Jump to content

RISC OS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Acorn RISC OS)
This article is about the operating system developed by Acorn Computers Ltd. For the OS developed by MIPS Computer Systems, see MIPS RISC/os.

RISC OS
RISC OS cogwheel logo
A screenshot of RISC OS 4
DeveloperAcorn Computers

Open-source (version 5)

Proprietary (versions 4 & 6)

Written inBBC BASIC, C, C++, assembly language
Working stateCurrent
Source modelClosed source; open source for some versions since 2018
Initial release25 September 1987; 37 years ago (1987-09-25)[1]
Latest release
  • 5.30[2] / 27 April 2024; 6 months ago (2024-04-27)
  • 6.20 / 1 December 2009; 14 years ago (2009-12-01)
Latest preview5.31
Marketing targetAcorn personal computers
Available inEnglish
Update methodFlash ROM, OTP ROM, or loadable ROM image
Package managerPackMan, RiscPkg
PlatformsARM
Kernel typeMonolithic
Default
user interface		GUI
License
Preceded byMOS
ARX (discontinued)
Official websiteriscosopen.org RISC OS Open
riscos.com RISCOS

RISC OS (/rɪsk.oʊˈɛs/)[4] is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archimedes personal computers. RISC OS takes its name from the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture it supports.

Between 1987 and 1998, RISC OS was included in every ARM-based Acorn computer model, including the Acorn Archimedes line, Acorn's R line (with RISC iX as a dual-boot option), RiscPC, A7000, and prototype models such as the Acorn NewsPad and Phoebe computer. A version of the OS, named NCOS, was used in Oracle Corporation's Network Computer and compatible systems.

After the break-up of Acorn in 1998, development of the OS was forked and continued separately by several companies, including RISCOS Ltd, Pace Micro Technology, Castle Technology, and RISC OS Developments.[5] Since then, it has been bundled with several ARM-based desktop computers such as the Iyonix PC[6] and A9home. As of March 2017, the OS remains forked and is independently developed by RISCOS Ltd and the RISC OS Open community.

Most recent stable versions run on the ARMv3/ARMv4 RiscPC, the ARMv5 Iyonix,[7] ARMv7 Cortex-A8 processors[8][9] (such as that used in the BeagleBoard and Touch Book) and Cortex-A9 processors[10] (such as that used in the PandaBoard) and the low-cost educational Raspberry Pi computer.[11][12][13] SD card images have been released for downloading free of charge to Raspberry Pi 1, 2, 3, & 4 users with a full graphical user interface (GUI) version[14] and a command-line interface only version (RISC OS Pico, at 3.8 MB).[15]

History

[edit]
Main article: History of RISC OS

The first version of RISC OS was originally released in 1987 as Arthur 1.20. The next version, Arthur 2, became RISC OS 2 and was released in April 1989. RISC OS 3.00 was released with the A5000 in 1991, and contained many new features. By 1996, RISC OS had been shipped on over 500,000 systems.[16]

Acorn officially halted work on the OS in January 1999, renaming themselves Element 14. In March 1999 a new company, RISCOS Ltd, licensed the rights to develop a desktop version of RISC OS from Element 14, and continued the development of RISC OS 3.8, releasing it as RISC OS 4 in July 1999. Meanwhile, Element 14 had also kept a copy of RISC OS 3.8 in house, which they developed into NCOS for use in set-top boxes. In 2000, as part of the acquisition of Acorn Group plc by MSDW Investment, RISC OS was sold to Pace Micro Technology,[17] who later sold it to Castle Technology Ltd.

In May 2001, RISCOS Ltd launched RISC OS Select, a subscription scheme allowing users access to the latest RISC OS 4 updates. These upgrades are released as soft-loadable ROM images, separate to the ROM where the boot OS is stored, and are loaded at boot time. Select 1 was shipped in May 2002, with Select 2 following in November 2002 and the final release of Select 3 in June 2004. In the same month, RISC OS 4.39, dubbed RISC OS Adjust, was released. RISC OS Adjust was a culmination of all the Select Scheme updates to date, released as a physical set of replaceable ROMs for the RiscPC and A7000 series of machines.

