am an HP printer expert)

This post is a very Ne mind dump, so sorry about that, but thought I should share.

I’m really grateful to people like you, James! People like you make RO viable (ish), which is of tremendous benefit to skinflints like me. I’ve spent under £100 all told on RO and gained enormous benefit.

But I have to admit that my main workhorse isn’t the Pi, it’s the Mac Mini – which altogether (including the monitor it shares with the Pi, but which I count as a Mac cost) has cost not much short of £1,000.

I still have a windoze laptop, which cost me £140, but it barely gets any use at all these days. (See http://clive.semmens.org.uk/index.html?RISCOS%2FAppsQ for what I use each system for.)

People like you make RO viable (ish)

That’s quite a compliment, thank you. I’m not entirely sure it’s deserved, though. xP

But I have to admit that my main workhorse isn’t the Pi, it’s the Mac Mini – which altogether (including the monitor it shares with the Pi, but which I count as a Mac cost) has cost not much short of £1,000.

I can believe it! The cost of the Apple tax! RO machines aren’t much cheaper though. I was planning to build a Titanium based computer, and couldn’t get the price bellow £749! I fear I may have to put it on the back burner for a bit.

See http://clive.semmens.org.uk/index.html?RISCOS%2FAppsQ for what I use each system for

Cool page. Perhaps I should write one? xD

Truth be told RO has the best text editors I have used in well over a decade. I even go to the lengths of sharing things via NFS just so I can use StrongEd or Zap. Trouble is recently NFS on RO seems to have become less transparent. That aside it’s light on resources and fast on low power (in watts) systems.

Besides hardware I think the only actual cost I’ve incurred is buying DDE. As much as I would have liked some of the software on NutPi, not being tied to the RPi and being able to download as opposed to playing a game of Postal Roulette won for me.
Have I got my money’s worth? No idea. But I do use DDE almost daily. I got it to fiddle with the OS and that’s what I use it for.

Cost breakdown is
Rpi3 kit – £45 (didn’t own one before I got into RO)
ePic – £55
DDE27 – £50
CJE/4D RTC module – £10
Ovation Pro – £100

I still have a big shopping list left.

Zachtronics do indeed make awesome games, and I’m not afraid to admit that a couple of them do go over my head.

Zachtronics do indeed make awesome games

I only own Infinifactory (which is alright) and TIS-100 (which is epic) never tried the others

I’m not afraid to admit that a couple of them do go over my head.

Mine too

I only own Infinifactory (which is alright) and TIS-100 (which is epic) never tried the others

I found Infinifactory pretty easy, since it’s based around (rudimentary) physics. It’s very easy to plan things out in a 3D space and understand how all the parts are going to work together. If you’re looking for something in a similar vein but harder, check out SpaceChem – the tight space constraints of the individual reactors and the more abstract nature of the interactions means you have to think outside the box a lot more often when coming up with solutions, let alone optimising them.

I found that TIS-100 became a bit tedious – it was a bit too much like writing actual assembly, except you’re forced to use a CPU with a rubbish instruction set. I found SHENZHEN I/O to be more enjoyable – you have a richer instruction set to play with, and the circuit-planning aspect has parallels with the larger SpaceChem levels where you have to plan out the connections between reactors. Some of the later levels also have some pretty tight space constraints, which is either a good or a bad thing depending on how quickly you find a design that fits!

(and in case you’re wondering, KOHCTPYKTOP is the one that went over my head – manually laying down silicon to build transistors is a bit above my pay-grade. Out of their main puzzle games, I think Ruckingenur II might be the only one I haven’t tried?)

I found that TIS-100 became a bit tedious – it was a bit too much like writing actual assembly, except you’re forced to use a CPU with a rubbish instruction set.

I’m a massive fan of minicomputers. The PDP-8, my favourite computer, has only a delicious 8 instructions. I think this is why I adore TIS-100 so much.

KOHCTPYKTOP is the one that went over my head

Not surprised. Would with me too.

Cost breakdown, RISCOS system:

Raspberry Pi Model B – Revision 2 512MB RAM – No Case / UK PSU for £34.99
7 Port USB Hub for the Raspberry Pi – UK for £9.99
Official Raspberry Pi 3 Universal Power Supply for £7.00
Official Raspberry Pi 3 Case – White/Red for £6.00
Raspberry Pi 3 – Model B for £32.00
(SD card, 120 GB Lacie USB drive inherited from obsolete PC laptop system)

Total: £92.98

Cost breakdown, Mac Mini system:

Macmini/2.6GHZ/8GB/1TB for £569
MagicTrackpad for £59
MagicKeyboard for £59
Philips 4K TV for £299
MorphX for £1.99

Total: £987.99

Apart from MorphX, no other separately purchased software on either system (sorry, software authors).

The PDP-8, my favourite computer, has only a delicious 8 instructions.

I’ve utterly forgotten the PDP-8 instruction set. It was the machine I cut my computing teeth on in the late 1960s – the department had one, with an 8096 word (12bit words) core, a 1" tape drive, and 7-hole paper tape punch and reader on a teletype. The first thing I wrote for it was a simple assembler that actually fitted, together with paper tape reader and writer, into the 8K words. The assembler the machine came with ran on the University’s ICL1905 machine – a much cleverer assembler than mine (and obviously far bigger than 8K words), but the wrong side of all the hassle getting anything run on the University machine (overnight runs only for us undergrads).

