What are you doing with RISC OS?

As for the PDF dpi thing, it’s funny because I remember being shown two different printouts by Paul at Explan back in the 90s,

Perhaps there’s an overall way to set the DPI of the printer, like those LaserJet models that could be 150dpi (draft) or 300dpi (normal)? I used to use a Kyocera with a built in page description language, and the global dpi setting affected the output of identical script…?

PS and dpi: IIRC, there was also a Gimp-Print Postscript driver where the dpi setting was very relevant. However, you need a lot of memory in your printer to make that work! A full-bitmap PS print stream in 600dpi needs usually more than 128 MiB printer memory.

Way back in A5000 days, Calligraph made a bitstream driver (software and podule) for a 600 DPI A3 printer. It didn’t try to render the whole page before sending it to the printer (which is why you need 128MiB), it rendered it line by line on the fly as it was being printed. On a 4MiB machine.

We had them at the Physiological Society, and produced camera ready copy for our journals on them.

Later they upgraded them to do 1200 DPI A3, using RiscPCs, but still only 18MiB. (We had a couple of RiscPCs with StrongARMs and 66MiB, but didn’t use them for the printing – didn’t need to.)

Worked absolutely fine. Not PS, of course, but there’s no magic about that: it was getting vector graphics and RISCOS fonts to render as well as bitmaps to resample, which are much the same problems as rendering PS.

The […] TiMachine is 2048×2048 […] it does have two video outputs so could drive two 1080p screens. There is a beta driver for this, but it remains unchanged since appearing 12 months ago, and I’d be cautious of selling a system based on its promise as it requires a bit of “coaxing”.

This odd statement is worth a little qualification. Firstly, the driver isn’t beta , it’s not clear where that idea has come from but it seems to be in a derisory sense here. The reason for no updates in 12 months is simply that the work is complete and no bugs have been reported! The aspect which is still lagging for dual head is support in RISC OS itself, it’s (one of the) corners of the OS that is a long way behind contemporary OS’, but the technical note provided in the free download on the Resources tab describes how to set up the driver using RISC OS as it currently stands. In that sense, it’s no different to the mode helper provided with the ARMX6 which is needed to convince RISC OS that its wide display really isn’t a rectangular pixel CRT.

Performance-wise, the TiMachine is faster, but it’s not a night-and-day difference (esp coming from Pi, which is noticeably slower in many operations) […] For technical reasons, ARMX6 is slightly more compatible with things than TiMachine.

The OP’s Pi2 (Cortex-A7), the ARMX6 (Cortex-A9), and Titanium (Cortex-A15) are all the same architecture, so if a program’s happy on Pi2 it should be happy all round. ARM are intent on confusing the general public with their processor numbering scheme: the A9 is the oldest from 2007 then came the A15 in autumn 2010 and most recently the A7 in October 2011. Note that there’s usually a delay of ~2 years from ARM announcing a core to it appearing as chips you can buy.

The decision on the hardware will be the most challenging. I really want my HD screen using the highest resolution possible, but then I can always use CPU speed. Ha, writing this on a 700MHz rPi … which seems capable of doing most tasks. Does Sun Fish work on the ARMX6? It does not seem to work on the rPi 2 (v1.1, ARMv7).

The spec sheets (A9/A15/A7) are interesting, as ARM have been learning how to make faster first then more efficient cores second. So simply comparing clock speeds doesn’t equate directly to performance where the efficiency per clock cycle has improved. There’s a reasonably comprehensive table of RISC OS machines compared taken with a pinch of benchmark salt; for example the ARMX6’s memory performance is half that of the Pi2 and a quarter that of Titanium, but if you spend little time on memory intensive tasks that might not matter.

ARM are intent on confusing the general public with their processor numbering scheme:

I believe they throw darts at a board and, voilà, how ARM cores get numbered.

Certainly, the logic of “incrementing numbers” is completely out the window. :-/

as ARM have been learning how to make faster first then more efficient cores second.

