RISC OS for Raspberry Pi

We’re very pleased to announce the immediate availability of RISC OS for the Raspberry Pi. First released in 1987, its origins can be traced back to the original team that developed the ARM microprocessor. RISC OS is owned by Castle Technology Ltd, and maintained by RISC OS Open Ltd. This version is made available free of charge to Raspberry Pi users.

Steve Revill, from ROOL, shows off RISC OS on the Pi

Steve Revill, from ROOL, shows off RISC OS on the Pi

We really recommend a download; it’s very smooth, very fast to boot, and we’re delighted to be able to offer RISC OS for the platform. You’ll find a RISC OS image on the downloads page; and if you’re completely new to the OS, you’ll find Burngate’s  Stroll around RISC OS in pdf form very useful.

128 comments

Theo M avatar

In case you’re wondering why RISC OS is interesting, have a read of this forum post:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=22093
Hint – it’s nothing to do with Linux :)

faustino avatar

It also has nothing to do with Windows or MacOS :)

Mark A avatar

But dose it have anything to do with a BBC Micro?

peter green avatar

The core of risc-os bares a lot of similarities to the BBC micros “operating system”. The initial boot messages look much the same, the system in non-desktop mode is controlled by * commands. Persistent configuration is by *config like on a BBC master (the original BBC A/B didn’t really have any persistent configuration)

Further RISC OS includes a version of BBC basic.

On the other hand afaict the desktop and relocatable module systems don’t really have much if anything to do with the BBC micro.

.

Sawdust avatar

Except the relocatable modules take the place of the sideways ROMs that were so popular on the Beeb!

Rich Kavanagh avatar

Whoa!!!

This is quite possibly the best news I’ve heard since the day I got my shipping delivery email for my Pi.

Downloading now, thank you :) :)

Rich Kavanagh avatar

I might be getting ahead of myself here, but does this mean I might be able to play Zarch on my Pi??

Chris Evans avatar

Unfortunately Zarch will not work on 32bit addressing ARM chips:-(

Ian avatar

Wasn’t Zarch written by a certain Mr. David Braben of the Raspberry Pi Foundation :-) Maybe he might be inspired to port Zarch to RISC OS on the RasPi to let a new generation enjoy this ground-breaking game.

Sputum avatar

Mr Braben is working on a new version of Elite. It’s multi-player space trading (I suppose like Dark Orbit) and dev is being funded through Kickstarter.

Montekuri avatar

I searched for RISC OS on Google and found this wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS

The name “Raspberry Pi” is there as a supported hardware!

Trixster avatar

Will this run Archimedes software? I’ve got an original copy of zarch which I can make an image of. Will it run?

Davespice avatar

I think the 26 bit to 32 bit difference between the Archimedes and the Pi processors would mean that you would still require an emulator to do this.

Andy avatar

Apparently not:

[quote]Be aware that some old software won’t run on the Pi, because ARM chips have changed in various ways between ARM version 2 (the original 1987 chip) and ARM version 6 (the Pi). Everything in !Store and PackMan should be fine, but that old floppy disc you found in the back of the cupboard…
There’s a program called ‘Aemulor’ which will enable running older software – the developer is rumoured to be working on a Pi version. There’s a list of tested ARMv6 safe software, which also gives links on how to convert old software.[/quote]

Mark avatar

great news

mahjongg avatar

Great news, at one time I had to decide whether to but an Amiga 500 machine, or the new Acorn Archimedes, but the latter proved to be just out of financial reach for me. Still when I saw one in the shop, and had a chance to play around with it I could see its great potential, it was also used the first really new microprocessor the ARM, which was one of the first mainstream (not just for university students) RISC chip.
Now all microprocessors use a RISC instruction set (or the derivation VLIW) inside, even intels offerings, and ARM has thrived because it does more with fewer transistors, thus consumes far less energy.

I never forgot the attraction of RiscOS, and that it offered things that other OS later “borrowed” from it, and now I finally have a chance to use it again.

And although its old, its still very functional, I heard that many modern programs, like Firefox, have been ported to it.

And best of all its much easier to understand every aspect of it than any other OS.

Also, because unlike other OS’s you can use it for timing critical things, a Raspberry PI with RiscOS can behave much more like an Arduino than a Raspberry PI with any Linux based system, and now with the opened ARM code it has access to the GPU the same way Linux does!

