I really love these alternate operating system videos, they really give an interesting look on the possibilities there could have been for operating systems today.
Yep. I kind of wish Apple would have managed to modernize their "classic" pre-Darwin Mac OS. It was a very elegant system that was just dogged by its lack of protected memory and preemptive multitasking, meaning that the whole system would often lock up if some bit of software misbehaved and having multiple apps running could be a real exercise in patience.
RiscOS was the first GUI-based OS I ever used. The Acorn A3000s we had at school were truly amazing machines. My dad had a PC compatible at the time and I remember it blew his mind seeing them on parents evening. I still occasionally use RiscOS today on my Archimedes A440 whenever I fancy playing PacMania
This video took me back to 1973 and writing BASIC programs on a teletype ( no visual display in those days ) connected between my school and the Hatfield Polytechnic DEC System 10. I must have been among the very earliest children taught "Computer Science".
class of '78' here and I did ye olde computational magical elictrickery studies too... Been great seeing the technological advancement through the years. I still look at my setup in disbelief at times, lol
I've been waiting for this video for a while. I had an Archimedes back in 1987, and it is amazing that a sub £20 machine now, runs RISC OS faster than the £1200 machine the OS and the ARM chip was invented for.
You (and I) were, Frogmella..... I graduated High School in 1974, was programming in BASIC the prior year in the first "Computer Science" class my school offered. Wrote the programs on punch tapes using a teletype, then used acoustic coupler to the T.I.E.S. HP2000C2 system to run the programs and get the output.
@@GoIdenApple That's because he does that thing where he pauses between bits of information, so that the information sinks in better, and it works well too!
I thoroughly enjoy every one of your videos Chris! I feel the world will be OK when I see you on the monitor and hear your reassuring voice and positive demeanor. You could make videos about anything, and I'd be happy watching them. Learning about new computer technology (and future trends on your other channel) is just a bonus! :D
Yay RISC OS. I was beginning to think you were ignoring it but that was a great video and demonstrated it quite nicely. I'm very pleased you covered it. I had an Archimedes from 1990 (and a BBC before that) and spent every day programming it when I was a teenager. I still have those original computers.
Same here. A capacitor in my Model B's power supply blew up recently, but it's a common fault and there's a repair kit readily available. tinyurl.com/ycj55bgt A pity Interdictor II is missing from the App Store!
I know it seems like a toy, but programming in BBC Basic under RISC OS is a much simpler way to develop for an embedded system. Whereas under Linux you'd have to develop in C, compile it, test it, compile it, test it, under RISC OS you can use the GPIO library with BBC Basic and it'll work just as fast! The topic of your next video is "Controlling LEDs with the Raspberry Pi using RISC OS"! Have fun!
Under Linux there is alternative: you can install TCC (Tiny C Compiler) which allows to treat source C-files like kind of „script” files provided that a) You set them executable, and b) You place in their very first line such kind of invocation: „#!/usr/bin/tcc -run” (optionally with additional arguments required for compilation on the fly, like „-lX11 -lpthread” for example). TCC is so fast, that there were even successful attempts to compile Linux kernel on the fly (well, it was at the time of 2.x or 3.x kernel line AFAIR). And it produces much smaller binary than GCC. OTOH there are a few situations when GCC is clearly better.
I love the Pi’s versatility! I recently got a Raspberry Pi 3 B+with my Christmas money and am eager to try so many things on it (your channel was a factor in my decision to buy one). Going to try out RISC OS now! :)
One of the great virtues of the early 80s micros is they tended to support having their power switch turned on and then boot (from ROM) immediately to a BASIC prompt. That characteristic made them great for novices to learn and explore. The RISC OS supporting the Raspberry Pi - where it boots (fairly quickly) from an SD card, and that the RISC OS provides a very quick and easy entry access to get to a BASIC prompt, I believe this combo (RISC OS and Raspberry Pi) comes closest of anything available today (other than antique retro hardware purchased off of eBay) to equaling that early 80s micro experience. And really it's superior than the early 80s micros in that the BBC BASIC is a much better dialect of BASIC than Microsoft BASIC (that was used in practically all the other early 80s era PCs). BBC BASIC is faster performing, as better structure programming capability, and is more full featured. If one is a neophyte and wants to learn an 80s BASIC, it's the one to learn. A;sp the RISC OS is rather nice all and all for an 80s GUI desktop OS. Very compact implementation (fast and lean). And unlike all the others from that era, the RISC OS itself still lives and breaths and is being maintained. If you go with Mac classic or Amiga, or Apple IIgs, etc., all those require finding retro hardware or buying rather expensive (and imperfect) hardware recreations or software emulation programs. Yet a modern, in production, Raspberry Pi can run the 80s era RISC OS (or modified variant thereof). That's almost unique (well, other than allowing that modern PCs can run MS-DOS - but not quite the same proposition). THIS NEEDS TO BE MORE OF A THING ==>> RISC OS/BBC BASIC running on very affordable Raspberry Pi Folks that is your ticket to getting a taste of retro computing - be an experiencer instead of just a passive on-looker
I loved how you explained the basic functions of the user interface. Many other channels skip that part and I'm like "Wow, what do all these buttons do?"