Because they’re really efficient, but the world wants speeeeed. I dunno, my phone (Galaxy S7) can record and play back video at 3840×2160 (UHD), it can decode 1080p HEVC (H.265) in software… I have a flight sim app that manages fluid frame rates at 560×1440 (!) and the phone can video the action rescaling to 720p for disc space at the same time (and I believe it could also insert a feed from the front camera for reaction shots if I wanted).
I’m not trying to brag about my phone, just wondering what the hell else I could want from its processor. I mean, isn’t that plenty fast enough, all 4+4 cores of it?
Maybe there’s mileage in enhancing 64 bit for server applications? Maybe people “just want a bigger number to show off”? I dunno…

The OP’s Pi2 (Cortex-A7), the ARMX6 (Cortex-A9), and Titanium (Cortex-A15) are all the same architecture, so if a program’s happy on Pi2 it should be happy all round.

There is the small matter of the screen memory. The Titanium and the IGEPv5 use RGB byte ordering, whereas RISC OS has traditionally always used BGR, and the ArmX6 supports that. RISC OS has been improved to cater for RGB as well as BGR, but a few applications were written doing things the wrong way and so the colours can come out funny. RiscOSM had this fault, but CJE notified us when they were preparing to launch the Rapido Ig, and we were able to do a fix quite quickly.

I just received my new rPi3 – and ‘wow’ is that thing fast. Much faster than the rPi2! Web browsing is now possible with the Otter Browser (but I tend to use NetSurf much more).

All my other programs are running fine, no problems with using the rPi3 as my main computer now.
Printing with UniPrint and an older Win7 PC works like a charm, and reading PDFs is awesome – I am so impressed!

Once I’m used to RISC OS I will definitely consider buying either a IMX6 or TIMachine (or similar), just to support this beautiful platform/operating system.

Some projects I am working on:

• Port to RK3288 — goes pretty well at the moment.
• Ensure that there is a decent Amiga emulator for RISC OS, just started
• Buy more applications, Id like Ovation Pro and Artworks… but money so will be later

Do I use RISC OS for day to day taks..

• I use it for basic webbrowsing , javascript support is for the kids (but banking is on pc)
• I chat using IRC or SSH (and IRC) Wants a new IRC client.
• I do all my DTP/WP work on RO , not much but still—

ON Linkedin I am known as “Composer, Lunatic, Hacker”
The Composer inside me wants to make music with RISC OS.. but that is a problem.
No decent MIDI solution on modern hw. Siblius is good but is hard to run.
It is also very hard to compete with the music software for mac/win.

I am very happy with the current RO hardware developments. My system of preference right now is my ARMX6.

Working on a port to the Allwinner H3. Going nowhere near as well as Michael’s port to RK3288. Michael, I look forward to possibly seeing some results from your Amiga emulator project. I had an attempt at porting KEGS (Apple IIGS emulator) to RO last year, but I gave up because the way it’s written seems really weird.

I’m porting to the Allwinner H3 mostly because I’m a stubborn idiot. I like RO but the Orange Pi PC is more suitable to my needs. I’m like this in every aspect of life. Something doesn’t meet my needs, I either alter it or make my own.

I use RO a lot for it’s text editors. I haven’t come across anything better than StrongED and Zap.

!Sunfish is also one of the other reasons I use RO all the time. Unfortunately it explodes if I look at it the wrong way even with the patch, but it is still the easiest way of dealing with NFS shares I’ve seen on any platform.

It gets used for a lot of SSH sessions with Nettle while I’m working on the AWH3 source. Usually one for Git and another to change file permissions of the ROM after I copy it so it can be run. The reasons are complicated and due to a lack of foresight on my part.

I did use RO for listening to music via my network until I got a DAC card for my Pi3. Because RO doesn’t support it I can’t use it for that now :(

Someday I hope to get back to my uSynergy port for RISC OS. I wanted to inject mouse and keyboard input without setting them up as drivers. Mouse movement worked great. Mouse buttons and keyboard input not so much.

I did use RO for listening to music via my network until I got a DAC card for my Pi3. Because RO doesn’t support it I can’t use it for that now :(

I doubt anyone would complain if you were to write a driver for it. You’ll need to know how to write audio drivers anyway, if you want your Allwinner port to support audio ;-)

While waiting for Pis to crash, I’m working on adding YUV overlay support to KinoAmp in order to test the in-development VideoOverlay module + GraphicsV overlay support.