Meanwhile, in October 2002, Castle Technology released the Acorn clone Iyonix PC. This ran a 32-bit (in contrast to 26-bit) variant of RISC OS, named RISC OS 5. RISC OS 5 is a separate evolution of RISC OS based upon the NCOS work done by Pace. The following year, Castle Technology bought RISC OS from Pace for an undisclosed sum. In October 2006, Castle announced a shared source license plan, managed by RISC OS Open Limited, for elements of RISC OS 5.

In October 2018, RISC OS 5 was re-licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.[18]

In 2018 RISC OS Developments acquired Castle Technology Ltd including its intellectual property.[5]

In December 2020, the source code of RISC OS 3.71 was leaked to The Pirate Bay.[citation needed]

Supported hardware

[edit]

Versions of RISC OS run or have run on the following hardware.

RISC OS compatible hardware
Machine ARM architecture Introduced Acorn version RISCOS Ltd version Castle Technology, RISC OS Open version
First Last First Last First Latest
ARM with 26-bit program counter
Acorn Archimedes ARMv2 1987–1992 0.20 3.1x — — — —
ARM with 26- & 32-bit program counter
Acorn Risc PC ARMv3 / v4 1994[19] 3.50[19] 3.71 4.00 6.20[20] 5.15 5.30[21]/5.31
Acorn A7000 and A7000+ ARMv3 1995[22] – 1997[23] 3.60[22][23]
Acorn Phoebe (cancelled) ARMv4 1998 3.80 (Ursula) — — — — —
MicroDigital Medi[24] ARMv3 1998[25] 3.71[25] — 4.02 6.20 — —
MicroDigital Mico 1999[26] — — 4.03[26] 4.39[20] — —
RiscStation R7500 1999[27] — — 4.03[27] 4.39[20] — —
Castle Kinetic RiscPC ARMv4 2000[28] — — 4.03 6.20 5.19[29] 5.30[21]/5.31
MicroDigital Omega 2003[30] — — 4.03[31] 4.39[20] — —
Advantage Six A75 ARMv3 2004[32] — — 4.39[33] — —
ARM with 32-bit program counter
Iyonix Ltd Iyonix PC ARMv5TE 2002 — — — — 5.01 5.30[34]/5.31
Advantage Six A9 (Home/RM/Loc) ARMv4T 2005 — — 4.42[20] — —
BeagleBoard[8] ARMv7-A 2008 — — — — 5.15 5.30[35]/5.31
IGEPv2[36] 2009 — — — —
DevKit8000 ? — — — —
Always Innovating Touch Book 2009 — — — —
OpenPandora's Pandora 2010 — — — — 5.17[37]
PandaBoard[38] 2011 — — — — 5.17 5.30[10]/5.31
Raspberry Pi (1 - 4 and compatible)[12][39][40][41] ARMv6, v7-A, v8-A 2012 — — — — 5.19 5.30/5.31
IGEPv5[42] ARMv7-A 2014 — — — — 5.23 5.30/5.31
Wandboard Quad[43][44] 2015 — — — — 5.21 5.31
Titanium[45] — — — — 5.23 5.30/5.31
Pinebook[46] ARMv8-A 2017 — — — — 5.27 5.31

RISC OS Open Limited adopted[47] the 'even numbers are stable' version numbering scheme post version 5.14, hence some table entries above include two latest releases – the last stable one and the more recent development one.

A special cut down RISC OS Pico (for 16MiB cards and larger) styled to start up like a BBC Micro was released for BASIC's 50th anniversary.[48]

RISC OS has also been used by both Acorn and Pace Micro Technology in various TV connected set-top boxes, sometimes referred to instead as NCOS.