Andrew Joy avatar

Amazing

Not used risc OS since my acorn A3010 that was running RISC OS 3.1, looking forward to having a play tonight.

I wonder how much has changed since 3.1 ?

Chris Hall avatar

And there’s help available to newcomers to RISC OS both on this forum and on the RISC OS Open Limited ‘Community Support’ forum here http://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11

Dave Parker avatar

I’ve still got my A3000 (RISC OS 3.1). I don’t suppose the software I’ve got will run in this version.

Egel avatar

Some software, writen in BBC Basic, will still work.

bhtooefr avatar

As long as it doesn’t have inline 6502 or ARM assembly. (6502 assembly for obvious reasons (and !65Tube hasn’t been ported to 32-bit AFAIK), ARM assembly because odds are it isn’t 32-bit clean.)

James avatar

Never used it before, may as well see how good it is :D

Phil Bowman avatar

Elite? :)

Chris Evans avatar

Unfortunately Elite will not work on modern ARM chips (32bit addressing) :-(

Mattt avatar

So no E-Type either I guess. Oh well, I’ll just have to power up the A310 :o)

Justin avatar

I’m loving the idea of RiscOS on the Pi. But for you Elite fans, are you aware of OOlite (http://www.oolite.org/) until there’s a working Pi version? Been ages since I played it but it does the nostalgia thing very well :)

Chris Hall avatar

What do you get with RISC OS? What does the desktop look like?

This link tries to answer these questions: http://www.svrsig.org/Beta.htm

TankSlappa avatar

Oooooh! I’m going to have to have a play with this to revisit my teenage years…

Although to be honest it’s more the teenage years I wanted, not the ones I got. I had a Beeb, had great fun modifying it with a soldering iron, and lusted after an Archimedes, but just couldn’t afford one :-(

*sniff*

So after all these years I can finally stop crying myself to sleep :-D

Adam Gardner avatar

Must try to play the original Elite on this now!

TankSlappa avatar

OOOH! Good call!

KJS avatar

Retro, i’m grabbing it ;)

Davespice avatar

Brilliant!!!

tzj avatar

As you can get realtime hardware interfacing, would there be python support?

And as it only takes 6mb run would the recomeded minimum SD card size be smaller?

Its nice to learn a completely different os to the ones i’m used to… tho based on the way it works, I think I have used it once before… be it I was in junior school and it was next to a windows 95.

bhtooefr avatar

I’ll note that while the OS ROM itself may only take 6 MiB, there’s plenty of applications with it. I believe the RISC OS Pi RC6 image is sized to fit on a 2 GiB SD card.

Chris Evans avatar

I think there was a port of Python to RISC OS but it is very old and will probably not run on modern ARM chips.
Re ‘Realtime’: RISC OS is not billed as an RTOS but programmers ‘single tasking’ have found they can make it pretty much real time.
I believe the ‘Disc image’ could be smaller or larger but the way that it includes a FAT format part and a RISC OS Filecore format part means that it is not simple to use other sizes. I believe a commercial piece of software is planned that will allow this.

bhtooefr avatar

Looks like it does exist, and looks like it does have 32-bit support:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071223061900/http://python.acorn.de/

Given that the default is for the Raspberry Pi to act like an ARMv5 chip, I’d expect it to work fine. Not sure if it’d work properly on a BeagleBoard, though.

And, it looks like you might be able to build newer versions, as long as it’s 2.x. (Wonder if there’s a package somewhere – at work, so my RPi isn’t handy.)

Tony "pyTony" Veijalainen avatar

There is README pointed by the python.org site and it reads:
This directory contains files for the RISC OS port of Python.
For more information about RISC OS see http://www.riscos.com/ .

This port is currently being maintained by Dietmar Schwertberger,
dietmar@schwertberger.de .

On http://www.schwertberger.de you may find compiled versions and libraries
as well as RISC OS specific documentation and extensions.
Compiling:

1. Extract Files from archive directory ‘Python-…’ to a directory named
‘!Python’.
2. Use a tool like Rename to change filenames from ‘*/[ch]’ into ‘[ch].*’.
3. Create missing directories with ‘amu cdirs’.
4. Build with ‘amu’.

