arm64

To Rick M: oh wow, am blown away by the Titanium Risc board, thanks for that link and info, amazing, am such a newbie here yet recognise being around a high league of expertise, ha ha. love to know more about the process that transpired to make the offering possible right from inception to release, especially every facet of the RO development I`m totally green yet enthusiastic about.

You see, and excuse my low-level inexperience yet, cannot help seeing the opportunity to start from scratch and build up brand new utilities and programs and compilers as breathtakingly exciting and pioneering I`d give anything for to be part of and create for. If binary becomes intense, can always multitask playing with or through my Android box or another choice, to re-energize and come back stronger and stimulated more.

I`m curious about how the process of writing programs evolves, like are programmers paid for their creations , games or other pieces of software? In other words, are many/most here being remunerated at all for their services and involvement? Maybe that is unsharable private and privileged info based on individual merit and extent of usefulness, in that case rhetorical. If Risc, for argument sake, ever became so popular that mainstream potential would apply, in wildest dreams, where would commercial prospects come in, or reach that bridge first before deciding?

Linus Torvalds semi-retired at 40, I think, and made his bucks from consulting on different levels and other PR exposure, while Linux remains free(ly accessible), is the impression of his progress I have from videos and articles/blogs mainly, hence the reason I enquire. Is there an FSF (Free Software Foundation) affiliation by RiskOSopen at all in some form, or is that membership restricted to GNU/Linux, to ensure that RO remains a product of the hobbyist-hacker spirit forever, just handy and insightful to know?

We could each and all be starting our own venture as aspiring Mark Z`s or likewise, yet there can be nothing more satisfying than having personal fun creating software that even inexperienced I can perceive and gravitate to without hesitation synergizing with and around other like-and-liberally-minded dynamos, being about capacity and not necessarily past knowledge, to forge ahead.

So, in a bigger picture, succeeding to innovate in a major software venture has it`s own unquantifiable rewards. The challenge at hand appeals to a new fresh sense of adventure reinventing the software wheel !!! Hope there are ladies interested here, cos a creative female talent is awesome and exciting and impressively different and fiesty and barrier-breaking and far-reaching.

Just in case that last reference to women sounds manipulatorily flattering. it`s based on having a handful of fairly regular mainly family-and-relationship-orientated lady chatfriends at a sociable organic venue on topics ranging from esoteric to health to microbiology to nutrition to astrology to politics, who totally stun and surprise me with their depth of insight and knowledge plus capacity to rationalise any situation highly intelligently, which no doubt humbles and balances any dormant chauvinist male ego in me delightfully, ha ha.

Hexa, from ancient Greek, means six. Not sure why hexadecimal is sixteen then

Deca is ten, so hexadecimal is six and ten: Sixteen.

NB: I never officially learnt this but it seems to make sense, at least!

I’m sure you’re right, Chris. I was thinking to write the same thing myself and something else intervened, I forget what now.

are programmers paid for their creations

Some ask for payment, others don’t. In the RISC OS world, I very much doubt the prices asked even begin to cover the development time.

I don’t ask for payment as it’s simply easier to give stuff away than to contemplate the EU tax laws and making déclarations fiscales… Plus it suits my philosophy better. I was employed to do geek stuff. Once. Hated it.
Coding is now a hobby. Something I do for fun.

I think much the same as what Rick just wrote. Except I didn’t mind the geek stuff too much – stuck at it for nine years, much longer than I stuck at anything else (although a lot of that was more to do with temporary contracts than disliking the work). But sometimes I did jobs I disliked far more than geek stuff, so tech writing for ARM was a blessed relief.

Hey, Rick M: magnificent, now you`re talking (about those processors in earlier post, and right too about being exciting), and the cpu singly without board, gotta go lower generally to get specs and choices and documentation, before taken out of circulation by Google for Chromebook or Android,the only way, thanks, you`re a star, mate, got me going to dig more……Riscbook sounds good for a laptop running RO

BTW, the Titanium board is cool yet economically priced way high for us alone, and with USB2 and 2 GB memory, for all intents and purposes obsolete before even starting…..my 6/7 year old (from manufacturing date) Lenovo Thinkpad W510 has two USB3 ports from way back then already, so just manufacturer lowering cost at the unnecessary sacrifice of speed significantly….I mean, what a difference between downloading with USB2 and 3

To Clive S: good to hear

BTW, the Titanium board is cool yet economically priced way high for us alone,

You must have some sort of delusion regarding the development and fabrication costs of making a motherboard. Your Lenovo is less expensive because they can make millions of the things. It’s called economy of scale (or “the little guy gets screwed”).

and with USB2 and 2 GB memory, for all intents and purposes obsolete before even starting…

I believe 2GB would probably make it the most capable of the RISC OS machines. Things get a little complicated beyond 2GB.