Such an informative video Gives us the brief history and a quick crash course to get started I've watched this video over and over again and learn so much as a beginner Thanks for your upload
Thank you, Christopher. I found this informative as well as entertaining. I was introduced to RiscOS 2 in 1995 when I began working at a school. It was quite an intuitive system and although I was unfamiliar with it, I soon understood how to get the best from it. The biggest problem by far was the lack of printer drivers. Most new printers came with Windows or MacOS drivers. Our local Education Support Centre had to code drivers from scratch and then release them to schools - it usually involved a twenty minute drive to the centre to pick up the floppy disks. On the plus side, I got to have a conversation with one of the IT guys with whom I had been to FE college. The other problem was teachers in that department buying printers and then asking me to install them in classrooms. My first question was if they had driver disks for that printer and the answer was usually “Isn’t that your job to create the drivers?” Of course, it wasn’t. One printer sat in its box for three months until the IT support guys received enough requests for a driver to be written. They were busy guys and didn’t turn out drivers unless there was enough demand. Thankfully a shift in how IT was delivered in schools saw the Archimedes systems consigned to recycling while Windows XP computers replaced them and a new IT guy at the school took over.
To keep the desktop tidy, open things using the right button, which closes the parent. Closing things with the right button will open the parent, and if I remember correctly, if you click on the close icon while holding either shift or ctrl (I don't remember which) then the parent opens without closing the child. The apps are directories (folders) that contain their resources, which generally follow a set structure. Hold down the shift key and double-click to open them instead of running them. There is normally a script called !Run that does whatever is needed to run an app, and another called !Boot that deals with the preliminaries when an app is first seen by the file manager. The icon images for the app are in a file called !Sprites. Installing apps is simply a case of copying the whole directory, and uninstalling is done by deleting the folder.
Really interesting and really useful info, thanks. I read up as much as I could, but did not get this far! :) The right button open thing sounds neat. I will dig into the app folders too.
Another trip down memory lane. I started with a BBC Microcomputer back in the day and when it was launched I bought an Archimedes and, later, a Risc PC. BBC BASIC is wonderfully powerful and it even includes a built-in assembler. I didn't realise that RISC OS had finally been made open source. I'm going to dedicate a Raspberry Pi to running it.
Great video... this is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks for thinking outside the "modern" box and reminding us of the roots of how it was done back in the day. Great stuff.
119MB for a whole OS? this alone make happy and excited, this video more than anything else remind me of the geeky years of the late 80s and the 90s, thank you sir, you gave me a reason to buy the Pi.
Yeah i know that but i think there is more to it than that, and i think it's time to start new OS, offer legacy compatibility as a emulator for those who need it.
What a trip down memory lane. I grew up with an A410 and an A3000 running RISC OS 4 and have very fond memories of playing all sorts games on them. Twin World and Zool were two of my faves. My dad switched to Mac in 1995 but at least one of those machines lived on and some years later my grandmother wrote her thesis on it.
Yet another fantastic video with Sunday morning breakfast. This is a wonderful introduction to RISC OS, anyone that is interested should look into interviews posted on TH-cam with Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber. They are the architects of the ARM processor and RISC OS.
Really good software, spotted it on the NOOBs SD card but wasn;t too sure about using it, you've inspired me to try it and it brings back the heady days of the 80's with the BBC BASIC!
I've just looked through most of the comments here and added a new Reply to several where I though a useful note might be added. I realise that the original posters will be unlikely to return here, but it's possible that you, Chris, may resume coverage of RISC OS at some point, and I would encourage that :-) It's quite interesting how certain usability themes recur, and I've tried to rebut the misconceptions, as well as bringing issues of wi-fi and RISC OS hardware other than the Pi up to date. One or two other real users of the OS have done likewise, I'm pleased to see. The annual London RISC OS Show is happening tomorrow (26-Oct-2019) so we'll get all the latest updates, and perhaps be able to discuss the feasibility of producing our own RISC OS videos to complement this one of yours. Thanks, again, for giving RISC OS some oxygen of publicity. It looks like it was well worth the effort.
I purchased the very first version of the Raspberry pi 256meg SBC when it released, it runs riscOS super fast, I love this OS, it very weird after using windows for so many years but it not that hard to learn and basic is an awesome language to learn with.
I tried using RISC OS last week prior to your video coming out and I was struggling a bit with a couple of things, I now know why. That middle mouse button was missing. Thanks for the video Chris it has come out at the right time for me. All the best for the new year to you, Mr Scissors and Stanley the knife.
oh yeah..I had forgotten basic.. now I have to get another pi just to put the oisc set up on it to play .. and I love those oled games.. thanks Chris.. thanks for bringing back old memories...
Wow. Great video. I've been around computers for a long time but hadn't heard of this OS before. I felt like I was in a time machine or a parallel universe or something. Very interesting as usual.
It took only a week to get yet another awesome video ❤️ It shows how ingenious Acorn machine was back then including standard VGA modes and video output.
This is fantastic! It's like Acorn's OS has come full circle on Acorn's hardware. I can't wait to play around with this. I have a special place in my heart for lean & mean OS' that originally did wonders on modest hardware, like AmigaOS, BeOS, etc.
Thank you so much for this video. I like Risc OS and being able to run it on the Raspi is very nice. Thanks also for having remind that the middle button of the mouse has an important feature (Which is was completely out of my mind prior I see your video)
The Menu (middle) mouse button is similar to the right button under other systems. RISC OS calls its right button Adjust as it provides an action that is an altered version of the left (Select) button, e.g. scrolling in the opposite direction, marking the end of selected text, and many other ergonomic functions as appropriate to the task.
Its very fast, compact, & efficient. In the early days the interpreted BBC BASIC running under RISC OS on the Acorn Archimedes was far faster than similar compiled languages on the Apple Macintosh. I had a very capable Desk Top Publishing package (included a sophisticated word processor) that was actually smaller the M$ Word for windows document READER program (that's reading & displaying word docs, no edit abilities). When Oliveti took over Acorn the new management couldn't really understand the idea of a non IBM compatible PC, so eventually it was sold off (allowing major shareholding in its former ARM subsidiary to be sold). Since then RISC OS development has been slow, until recently. Now a lot of catch-up development is being done, and some businesses are seriously evaluating using the operating system.
