arm64

Am I the only one that is very happy with what we have , in terms of hardware and software?

No. I am very happy with what we have. But everything that is borders on something that is not, and I have a an itch to know that something.

Am I the only one that is very happy with what we have, in terms of hardware and software?

No, I’m pretty happy in terms of hardware. For software it’s mainly the web browsing side of things that needs improvement, and I think you’re working on that!

I’m pretty happy with what we have, in hardware and software. My only real worries are (a) how long will my hardware last, and will I be able to replace it with something that runs the software I currently use on the Pi when it finally dies? and (b) will the rest of the world remain compatible with the means of communication available to the Pi?

With sterling help from Stuart Painting, Dave Pitt & Martin Avison, I’ve now got improved communication with other systems (I was entirely dependent on email); this is a great bonus. I’m very grateful to them for that. Other things that will be bonuses may turn up. But at the moment I’m very happy – the Pi does the things I want the Pi to do; other stuff I do on the Mac.

Horses for courses: http://clive.semmens.org.uk/RISCOS/index.php?AppsQ

Being positive gets you anywhere you really want, and nothing less.

(Un)fortunately, being positive gets you nowhere. Long, hard work combined with good ideas in a great team might get you somewhere. And likely not where you initially wanted to go!

I kind of hung back on this thread because I wasn’t certain of the human-ness of the OP.

Clive, are you familiar with the story of PalmOS? Long story short, it used to run on m68k. Palm sold off something they shouldn’t have and did something very strange. They reimplemented the core of their OS in ARM and set it up so everything else ran by default in an m68k emulator. The m68k code would still talk to the ARM OS via it’s APIs. Sort of like QEMU running a non native application on another architecture.
It was possible to write ARM code for Palm, but it required a special m68k dance as a prelude being allowed access to the underlying architecture to execute ARM code.

What am I rambling on about? I guess that there are always ways to maintain a level of compatibility. Given RO uses SWIs as the conduit between application and OS (I’m well aware there are exceptions) it is possible to move forward. To be quite honest, the Linux port already does all this, at least as far as I know.

I guess that there are always ways to maintain a level of compatibility.

Sure. But there may come a point where it becomes more trouble than it’s worth for those for whom it is actually possible, which then leaves those who depend on their skills adrift. To be honest, I doubt that’s likely to happen to me because I’m fairly confident RISCOS will outlast me. I’m 69, I’d be very lucky to last another thirty years.

I kind of hung back on this thread because I wasn’t certain of the human-ness of the OP.

Me too. Harmless whatever though.

Asus and Mecer Xpression Chromebooks use the Rockchip RK3399 and RK3288 arm64 processors respectively. Be great to disassemble their rom as a way to develop RISC4ALL (Risc OS 64-bit) for and on them, while both have fairly decent connectivity, esp Asus.

Just like to find the simplest board that no one like Google/Android have hogged yet, from the point of view of having more chance of obtaining documentation maybe through an importer, why pursuing more info on the Rock Pi 4 here in South Africa, yet have to be from tomorrow cos is a public holiday here today, Mon.

Maybe a good and superb time of the year to dig up stuff on it now, and nip that process in the bud soon. Africa and SA are primarily under a diverse Chinese influence and promotion, whereas this website clearly has a British image and flavour, so need a back door to get what we`re hungry for beyond mere business.

To Gavin W: exactly, my mindset too

To Michael G and Mathew P: Being happy with what you have indicates a positive position of strength, from (more than “on”) which to be able to advance forward exploring new technology for power, speed, quality and flexibility like never before, as the hobbyist quest dictates, being simply fun progress. We`re all here for curiosity and likely open for more.

To Clive S: just acquired two fab legacy Lenovo i7 W510 laptops, fully loaded, of which maybe turning one into a Hackintosh. You have your Mac OS and some like me our x64PC`s, both to compliment a less versatile Raspberry RO. New technology and even an ARM64 Risc OS opens up access to enjoying the new techno age. Why not one strong adaquate platform to cater natively for everything and more, as well as development self-sufficiently.

To Steffen H: we can be positively creative from hereon cos we have a clear project to enjoy tackling if we want. I`m just new and fresh and keen as hell, so don`t ever mind me, ha ha.

