RISC OS Pico

Has anyone purchased the RISC OS Pico SD card?

Is there a way of ‘decoding’ the BASIC program files in directory – FirstSteps.Progs so that they can be loaded/run in the desktop via a text editor?

Running the Pi in full OS5 mode with the Pico card in a SD card reader the files are seen typed as Text but in fact they are tokenised BASIC. Copy them somewhere, set the Filetype to BASIC and StrongED can then do its stuff.

I was a trifle surprised to see the Pico BASIC files typed as text but it seems the BASIC interpreter does not mind that. Probably just something else I have forgotten, though some of it is slowly coming back.

Thank you so much David – changing the filetype from text to BASIC does the job.

So that’s what tokenised BASIC looks like!!

I was a trifle surprised to see the Pico BASIC files typed as text but it seems the BASIC interpreter does not mind that. Probably just something else I have forgotten, though some of it is slowly coming back.

It’s because we didn’t use RISC OS to create the contents of the FAT partition (and only RISC OS can put the file types into FAT partitions in a way it likes). This is because we wanted to ensure the image we created (and tested) would match that which users would create for themselves if they downloaded the free RISC OS Pico zipfile and decompressed the contents onto their own SD card – this would also have no RISC OS filetypes.

Question : Can we launch RISC OS Games from RISC OS PICO ? (games like Speedball 2, Lemmings, etc..) that we can found here :

http://forums.jaspp.org.uk:9000/forum/viewforum.php?f=25

Can we launch RISC OS Games from RISC OS PICO ?

Via ADDFS? Perhaps by delving into the command line side of things? The front-end that you can see normally is a Desktop application.

Though, one of the benefits of RISC OS is that a full installation should behave like Pico with extras. ;-)

Can we launch RISC OS Games from RISC OS PICO ?

Via ADDFS? Perhaps by delving into the command line side of things? The front-end that you can see normally is a Desktop application.

Though, one of the benefits of RISC OS is that a full installation should behave like Pico with extras. ;-)

yes of course but i try to imagine un retro-like computer (BBC micro, Amstrad, C64) just for fun

- a great and fast bootable basic OS (should be ok with PICO)
- run the games like in the past from a basic command : run “GAME”

and then create a all in one keyboard with the PCB hidden inside :)

And here is the new BBC Micro computer ;)

Sorry for my crazy fantasms LOL

- a great and fast bootable basic OS (should be ok with PICO)

? RISC OS is this is pretty much any incarnation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idN0Cph1hh8

A year ago, it was a mere 16s to perform a full boot from power-on to usable desktop¹. It feels even quicker now, but since I’m using it on the other display, I’m not going to try…

¹ This is after loading the boot time stuff. I know Windows takes ages to load, then gives you a UI that keeps stalling as more stuff loads, and then stalls even more as the antivirus updates itself… RISC OS is not like that. Around fifteen seconds, you’re good to go. About a third of that is the hardware initialising itself. RISC OS is quick.

so with RISC OS PICO it should be 4 or 5 secondes maximum !

I doubt it … the hardware is the same, so presumably that will still take about 5 seconds. I would be suprised if the software time has halved, so I would expect a total of 10-15 seconds. But I have never seen Pico boot!

I would be suprised if the software time has halved

I could imagine that, if it just starts up and boots into BASIC with no extras. Essentially, the point where you see the RISC OS blahblahK message could be the point when Pico is ready.

But I have never seen Pico boot!

Me neither. Any takers for a YouTube vid? ;-)

I could imagine that, if it just starts up and boots into BASIC with no extras. Essentially, the point where you see the RISC OS blahblahK message could be the point when Pico is ready.

Slightly quicker than that I would imagine – some of the normal startup modules are only required for GUI support.

I will tell thiw week-end, i will receive my Rasp Pi and will install straight away RISC OS PICO :)

If you use the GUI at all, it’s really no overhead.
I’d recommend looking at the “Nut-Pi” it’s an amazing bundle of software for next to nothing.

YouTube video
Search for “RISC OS PICO boot”
I will edit with a proper link when I’m not trying to do it from my phone.

EDIT
Search worked on my phone with today as filter, but not on PC. Hope this link is more successful.
Link
I copied ROM image to my normal RPi Loader directory as “PICO” and then edited “CONFIG.TXT” to load it.
From [CTRL][Break] to entry cursor I guestimate about 6.5s.

There is any You Tube video about PICO :/