I’ve only tested Acorn/Norcroft C/C++ 5.30 and amu.

Python now uses the 32 bit libraries from Pace as well as the 32 bit
version of OSLib.

You will also need some additional libraries:

DLK (patched version)
http://www.schwertberger.de
OSLib
http://www.mk-net.demon.co.uk/oslib

zlib (optional)
ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/infozip/zlib/
expat (optional)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/
(makefile and config.h available from http://www.schwertberger.de/riscos_expat.zip

Theo M avatar

There is Python for RISC OS – I’m not clear on how up to date it is, though.

The standard SD image takes 2GB as that’s a common size of card, but there’s a lot of free space. The absolute minimum is the 6MB ‘ROM’ in your FAT partition – you can get a bare bones system up with nothing else. Actually, 6MB is the uncompressed size in memory – compressed on disc it’s about 2.2MB :)

swirlythingy avatar

I can’t believe three RISC OS users and ROOL forum regulars have attempted to answer the question, “Is there Python support?” and not noticed this one-month-old port of Python 2.7.2.

arm2 avatar

There is so much stuff coming out for RISC OS at the moment it is very difficult to keep up with it, which is good!
A comp.sys.acorn.announcement gets noticed by most people!

tero999 avatar

How do you make a screenshot?

Egel avatar
Bruce Goatly avatar

In Soviet Russia, screen snapshoots you.

Steve avatar

You can either use !Paint or !Snapper to take screenshots. !Paint can be found in the Apps folder on the iconbar and !Snapper can be found in the Utilities folder on the RISC OS Pi SD card.

Stephen Scott avatar

I’ve had a little play with this the past few days – it’s fantastic! Well done to all concerned with getting this far. :-D

Having dug out an ethernet cable, I was able to hook up RISC OS to the internet, and download some of the games I co-wrote last century. Not surprisingly, my Cavern Duel game doesn’t work, but it’s desktop based level editor seemed to work fine (my caveat being it was just a 2 minute test, didn’t look at whether I could save or load files – but still, not bad for 15 year old code!)

I’m gonna delve into the PRMs to see how if I can address how to get the game to work – I guess the simple fact is that I’m using an old school display resolution, which the ‘SpriteExtend’ module is struggling with showing the sprites on screen.

It raises the question of how people like myself are going to resurrect their software to work on this. I looked into this back in 2007 when I realised that the newer systems of that time were going to be problematic with the game. I mentioned then, that some kind of central resource would be great – I think currently, it’s scattered far and wide between ROOL, ROL, various Wikis, and the comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroups. Squeezing blood from a stone while plate spinning is an easier pastime.

I’m not moaning – this release has given the OS a much larger audience than it arguably had in its entire 25 years.

And That Is A Good Thing.

bhtooefr avatar

Also, is it 32-bit compatible?

If it’s 15 years old, the 32-bit systems (Iyonix) weren’t even around, so that may be part of the problem.

Stephen Scott avatar

Ah yep, that was the discussion I had in 2007, 32-bit compatibility. I had issues with old sound modules, which were converted with some utility dug out from a hovel of the internet to make them 32-bit compatible. I’ve not dug out my headphones yet to see if I have sound on my RPi.

What’s left now is that I am using an 8-bit screen on a 32-bit system. It’s somewhat pointless to keep it this way, so some grunt work will be required (with lots of coffee) to get it working as desired.

I’ve noted the presence of the website http://www.svrsig.org/Beta.htm which contains links to online editions of the Basic manual and Programmers Reference Manuals, which I guess is the de facto starting point for me?

Theo M avatar

Don’t forget to make it ARMv7 compatible too, so it’ll run on other new machines!
https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/ARMv7%20compatibility%20primer

Stephen Scott avatar

Since both the game and its editor are written in Basic, ARMvX compatibility is not really an issue. The sound modules are 32-bit compatible. It’s really a case of updating the graphics and display resolution to 32-bit, rather than 8-bit. But thanks for the pointers.

Again, if documentation such as this is housed within a section for former developers, it would be great. But my postings are straying off the main subject of this page :-)

I’ve been reading tweets related to RISC OS these past few weeks. I am pleased with how people all over the world are discovering it for the first time, alongside those who have been away for a considerable period.

