Equipment needed section

How about a section where people can ask for equipment (or software) they need to be donated? (And give their location).

For developers (of RISC OS or free RO software) it would be donated free (or for postage, if needed).

Non-devs would make a contribution/bounty to ROOL on behalf of the former owner.

I’m sure there are lots of people out there with piles of old kit, some of which could be useful to others.

About 12 years ago we at 4D had the ‘RPI’ RISC OS Programmers Initiative which sold at a significant discount RiscPC systems to programmers.
ROOL a few years ago had the ‘Development loan system’ Bounty also we at CJE/4D have given/loaned systems to a number of people in the last three years.
Though I’m not aware of anyone in the last couple of years who has been hampered by the need for hardware. I have actually offered equipment on loan to key people but they declined as they didn’t feel they would have the time to use it.

If there is a need then please let us know and I or others may well be able to help.

About 12 years ago we at 4D had the ‘RPI’ RISC OS Programmers Initiative which sold at a significant discount RiscPC systems to programmers.

That’s where my RiscPC came from. ;-)

A standard ARM610 RiscPC with RISC OS 3.6, 16MiB RAM, 1MiB VRAM, and the basic x86 card. I also got RISC OS 3.7 from you. Perfectly serviceable. Moreso after I got a second slice, another 16MiB SIMM, and an ARM710, plus added the Simtec IDE card for lots of storage.
It was quite a trade-up from an ancient A5000.

That was January 2001, so fourteen years ago. I feel really old now!

That was January 2001, so fourteen years ago. I feel really old now!

Yeah – I was 54 then!

As you sons of American mothers might say: Do the math!

Or, as we native speakers say: Work it out for yourself!

You feel old?

I wasn’t thinking so much of actual current RISC OS machines, (everyone has a Pi surely?), more peripherals, upgrades, spares etc. Perhaps even PCs for cross compiling.

 As you sons of American mothers might say: Do the math!

Ugh.

As a son of an American mother brought up in England I may have some strange speech patterns and phrases but one thing I can say for absolute certainty is that “math” should have an “s” at the end.

# She’s so cold and human / It’s something humans do / She stays so golden solo / She’s so number nine / She’s incredible math / Just incredible math…

That could be handy – occasionally I’ve thought ‘it would be neat if there was a RISC OS 5 driver for $Thing’, only if I don’t own such a $Thing so I’m not likely to look at this further. I could scour ebay for weeks until I find one, but that’s rather too much effort – it’s not really about the money as such.

Chris makes an important point: it’s important to set up the expectations right. There’s nothing worse than being given a £10 gadget and feeling this then has an obligation on you to work on it, or even worse a time limit. Developers will simply avoid the process as too much hassle. On the other hand, if a developer has a $Thing on their desk and a free Sunday afternoon then there’s a much greater chance of them writing for it than if they don’t.

So something a bit like a no-commitments Charity Stall for devs might work. Or maybe a pool of loan bits – a bit like a lending library where there are no fines and you can borrow things as long as you like.

If one of the suppliers was to set up a loan library of $Things to assist developers I for one would be prepared to throw in some cash to help!

How about a section where people can ask for equipment (or software) they need to be donated? (And give their location)

A very good idea, which I’d certainly make good use of. I’ve been looking at fixing the sound issues on the Pandaboard, but without one to test, it’s impossible. I’m certainly not going to buy one, but a loan to complete the development/testing would be great.

Can ROOL add a “Loan/Donate” forum on here to cover it?

The only issue that would need resolving, is what happens in the event of a piece of loaned equipment getting lost/stolen/broken or simply not returned.

I’ve loaned out several machines to people over the past two years, despite chasing I’ve yet to see any of them returned or any of the output people were going to do with the equipment. I’m particularly annoyed about the Iyonix that’s gone missing…thankfully a member of the community donated another to JASPP project so I could continue development.

Hi Jon, what do you need? Classic BeagleBoard or BeagleBoard-xM?

Classic BeagleBoard or BeagleBoard-xM?

Sorry, it’s the Pandaboard not BeagleBoard I need. I’ve updated my post.

Depending on exactly what you were planning on doing you might not even need a PandaBoard. Just take a (insert platform here) ROM and change the audio driver so that it only reports that it supports the highest sample rate (BB can do 96kHz, others can do at least 48kHz).

Depending on exactly what you were planning on doing

Trouble is, I don’t know exactly as I’m not sure where the issue is. I suspect its the software, but it could also be the values RISCOS passes down the audio chain. Probably not for discussion in this thread though as we’re going off-top.

I have a Pi and Iyonix, if either of those will support the default kHz the PandaBoard uses, I’d be immensely grateful if you could build said ROM and eMail it over to me ;)

ROOL have some equipment that has been loaned out in the past. We also have some that we could loan. I will ask them what they think about combining our efforts.

JASPP can contribute as well. Most of the equipment we have here is old Arcs, podules etc, but we can contribute to buying pooled kit that’s more applicable to today’s requirements.

Tell you what I could do with, a Pi laptop ;)