Thanks for creating this video. RISC OS was, and has the potential to be, a great operating system for the 21st Century. I can't think of any other OS specifically written for the ARM processor, so the fact that it is open sourced under the Apache 2 licence, means it can be given the shot in the arm it needs to make serious inroads into niche computing markets. I use Windows and Mac OS regularly, but do miss the immediacy and ease of use that was apparent in tools such as !Paint (the lack of Undo notwithstanding) and !Artworks (the latter formed the basis of Corel Xara/Xara Studio). It's definitely worth a try!
Retrotastic. I love these alternative OS vids. Makes you wonder what actually makes one become "the one." Life today could be so different if just one other of these OS's had been taken up by more people first. Timing? price? Ease of use? Advertising? Why did "we" go for DOS and then 3.1? Hmmm.
R0lica It's because the general cross section of the computer buying public prefers to be spoon fed , they do not like reading manuals and want some thing that works straight out of the box, no questions. Having an inferior computer that works (like the 8086) , is a price they are willing to pay, as they do not use it seriously anyway.
That and Acorn never had any foothold in the US. I heard they THOUGHT about bringing their computers and OS here to the US, but then decided against it.
Oh that brings up memories.... How I loved my Acorn Atom with the BBC basic Rom. The Atom itself was sweet as well. You could switch into 6502 Assembly just by putting it in square brackets. At 1 Mhz clock speed that was very welcome to speed things up.
Hello Christopher. Now that`s a fitting OS for the Raspberry. Good to be diverted :) I`ve got 4k video working in Linux on the RK3399`s. But it breaks Kdenlive. The same problem as with TinkerOS. RockchipMPP(kind of video driver for Rockchip VPU) seems to cause it. I`m trying to fix it, not sure if I can. I also ordered a new better camera. I`ll wait for that for my video editing video. Too bad light now for my cheap camera. Greetings, have a nice day.
@@thatscienceguy9458 Everybody has the right to have his own opinion. But spuwing opinions without articulating why brings little to no information to nobody. I edit video's and I like Kdenlive, so what you said is untrue. "Any one who edits video knows better to use that pos." Have a nice day.
RISC OS is a true Windows Icon Menus Pointer, OS vs windows where you can do a lot with ALT keys! Also if you look at the file system it has type then ID, so that you don't run into Windows 26 drive letter issue. Plus there are the fonts based on Bezier curves which mean each font is scalable in 0.001 pt increments. You touched on the ! which is a directory it just has a ! at the start which makes it an app (Like OS X uses .app) in the directory there are files that set up the app for use on the system no need for a registry! Installing is just copy it over. There's a lot to like about RISC OS and that's from 1987!
Thank you very much for this spot, I just look for nice things to bring the RaspBerry closer to my gandchildren. It remenbers me to the good old time with my Pat 1979 and the first 8KB programms.
That's fascinating. I was intrigued by the futuristic (in the early 1990s) user interface on the Acorn Archimedes, which I encountered only in one or two shops at the time (Clery's in Dublin city centre comes to mind). Looking back now it's reminiscent of how the Amiga's Workbench was way ahead of its time. Back then I had moved from a Commodore 64 to the Atari ST (and some exposure to DOS and Windows 3.11 on my friend's 486 PC), and had no idea how much better things could be. Sort of a shame RISC OS (and the Amiga's Workbench) didn't have more commercial impact, as I think we might be in a better place today.
I love Risc OS. When I was a kid I hated it as it was the "School computer" and wanted nothing to do with it at home, where it was Atari TOS all the way, but now, I love the elegance and attention to aesthetics of the UI, and the simplicity of the structure. It's all round a very elegant system compared to the painfully self-conscious over-styalised MacOS or the, to be blunt "fugly trainwreck" aesthetic of Windows.
Funny, back in the day, I worked at Silicon Graphics building RISC computers and one of my favorite basic programs was "Simon's Basic" on my Commodore 64. Yeah I'm old, thanks for the memories.
I was based in the Business School in the University of Nottingham, and next door was the Computer Science Department. There a project under Steve Benford did a lot of quite pioneering work on VR in a project called the ACE (Advanced Computing Environments) Lab. I visited on a few occasions -- even filmed there! -- as I wrote the first UK e-business book in the mid 1990s, so we often talked about collaborations.
That's the man! A great guy. He had several Silicon Graphics workstations at the time doing various VR stuff. I left the university in late 2015, so have not seen him since.
Haha this is exactly what I needed this moment Chris, thanksss🙋👍👍👍 I love the small footprint. Those multi-gigabyte 'light' Linux distributions are a bit obscene. Edit: Ooops, spoke two soon, after decompressing it's 2 Gigs, bummer :(
Wow thats taken me back! Where was the Zarch / Lander demo? Used to have the A440/1 when it 1st came out :) Also programmed ARM assembler. My machine came with Arthur 1.2 before I was able to do a chip replacement to get a new version of RISC. Imagine my surprise when i got into the latest and greatest in the PC world only to find it was 16 bit and not really multi tasking....
Great video! Always wanted to have an Acorn Archimedes (the one that looked like Amiga/Atari ST) and now I can at least have an OS that looks very similar. :)
I was watching another video last week talking about how Microsoft and Apple where getting behind the ARM architecture. This would be a good time to bring the RISC OS up to-date. I read a few of the forums on the RISC OS web site and there is talk about it.
language is what you speak, it is a property of you as a programmer; in case of basic and this os you would rather say 'interpreter', but you may also need a compiler and a linker ;)
Thanks for this nice video. I think i have read on riscos forum for pi that only one core of the CPU is used. So it seems a good OS for single core pis
I believe Acorn showed RISC OS to Bill Gates, but he wasn't too interested except for the icon bar which later made its way into Windows '95 as the Windows taskbar.
