Talk:RISC OS

message: BBC BASIC isn't currently within the scope of WP:RISCOS, although it could arguably be included. I'd like to suggest that BBC BASIC link to RISC OS under the relevant section, rather than Acorn Archimedes (discussion at Talk:BBC BASIC). --trevj (talk) 09:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  BBC BASIC 

message: The / tag means we still need to address a few items. I'm considering the following:
*Bundled applications
:could be moved to List of RISC OS bundled applications (and included in :Category:Lists of software)
*Features (OS core/The Desktop) was split into subsections in 2009 and has its origins in 2006
:either rewrite entirely in prose, or move to list(s) as above
*RISC OS 3 was expanded and converted to list form in 2006
:revert to prose
*Work post-Acorn by RISCOS Ltd large content rewrite includes some list items
:could possibly be addressed similarly to 'Features' above?
:prose for shorter lists?
--trevj (talk) 10:18, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Also worth noting WP:EMBED. --Trevj (talk) 14:57, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Features reworded, Bundled applications split out. RISC OS 3 and Work post-Acorn by RISCOS Ltd now at History of RISC OS. --Trevj (talk) 15:36, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Converting from list to prose 

message: I'm undoing this edit. The tag was dated Sept 2006 (persumably originating with this tag), and many references have recently been added + some dubious claims removed IIRC. However, the article still lacks some refs, as noted around just one week ago. When we've managed to address these issues, I think the tag could legitimately be removed once more. In the mean time, I'm sure that any reviewing editor from elsewhere would share the view that the tag remain. I hope that makes sense. --Trevj (talk) 06:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: The opening sentence now reads "...RISC OS RISC OS Open - About us: RISC OS Open Limited FAQ (initially named Arthur)..."
Could this be phrased better?  It seems ambiguous to me, as was RiscOS supposed to be Arthur 2, or does the statement mean that the operating system was originally, ie pre-RO2, called Arthur?  I'm confused.   a_man_alone (talk) 17:09, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Both, Arthur 2.00 was renamed  RISC OS 2.00 before publication. --Egel Reaction? 17:52, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It can't be both.  In fact, I've thought about it a bit more, and RiscOS was originally called Arthur 2 - pre RiscOS OS systems were called Arthur full stop.  I've made a slight change.  a_man_alone (talk) 18:06, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it now makes more sense than my ambiguous contribution. Thanks. --Trevj (talk) 06:59, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The way I understand it, the operating system was originally called Arthur, and the subsequent version was to be called Arthur 2, however this was nixed because of the similarity with the name of the film "Arthur 2: On The Rocks" (1988), so the operating system was renamed RISC OS; beginning with RISC OS 2. So in essence, what would have been RISC OS 1 was actually called Arthur, and what would have been Arthur 2 (onwards) was called RISC OS. --HeyRick1973 (talk) 17:43, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi! I think that's what's attributed to the ART factsheet under #History (a summary of History of RISC OS). It'd be better to replace with third party secondary sources, which is something that needs looking at (I have relatively easy access to the relevant '87 mags but will need to refer to later news too, which is less accessible, i.e. not at home). -- Trevj (talk) 07:31, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  From APP118 Archimedes High Performance Computer Systems and APP136 Archimedes 440 the BBC/Acorn MOS version for the Archimedes (300/400) series was named ARTHUR. From the Acorn Newsletters the second (version of the) OS was named RISC OS, the third RISC OS3. --Egel Reaction? 14:27, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

text: I am highly amused that my age-old post has prompted such recent activity, especially as we are now talking at a slight tangent to what I was actually asking.  What I was querying was the phraseology used in the lede, which originally stated: "RiscOS (initially named Arthur)"  My query was that RiscOS was not initially called "Arthur", but was "Arthur II", and even that was not entirely accurate, because it wasn't RiscOS, but RiscOS 2.  See how confusing the whole thing was?  However, it's always good to talk, and find an excuse to peruse Chris' Acorn stuff.  Chaheel Riens (talk) 15:43, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambiguous use of the term "Arthur" 

message: Any possibility that "Arthur" was a reference to the Cambridge University Computer Science / Computer Algebra lecturer Dr. Arthur C. Norman ? He IIRC wrote the floating-point and LISP packages for the BBC Micro ...  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.211.22.194 (talk) 14:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of name ?