RISC OS can also run on a range of computer system emulators that emulate the earlier Acorn machines listed above.

RISC OS capable hardware emulators
Emulator Machines emulated Host platforms supported Latest release
!A310Emu[49] Archimedes RISC OS 0.59
Archie[50] DOS, Windows 0.9 – 10 February 2001
ArchiEmu[51] RISC OS 0.53.3 – 7 December 2014
ArcEm[52] Windows, Linux, macOS, RISC OS 1.50.1 – 18 December 2015
Arculator[53] Windows, Linux 2.2 – 24 June 2023
Virtual A5000 Windows 1.4
Red Squirrel[54] Archimedes, Risc PC, A7000 0.6 – 28 October 2002
RPCEmu[55] Risc PC, A7000, Phoebe Windows, Linux, macOS, OpenBSD 0.9.4 – 30 October 2021
VirtualRPC Risc PC Windows, macOS 5 September 2014[56]

Features

[edit]

OS core

[edit]

The OS is single-user and employs cooperative multitasking (CMT).[57] While most current desktop OSes use preemptive multitasking (PMT) and multithreading, RISC OS remains with a CMT system. By 2003, many users had called for the OS to migrate to PMT.[58] The OS memory protection is not comprehensive.[59][60]

The core of the OS is stored in ROM, giving a fast bootup time and safety from operating system corruption. RISC OS 4 and 5 are stored in 4 MB of flash memory, or as a ROM image on SD Card on single board computers such as the Beagleboard or Raspberry Pi, allowing the operating system to be updated without having to replace the ROM chip. The OS is made up of several modules. These can be added to and replaced, including soft-loading of modules not present in ROM at run time and on-the-fly replacement. This design has led to OS developers releasing rolling updates to their versions of the OS, while third parties are able to write OS replacement modules to add new features. OS modules are accessed via software interrupts (SWIs), similar to system calls in other operating systems.

Most of the OS has defined application binary interfaces (ABIs) to handle filters and vectors. The OS provides many ways in which a program can intercept and modify its operation. This simplifies the task of modifying its behaviour, either in the GUI, or deeper. As a result, there are several third-party programs which allow customising the OS look and feel.

File system

[edit]

The file system is volume-oriented: the top level of the file hierarchy is a volume (disc, network share) prefixed by the file system type. To determine file type, the OS uses metadata instead of file extensions. Colons are used to separate the file system from the rest of the path; the root is represented by a dollar ($) sign and directories are separated by a full stop (.). Extensions from foreign file systems are shown using a slash (example.txt becomes example/txt).[61] For example, ADFS::HardDisc4.$ is the root of the disc named HardDisc4 using the Advanced Disc Filing System (ADFS) file system. RISC OS filetypes can be preserved on other systems by appending the hexadecimal type as ',xxx' to filenames.[61][62] When using cross-platform software, filetypes can be invoked on other systems by naming appending '/[extension]' to the filename under RISC OS.[63]

A file system can present a file of a given type as a volume of its own, similar to a loop device. The OS refers to this function as an image filing system. This allows transparent handling of archives and similar files, which appear as directories with some special properties. Files inside the image file appear in the hierarchy underneath the parent archive. It is not necessary for the archive to contain the data it refers to: some symbolic link and network share file systems put a reference inside the image file and go elsewhere for the data.

The file system abstraction layer API uses 32-bit file offsets, making the largest single file 4 GiB (minus 1 byte) long. However, prior to RISC OS 5.20 the file system abstraction layer and many RISC OS-native file systems limited support to 31 bits (just under 2 GiB) to avoid dealing with apparently negative file extents when expressed in two's complement notation.[citation needed]

File formats

[edit]
Main article: List of RISC OS filetypes

The OS uses metadata to distinguish file formats. Some common file formats from other systems are mapped to filetypes by the MimeMap module.[64]

Kernel

[edit]