Apparently a few years earlier the boot was on the other foot when Bill was trying to sell MSDOS to Acorn for the BBC micro or something... Hermann Hauser replied "why would we want MSDOS when we have MOS?" Ans and Bill went back to Seattle with his tail between his legs
Seeing Basic takes me back. I started on a ZX81 and continued through to VB.net but when I dropped Windows from my life , I switched to Python and C+ f or Arduino. Think it worth a look as I only have to swop SD cards.
@ExplainingComputers / Christopher. Wow, talk about a blast from the past. I was a big fan of the Amiga, Atari ST, the classic Apple Macs and the Acorn Archimedes (also being a kid back in the 1980's that was taught in British schools, I fondly remember the education / Acorn BBC project). ARM processors and RISC based operating system, let's live like it is the early 1990's again :-) (btw, I learnt some Forth, Lisp, Assembly and BASIC using BBC B's and BBC Master computers)
you can definitely tell the appstore was written later than the other apps. It actually just opens when you activate it, instead of that weird background-open thing that the older apps do.
Nice vid Chris! Thanks. I wish you could make an introduction on how to address Pi IO port via Basic. Then one can make simple automation programs in Basic.
Takes me back to my early ZX81 & ZX Spectrum days writing basic programs or copying in the basic code from the pages of one of the magazines. Before it came out on tape Manic Miner was originally printed in a magazine.
Last time I saw a screen like that was on an Archimedes 5000 that I was fortunate to get a hold of. Just like with the Amiga/Motorola combination I found Arm Assembly very pleasent unlike intel 8086/x86. Its cool that more software that would be labled abandonware is now opensource, alot of lessons learned over time thats for sure. Nice video to start the year out with,
MASM has a lot of baggage, but I used to write in A86 (a shareware assembler) and thought it was the best language I'd ever seen (up to that time). I've written plenty of C programs on RISC systems (Alpha and AS/400 PowerPC - and lately my Raspberry Pi) but no assembler.
Oh, me too... Really showing my age here, but I put so many quarters into the Asteroids machine back in the day! Never was all that good at it, but it was very relaxing blasting the asteroids away with my little ship. - Remember flying full speed off the edge over and over while blasting them as you zoomed by? Great memories, such nostalgia!
This is actually a great system, if you think about it. It has its ups and downs. And no way near as polished as anything modern. Yet it is cool. Reminds me of the way you operated Amiga's in a way. And again, not quite the same. I guess it is it's own cool thing.
Thanks for the review. I'm going to move my dhcp and log server to my virtuals on vmware esxi. Then I'm getting a copy of this! Thanks for the video!!!
Dam I haven't seen that OS running since High school thanks professor didn't know I could get it makes me wonder if I can get it to run on my pinebook .
I really love these alternate operating system videos, they really give an interesting look on the possibilities there could have been for operating systems today.
Perhaps someday we can have these OSs on distinct platforms. You never know. ;)
Yep. I kind of wish Apple would have managed to modernize their "classic" pre-Darwin Mac OS. It was a very elegant system that was just dogged by its lack of protected memory and preemptive multitasking, meaning that the whole system would often lock up if some bit of software misbehaved and having multiple apps running could be a real exercise in patience.
RiscOS was the first GUI-based OS I ever used. The Acorn A3000s we had at school were truly amazing machines. My dad had a PC compatible at the time and I remember it blew his mind seeing them on parents evening. I still occasionally use RiscOS today on my Archimedes A440 whenever I fancy playing PacMania
This brings me back to my high school days.
This video took me back to 1973 and writing BASIC programs on a teletype ( no visual display in those days ) connected between my school and the Hatfield Polytechnic DEC System 10. I must have been among the very earliest children taught "Computer Science".
class of '78' here and I did ye olde computational magical elictrickery studies too... Been great seeing the technological advancement through the years. I still look at my setup in disbelief at times, lol
I've been waiting for this video for a while. I had an Archimedes back in 1987, and it is amazing that a sub £20 machine now, runs RISC OS faster than the £1200 machine the OS and the ARM chip was invented for.
You (and I) were, Frogmella..... I graduated High School in 1974, was programming in BASIC the prior year in the first "Computer Science" class my school offered. Wrote the programs on punch tapes using a teletype, then used acoustic coupler to the T.I.E.S. HP2000C2 system to run the programs and get the output.
My school went that route early 1970, so I had 2.5 years with BASIC and XBASIC by graduation in '72.
@@GoIdenApple That's because he does that thing where he pauses between bits of information, so that the information sinks in better, and it works well too!
I thoroughly enjoy every one of your videos Chris! I feel the world will be OK when I see you on the monitor and hear your reassuring voice and positive demeanor. You could make videos about anything, and I'd be happy watching them. Learning about new computer technology (and future trends on your other channel) is just a bonus! :D
RISC OS is the OS that pioneered the contextual menu, for which we should be forever thankful.
Xerox Alto menus were contextual. Contextual menus predate global or app menus
Yay RISC OS. I was beginning to think you were ignoring it but that was a great video and demonstrated it quite nicely. I'm very pleased you covered it. I had an Archimedes from 1990 (and a BBC before that) and spent every day programming it when I was a teenager. I still have those original computers.
Still have mine as well
Same here. A capacitor in my Model B's power supply blew up recently, but it's a common fault and there's a repair kit readily available.
tinyurl.com/ycj55bgt
A pity Interdictor II is missing from the App Store!
Yep that happened to me, a very loud buzz and the most acrid smell ever, kept working tho! I found a kit online.
