Can i use the Older RISC OS V3 manual to learn the OS?

Hello,

i am new to RISC OS, and im wanting to learn how to use the OS inside and out. I can’t currently afford the paperback version of the RISC OS user guide, but i saw the older guide is available online. Could i use this to learn the OS? Many Thanks.

Hi Joseph,
most of the information on the older RISC OS guide are definitely still very useful on RISC OS 5, so you’ll find plenty of useful things.

However, one of the historical problem with RISC OS documentation was that first the documentation was fragmented in multiple books and second the old documentation either had very little examples or some (IIRC) was a bit buggy. So make sure you get also the various errata and/or the extra Release Notes that were added to each release.

https://www.4corn.co.uk/articles/docs/

has a lot of extremely valuable guides.

Also do not forget that here RISC OS Open has a very good source of information too:

https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Introduction%20to%20RISC%20OS

And

https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Welcome%20to%20RISC%20OS%20Pi

I also have collected a lot of free resources and some useful and really well made video from WiFi Sheep on configuring RISC OS and using it on the Raspberry Pi:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/risc-os-official-video-tutorial-on-how-to-setup-and-use-the-desktop-released/

There are also other videos on YouTube and people collected info.

P.S. just remembered that RISC OS Direct should have the User Guide in PDF format on the SD, did you have a look at that? if not , useful link here:

https://www.riscosdev.com/direct/

Hope this helps.

99% of the old documentation is still valid but of course there may be newer SWIs.
As a simple rule: In case that you are missing a feature in the old manuals, have a look onto ROOLs online documentation. It is not unlikely that you will find something matching you requirements.

Paolo, you saved me. Thank you very much, i found it on the direct image. just had to transfer it to my RISC system and rename the adf file to pdf. Thank you Thomas as well.