As for USB, I don’t know the specs of the Ti board or your PC, suffice to say that many end up with multiple USB ports running off a single PHY (like the Pi and Beagle). As such, you’ll only ever get half the maximum possible speed because the bandwidth is shared.
That aside, this is RISC OS, what would you need USB 3 speed for? And could the machine actually keep up anyway?

I mean, what a difference between downloading with USB2 and 3

If that’s the case, your hardware should go in the bin. USB 2 runs up to 480 megabit. Domestic broadband services are less than that (direct fibre goes up to 200).

Domestic broadband services are less than that (direct fibre goes up to 200).

Fibre options here are up to 300Mb/s (Virgin) or 1Gb (Hyperoptic), but not in my street. BT gives me 1.5Mb/s, so I use 150Mb Virgin.

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

Titanium.
And if you read between the (linux) lines, the Raspberry Pi.

I`m curious about how the process of writing programs evolves, like are programmers paid for their creations , games or other pieces of software? In other words, are many/most here being remunerated at all for their services and involvement?

Paid? :)

Fibre options here are up to 300Mb/s (Virgin) or 1Gb (Hyperoptic), but not in my street.

That’s pretty impressive, but if you had a Gb, how much downloading would be necessary to saturate it? [assuming contention isn’t an issue] Just because you can get X doesn’t mean the internet runs that fast! ;-)

BT gives me 1.5Mb/s

OMG. I’m at the end of over four and a half kilometres of twisted pair copper installed maybe in the late sixties or early seventies and I get around 3.5-4Mb. What’s BT’s excuse?

OMG. I’m at the end of over four and a half kilometres of twisted pair copper installed maybe in the late sixties or early seventies and I get around 3.5-4Mb. What’s BT’s excuse?

And you suffered a local trauma only a couple of years ago! Doubtless a few self-soldering joints were involved!

In the cadets I always thought they resembled Bengal Matches (anyone else old-enough to understand that!).

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be!

(anyone else old-enough to understand that!)

They were a sort-of “Yorkshire joint” for wires, but with a match-head in the middle to strike to initiate a combustion to do the soldering; used on tinned-steel wires for field communications!

A Friend-in-France still has a standard-lamp wired using these rather-antiquated devices – not really a terribly good idea!

Insulating tape really doesn’t cut-it!

Shrink-wrap wasn’t invenented!

And you suffered a local trauma only a couple of years ago!

Which, the fallen tree or the backhoe that cut off the west side of town?

Doubtless a few self-soldering joints were involved!

Doubtful, everything is done using screw terminals. Solder has low tensile strength.
Repair with insulating tape is a bodge. Using shrink wrap is a bodge done by a person with a larger budget. It needs screws and straps to hold airborne phone wires in place and together.

but with a match-head in the middle to strike to initiate a combustion to do the soldering;

Basically “soldering, Rambo style”.

wired using these rather-antiquated devices

Look inside a valve radio some day. You might find a rather ad hoc “circuit” put together by mounting the stuff on a piece of stiff cardboard, wired up with many short wires here and there, and stuff they didn’t want subject to vibration covered in wax.
This being a device where the active parts of the circuit heat up and start glowing.

One could say the best thing about the birth of the integrated circuit is that we could leave behind the big crazy that was valve equipment (along with the “is this part live?” conundrum and the "tell me you didn’t just drop 100 volts by punting the power in series through a little bar heater (masquerading as a wound wire resistor)).

Us pre-retirees that toast our Pi or Arduino by hooking a 3.3V device to an older 5V device by mistake… He he he, we don’t know were’re born. Accidentally killing the device is one thing. Accidentally killing the guy holding the screwdriver. That’s how they rolled back in the fifties… Badass semi-suicidal radio technicians, FTW!

Insulating tape really doesn’t cut-it!

Several years ago I got home to find my connection running at ~1.5 Mb/s instead of the usual 8 or so. After arguing with Vodafone for a week they finally sent a tech out. He went out to the box on the street, took the cover off, and was greeted with a mass of green corrosion. He was amazed that I had a connection at all!