The RISC OS kernel is single-tasking and controls handling of interrupts, DMA services, memory allocation and the video display; the cooperative multi-tasking is provided by the WindowManager module.[57]

Desktop

[edit]

The WIMP interface is based on a stacking window manager and incorporates three mouse buttons[65] (named Select, Menu and Adjust), context-sensitive menus, window order control (i.e. send to back) and dynamic window focus (a window can have input focus at any position on the stack). The icon bar (Dock) holds icons which represent mounted disc drives, RAM discs, running applications, system utilities and docked: files, directories or inactive applications. These icons have context-sensitive menus and support drag-and-drop operation. They represent the running application as a whole, irrespective of whether it has open windows.

The GUI functions on the concept of files. The Filer, a spatial file manager, displays the contents of a disc. Applications are run from the Filer view and files can be dragged to the Filer view from applications to perform saves, rather than opening a separate 'Save' dialog box where the user must navigate to a location already visible in the Finder. In addition, files can be directly transferred between applications by dragging a save icon into another application's window.

Application directories are used to store applications. The OS differentiates them from normal directories through the use of an exclamation mark (also called a pling or shriek) prefix. Double-clicking on such a directory launches the application rather than opening the directory. The application's executable files and resources are contained within the directory, but normally they remain hidden from the user. Because applications are self-contained, this allows drag-and-drop installing and removing.

The RISC OS Style Guide encourages a consistent look and feel across applications. This was introduced in RISC OS 3 and specifies application appearance and behaviour. Acorn's own main bundled applications were not updated to comply with the guide until RISCOS Ltd's Select release in 2001.[66]

Font manager

[edit]

RISC OS was the first operating system to provide scalable anti-aliased fonts.[67][68][69][70] Anti-aliased fonts were already familiar from Arthur, and their presence in RISC OS was confirmed in an early 1989 preview,[71] featuring in the final RISC OS 2 product, launched in April 1989.[72]

A new version of the font manager employing "new-style outline fonts" was made available after the release of RISC OS,[73] offering full support for the printing of scalable fonts, and was provided with Acorn Desktop Publisher.[74] It was also made available separately and bundled with other applications.[75] This outline font manager provides support for the rendering of font outlines to bitmaps for screen and printer use, employing anti-aliasing for on-screen fonts, utilising sub-pixel anti-aliasing and caching for small font sizes.[76] At the time of the introduction of Acorn's outline font manager, the developers of rival desktop systems were either contemplating or promising outline font support for still-unreleased products such as Macintosh System 7 and OS/2 version 2.[77]

From 1993, starting with the German RISC OS 3.12, and in 1994 for RISC OS 3.5, it has been possible to use an outline anti-aliased font in the WindowManager for UI elements, rather than the bitmap system font from previous versions.[78][79] RISC OS 4 does not support Unicode but "RISC OS 5 provides a Unicode Font Manager which is able to display Unicode characters and accept text in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32. Other parts of the RISC OS kernel and core modules support text described in UTF-8."[80]

Support for the characters of RISC OS (and some other historic computers) was added to Unicode 13.0 (in 2020).[81]

Bundled applications

[edit]
Main article: List of RISC OS bundled applications

RISC OS is available in several distributions, all of which include a small standard set of desktop applications, but some of which also include a much wider set of useful programs. Some of those richer distributions are freely available, some are paid for.

Backward compatibility

[edit]

Limited software portability exists with subsequent versions of the OS and hardware. Single-tasking BBC BASIC applications often require only trivial changes, if any.[citation needed] Successive OS upgrades have raised more serious issues of backward compatibility for desktop applications and games.[82] Applications still being maintained by their author(s) or others have sometimes historically been amended to provide compatibility.[citation needed]