I know it seems like a toy, but programming in BBC Basic under RISC OS is a much simpler way to develop for an embedded system. Whereas under Linux you'd have to develop in C, compile it, test it, compile it, test it, under RISC OS you can use the GPIO library with BBC Basic and it'll work just as fast! The topic of your next video is "Controlling LEDs with the Raspberry Pi using RISC OS"! Have fun!
ExplainingComputers : Yes, please do!
Under Linux there is alternative: you can install TCC (Tiny C Compiler) which allows to treat source C-files like kind of „script” files provided that a) You set them executable, and b) You place in their very first line such kind of invocation: „#!/usr/bin/tcc -run” (optionally with additional arguments required for compilation on the fly, like „-lX11 -lpthread” for example).
TCC is so fast, that there were even successful attempts to compile Linux kernel on the fly (well, it was at the time of 2.x or 3.x kernel line AFAIR). And it produces much smaller binary than GCC. OTOH there are a few situations when GCC is clearly better.
@@beholder2012 I don't know how RISC OS is doing these days. You might like to make a video explaining this point in more detail. Thanks for replying.
I love the Pi’s versatility! I recently got a Raspberry Pi 3 B+with my Christmas money and am eager to try so many things on it (your channel was a factor in my decision to buy one).
Going to try out RISC OS now! :)
Yet another fascinating and nostalgic look at an OS seemingly frozen in time. Thanks Chris!
One of the great virtues of the early 80s micros is they tended to support having their power switch turned on and then boot (from ROM) immediately to a BASIC prompt. That characteristic made them great for novices to learn and explore.
The RISC OS supporting the Raspberry Pi - where it boots (fairly quickly) from an SD card, and that the RISC OS provides a very quick and easy entry access to get to a BASIC prompt, I believe this combo (RISC OS and Raspberry Pi) comes closest of anything available today (other than antique retro hardware purchased off of eBay) to equaling that early 80s micro experience.
And really it's superior than the early 80s micros in that the BBC BASIC is a much better dialect of BASIC than Microsoft BASIC (that was used in practically all the other early 80s era PCs). BBC BASIC is faster performing, as better structure programming capability, and is more full featured. If one is a neophyte and wants to learn an 80s BASIC, it's the one to learn.
A;sp the RISC OS is rather nice all and all for an 80s GUI desktop OS. Very compact implementation (fast and lean). And unlike all the others from that era, the RISC OS itself still lives and breaths and is being maintained. If you go with Mac classic or Amiga, or Apple IIgs, etc., all those require finding retro hardware or buying rather expensive (and imperfect) hardware recreations or software emulation programs. Yet a modern, in production, Raspberry Pi can run the 80s era RISC OS (or modified variant thereof). That's almost unique (well, other than allowing that modern PCs can run MS-DOS - but not quite the same proposition).
THIS NEEDS TO BE MORE OF A THING ==>> RISC OS/BBC BASIC running on very affordable Raspberry Pi
Folks that is your ticket to getting a taste of retro computing - be an experiencer instead of just a passive on-looker
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
I loved how you explained the basic functions of the user interface. Many other channels skip that part and I'm like "Wow, what do all these buttons do?"
This was really interesting to watch and demonstrates an operating system from around the time I was born. Excellent video.
These videos are great, they remind me of the old OpenUniversity lectures that would appear on TV early in the morning in the 1980s.
Such an informative video
Gives us the brief history and a quick crash course to get started I've watched this video over and over again and learn so much as a beginner
Thanks for your upload
Thank you, Christopher. I found this informative as well as entertaining.
I was introduced to RiscOS 2 in 1995 when I began working at a school. It was quite an intuitive system and although I was unfamiliar with it, I soon understood how to get the best from it.
The biggest problem by far was the lack of printer drivers. Most new printers came with Windows or MacOS drivers. Our local Education Support Centre had to code drivers from scratch and then release them to schools - it usually involved a twenty minute drive to the centre to pick up the floppy disks. On the plus side, I got to have a conversation with one of the IT guys with whom I had been to FE college.
The other problem was teachers in that department buying printers and then asking me to install them in classrooms. My first question was if they had driver disks for that printer and the answer was usually “Isn’t that your job to create the drivers?”
Of course, it wasn’t. One printer sat in its box for three months until the IT support guys received enough requests for a driver to be written. They were busy guys and didn’t turn out drivers unless there was enough demand.
Thankfully a shift in how IT was delivered in schools saw the Archimedes systems consigned to recycling while Windows XP computers replaced them and a new IT guy at the school took over.
To keep the desktop tidy, open things using the right button, which closes the parent. Closing things with the right button will open the parent, and if I remember correctly, if you click on the close icon while holding either shift or ctrl (I don't remember which) then the parent opens without closing the child.
The apps are directories (folders) that contain their resources, which generally follow a set structure. Hold down the shift key and double-click to open them instead of running them. There is normally a script called !Run that does whatever is needed to run an app, and another called !Boot that deals with the preliminaries when an app is first seen by the file manager. The icon images for the app are in a file called !Sprites. Installing apps is simply a case of copying the whole directory, and uninstalling is done by deleting the folder.
Really interesting and really useful info, thanks. I read up as much as I could, but did not get this far! :) The right button open thing sounds neat. I will dig into the app folders too.
Always Amazing Analysis. 2019 is off to an excellent start.
Great video. I remember the OS before RISC OS on the Acorn Archimedes. Arthur. Good times!
Another trip down memory lane. I started with a BBC Microcomputer back in the day and when it was launched I bought an Archimedes and, later, a Risc PC. BBC BASIC is wonderfully powerful and it even includes a built-in assembler. I didn't realise that RISC OS had finally been made open source. I'm going to dedicate a Raspberry Pi to running it.
Great video... this is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks for thinking outside the "modern" box and reminding us of the roots of how it was done back in the day. Great stuff.