JF: Complement, not compliment.

I used to have Windows, but Windows 10 killed Migrainesoft for me. The only thing I continued to use on Windoze was Microsoft ICE, and I’ve found (free) software for that function on Mac now, so I’ve no Microsoft software in use at all any more, except when I’m on the move – and the sooner I can afford a Macbook the happier I’ll be.

I’m perfectly happy running Mac and Pi as two separate systems, because RISCOS is hackable by semi-nerds like me, whereas the Mac is very unhackable by semi-nerds like me, and I like the hackability of RISCOS, and don’t want an all-singing, all-dancing new RISCOS that I won’t be able to hack. Hell, I can write in Assembler on RISCOS. I don’t want to try to learn ARM64 assembler at my age, never mind a whole effectively new operating system.

JF: My advice is to spend some time getting to know RISC OS as it currently stands on some supported hardware rather than dreaming of a 64-bit future which may well be beyond us for the foreseeable future.

which to be able to advance forward

1. Has any one ever noted an advance backward?
2. “advance forward” – simpler phraseolgy now but still tautological.

Now Hackintosh is quite interesting. A Hackintosh portable with a bigger screen than a Macbook Pro 15" (doesn’t need to be quite that pixel count, but a good resolution would be nice) at a fraction of a Macbook Pro 15" price would be very interesting indeed. Very happy with my Mac Mini with a 4K, 43" screen for the desktop, but an affordable hackintosh with a decent size screen that I can take here and there would be fabulous.

To follow what Clive and Stuart has said, the 64 bit API will necessitate a new API and then there’s the processor… In other words, it’s going to be a total breaking change.
As such, I have little concern about RISC OS going 64 bit. Maybe some day, but how about we concentrate on more pressing concerns like Bluetooth, WiFi, making use of the other three cores……..

Has any one ever noted an advance backward?

The Italian army?

And then we’d need Aemulator64 or its like.

To put this to bed, has anyone recently done an estimate of porting the whole system to C? I think it’d take longer than it took to write it in the first place. edit: And that all that effort should be put into improving what we’ve got.

My snowblower has two reverse gears…

Clive S: I compliment your complement observation, the damn key moved, I swear. ha ha…….

OK, been mildly brainstorming today over any obstacles to circumvent, and if you think I`ve been ridiculous until now since this subject began on Friday, you ain`t seen nothing yet. Empathise fully with typical hassles writing code and finding suitable software to work with, including soft- and hardware platform, one level after another, so here goes:

OUR OWN MAINBOARD !!!!!!!!! FUNK all the coding obstacles, cos then can create own BIOS and ROM, and Operating System on- or offchip, and subsequently every utility, language, emulator, disassembler, game, office program, you name it, original and from scratch, binary bits and all……imagine how much easier to develop anything, and everything legal and accessible….hackers and hobbyists of the world unite…

This site has terrific bargaining power for any manufacturer cos we have a team of brilliant programmers hungry to get their hands dirty with ingenious clean strong coding, and theoretically for starters warrant that kind of freedom to program from bottom up, by a superior hobbyist culture.

Why pick up the crumbs off Microsoft or Unix/Linux/BSD or Apple`s table any longer….it`s about time this group is recognized for the potential to create as well as anyone else, while control the whole process from processor instruction set up……

So, we negotiate with a manufacturer for a new board that they have produced not needing the outlay cost of a prototype……minimum USB3 X 2, gigabit ethernet, up to ac wifi, bluetooth, hexacore (8 cores) and up to 4 GB memory, and complete documentation, even if only in a text file, yes, that new, and uptodate for the public and our fun in reverse order for sure.

This site has terrific bargaining power for any manufacturer cos we have a team of brilliant programmers hungry to get their hands dirty with ingenious clean strong coding,

Wherever that team has been hiding up until now, please put me in contact with them, I’d like them to do some really important work.

OUR OWN MAINBOARD !!!!!!!!!

You’re a bit late with that idea don’t you think? After all Elesar have had boards with RISC OS (or Linux as an option) available for some while (like 2015).
Both R-Comp and CJE Micros sell machines based on them.