The introduction of the RiscPC in 1994 and its later StrongARM upgrade raised issues of incompatible code sequences and proprietary squeezing (data compression). Patching of applications for the StrongARM was facilitated and Acorn's UnsqueezeAIF software unsqueezed images according to their AIF header.[83] The incompatibilities prompted release by The ARM Club of its Game On![84][85] and StrongGuard software.[84][86][87] They allowed some formerly incompatible software to run on new and upgraded systems. The version of the OS for the A9home prevented the running of software without an AIF header (in accord with Application Note 295)[88] to stop "trashing the desktop".[89]

The Iyonix PC (RISC OS 5) and A9home (custom RISC OS 4) saw further software incompatibility because of the deprecated 26-bit addressing modes. Most applications under active development have since been rewritten.[90][91][92] Static code analysis to detect 26-bit-only sequences can be undertaken using ARMalyser.[93] Its output can be helpful in making 32-bit versions of older applications for which the source code is unavailable.[94][93][95] Some older 26-bit software can be run without modification using the Aemulor emulator.[92][96][97]

Additional incompatibilities were introduced with newer ARM cores, such as ARMv7 in the BeagleBoard and ARMv8 in the Raspberry Pi 3. This includes changes to unaligned memory access in ARMv6/v7 and removal of the SWP instructions in ARMv8.[98]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Revill, Steve (27 April 2024). "RISC OS 5.30 now available". RISC OS Open. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  2. ^ RISC OS is open for business! Archived 22 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine, RISC OS Open Ltd, accessed 2018-10-23
  3. ^ "RISC OS" (PDF). ISV Department news from Acorn. No. 14. Acorn Computers Limited. May 1989. p. 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 May 2021. Retrieved 14 February 2021. It is RISC OS (pronounced risk oh ess, not risk oss)
  4. ^ a b "Home". riscosdev.com.
  5. ^ "Acorn announces distribution deal with Castle Technology for RISC based products" (Press release). Acorn Computers Ltd. 12 October 1998. Archived from the original on 6 May 1999. Retrieved 6 January 2011. (October 12th 1998), Cambridge, UK-Acorn announced today that it has completed negotiations with Castle Technology for them to distribute Acorn products.
  6. ^ "RISC OS 5 features". Iyonix Ltd. Archived from the original on 10 November 2010. Retrieved 31 January 2011. All IYONIX pcs ship with RISC OS 5 in flash ROM.
  7. ^ a b Farrell, Nick (27 April 2009). "Snaps leak of RISC OS5 on BeagleBoard". The Inquirer. Archived from the original on 19 May 2009. Retrieved 28 June 2011. A snap of an RISC OS 5, running on a BeagleBoard device powered by a 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with a built-in graphics chip, has tipped up on the world wide wibble. The port developed by Jeffrey Lee is a breakthrough for the shared-source project because it has ported the OS without an army of engineers.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  8. ^ "Cortex-A8 port status". RISC OS Open. Archived from the original on 26 October 2021. Retrieved 31 January 2011. [The port includes] a modified version of the RISC OS kernel containing support for (all) Cortex-A8 CPU cores.
  9. ^ a b Revill, Steve (25 April 2015). "RISC OS 5.22 stable is now available". RISC OS Open. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  10. ^ Lee, Jeffrey. "Newsround". The Icon Bar. Archived from the original on 4 January 2016. Retrieved 17 October 2011.
  11. ^ a b Holwerda, Thom (31 October 2011). "Raspberry Pi To Embrace RISC OS". OSNews. Archived from the original on 4 January 2016. Retrieved 1 November 2011.
  12. ^ Dewhurst, Christopher (December 2011). "The London show 2011". Archive. Vol. 23, no. 3. p. 3.
  13. ^ "Downloads". Raspberry Pi. Archived from the original on 14 January 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  14. ^ "RISC OS Open: Raspberry Pi". riscosopen.org. Archived from the original on 20 March 2021. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  15. ^ "ART – Acorn RISC OS" (PDF). acorn.chriswhy.co.uk. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 May 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2011.