119MB for a whole OS? this alone make happy and excited, this video more than anything else remind me of the geeky years of the late 80s and the 90s, thank you sir, you gave me a reason to buy the Pi.
The bare OS is under 4 MB. All the rest is bundled apps, resources, and other goodies.
That's impressive, which makes me ask why Windows 10 need 18GB of space?
@@Abdulla79 A massive, decades-old codebase with an insane amount of legacy support and backwards compatibility.
Yeah i know that but i think there is more to it than that, and i think it's time to start new OS, offer legacy compatibility as a emulator for those who need it.
What a trip down memory lane. I grew up with an A410 and an A3000 running RISC OS 4 and have very fond memories of playing all sorts games on them. Twin World and Zool were two of my faves. My dad switched to Mac in 1995 but at least one of those machines lived on and some years later my grandmother wrote her thesis on it.
Wow thats a fast OS, look how fast it starts programs!
Its actually insane how snappy this OS is.
Yes, old-fashioned, well-optimised code.
@@ExplainingComputers I wish windows was this optimized :(
It's like a software version of vintage computing... I love it. Thanks for this one Chris, I look forward to trying it out.
Yet another fantastic video with Sunday morning breakfast. This is a wonderful introduction to RISC OS, anyone that is interested should look into interviews posted on TH-cam with Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber. They are the architects of the ARM processor and RISC OS.
I will check out those videos.
Really good software, spotted it on the NOOBs SD card but wasn;t too sure about using it, you've inspired me to try it and it brings back the heady days of the 80's with the BBC BASIC!
I've just looked through most of the comments here and added a new Reply to several where I though a useful note might be added. I realise that the original posters will be unlikely to return here, but it's possible that you, Chris, may resume coverage of RISC OS at some point, and I would encourage that :-)
It's quite interesting how certain usability themes recur, and I've tried to rebut the misconceptions, as well as bringing issues of wi-fi and RISC OS hardware other than the Pi up to date. One or two other real users of the OS have done likewise, I'm pleased to see.
The annual London RISC OS Show is happening tomorrow (26-Oct-2019) so we'll get all the latest updates, and perhaps be able to discuss the feasibility of producing our own RISC OS videos to complement this one of yours.
Thanks, again, for giving RISC OS some oxygen of publicity. It looks like it was well worth the effort.
Thanks for contributing to the comments here. This video is still generating steady traffic, so the comments are a useful resource. :)
Thank you Chris for your wonderful review...
I purchased the very first version of the Raspberry pi 256meg SBC when it released, it runs riscOS super fast, I love this OS, it very weird after using windows for so many years but it not that hard to learn and basic is an awesome language to learn with.
Wow that OS looks really neat
I tried using RISC OS last week prior to your video coming out and I was struggling a bit with a couple of things, I now know why. That middle mouse button was missing. Thanks for the video Chris it has come out at the right time for me. All the best for the new year to you, Mr Scissors and Stanley the knife.
Seeing menu options flash upon selection... Oh, the fond memories of old Macintosh...
oh yeah..I had forgotten basic.. now I have to get another pi just to put the oisc set up on it to play .. and I love those oled games.. thanks Chris.. thanks for bringing back old memories...
Wow. Great video. I've been around computers for a long time but hadn't heard of this OS before. I felt like I was in a time machine or a parallel universe or something. Very interesting as usual.
I remember using RISCOS in school, I could not understand why anyone would ever use a PC at the time
It took only a week to get yet another awesome video ❤️
It shows how ingenious Acorn machine was back then including standard VGA modes and video output.
This is fantastic! It's like Acorn's OS has come full circle on Acorn's hardware. I can't wait to play around with this. I have a special place in my heart for lean & mean OS' that originally did wonders on modest hardware, like AmigaOS, BeOS, etc.
I love you Chris for showing this install, it answered all my questions, and the mystery of a need for 3 button mouse,..thanks Love cheers
What gets my juices flowing these days is alternative operating systems.
Thank you for introdusing us this unique OS..!!!!
Thank you, as usual, beautifully explaining things so that even an old dog like me understands everything :D
I loved risc os, and it's amazing how well it aged, given the other os's from 1990.
Another great video, although I feel bad now for binning my RiscPC 600 a few years ago. It cost me £2000 in 1994
Thank you so much for this video. I like Risc OS and being able to run it on the Raspi is very nice. Thanks also for having remind that the middle button of the mouse has an important feature (Which is was completely out of my mind prior I see your video)
The Menu (middle) mouse button is similar to the right button under other systems. RISC OS calls its right button Adjust as it provides an action that is an altered version of the left (Select) button, e.g. scrolling in the opposite direction, marking the end of selected text, and many other ergonomic functions as appropriate to the task.
what a nice little os! , very well explained , amazing video as usual!
Its very fast, compact, & efficient. In the early days the interpreted BBC BASIC running under RISC OS on the Acorn Archimedes was far faster than similar compiled languages on the Apple Macintosh. I had a very capable Desk Top Publishing package (included a sophisticated word processor) that was actually smaller the M$ Word for windows document READER program (that's reading & displaying word docs, no edit abilities).
When Oliveti took over Acorn the new management couldn't really understand the idea of a non IBM compatible PC, so eventually it was sold off (allowing major shareholding in its former ARM subsidiary to be sold). Since then RISC OS development has been slow, until recently. Now a lot of catch-up development is being done, and some businesses are seriously evaluating using the operating system.
Thanks for creating this video. RISC OS was, and has the potential to be, a great operating system for the 21st Century. I can't think of any other OS specifically written for the ARM processor, so the fact that it is open sourced under the Apache 2 licence, means it can be given the shot in the arm it needs to make serious inroads into niche computing markets.