Maybe now we can all give Mr Braben a prod and get Zarch to work! Can anyone donate an ARM programmers manual and a desk for him to work on it? No pressure :-)

Alex Gibson avatar

Hi Stephen, just to say that I for one would appreciate your effort if you get your games running! RISC OS Pi certainly needs a few 32-bit game conversions to point new users to, which is A Good Thing, and anything you do could encourage others, A Very Good Thing! I and I’m sure others would be happy to beta test. Have Acorn hardware ranging from BBC to A3000 to RiscPC to Pi – no Iyonix though…

Pete avatar

This is fast ! do you remember when Linux was fast ? I love trying things I’ve never heard of and being impressed … Many thanks.

Francois Dion avatar

And of course you can take it on the road:
http://raspberry-python.blogspot.com/2012/10/risc-laptop.html

It boots to the desktop, ready to use in 10s flat. Compare to raspbian at 42s, on my setup.

3 interesting factoids:
-TCP/IP is disabled by default, enable it without adding any parameters, and it will get its config from DHCP at the next reboot.
-When trying to replace the URL on the web browser, instead of backing (backspace) the whole way, Ctrl-U will clear the URL.
-F12 will get you a (tiny) command line at the bottom of the screen. hitting enter at that prompt will return to the desktop and close that command line.

François

Francois Dion avatar

The wiring how-to is here:
http://raspberry-python.blogspot.com/2012/10/risc-laptop-cables-cabos.htm

Since the link was in a reply in portuguese, most wont know about it…

Montekuri avatar
jan avatar

Does it play Videos ? :)

Chris Evans avatar

Its media serving facilities are rather limited. XBMC is what you need for that.

Montekuri avatar

You can install MPLAYER, but it is not GPU accelerated.

Marc avatar

Way cool.
I just got to work, and find this.
Now I don’t feel so good.
I may have to go home sick, now.

PS: for some unknown reason I have several blank sd cards waiting for a new image!

Ashley Basil avatar

Put a lot of time with this yesterday , puppy is fast but this is a “Hot little Kitten”!
Finding my way about slowly,missing some java and flash not surprising, could not see a 1tb drive!, Had some prob’s with camera card, that has more to do with Nikon i think. It saw multi card reader, pen drive and 250gb backup drive, fell over when i move 200 pictures, did the first 102. Fantastic!
Now if it can run a server farm, we could do our bid for Global warming?
Did you know 3% UK ele’ is used in servers farms!

Graham avatar

That 3% figure? Can you link source data for that please?

pete avatar

Using a gyration keyboard and mouse which has worked with other rpi linux distributions, but not this RiscOs . Is this a driver issue, I thought it was treated as a USB device

Montekuri avatar

I used a wireless (brand = BRIGHT) keyboard and mouse and it worked fine.

bhtooefr avatar

I’ve heard claims that RISC OS doesn’t support composite HID devices (which are a single device appearing as having two HID functions).

Alex Gibson avatar

Hi Pete, the USB drivers for RISC OS on the Pi were only recently written, as part of a huge amount of ‘modernisation’ work by relatively few people. So if something’s not working for you, try going to riscosopen.org and posting in the forum a request for the functionality you need!

Montekuri avatar

I managed to install Firefox browser and… no flash! No Youtube!!!!
Well, I had faith that it would work :)

tide avatar

The only way to play youtube vids would be downloading tand converting them. Check out !Murnong for that and either !Mplayer or FFMpeg

Ed avatar

Or you can watch youtube videos in HTML5 mode instead of flash. Youtube HTML5 It’s part of a “preview” program, good luck with this, and keep us updated!

k4gbb avatar

How come I never heard of the RISCO OS before?
It must be a Brit thing. My first Home computer was an ELF II (1978).
I entered the OS phase with M$ 1.0 and never seem to get passed the CLI.
The darned Mouse keeps getting lost in the clutter on my desk!
I’m suspect it will catch on with my boys… they are more adapted to the mouse/joy stick thing.

bhtooefr avatar

Yeah, Acorn completely failed to make it here into the US.

(They tried with the BBC Model B, which is an interesting machine itself (and where the Raspberry Pi’s model naming came from – so the current ones should be called the Raspberry Pi Model B+512 :P), but it was a miserable failure (and the compatibility issues didn’t help). So, they didn’t even try to bring the Archimedes here, although they did try (and fail again, as I understand) in Canada.)