  16. ^ Cullen, Drew (24 April 1999). "ARM denies role in Acorn dismemberment". The Register. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  17. ^ Speed, Richard. "Roughly 30 years after its birth at UK's Acorn Computers, RISC OS 5 is going open source". www.theregister.com. Archived from the original on 23 September 2021. Retrieved 26 October 2021.
  18. ^ a b "Chris's Acorns: Risc PC Computers". chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk. Archived from the original on 21 October 2017. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  19. ^ a b c d e "RISC OS Six Frequently Asked Questions". Archived from the original on 8 December 2012.
  20. ^ a b "RISC OS Open: RiscPC". www.riscosopen.org. Archived from the original on 11 April 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  21. ^ a b "Chris's Acorns: Acorn A7000". computinghistory.org.uk. Archived from the original on 11 October 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  22. ^ a b "Chris's Acorns: Acorn A7000+". computinghistory.org.uk. Archived from the original on 11 October 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  23. ^ repackaged A7000+
  24. ^ a b "Chris's Acorns: MicroDigital". computinghistory.org.uk. Archived from the original on 22 July 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  25. ^ a b "Chris's Acorns: MicroDigital". computinghistory.org.uk. Archived from the original on 22 July 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  26. ^ a b "Chris's Acorns: RISC OS After Acorn". computinghistory.org.uk. Archived from the original on 11 October 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  27. ^ "The Icon Bar: Castle reveal Kinetic to the press". iconbar.com. Archived from the original on 16 July 2012. Retrieved 23 February 2011.
  28. ^ "Bugs and sources". RISC OS Open. 28 March 2013. Archived from the original on 13 April 2015. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  29. ^ "Omega production saga continues – Drobe.co.uk archives". drobe.co.uk. Archived from the original on 16 March 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  30. ^ "Chris's Acorns: MicroDigital". computinghistory.org.uk. Archived from the original on 22 July 2015. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
  31. ^ "A75 is ARM7500FE ruggable – Drobe.co.uk archives". drobe.co.uk. Archived from the original on 16 October 2015. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  32. ^ "Advantage6: Thea75". advantagesix.com. Archived from the original on 2 November 2013. Retrieved 9 February 2012.
  33. ^ "RISC OS Open: Iyonix". riscosopen.org. Archived from the original on 11 April 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  34. ^ "RISC OS Open: BeagleBoard". riscosopen.org. Archived from the original on 11 April 2015. Retrieved 25 April 2015.
  35. ^ "RISC OS on IGEPv2". 24 January 2010. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  36. ^ "RISC OS Open: Forum: Let's get started with a Pandora port". riscosopen.org. Archived from the original on 19 September 2014. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
  37. ^ Lee, Jeffrey (2 August 2011). "Have I Got Old News For You". The Icon Bar. Archived from the original on 12 June 2012. Retrieved 28 September 2011. [...] Willi Theiss has recently announced that he's been working on a port of RISC OS to the PandaBoard [...]
  38. ^ "raspberrypi.org". Archived from the original on 29 February 2012. Retrieved 1 November 2011.
  39. ^ "Raspberry Pi B+". 15 July 2014. Archived from the original on 25 July 2014. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
  40. ^ "Raspberry Pi 3". 29 February 2016. Archived from the original on 7 April 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
  41. ^ "RISC OS on IGEPv5". 9 September 2014. Archived from the original on 11 April 2015. Retrieved 9 September 2014.
  42. ^ Hudd, Vince M. (1 February 2015). "ARMX6 formally announced at last". RISCOSitory. Soft Rock Software. Archived from the original on 4 January 2016. Retrieved 1 November 2015. [...] The heart of the machine is a Freescale i.MX 6 series processor [...]
  43. ^ "i.Mx6". 26 January 2018. Archived from the original on 9 November 2018. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
  44. ^ "Preview of a whole new RISC OS platform". 23 October 2015. Archived from the original on 24 November 2015. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