I use Windows and Mac OS regularly, but do miss the immediacy and ease of use that was apparent in tools such as !Paint (the lack of Undo notwithstanding) and !Artworks (the latter formed the basis of Corel Xara/Xara Studio).
It's definitely worth a try!
I knew RISC OS was available on the RPi, but I didn't know much about it. Thanks!
You sir, are VERY good at explaining all things computer related. You should be a teacher... 😉
Thanks. I have been a university lecturer for about 28 years. :)
@@ExplainingComputers Yep. A good one at that....😉
Retrotastic. I love these alternative OS vids. Makes you wonder what actually makes one become "the one." Life today could be so different if just one other of these OS's had been taken up by more people first. Timing? price? Ease of use? Advertising? Why did "we" go for DOS and then 3.1? Hmmm.
Short, simple and correct answer: Microsoft. They basically bullied manufacturers and resellers into shipping with DOS and Windows.
R0lica It's because the general cross section of the computer buying public prefers to be spoon fed , they do not like reading manuals and want some thing that works straight out of the box, no questions. Having an inferior computer that works (like the 8086) , is a price they are willing to pay, as they do not use it seriously anyway.
That and Acorn never had any foothold in the US. I heard they THOUGHT about bringing their computers and OS here to the US, but then decided against it.
Happy new year Chris awsome video as always
Lovely video. Thank you.
Thanks for explaining the Risc arch
Oh that brings up memories.... How I loved my Acorn Atom with the BBC basic Rom. The Atom itself was sweet as well. You could switch into 6502 Assembly just by putting it in square brackets. At 1 Mhz clock speed that was very welcome to speed things up.
As ever Chris, great fun.
OMG I did BBC programming at college many moons ago. The old BBC computers with the cd sized floppy drives.
What an interesting video thank you.
Hello Christopher. Now that`s a fitting OS for the Raspberry. Good to be diverted :)
I`ve got 4k video working in Linux on the RK3399`s. But it breaks Kdenlive. The same problem as with TinkerOS. RockchipMPP(kind of video driver for Rockchip VPU) seems to cause it. I`m trying to fix it, not sure if I can.
I also ordered a new better camera. I`ll wait for that for my video editing video. Too bad light now for my cheap camera. Greetings, have a nice day.
H Nico. It sounds like we are at the opposite ends of the SBC world this week! You in 4K, and me running MODE 7 and BBC BASIC. :)
Kdenlive is a crap. Any one who edits video knows better to use that pos.
@@thatscienceguy9458 Everybody has the right to have his own opinion. But spuwing opinions without articulating why brings little to no information to nobody. I edit video's and I like Kdenlive, so what you said is untrue. "Any one who edits video knows better to use that pos."
Have a nice day.
RISC OS is a true Windows Icon Menus Pointer, OS vs windows where you can do a lot with ALT keys!
Also if you look at the file system it has type then ID, so that you don't run into Windows 26 drive letter issue. Plus there are the fonts based on Bezier curves which mean each font is scalable in 0.001 pt increments.
You touched on the ! which is a directory it just has a ! at the start which makes it an app (Like OS X uses .app) in the directory there are files that set up the app for use on the system no need for a registry! Installing is just copy it over. There's a lot to like about RISC OS and that's from 1987!
more is yet to come and soon, 5.28 >> www.riscository.com/2020/rpcemu-risc-os-direct/
.
but first, what do you grow in an orchard?
Great video with great information as always Chris.
2019 is looking good already.
Thanks for the CISC & RISC explanation as well.
The vintage looking GUI is really cool!
Even though I know I'll never use an OS like this, it's still interesting to see what old OSes were like from before I was even born
I will have to try that on my Raspberry Pi Good Show as always and RISC looks very interesting :)
Thank you very much for this spot, I just look for nice things to bring the RaspBerry closer to my gandchildren. It remenbers me to the good old time with my Pat 1979 and the first 8KB programms.
"...this is novel, we don't have that in other operating systems..."
Except in the Amiga's Intuition since 1985. 🙂
Yes, as an Amiga user for many years, I should not have forgotten this! :)
That's fascinating. I was intrigued by the futuristic (in the early 1990s) user interface on the Acorn Archimedes, which I encountered only in one or two shops at the time (Clery's in Dublin city centre comes to mind). Looking back now it's reminiscent of how the Amiga's Workbench was way ahead of its time. Back then I had moved from a Commodore 64 to the Atari ST (and some exposure to DOS and Windows 3.11 on my friend's 486 PC), and had no idea how much better things could be.
Sort of a shame RISC OS (and the Amiga's Workbench) didn't have more commercial impact, as I think we might be in a better place today.
I love Risc OS. When I was a kid I hated it as it was the "School computer" and wanted nothing to do with it at home, where it was Atari TOS all the way, but now, I love the elegance and attention to aesthetics of the UI, and the simplicity of the structure. It's all round a very elegant system compared to the painfully self-conscious over-styalised MacOS or the, to be blunt "fugly trainwreck" aesthetic of Windows.
Funny, back in the day, I worked at Silicon Graphics building RISC computers and one of my favorite basic programs was "Simon's Basic" on my Commodore 64. Yeah I'm old, thanks for the memories.
I remember those SG machines, I knew a group who used them for early VR research.
You were part of the MIPS team?
I was based in the Business School in the University of Nottingham, and next door was the Computer Science Department. There a project under Steve Benford did a lot of quite pioneering work on VR in a project called the ACE (Advanced Computing Environments) Lab. I visited on a few occasions -- even filmed there! -- as I wrote the first UK e-business book in the mid 1990s, so we often talked about collaborations.
@@ExplainingComputers www.nottingham.ac.uk/ComputerScience/People/steve.benford ?