I’m not quite sure what I’ll move on to once that’s done – probably either return to the multicore work, or maybe stick with the graphics theme and try tackling some of the other nasties that have been lurking around (numbered/legacy mode handling, display scaling & BPP conversion, video memory management, 32×32 pointer size limit, software pointer bugs/flickering, etc.)

return to the multicore work, or maybe stick with the graphics theme and try tackling some of the other nasties that have been lurking around (numbered/legacy mode handling, display scaling & BPP conversion, video memory management, 32×32 pointer size limit, software pointer bugs/flickering, etc.

As much as I’d love you to return to Multi-core, i think it would be great if you continue your ‘graphics theme’. Kill those pesky bugs!

Of course, please yourself!
I’m just a user.

Southport Sailing Club is using RISCOS and GPS Tracking to score the Junior 12 Hour Race held on the Last Saturday in June each year.

Each boat carries a small GPS Tracker which reports its position every thirty seconds to a RISCOS Server. (more frequently at the end of each lap).

http://www.queclink.com/GL300

The GPS server then reports the completion of each lap, in real time, to the race scoring program (also RISCOS), which in turn sends updates to the race scoring website, in real time.

The GPS Server and Race Scoring software are written in BBC Basic on a Raspberry Pi. The GPS Track graphics are produced by WebJames, also on a Ras Pi.

The 2017 race results and GPS Tracks for each boat on every lap can be seen by following the 12 HOUR RACE – RACE RESULTS SITE links on the Southport Sailing Club website.

As a Radiotherapy Eng I use Vac pumps to evacuate linear accelerators to a hi vacuum. I use a RiscOSpi and an app I wrote in BASIC to read the motor current of a turbomolecular pump.

Then display it as text and a graph, on a colour & mono (daisy chained) monitors.

Here’s a link to some piccies.

https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=VZlv7f7ZKqDZQoUnMMmpCouFQOn91RdbvY5jNmx7

Regards

Colin.

What I’m doing in RISC OS on my Pi0:
Surfing the web
Installing all the !things :-)
Slowly downloading and reading the ARM CLUB’s newsletter

I’ve decided the best way to do backups is to plug the SDcard into another machine and image it.

Light word processing with Pipedream.

Read a lot of manga. :-)

Porting programs to BBCBASIC.
My BASIC Prettyprinter’s unique trait is that I’m trying to maintain it under several different BASICs (CoCo BASIC, Model 100 BASIC, BWBASIC, MBASIC5, GWBASIC, Chipmunk BASIC, Mac BBCBASIC, CP/M BBCBASIC). It needed a few tweaks for RISCOS. I think I’ve got DEF FN and DEF PROC support right but I haven’t tested it a lot yet…

I have a BASIC game called “THERESGOLD” that I believe I stumbled across on a German CP/M site, in “Standard BASIC” whatever that means (honestly it looks like ported FOCAL code)… It was pretty trivial to get it working in BBCBASIC.

Another oldie from the dawn of home computers is “Star Trader” AKA “Star Lanes”. I stumbled across the ASCII source while browsing my Linux server via LanmanFS and had to port it. This is some ancient code “MODIFIED FOR ALTAIR BASIC 4.0…” I think I have it working correctly.

A couple of years ago I stumbled across the history of the ECCE text editor. This interested me, how many other line editors got ported to MacOS? But all I could find for RISC OS is C and BBCBASIC source. The EPIC package is on my shopping list but until then I’ve been playing with the BBCBASIC version. I think it might actually be BBC micro source. I RTFMed and I know how to handle my current stumbling block, and I can’t wait to see what problem it comes up with next… :-)

Light word processing with Pipedream.

Uh…? Isn’t that a spreadsheet program?

For “light word processing”, why not give Ovation a try?
It’s perfect for writing a quick letter – quick tutorial: https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20151108
You can also create more complicated things with it too; my early issues of Frobnicate magazine were created using Ovation: https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20150514

I’ve decided the best way to do backups is to plug the SDcard into another machine and image it.

Ditto. Win32DiskImager to back up the SD card to a USB harddisc.

Porting programs to BBCBASIC.