  45. ^ "Pinebook port". 8 September 2023. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  46. ^ "Stable release criteria". 12 January 2017. Archived from the original on 9 November 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  47. ^ "Happy birthday, BASIC". 5 January 2014. Archived from the original on 9 November 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
  48. ^ "Welcome to my homepage!". Home.tiscali.nl. Archived from the original on 19 June 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  49. ^ "Archie – Acorn Archimedes Emulator". 12 August 2001. Archived from the original on 6 February 2004. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  50. ^ "Tellima". Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 13 December 2015.
  51. ^ "ArcEm – The Acorn Archimedes Emulator". Arcem.sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 9 August 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  52. ^ "Arculator – The Acorn Archimedes Emulator". B-em.bbcmicro.com. Archived from the original on 21 June 2013. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
  53. ^ "Red Squirrel Acorn Archimedes Emulator". Redsquirrel.fsnet.co.uk. Archived from the original on 27 December 2005. Retrieved 2 September 2013.
  54. ^ "RPCEmu". Marutan.net. Archived from the original on 16 March 2013. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  55. ^ "VirtualAcorn". virtualacorn.co.uk.
  56. ^ a b Palmer, Stewart (December 1996). "A RISC OS for All Seasons". Byte. 21 (12): 49. ISSN 0360-5280. OCLC 208951251.
  57. ^ Williams, Chris (26 July 2003). "Imagining RISC OS and PMT". Drobe. Archived from the original on 17 June 2018. Retrieved 10 July 2012.
  58. ^ Michael Reed Tech Book 1 – Published articles Oct 2006 – June 2008 Archived 26 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
  59. ^ "RISC OS Memory Protection". Drobe: The Archives. Archived from the original on 31 March 2014. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
  60. ^ a b Naulls, Peter (2 January 2004). "RISC OS filename translation". Drobe. Archived from the original on 9 July 2011. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
  61. ^ "Emulating RISC OS, Page 3/3". OSNews. Archived from the original on 13 March 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2012.
  62. ^ Fitton, Gerald (August 1994), "Fireworkz for Windows" (PDF), Archive, vol. 7, no. 11, Glastonbury: Abbey Press, p. 21, OCLC 222434223, archived (PDF) from the original on 3 December 2013, retrieved 25 April 2012
  63. ^ "Iyonix: MIMEMap". iyonix.com. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016.
  64. ^ Ryan, Dan (13 April 2011). History of Computer Graphics: DLR Associates Series. AuthorHouse. p. 358. ISBN 978-1-4567-5115-9. Archived from the original on 6 July 2014. Retrieved 13 June 2013.
  65. ^ Phil, Mellor (23 March 2007). "An arbitrary number of possibly influential RISC OS things". The Icon Bar. Archived from the original on 31 March 2012. Retrieved 27 September 2011. Admittedly it wasn't until RISC OS Select was released, almost 10 years later, that the standard Acorn applications (Draw, Edit, and Paint) implemented the style guide's clipboard recommendations, but most products followed it with care.
  66. ^ Round, Mark (26 February 2004). "Emulating RISC OS under Windows". OSnews. Archived from the original on 14 November 2010. Retrieved 12 May 2011. Many of the UI concepts that we take for granted were first pioneered in RISC OS, for instance: scalable anti-aliased fonts and an operating system extendable by 'modules', while most of the PC world was still on Windows 3.0.
  67. ^ Ghiraddje (22 December 2009). "The RISC OS GUI". Telcontar.net. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2011. Only with Mac OS X did any mainstream graphical interface provide the smoothly rendered, fractionally spaced type that Acorn accomplished in 1992 or earlier.
  68. ^ Reimer, Jeremy (May 2005). "A History of the GUI". ArsTechnica. Archived from the original on 2 December 2011. Retrieved 25 May 2011. [...] in 1987, the UK-based company Acorn Computers introduced their [...] GUI, called "Arthur", also was the first to feature anti-aliased display of on-screen fonts, even in 16-color mode!
  69. ^ Holwerda, Thom (23 June 2005). "Screen Fonts: Shape Accuracy or On-Screen Readability?". OSNews. Archived from the original on 19 November 2011. Retrieved 13 June 2011. [...] it was RISC OS that had the first system-wide, intricate [...] font rendering in operating systems.