James avatar

RISC OS was the second version of the operating system Acorn developed for the Archimedes range of desktop machines. (The first incantation being released under the name Arthur.)

The Archimedes being the machine that Acorn originally designed and developed the ARM processor for (ARM originally standing for Acorn RISC Machine) as a successor to the 8-bit range of BBC computers.

John Germany avatar

Wasn’t RiscOS the operating system used on the Acorn Archimedes?

swirlythingy avatar

No, RISC OS was.

tzj avatar

I forgot to mention this earlier… where has the qt5 image gone?
Are you still supporting it? Or is it in the same position as puppy?

Will Godfrey avatar

This news has washed away my last excuse for not getting my own Pi :?

Matt Hawkins avatar

Welcome to the club. You know it makes sense!

Richard Wooding avatar

Awesome! I am so happy!

noel rolfe avatar

great news but where’s the network ?
I burned it on to my sd card put it in , powered up and followed the instructions but no network.

Theo M avatar

So you enabled the ‘TCP/IP protocol suite’ and rebooted? What happens to the network lights on your Pi as it boots up? Is DHCP enabled on your network?

n r avatar

yes , i enable it , reboot and no signs of life from network at all. I know it all works as I am writing this on my pi now , using raspbian. DHCP is enabled as the pi and the laptop use it.

Steve avatar

What type of DHCP sever are you using?

Semtex avatar

I had a similar problem initially. If you are using a wireless adapter on your RasPi unplug that and just use an ethernet cable. Then restart.
I can also confirm that using a combined wireless mouse and keyboard makes for very erratic mouse movement. Add a wired mouse and it is perfect.

n r avatar

I am using the DHCP server built into my broadband router. The network light does not light up when running RISC OS but does when running Linux.

Montekuri avatar

Are you using a cable or wifi adapter?

n r avatar

cable (red) :)

n r avatar

sorted now see bottom of list .

markit avatar

Wow, a proprietary OS in a project intended to educate children about openess, collaboration and learn how to program “reading a lot of code”. Looking forward for a release of “Windows 8 pi – school special edition” soon :)

JamesH avatar

Well done – you win the daftest comment of the day award. Do you trolls ever think before posting?

markit avatar

Do you really see no problem in that? Don’t you find hurting that in the official download page of the project there is a proprietary OS available? Nor that is not labelled as “proprietary” (=bad) but “you can use it for free” (=so good! You have the permission of install it gratis, yuppy).
Don’t you think that proprietary, secret, closed code is against education in general, and against education of young programmer (that is the goal of the project) in particular? Are you a troll?

Chris Gransden avatar

The source code to RISC OS is available to browse at https://www.riscosopen.org/viewer/revisions.

The licence conditions for RISC OS can be read at http://www.castle-technology.co.uk/licence/front.shtml.

Certain parts of RISC OS have other licences.

DryRiser avatar

The source code is available. You can download it, read it and submit changes to it, if you get SVN access, or talk to the right person. It’s also well documented, with the bits that aren’t documented being actively worked on.

How much more open were you wanting?

JamesH avatar

@Marki

In reference to “Don’t you think that proprietary, secret, closed code is against education in general, and against education of young programmer (that is the goal of the project) in particular? Are you a troll?”

No, No, and No. I have no problems AT ALL with proprietary software in education, as long as education is the end result. I grew up using proprietary software, starting with the BBC Micro, moving on the Sun Workstations, then on to PC’s. All proprietary software. Has done me no harm whatsoever with regard to education OR my career. OSS is great, but it’s NOT a panacea, for education or anywhere else. And its certainly not necessary for either.

Russell Pollock avatar

Question not a comment. On wheezy I had to edit the config to get my tv to work (hdmi_force_hotplug=1). Do I need to do anything on this and if so where???

Many thanks for all that have done so much for everything for the RaspberryPi for everyone!
Russ

Theo M avatar

RISC OS uses the same config.txt as Linux, so if it doesn’t work you can try changing that in the same way. RISC OS defaults to 1920×1080 which is scaled down by the GPU to whatever settings are in config.txt – if you need to change to a lower resolution, click the Display Manager – second icon from the right – and choose a more sensible mode.

