Unofficial RO4

Whilst cruising around an archive found earlier this evening found some RO ROMS and the descriptor for one of them caught my attention:

“Following the closure of the Acorn workstation division and the cancellation of the Phoebe project in 1998, those engineers who remained at Acorn unofficially and internally ‘launched’ RISC OS 4 for the Risc PC, it’s very similar to RISC OS 3.80.”

found it here:
https://arcarc.nl/archive/ROMS/OS/Beta%20and%20Development/4.00/

How do you feel about this?

Have you tried running it? What’s it like?

Have you tried running it?

The download zip is a !Boot with the ROM as a softload. I failed to get the !Boot to boot but the extracted ROM, filename Ursula4, does run on RPCEmu.

*FX0
RISC OS 4.00 (20 Nov 1998)
*

ROOL’s !Boot does work and that is what I am using.

it’s very similar to RISC OS 3.80

*fx0
RISC OS 3.80 (24 Sep 1998)
*

The OS4.00 !Boot must have something in it the requires StrongARM, setting that in RPCEmu allowed the boot to start.

Ooh look something interesting! This ran at startup.

RC5DES v2.7104.428 client – a project of distributed.net
Copyright 1997-1999 distributed.net
ARM assembly by Steve Lee
PC Card support by Dominic Plunkett
Pease visit http://www.distributed.net/ up-to-date contest information.
Interactive help is available, or select ‘Help contents’ from the menu for detailed client information.

The link is still alive.

MovieFS is also present.

I don’t know the exact origins of this ROM, but if it doesn’t have the RISC OS Ltd enhancements, then be aware that the 3.8/4 that came from Acorn had a very borked version of filecore that could and would trash itself/your data. That was a major showstopper when developing OS4 for retail – it was something non-negotiable in terms of fixing for release.

I was planning on giving this a go on my A7000 based omnibus (softload hopefully) but as it is physically remote haven’t got there at present. David – I should have thought about trying it with RPCemu – thanks for exploring that! Andrew R – as usual thank you for insights into that mists of time period between Acorn closing the workstation division and what i call the ‘re-emergence’ of RISC OS (albeit in its hobby scale implementation). Yes data corruption would be a bit of a show stopper one would think !

The ROM Image has some interesting components/entries ie !Shockwave, !ARMovie, Java, CDBlaze, DigitalCD, LongFiles, Messenger, NCFresco, Techwriter, Browse, Phoenix, etc

I can confirm. There were versions of some of this stuff floating around as modules that could be loaded on a 3.70 RiscPC and I was warned that FileCore “had grave issues”.
Using a sacrificial hard disc, it didn’t last long until it got so scrambled the OS didn’t even recognise it…absolute show stopper as the two golden rules of an OS are 1, don’t break existing software unnecessarily; and 2, don’t trash user data.

I was quite vociferous about the idea of getting rid of page zero when the OS switched to high vectors, but there is now a fake page there so crappy broken software keeps on working; and RISC OS is actually not bad at the second point (“Broken directory” is pretty much a historical memory) and I’ve needed DiscKnight far less than I ever needed SCANDISK on that other system.

Anyway, stuff like this is an interesting look at how things were developing. Rather like reading the comments in the OS2 sources, unlike the sanitised versions available here. :p

The only thing I’m really missing in my life are the sources to PCEm, mostly out of interest for how they got it running so quickly on hardware that was, let’s be honest, only marginally faster than the PC it was Emming. But, again, it’s a historical relic that’d only be of intellectual interest.

The ROM Image has some interesting components/entries

Think about the times. It would be, what, 1998ish? If you buy a PC you get a browser and some basic software built in, and often MS Office or MS Works ¹ was also bundled alongside. Therefore it would make sense if Acorn were looking to release a machine with a bundle. They had already done something like that with the Learning Curve package.

¹ I liked Works, it was perfectly good for the average user without the complications of the full Office suite. I passed my RSA IT exam (night school) using Works and did the hour long test in about twenty minutes because I knew the hotkeys. ;)

The ROM Image has some interesting components/entries

Just noticed this fun item in PreDesk!

*help modefader
==> Help on keyword ModeFader
*ModeFader turns the mode fader on or off, or gives its state.
Syntax: *ModeFader [on|off]
==> Help on keyword ModeFader
Module is: ModeFader       0.03 (22 Jul 1997)

Commands provided:
ModeFader       ModeFader_FadeInDelay   ModeFader_FadeOutSpeed  ModeFader_FadeInSpeed
*

softload hopefully

As far as I can see the OS4.00 !Boot, as supplied, does not have anything to actually do the ROM softload. The required softload components are all there, but just not called. I would guess it just needs a suitable Obey file in PreDesk.

The ROM Image has some interesting components

Moo! Moo! Moo! MOO!

Nothing quite like a MOO! to signal an error. ;)

The ROM Image has some interesting components/entries ie !Shockwave, !ARMovie, Java, CDBlaze, DigitalCD, LongFiles, Messenger, NCFresco, Techwriter, Browse, Phoenix, etc

Then it’s not Acorn’s release candidate RISC OS 4 soft-load. The RC RO4 never included those extra modules. I have it running it on my RiscPC (that I don’t use as I use a Pi).