The R-Comp page is less obvious (Richard seems better at making than advertising, how that affects sales I don’t know) but read the text and contact them for details, or with the CJE offering just follow the links and order.

has anyone recently done an estimate of porting the whole system to C?

It would probably make more sense to do it in parts (yay modularity), but not a lot has happened in that respect. Probably more logical to enhance what we have than to spend a long time writing something that behaves the same as the current system.

And, even so, RISC OS is tied to the ARM architecture, so it’s pretty likely that whatever language it ends up written in (even if all in C), it’ll be a huge breaking change to go 64 bit.

and if you think I`ve been ridiculous until now since this subject began on Friday, you ain`t seen nothing yet.

That…does not inspire confidence.

OUR OWN MAINBOARD !!!!!!!!!

<sigh> Titanium mean anything to you?

Here, I’ll give you a friendly clicky-link: http://shop.elesar.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=51

cos then can create own BIOS and ROM,

We have no need of a BIOS. Maybe a recovery reflash tool if the board can’t boot directly from some sort of media, but no BIOS…

and Operating System on- or offchip,

On or off chip? What are you talking about?

and subsequently every utility, language, emulator, disassembler, game, office program, you name it, original and from scratch,

OMFG.

Have you any idea how many man hours it would take to write, say, a modern office suite? A web browser? An emulator? A compiler that doesn’t output bollocks?

This site has terrific bargaining power for any manufacturer

Oh, I see. You’re a teenager.

Because if you were actually an adult, you would understand that the reply to that is “money, dear boy”. A small operating system unknown to many in the world is not going to make manufacturers money. That’s why my HP Deskjet 3630 does not come with a RISC OS driver. Our entire budget for the creation of RISC OS, since its inception, indeed let’s be generous and include the ENTIRE RISC OS market since 1987. Got a figure in your head? Well, it’s probably less than Microsoft’s yearly expenditure on toilet paper.
So remind me, what’s this bargaining power you speak of?

cos we have a team of brilliant programmers hungry to get their hands dirty with ingenious clean strong coding

Funny, I thought we only had the one Jeffrey…

it`s about time this group is recognized for the potential to create as well as anyone else,

Definitely a teenager. And likely closer the single digit side of the scale.

When you grow up, you’ll understand that the system is unfair and the little guy gets screwed all the time. Money doesn’t fall out of the air. For everybody who “makes a killing on the markets” there’s a flip side of broken dreams and bankruptcies. For every big Internet based company, there are many who get their ideas ripped off by such with no recourse nor payment. For every company executive that takes reckless gambles with the company pension…well, HE will be alright. The people retiring, on the other hand.

We can create, certainly. Maybe as good as everybody else. Maybe better. But don’t expect recognition. Ain’t gonna happen.

hexacore (8 cores)

I think you’ll find hex is 16 (as in hexadecimal, duh). You meant octacore. But, frankly, anything that’s a plural is wasted on RISC OS as it currently exists…

and complete documentation,

Dream on dude, there’s a ton of stuff that’s covered in NDAs, trade secrets, and the like. Remember I told you about that huge detailed OMAP3 technical reference? Well, it doesn’t cover the GPU side of things. At all. There’s info in there using the graphics as a framebuffer. The accelerated stuff is NDA. Surprise surprise, so’s the Pi’s one.

THIS WILL NOT CHANGE.

Why? Well, there’s a company that makes simple little oscilloscopes based around an STM32 chip. Single channel, fairly reliable up to 100kHz (it uses the ADC to sample waveforms), claims to sample up to 500kHz though it’s attempt at showing me a composite video waveform was…a bit poor.
Why am I saying this?
Simple. The first one I bought (from Amazon) was a fake. An open design with open firmware that Chinese outfits simply cloned. And the fake works about as well as the real thing (my DSO Shell that I built later was real). These (real) kits sell for like twenty euros on banggood.com – you wouldn’t have thought there would be margins worth cloning the thing, but they do.
There’s nothing the Chinese won’t copy if they could – which is why some stuff is simply not ever going to be documented.