message: The history section begins "RISC OS was originally released in 1987 as Arthur 1.20. The next version, Arthur 2, became RISC OS 2 and was made available in April 1989." This is not correct as Arthur 1.20 was the third incarnation of Arthur (arguably the one that mostly worked). The History of RISC OS document itself contradicts the above by saying "was originally released in 1987 as Arthur 0.20, soon followed by Arthur 0.30, and Arthur 1.20. The next version, Arthur 2, became RISC OS 2 and was completed and made available in April 1989.".
The thing is, I'm not sure how best to phrase this without it getting ridiculous. Perhaps it should only make brief mention of Arthur and be something like "RISC OS, originally developed from an earlier system called Arthur (1987), was made available in April 1989 as RISC OS 2"?
HeyRick, but not logged in 86.214.250.191 (talk) 22:58, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Early history?

message: I've moved the bulk of this content out to A9home, per WP:CFORK. This should make it easier to maintain things. If anyone feels strongly otherwise, please move it back in and/or discuss here. Thanks. --Trevj (talk) 09:54, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  A9home 

message: There are some potentially useful references at the bottom of this post. Neil Raine, David Seal, William Stoye and Roger Wilson also presented at the USENIX Computer Graphics Workshop, Monterey, California, 1989 --Trevj (talk) 11:52, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Font Manager 

message: ROOL's site provides the following commit dates, but AIUI we can't use them within the article because it would count as original research.
* 9-Sep-88    2.00
*17-Sep-91    3.00
*17-Feb-94    3.50
Therefore, does anyone know if this kind of information has been previously documented elsewhere, e.g. interviews/articles? --Trevj (talk) 11:25, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Problem is those dates are a) window manager only (not the OS date) b) the code freeze dates, not the dates they started shipping. So from a public point of view the dates are generally a few months later than that. Anyway, here's some more dates for you ... http://marutan.net/db/modules.php?kModule=12 http://marutan.net/db/modules.php?kModule=1 --Flibble (talk) 13:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the other release dates. Yes, it's true that the above ROOL dates are just for the Window Manager and I guess that other parts of the OS required for the respective shipped releases may have been finalised after those dates. (The ROOL MOS dates can also be checked.) Anyway, the reason I've been thinking about dates is because I'm currently reading Andy Hertzfeld's Revolution in the Valley. Therefore, I wondered if it would be interesting from a(n) historical POV to include dates of completed code for functionality included in the major OS releases. Aspects of any large software project presumably have code freezes a considerable time in advance of the product being shipped. In the case of producing ROMs, the fabrication/testing process is probably longer than for magnetic/optical media. But as I said above, it's all WP:NOR AFAIK ATM - unless someone digs something up. Cheers. --Trevj (talk) 09:59, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I collated a set of useful refs for arthur to 3.7 by combing through Chris's Acorns, the highlights are here User:Flibble/Acorn_Stuff#Refs_per_version, give some dates for some versions.--Flibble (talk) 19:06, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice one. Will see what can be done with that when I get some uninterrupted time to wade through it all. --Trevj (talk) 20:44, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Release version commit dates 

message: Now done (first stab). --Trevj (talk) 14:56, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Added it to the security section.--Flibble (talk) 16:05, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Entry at [[Comparison of operating systems]] 

message: Given, the shared kernel, most of the modules, developers and hardware. I suggest moving the NCOS page into a section on the RISC OS page. With a redirect setup on NCOS.--Flibble (talk) 16:15, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Independently notable, per WP:PRODUCT. -- Trevj (talk) 14:14, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[NCOS]] merge suggestion 

message: What?! No Web Browser Information?! Please add web browser information. In-Correct (talk) 04:57, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Browsers are application software, not part of the Operating System. Is there a more appropriate page dedicated to RISC OS software, where these could be listed? REH11 (talk) 21:20, 24 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: List of RISC OS bundled applications--Egel Reaction? 14:16, 25 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  NO WEB BROWSER INFORMATION?! 

message: This is a list of the emulators that are capable of running RISC OS, I think I've got all of them. I've decided not to commit this directly to the RISC OS article as due to being involved with two of them it is a conflict of interest. However if someone thinks that they're NPOV enough please add them to the page. If there is not a wiki page yet for an emulator it links to the emulators homepage. Also note that the emulators listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_system_emulators#Acorn_Archimedes has many issues, not least that many listed are not system emulators.--Flibble (talk) 11:43, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you thinking of this being included within #Supported hardware, where the current emulation info is? Or elsewhere? I don't see a major problem with you adding this yourself (best to clearly declare the COI in the edit summary, as I'm sure you would) but me or someone else will surely be happy to do it otherwise. Just one thing about the external links: they shouldn't really be included within the table, per WP:ELPOINTS. However, there's no reason they can't still be referred to as references in each case. I'm personally convinced that some of these are notable, and have been intending to write at least a stub for RPCEmu for a while now. Sorry about the delay. Finally, ArcEm can be run under RISC OS too - is that the deliberate mistake? Cheers. -- Trevj (talk) 14:18, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  RISC OS Emulators 