However, given the modules, it does seem likely to have come from inside Acorn. Shockwave, Java, NCFresco and Techwriter were ANC modules for NC OS.

Therefore it would make sense if Acorn were looking to release a machine with a bundle. They had already done something like that with the Learning Curve package.

I’m unaware of that discussion – the only priority was getting Ursula out.

NCFresco was owned by ANT, so would have never been part of any desktop ROM. It would also have been full-screen, not running in a window (it was a compile-time flag to build NCFresco vs desktop Fresco as the templates were entirely different, and the latter didn’t have “NC” in the name). Also ANT and Acorn had fallen out, though money could have presumably fixed that.

Similarly Techwriter was owned by Icon. The module version was full-screen, but I don’t know if it was a runtime option for desktop mode.

Java could have been included (but it was never discussed – I was project manager) – Acorn paid for a licence after the Oracle split. It would have been daft to include in ROM format since Java 1.2 was under development with months of development work remaining. The latter was also tens of megabytes, so clearly not a candidate for a ROM image.

I believe the Shockwave licence wasn’t Acorn’s.

Browse was essentially identical to Phoenix, so pointless to include both.

The only thing I’m really missing in my life are the sources to PCEm

What’s more frustrating is the author told me (when we’d moved to Broadcom) that he’d written a JITed version that was never released because it required 8MB RAM. (I was writing a JIT for Firepath at the time, amusingly in Java – probably not the choice of language I’d use now).

Then it’s not Acorn’s release candidate RISC OS 4 soft-load.

If you look at the very end of the ROM image, it appears to identify itself as NCOS. Perhaps this is a snapshot of some sort of development hybrid?

If you look at the very end of the ROM image, it appears to identify itself as NCOS. Perhaps this is a snapshot of some sort of development hybrid?

I don’t doubt it came from someone at Acorn, but it must have been a personal creation. It isn’t one of the release candidate “RISC OS 4” ROMs that came out fortnightly (or possibly weekly, I forget). It’s always surprised me that Acorn’s images are referred to as 3.80, given they were officially 4.00 for quite some time before the workstation division was closed.

It won’t be a development build, either. Generally, developers didn’t bother creating ROM images – I certainly never did. You just loaded modules or (more usually) ran the app as an app. NCs didn’t have desktops, with the exception of the first build of StrongARM NCOS. This isn’t that as I had the first StrongARM NC, for the Java project.

The NC never had Browse/Phoenix in, and never would have had – the idea was dropped quite early on when they realised how much effort was required to write a browser, plus Oracle had paid for a Fresco licence. Browse’s author (on here) sat next to the main developer of NCFresco. Also no NCs had CD drives.

Also NCs didn’t have Replay. And the distributed.net rc5 challenge was run by, probably, half the RISC OS computers in the building. The moos were very irritating. Tim Dobson, I think, rewrote the main loop in assembler to speed it up dramatically. No idea who Steve Lee is, mind.

https://stats.distributed.net/participant/psearch.php?project_id=5&st=acorn.co

Piers, thank you for the insights into things at Acorn. Nice to know some of you are still around these traps. I vaguely remember hearing something about distributed net for RISC OS back in the day but never got it running myself. I did get involved in Folding@Home about 15 years ago and still throw some GPU cycles at the cause. Note to anyone with powerful hardware (ie good GPU) and free or cheap electricity – you could do worse things with your computer – check out: https://foldingathome.org/
I did even get F@H running on a RPi4 (using RaspberryPi OS) for a while, so it may even be technically possible to create a RISC OS Client, but it was a trifle slow on the Pi hardware (CPU). The list of names participating in distributed.net at Acorn is interesting too.

Re F@H – from experience don’t run it too much on laptop hardware GPUs – the heat load i am sure has killed 2 GPUs in my laptops (the second 1 with very good cooling too).

NCs didn’t have desktops

Raking through old memories – I recall having (I think) NC kit tested as potential Citrix clients for a project we had going. Don’t think it was a fully finished case etc.
I can’t actually recall how we came to be trialling them, I do know I was the one that suggested them as a possible. It’s just the contact route I don’t recall.

The eventual client lumps spent more time in the workshop, in a courier van, or at the manufacturer being repaired.

I don’t know the exact origins of this ROM, but if it doesn’t have the RISC OS Ltd enhancements, then be aware that the 3.8/4 that came from Acorn had a very borked version of filecore that could and would trash itself/your data.

Have try on RPCEmu. Copy the content to a HD4Image and boot from, copy any old stuff on it, disable network and play around with…
Takes round about 30min and I get an corrupt directory error and boot fails from that Image …

I recall having (I think) NC kit tested as potential Citrix clients for a project we had going.

Yes, it had a Citrix client. I meant it didn’t have a standard RISC OS desktop in the ROM. There was no icon bar, and all native apps were full screen.

Yes, it had a Citrix client. I meant it didn’t have a standard RISC OS desktop in the ROM

Yup, the Citrix client was the reason for it being considered – it’s reason for existence was as a thin client box, no?.

Thin not only in the tech sense but also as opposed to the FAT (obese) things with a wise Wyse label. Shudder. Bad memories, need a beer now.