[There’s a bit of irony in the fact that the three books (PDF) documenting the TI chip in my PVR (~200MHz ARM9 plus ~100MHz DSP) was NDA restricted to the point where TI didn’t want to waste time talking to me…so with the help of Google Translate, I downloaded it…from China…]

Here, I’ll give you a friendly clicky-link

Did that already.

We have no need of a BIOS. Maybe a recovery reflash tool if the board can’t boot directly from some sort of media, but no BIOS…

Sounds like a simple switch to select between onboard flash or SD card/whatever.
That said, why put the flash on there unless it’s a cheaper or faster option than a socket and micro-SD card?

Since Friday, there have been enough viewpoints around a 64-bit Risc OS concept to indicate a potential cohesive group of enthusiasts ready to collaborate and tackle anything even just for the challenge, as long as there is some coding substance to work with, in spite of a possible majority consensus at this stage that prefers to “enhance” the current RO, whereas there exists a certain aspiration to consider “what if?”.

Th right circumstances will bring programmers out the woodwork from anywhere to give something new a shot, cos it`s about bringing out the best in humans that allows this ambitious idea to hold water and be feasible. Seems that there`s absolutely no harm in being a kid again with their kind of clear enthusiasm that us older can only envy and emulate, while roles become reversed as in the child inspiring the adult.

To Steve P: better late than never, and there`s an advantage in approaching a new mainboard concept freshly, since in the first place, they`re unusable for our 64-bit purposes, and the latest Raspberry Pi 3 A/B+ too, cos they simply don`t qualify for exploring a major change like ARM64 as a whole new ballgame, with ongoing continuity a very real and achievable goal that the passionate journey alone and mainly will determine.

Is this all just idealistic, hell, yeh. for sure, and what a great place to start. Not talking about what other boards can do and are doing and have done, cos focussing on one, can call it RISCPC, that serves all purposes, including the ability to develop on AND run 64-bit RISK4ALL as the standard user computer. There is integrity in the world today to appeal to expose, that exists to make our cause possible and likely.

To Rick M: you`re thorough in your analysis of everything said and claimed here, now that is the quality of interest we draw from and benefit by. Oh yes, octa is 8 and hexa 16, yet the latter named Rockchip RK3399 CPU has 8 cores according to the specs. About being “ridiculous” and “ain`t seen nothing yet”, said with tongue in cheek as my inclination to laugh at myself and empathize with others perceiving these ideas and my particular expression of them here……

Of course money is involved, and I`ve been an IT Director for 10 years up till now negotiating technical deals with at times limited resources or intentions of the owner, my friend whose enterprise I assist in, for buckshees, as a complete hobbyist doing everything my style, that has worked for him and I every step of the way while even strengthening our friendship over this time,…..

…..and thereby reinforced my knowledge of and faith in people, even in business, and the ability to get whatever you really sincerely want-and-need, since, when you make them the same, you get an ideal excellent outcome, not just best, and a deal based on the simple clear standards we insist on and stick to, is all that matters and not too much to ask for and seek, hence our audacity in claiming a right to demand our way.

The essence of it all comes down to knowing, understanding and embracing one elegant simple complete concept, and pursue it wholeheartedly and co-operatively in harmony accepting each other`s worth and individuality and preferences in laissez-faire free democratic style that know no bounds………and if at first we don`t succeed, try try again, without letting obstacles cloud and impede our positive mindset.

The aspect of BIOS (Basic Input and Output System), as found in the pc culture, lends itself to the idea of having the operating system onchip and flashable, as part of keeping the system tight and together, and leaving the user storage including SD and or flashdrive and or internal/external harddrive, available for all user programs exclusively and separately.

Hexa, from ancient Greek, means six. Not sure why hexadecimal is sixteen then, maybe Gavin can fill us in?

At any rate:

yet the latter named Rockchip RK3399 CPU has 8 cores according to the specs

Is not even close. Working with ARM’s Big.Little way of designing processors, the RK3399 has a fast dual core A72 processor and a slower quad core A53 processor.
If it’s anything like the one in my phone, there will be restrictions on how it can be used (to stop it burning up)… Suffice to say, it contains SIX cores, not eight.

If you want exciting, imagine a board based upon this: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/ampere_computing/emag