message: I think that the sentence "Limited software portability exists with subsequent versions of the OS and hardware." Is being unduly harsh towards RISC OS for compatibility issues arising from fundamental changes in the hardware (for instance the combined PC+PSR being split into two things, or the change of behaviour related to unaligned loads). Neither of these are directly the fault of RISC OS; it isn't the same as an OS induced incompatibility (example: Linux when it changed SWI behaviour, or Linux again when it changed to hard float). Indeed, the comment on BBC BASIC programs (which are interpreted so would be (mostly) immune to changes in how the processor operates) demonstrates that RISC OS maintains a reasonably good level of compatibility. Multitasking programs I have written for RISC OS 2 run on RISC OS 5. Single tasking programs from the BBC Micro era run on RISC OS 5!
There are, certainly, issues of compatibility with older software (what system doesn't have these sorts of issues?). Could this section be reworded to make it look a little less like RISC OS is arbitrarily incompatible with itself?
HeyRick1973 (talk) 11:07, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You're probably right - I'll have a closer look soon. (I'm currently recovering from the minor shock of finally transitioning  - which I'd forgotten about - to Impression (software)! I'll add some further info and refs at some point in the future... but at least that's a starting point which should be robust enough to demonstrate notability.) Cheers. -- Trevj (talk) 18:00, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compatibility between versions? 

message: While the announcement of RISC OS 5.20 is 24th July 2013 (https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2013/07/24/risc-os-5-20-stable-is-now-available), the downloads page for the builds (say, OMAP3) gives a date for the ROM image almost a year later [Beagle/OMAP3 https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/beagleboard 2014/04/24; Iyonix https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/iyonix 2014/04/24; RiscPC https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/riscpc 2014/04/24; there doesn't appear to be a stable for the RPi or the Panda/OMAP4].
Which would be the best date to use, the announcement (as now) or the date of the actual software (2014/04/24)?
Additionally, the "Latest preview" needs to be changed, though I'm not sure how to do this. The ROOL site runs an autobuilder each night, so the most recent "beta" version of RISC OS available is always "last night". It is disingenuous to suggest it was 19 months ago, when 19 hours is more realistic.
I have also added "loadable ROM image" to the update method, since this is how RISC OS is now most commonly used (on OMAP, Pi...).
HeyRick1973 (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latest versions 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: "ARMv3 first to support 32-bit memory address space (previously 26-bit)." RPCEm is limited to 256 MB, as RiscPC didn't support more. 26-bit meant 64 MB max, but going to 32-bit and high bits not used, it seems 256 only had to be a address bus hardware limitation of the ARM chip and/or RiscPC. Any idea why RPCEm follows that limitation, as e.g. Raspberry Pi has more memory and I assume/d all usable for RISC OS. comp.arch (talk) 10:04, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Being aware that by answering this I'm breaking the WP:FORUM guidelines. You are confusing two separate things, virtual memory size (26bit, 32bit) with physical memory size. Ask yourself, "why if 26bit addressing supports 64MB of space, did the biggest machine only have 16MB RAM in?". The virtual memory space is divided into sections that map to RAM, ROM, IO space, podule space, VRAM etc, the total amount of all this combined cannot exceed the size of the virtual memory space. This mapping is called a 'memory map' and varies considerably between different hardware. Support for these different memory maps requires specific code in RISC OSs kernel. RPCEmu emulates the memory map of the Risc PC, as such it can use Operating Systems built to run on the Risc PC, but not those versions of RISC OS built for other hardware, with different maps. The Risc PC memory map has a 256MB (2 128MB SIMMS) section in it for RAM, but no more, RISC OS probes how much physical RAM you actually have by writing to memory addresses and checking to see if there are duplicate values at wrapping points in the map (e.g 64MB RAM in one of the two SIMM slots will have the same data at 64MB and 128MB). So in answer to your primary question, there's not a 256MB limit in the OS, but there is in some of the hardware (including emulation of that hardware) that the OS runs on.Flibble (talk) 03:25, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is there a 256 MB limitation is some OS version?