That's the man! A great guy. He had several Silicon Graphics workstations at the time doing various VR stuff. I left the university in late 2015, so have not seen him since.
I love how the SD Card is just like :0
Great video Chris...Would love to see a show on the Anki Vector...
Thanks for taking a RISK for explaining RISC
Haha this is exactly what I needed this moment Chris, thanksss🙋👍👍👍
I love the small footprint. Those multi-gigabyte 'light' Linux distributions are a bit obscene.
Edit: Ooops, spoke two soon, after decompressing it's 2 Gigs, bummer :(
Wow thats taken me back! Where was the Zarch / Lander demo? Used to have the A440/1 when it 1st came out :) Also programmed ARM assembler. My machine came with Arthur 1.2 before I was able to do a chip replacement to get a new version of RISC. Imagine my surprise when i got into the latest and greatest in the PC world only to find it was 16 bit and not really multi tasking....
We need a compilation of you getting carried away and starting to play solitaire whilst demonstrating various operating systems
Great video! Always wanted to have an Acorn Archimedes (the one that looked like Amiga/Atari ST) and now I can at least have an OS that looks very similar. :)
I love your sarcasm.
I was watching another video last week talking about how Microsoft and Apple where getting behind the ARM architecture. This would be a good time to bring the RISC OS up to-date. I read a few of the forums on the RISC OS web site and there is talk about it.
Ahhh riscos , its good to be back.
Real operating systems come with a programming language included.
@Lee its most probably better than commodore basic.
language is what you speak, it is a property of you as a programmer; in case of basic and this os you would rather say 'interpreter', but you may also need a compiler and a linker ;)
I really enjoyed this segment
The best computer youtuber of the earl.
Thanks for this nice video.
I think i have read on riscos forum for pi that only one core of the CPU is used. So it seems a good OS for single core pis
I believe you are correct.
I believe Acorn showed RISC OS to Bill Gates, but he wasn't too interested except for the icon bar which later made its way into Windows '95 as the Windows taskbar.
Apparently a few years earlier the boot was on the other foot when Bill was trying to sell MSDOS to Acorn for the BBC micro or something... Hermann Hauser replied "why would we want MSDOS when we have MOS?" Ans and Bill went back to Seattle with his tail between his legs
They also had to explain to him what a network was.
Seeing Basic takes me back. I started on a ZX81 and continued through to VB.net but when I dropped Windows from my life , I switched to Python and C+ f or Arduino. Think it worth a look as I only have to swop SD cards.
Grand fun! It has all the signs of an OS whose technological substrate evolved faster than it could to keep up but it just refused to die.
@ExplainingComputers / Christopher.
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. I was a big fan of the Amiga, Atari ST, the classic Apple Macs and the Acorn Archimedes (also being a kid back in the 1980's that was taught in British schools, I fondly remember the education / Acorn BBC project).
ARM processors and RISC based operating system, let's live like it is the early 1990's again :-)
(btw, I learnt some Forth, Lisp, Assembly and BASIC using BBC B's and BBC Master computers)
you can definitely tell the appstore was written later than the other apps. It actually just opens when you activate it, instead of that weird background-open thing that the older apps do.
Nice and informative. Thanks for valuable info sir. I wasn't aware of that Acorn"RISC"machine.
Nice vid Chris! Thanks. I wish you could make an introduction on how to address Pi IO port via Basic. Then one can make simple automation programs in Basic.
Nice idea for a future video, noted.
RISC OS includes general support for the Pi's GPIO and specific support for its I²C. We can demonstrate the SenseHAT, for example, using BASIC.
Takes me back to my early ZX81 & ZX Spectrum days writing basic programs or copying in the basic code from the pages of one of the magazines. Before it came out on tape Manic Miner was originally printed in a magazine.
Last time I saw a screen like that was on an Archimedes 5000 that I was fortunate to get a hold of. Just like with the Amiga/Motorola combination I found Arm Assembly very pleasent unlike intel 8086/x86.
Its cool that more software that would be labled abandonware is now opensource, alot of lessons learned over time thats for sure.
Nice video to start the year out with,
MASM has a lot of baggage, but I used to write in A86 (a shareware assembler) and thought it was the best language I'd ever seen (up to that time). I've written plenty of C programs on RISC systems (Alpha and AS/400 PowerPC - and lately my Raspberry Pi) but no assembler.
Fantastic, I nearly leapt out of my seat when I saw Meteors... Brilliant!
Oh, me too... Really showing my age here, but I put so many quarters into the Asteroids machine back in the day! Never was all that good at it, but it was very relaxing blasting the asteroids away with my little ship. - Remember flying full speed off the edge over and over while blasting them as you zoomed by? Great memories, such nostalgia!
Honestly, the style of windows in this OS reminds me of the era back to Windows 3.x.
I don't know why, but I find OSs to be very fascinating.
Reminds me the old times of Windows 3.11
This is actually a great system, if you think about it. It has its ups and downs. And no way near as polished as anything modern. Yet it is cool. Reminds me of the way you operated Amiga's in a way. And again, not quite the same. I guess it is it's own cool thing.
You can do that foreground/ background window swapping in every variant of Amiga OS.
I know, I really should have remembered that, as I was a long-term Amiga user. :)
I just wish they’d implement WiFi under RISC OS
@@studiokadaver Elesar have (October 2019) announced a WifiHAT for RISC OS on a Pi.
Thanks for the review. I'm going to move my dhcp and log server to my virtuals on vmware esxi. Then I'm getting a copy of this! Thanks for the video!!!
thanks for replying so quickly.
Can’t believe you are old enough to remember BBC basic Chris!
Oh yes. I just turned 52! :)
Dam I haven't seen that OS running since High school thanks professor didn't know I could get it makes me wonder if I can get it to run on my pinebook .