I’m not sure what he repaired it all with, but once it was back up and running it was better than ever (and is presumably still fine to this day; I switched to fibre as soon as it came to my street so I can’t say for sure).

Hey, Rick M: OK, so, am choosing an alternative term to “downloading” over USB 2 and 3, being “uploading or backing up” to external drive storage, where consistently discovering a major speed increase of, with the latter USB 3, by up to 10 times multiple improvement, that`s all.

Am considering an ideal board that will serve the threefold purpose, in one environment, for: 1. development at acceptable speeds and sufficiently up-to-date facilities that USB 2 is too slow and old for, 2. normal public programming and playing as in entertainment, and 3. economically affordable prices for both developers and users, and am afraid that the Titanium fails to qualify on all of price, capacity and reasonable relevance…..

….. while the Raspberry Pi is, as I claimed previously, dragging it`s technological feet to provide less than the bare minimum acceptable specs, probably cos they aim to cut costs enough to offer school students an attractive deal being their target market as opposed to all-age users, reading between the lines – they make their intentions clear in the literature out there.

Also, 2 GB as max high memory limit threshold indicates a likely undesirable shorter life before becoming redundant, and what is truly warranted is a processor with reasonable longevity since these new boards are relatively shortlived and therefore lacking ongoing support for long enough to make creative development feasibly timeous and worthwhile. The gap between PC and ARM abilities is narrowing and closing fast.

The solution for real progress begins (and proceeds) with, first and foremost, being in a position of strength through having full control over the whole board, including the (BIOS) rom code, from which the rest will flow naturally and efficiently, when creating/programming all software to run on new RO64, whatever past experience dictates as being crazy and over-ambitious.

If this fact-of-life logic can be understood and embraced, programming a new OS from scratch will turn into a stunningly satisfying process for all involved that will set a precedent in universal development history up till now, except probably for a few-count-on one-hand-fingers decades-old legacy projects, while natively building up the system from within itself alone, as likely never before, WITHOUT resorting to any special platforms for the main virtual creativity, whether like Linux, Windows or even current RO32.

I am personally fully prepared in all ways to welcome challenging a project of this magnitude on my own, using a bank of servers and computers to multitask each facet in a combined whole, that I already have immediately-available-and-in-place, as we speak, with my feet on the ground and not a pedestal nor soapbox in Hyde Park, is it, ha ha, …..

…..cos this is just too uplifting for real, yet am privileged and ecstatic to identify and connect somewhat objectively with other true enthusiasts like myself and share inspiration in celebration of being alive and exploring this, and see where it goes and how it all transpires as destiny. Not for the faint-hearted, but for passionate software creators in singleminded unison yet still individualistic, with all development open for anyone public to observe and follow in whatever manner they please and choose

If this fact-of-life logic can be understood and embraced, programming a new OS from scratch will turn into a stunningly satisfying process for all involved that will set a precedent in universal development history up till now, except probably for decades old legacy projects

With who?

Do you see 10.000 developers here?
That’s what is needed for the development of the Linux kernel ALONE.

IMHO, it would be best to take the C road piece by piece.
And that’s exactly what ROOL and other guys are doing here.

Feel free to help.

except probably for a few-count-on one-hand-fingers decades-old legacy projects

RISC OS is probably more than 5000 apps. A very big hand.

Accidentally killing the guy holding the screwdriver. That’s how they rolled back in the fifties… Badass semi-suicidal radio technicians, FTW!

http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Recounts.php?ThreeLessons

To David F:Sure, am taking a most radical route imaginable by even considering taking on a much more advanced architecture, and so understand your realistic reaction based on all the evidence out there and in here. of the extensive wo-manpower required to co-ordinate a coding exercise of such gigantic proportions, so provide some further personal background flavour to somehow substantiate method to my madness.

so provide some further personal background flavour to somehow substantiate method to my madness.

Reversal of the burden of proof.

I do not claim to be able to do better than 10000 developers. You do. So you should provides PoC… IE: code. Then people will follow you, as people did follow Linus.

much more advanced architecture

No. 64-bit is not much more advanced than 32-bit. It’s just 64-bit, when the other is 32-bit.

Today, ML things are considered to be the next step in computing and rely on 8-bit or 16-bit operations. So it’s a lot less advanced?