Porting to BBC BASIC is not so hard as most other BASICs are subsets of what BBC BASIC can do. It’s often, in my experience, a case of working out what obscure PEEK and POKE is doing to replace with the appropriate OS calls, and to change stuff like PAPER and INK to the Beeb style graphics. Sometimes it isn’t always possible. There was one machine, Oric-1? I forget, that could have graphics AND text on-screen at the same time. Like the BBC? No, not quite. For the graphics part was bitmapped, but the text part was simply a sequence of text/attributes (not unlike how CGA does it). You can fake it, until it tries to do clever stuff, then it gets harder. :-)
But, hey, if porting was easy it wouldn’t be fun¹!

¹ For a very obscure definition of the word “fun” that might not be understood by the majority of people.

Uh…? Isn’t [Pipedream] a spreadsheet program?

It’s a hybrid Word Processor/Spreadsheet cross. Marketed as View Professional on Beeb, ISTR. Oh yeah, it was built-into the Cambridge Z88 too.

Sometimes it isn’t always possible. There was one machine, Oric-1? I forget, that could have graphics AND text on-screen at the same time.

Your head will explode when you find out what the extraordinary Enterprise/Elan could do.

I’d have got one, but I saw one running and it was spectacularly slow. This video demonstrates the normal drawing speed from BASIC. As I recall it had no filled graphics primitives, instead relying on The Slowest Flood Fill Known To Man™.

Shame. It was a great design. Nice people behind it.

Porting to BBC BASIC is not so hard as most other BASICs are subsets of what BBC BASIC can do.

Is it a sign of insanity to have:

1. reverse engineered the format of Olivetti Word processor files¹
2. written a BBC BASIC routine (can’t recall whether it was on the A4xx or the RPC) to read them from floppy and convert them to WordStar format²
3. converted the BBC BASIC routine to whatever that crappy, irritating version of BASIC came with DOS6 so that co-workers could use it to transfer files (Legal Claims had lots of floppies). The PC version was way longer and way slower but floppies are slower still.

The strange part was being told three weeks later that they had a quote just come in to do the conversion work which amounted to about 3 months of my salary so could I get hold of all the floppies ready for conversion and having to explain it was already done.

¹ Incredibly simple really
² The days of Wordstar vs. WordPerfect, pre-Windows WP (the first windows version of WP was so bad it made early MS Word look great)

Is it a sign of insanity to have:
1. reverse engineered the format of Olivetti Word processor files1
2. written a BBC BASIC routine (can’t recall whether it was on the A4xx or the RPC) to read them from floppy and convert them to WordStar format

Wibble.

Wibble.
(and a graphic item demonstrating ability to do GUI stuff)

I’ve always stuck with simplistic non-GUI items (mainly because you don’t need a GUI for those)
I’d call it simple elegance but for the fact the construct would have most programmers gouging their own eyes out to avoid seeing it again.
It did work though.

Mind you, “Wordstar for Windows”? A GUI on Wordstar was rather like a steering wheel on a football – you feel certain someone might figure out a use for it but removing it makes the whole thing work better for the original function.

I used to produce a lot of magazines, and authors would submit copy written in whatever super-duper program was installed by default on whatever super-duper machine they’d been sold by Dixons four years earlier. I used to factor in the time to reverse engineer what was bound to be a never-before-seen file format when pricing the things. I’m so glad those days are gone.

(and a graphic item demonstrating ability to do GUI stuff)

The nice thing about that program (from early 1994!) is that it is modular and multi-tasks while converting. Typically it converted to DDF (the ‘plain text’ is a lie) and the Pre/Post processing options and ticked converters allowed one to choose multiple stages of conversion, and then drag a directory full of files to it… and then get on with something else.

That’s from over 24 years ago. :-/

I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender.

I used to produce a lot of magazines, and authors would submit copy written in whatever super-duper program was installed by default on whatever super-duper machine they’d been sold by Dixons four years earlier. I used to factor in the time to reverse engineer what was bound to be a never-before-seen file format when pricing the things. I’m so glad those days are gone.

That’s a carbon copy of what I did for the Physiological Society’s academic journals! The input “filter” I wrote to do the conversions ended up with forty-odd different front-end stages for different file formats, which it selected automatically as soon as you dropped the file on it. We were still getting new formats occasionally right up to when I left after five and a half years. Forty papers a month on average… this tome: http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Photos.php?Assortment%2FJPhysiol

That’s from over 24 years ago

Yup. Ditto.

Great minds and fools.