If you had access to a mainframe to program, why would you need a minicomputer?

Because access to the mainframe was restricted to submitting punched cards or paper tape for overnight runs, whereas I could get to sit at the PDP8’s teletype and get instant turnaround.

There were only 36 undergrads in the department, and only three of us were computer nerds. One of the staff used the PDP8 a fair bit, but the staff could use the mainframe for multiple daytime runs and the others didn’t bother with the PDP8. I don’t know how many of them used the computers at all.

submitting punched cards or paper tape for overnight runs

That’s really cool. Obviously it’s annoying, especially if you’ve made a mistake and are waiting only to be gutted by the result, but there’s a little charm to it too.

I could get to sit at the PDP8’s teletype and get instant turnaround.

Quite necessary to get to do something useful in a sensible time-frame. I do kind of love toggle-switching aspect to programming. Flicking 2 octets at a time. I do love how fantastically loud the paper tape interface on the teletype is though. Feels like something important is happening. Haha

Obviously it’s annoying

Master of understatement you are! 8~)

I do kind of love toggle-switching aspect to programming

One did get pretty quick at putting in the 23 words needed to run the paper tape reader in “stupid” mode so you could load the 80-odd word “clever” paper tape reader, every time you accidentally overwrote the latter. At least with core storage you didn’t lose memory contents every time you turned the machine off.

especially if you’ve made a mistake and are waiting only to be gutted by the result,

On the other hand, one learned to program correctly. Unlike this modern rubbish that is rushed out the door the moment it actually builds.

On the other hand, one learned to program correctly.

But very, very slowly! Having that restricted access to a big, (relatively) powerful machine as well as the PDP8 was the best of both worlds, really. We could do things on the big machine that were impossible on the little one, so we did use both.

We had Fortran on the big machine – there’s posh!

At least with core storage you didn’t lose memory contents every time you turned the machine off

Very true! No powercuts loosing your progress! Crazy expensive at the time, though. An old manager of mine told me a story when he was working on some DEC computer, and he dropped the core memory! He burst into tears. Think I would too.

We had Fortran on the big machine – there’s posh!

I saw a demo of 4k fortran on the PDP-8

I saw a demo of 4k fortran on the PDP-8

I was very proud of squeezing a rather primitive assembler into 8K (12K bytes, except organized as 8K x 12 bits words of course).

I was very proud of squeezing a rather primitive assembler into 8K

I would be too1 I’ve never been able to do anything I can be proud of in assembly. I could get small binaries in C! I just don’t have the brain for it. T.T

I have easily sunk £260 this month

I’m not sure I’d call it pricey, exactly, as like many hobbies it’s a one off initial price (you don’t need to buy a DTP product every month). Consider enjoying a proper quadcopter, photography with a decent DSLR, woodworking, etc. Most things will have an initial cost.

Cost breakdown? No real idea. I can guess, but I bought stuff in bits (I initially used the composite video!), stuff was recycled, and the monitor came from a boot sale. Helps to spread the cost around.

But very, very slowly!

Slightly more modern – serious stuff for the Beeb came on ROMs. A dodgy ROM could bankrupt a company or slaughter it’s reputation, so the software had to work well out of the blister wrap. That’s not to say that there were no bugs, but certainly the current mindset of treating customers as an extended beta cycle didn’t exist back then.
I could say that there’s a use in having flash memory to permit devices to be upgraded in situ. But I could counter that by listing the upsetting number of things with update capabilities that will never ever see a single update.

I was very proud of squeezing a rather primitive assembler into 8K

Do you still have this? It would be an interesting from a historical perspective. Just as the ARMs powering most of the world’s smartphones can ultimately be traced back to the Acorn System 1…

it’s a one off initial price

But that is big for RO. I could easily loose another £1000 without trying.

Do you still have this?

Sadly, no, long gone. I think the oldest programs I wrote that I still have are some fast arithmetic routines I squeezed into page zero on a BBC Model B using self-modifying code. I’ve only got those because Personal Computer World published them. I originally wrote them for real-time satellite tracking for a research project – it really was pushing the limit of what could be squeezed out of the Beeb. I’ve still got a few non-computer related things from undergrad days that I was proud of – a report on a pneumatic system for transferring radioactive samples between shielded areas (probably classified but who cares?), and an analysis of tritium production for fusion reactors (that’s on my website – definitely NOT classified).

But that is big for RO.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

There’s a reason my first RISC OS machine was an A3000…

http://heyrick.co.uk/random/acorn_september1989_retail_price_list.pdf

I could easily loose another £1000 without trying.

I could probably do that here: http://www.satsuki.fr/ there’s a lot of nice stuff there.

Kasugai melon gummy – lovely
Honey and yuzu sweets – sublime
Rice that tastes like something (sticky rice), though I got my last bag from http://www.nishikidori.com/en/rice/1133-koshihikari-rice-from-toyama-5kg.html because it’s just a ways (~40 miles?) down the road.
There’s a reason Oyakata ramen shoyu cup noodle is often out of stock. It makes a childhood of Pot Noodle seem like a cruel joke.
Not to mention proper Japanese soy sauce, not that awful over-salted Chinese muck.
Special mention to this which goes with so many things: http://www.satsuki.fr/sauce-pour-yakitori-250ml.htm

There’s a reason my first RISC OS machine was an A3000…

Irrelevant in 2017. It’s not cheap by today’s standards for modern hardware.