IMHO, your vision is too reductive. It is wrong to believe that going to 64-bit will attract thousands of programmers and will make us the next Windows. 30 years of history prove us that this is not true. What will improve the success of the platform are evolutions (brownfield) and not an overhaul (greenfield). Greenfield is more attractive, but that never works in IT projects.

So code applications for RISC OS. Or help the OS going more on the C route.
There are many ways to make RISC OS greater. To stop it and bet on a new OS is not a solution.

You can’t come here and say “stop using RISC OS and let’s make something else”.
This is the ROOL forum.

You can’t come here and say “stop using RISC OS and let’s make something else”.

Well, you can, and he did. But don’t expect people to get on board.

Thank you, Clive, exactly, it`s all about choice, and David F, you make yours by choosing to participate and contribute your point of view here, all fair and free, and secondly, there is no question of directly ever replacing the current RO in place. I typed more earlier to complete providing supporting info, yet lost it as all three previous mornings due probably to the website rebooting, which I`ll reinstate a little later.

Now, for anyone as unconventionally enthusiatic as myself who will give a new 64-bit Risc OS project a chance, I`ve created and posted a new article over the last hour or so, under this Forum /General section, with subject title "RISC4ALL’ representing the official project in question, assuming no objections from the Riscosopen authorities and convenors, who I don`t yet know, being new here.

I`ve created and posted a new article over the last hour or so, under this Forum /General section, with subject title "RISC4ALL’ representing the official proposed project in question

There you go, fixed that for you.

Content typed earlier (2 hours ago) and reading off cel photo taken just in time:

During my exposure to the pc environment in the 90`s, became aware of Dos, Windows 3 and O/S 2, which I played with installing, using a shiny white box of similar coloured and labelled stiffy disks i still have packed away, that I wanted to do something useful with yet found limited for my use even though well prepared by Microsoft, while finding my fascination growing in leaps and bounds about operating systems…

…like early BSD v.2 and SuSE 5.1 and another two primary Linux distros at that time, i.e. Slackware and RedHat, and while feeling strongly that it was time for a professional secure 32-bit Windows, read in the literature about MS bringing out NT to do exactly that, so managed to lay my hands on a copy of 3.5 upgrade and installed it fully independently for two friend`s businesses office staff`s networks.

Was invited to join an external OS/2 team by IBM (ISM in South Africa during our boycotted apartheid years) to provide feedback on their awful attempt to keep OS/2 alive through v.3 Warp, in which messages had nothing to do with actual errors, or at least were unclear, and found it unstable on my compatible.

My first encounter with RISC (as Reduced Instruction Set Computers) or alternatives, included an Acorn and DEC Alpha and a Motorola Risc 88000/1 data book set (that was modified as I imagined) and became the brain cpu of the PowerPC afterwards, and even Apple G-series or something. Read into NT architecture by Dave Cutler, the lead designer, before release.

To cut a long story short, sustain and nourish my curiosity about OSes through imagining various scenarios to build one up in, that have never taken further to produce, UNTIL NOW as I`m expressing my overwhelming interest for actualizing, through this gripping looming ARM64/AARCH64 challenge.

Love Win XP x64 as a relatively uncomplicated 64-bit system that I have running blindingly fast on 2/3 pcs, as a part of experimenting with graphics, way back from installing my first MPEG hardware board (took a month) before overtaken and replaced by the software versions, and them too.

I ask myself: what is the minimum in info and hard- and software necessary for a bare functional OS that can be evolved into a versatile modern platform for both developers and average to innovative playful users alike, that`s INDEPENDENT of reliance for anything on alternative “escape” systems for variety and power, that leads me to the conclusion, at least for myself, to become an absolute purist of the highest degree..

….and proceed to obtain and build up a relatively simple basic binary instruction code set to experiment with, while understanding the specific hardware technology processor involved, in this case an ARM64 type and no less, through throwing caution and traditional conventional wisdom and commonsense to the wind, and taking a big yet calculated risk on RISC exactly as I perceive and wish and dare to pursue, NO HOLDS BARRED !!!!!!!

Do see a wealth of ARM64 documentation on the net to get one`s teeth into, brilliant, so happy, ha ha. Gotta admit, am tempted to consider simulating (ok, ok, Dave F, ha ha) a whole complete process on my best Microsoft Windows hard/software combination IDE platform possible, of course in bare minimal terms, to put my dormant x64 server and pc hardware to valuable interesting use.