  70. ^ Pountain, Dick (January 1989). "Screentest: Archie RISC OS" (PDF). Personal Computer World. p. 154. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 June 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2021. [ArcDraw] can also add text in multiple sizes and fonts to a drawing (including anti-aliased fonts)
  71. ^ "RISC OS is ready for April launch". Acorn User. February 1989. p. 9. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  72. ^ "New fonts for DTP". Acorn User. April 1989. p. 7. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  73. ^ Bell, Graham (October 1989). "Hold the Font Page". Acorn User. pp. 134–135. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  74. ^ "Acorn Customer Hotline". Acorn User. April 1990. p. 19. Retrieved 2 May 2021.
  75. ^ Raine, Neil; Seal, David; Stoye, William; Wilson, Roger (November 1989). The Acorn Outline Font Manager. Fifth Computer Graphics Workshop. Monterey, California: USENIX Association. pp. 25–36.
  76. ^ Bell, Graham (November 1989). "My Type". Acorn User. pp. 68–69. Retrieved 7 May 2021.
  77. ^ "Acorn signs pre-press deal". Acorn User. Addison-Wesley. July 1993. p. 10.
  78. ^ Murphy, Dean (29 March 1994). Acorn Computers Support Group Application Notice 253 – New features of RISC OS version 3.5 (PDF) (Technical report). Acorn Computers Limited. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
  79. ^ "Unicode in RISC OS". riscos.info. Archived from the original on 11 April 2015. Retrieved 28 April 2015.
  80. ^ "The Unicode® Standard Version 13.0 – Core Specification" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 11 March 2020.
  81. ^ "ARM architecture versions cheat sheet". Archived from the original on 12 April 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  82. ^ "Application Note 295". Engineering Support Application Note. Acorn Computers. 4 October 1996. Archived from the original on 4 January 2013. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  83. ^ a b Foggy (11 July 2001). "Games FAQ". Acorn Arcade. Archived from the original on 21 March 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  84. ^ Ruck, David J. "Game On!". The ARM Club: Software Products. David J. Ruck. Archived from the original on 4 October 2001. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  85. ^ Ruck, David J. "StrongGuard". The ARM Club: Software Products. David J. Ruck. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  86. ^ McKillop, Keith (22 November 2000). "RISC OS 2000: Show Report". Acorn Arcade. Archived from the original on 16 October 2015. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  87. ^ "RISCOS Ltd News" (PDF). RISCOS Ltd. May 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 November 2012. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  88. ^ Williams, Chris (17 April 2006). "ROL release C99 SCL to A9home users". Drobe. Archived from the original on 1 October 2009. Retrieved 28 June 2012.
  89. ^ Thompson, Matt. "Iyonix Issues". RISC World. Vol. 7, no. 2. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  90. ^ Thompson, Matt. "Iyonix Issues". RISC World. Vol. 8, no. 2. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  91. ^ a b "A Guide to RISC OS Versions". WROCC website. Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club. Archived from the original on 7 January 2013. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  92. ^ a b Brett, Paul. "PD World". RISC World. Vol. 7, no. 1. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  93. ^ Brett, Paul. "PD World". RISC World. Vol. 3, no. 1. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  94. ^ Ruck, David J. "Free Software". The ARM Club. David J. Ruck. Archived from the original on 26 June 2012. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  95. ^ Williams, Chris (19 November 2002). "Aemulor: Number of apps working on Iyonix 'growing daily'". Drobe. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  96. ^ Williams, Chris (25 March 2003). "Aemulor sees the light of day". Drobe. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 27 June 2012.
  97. ^ "ARMv7 compatibility primer in Documentation". Archived from the original on 16 October 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RISC_OS&oldid=1256042636"