Russell Pollock avatar

Theo M
Thank you, I looked into the zip and not the image and didn’t think. Duh! This learning new OS’s and programing has really re-energized my mind. Turning sixty in ten days, who says it’s for kids.

Theo M avatar

If you put the SD card in a PC, you can change the config.txt settings even if you can’t see anything under RISC OS.

By the way, to get at config.txt under RISC OS: click on the SD card on the iconbar, double click on !Boot while holding down Shift, double click Loader, and you now have the contents of the FAT partition including config.txt that you can change.

HKwhyIP avatar

It is super fast. How can I watch a movie under RISC OS? One of the comments mentioned that I can use MPlayer. How can I install it? Any plan to make a similar omxplayer for RISC OS?

Chris Gransden avatar

There should be a !PackMan icon already on the desktop. You can use it to install MPlayer. Don’t expect to be able to play fluid high resolution videos. There’s no GPU acceleration on RISC OS.

evil twin avatar

Can that be expected in near future?

Chris Gransden avatar

Not any time soon. The main problem with modern GPUs is the documentation is a closely guarded secret. There has been talk of utilising the Linux binary blob and writing a wrapper for RISC OS. Even after this is done the API support needs to be written and all the supporting libraries need porting/implementing.

makomk avatar

That’s a thought. The recent open-sourcing of the ARM code to access the GPU ought to make it easier to access it from other OSes like RiscOS, but I don’t remember seeing any code for video acceleration. It should be there somewhere though.

Andrew L. Weekes avatar

I never had an Archimedes, but this really feels like the first optimised OS for the Pi. It’s stunningly fast and responsive and looks and feels remarkably modern, it was obviously way ahead of it’s time!

Even web browsing (Java / Flash issues aside) is speedy.

Cool for some BBC Basic retro action, I’ll be interested to see where this goes in terms of software support.

Chi Man avatar

This is another great announcements. Does this OS release has a preference to run on RPi with 512MB memory or not? Please advise.
Regards,
Chi

Chris Gransden avatar

On the 256MB model after initial boot up with no applications running there is about 200MB of free memory.

Chi Man avatar

Great. Thanks for your time and the answer. Anyone for a game of Elite? :-)

Neil avatar

Outstanding news. The ARM story arc comes full circle.

Wonder if it will run Archimedes/A3000 Elite :-)

smrad356 avatar

Will be sometime Risco OS support Wifi adapters

Chris Evans avatar

Hopefully sometime but not likely soon :-(

johnrambo avatar

finally we’ve got RT-OS for RBPi!

DanielJ avatar

All those wanting to run 26bit RISC OS applications, like ArcElite, it is completely possible on the Pi, you just need to install and configure a copy of arcem: http://arcem.sourceforge.net/

Might be some compatibility issues with some games though as far as I can tell from having a play with it.

DanielJ avatar

All those wanting to run 26bit RISC OS applications, like ArcElite, it is completely possible on the Pi, you just need to install and configure a copy of arcem: http://arcem.sourceforge.net/

Might be some compatibility issues with some games though as far as I can tell from having a play with it.

Ken Howe avatar

Will Super Methane Bros. run on this?

http://methane.sourceforge.net/

Jon Baker avatar

SYS “Wimp_Initialise” here we come!

Winkleink avatar

This is great. I grew up in Ireland where the main school computers were Apple IIe. (Apple manufacturer in Cork) so I had never really played or used an Archimedes. They were more of a novelty in the wake of the Amiga and Atari ST.
I copied the image and booted it up last night.
It’s fast. Proper fast compared to Raspian. For simple web use it would most definitely work. The tips about clicking the wheel on the mouse for middle click and that networking isn’t enabled by default as well as [ctrl]-u to clear the URL in the browser were very useful – thanks to those who posted.
It was so much fun I crawled into bed about 2:30am with a 6:00am alarm clock.
So, I probably won’t be very productive today at work.
Looking forward to playing some more and see what is possible.

My only problem now is too many possibilities.
Scratch
Python
BBC Basic
C++
Risc OS
GPIO
Emulation
:
:

So far the only things I have done are:
Installed Quake 3
Installed the Atari 2600 emulator
Set up a webserver (LAMP) and controlled an Arduino over the network. No GPIO needed.

This just keeps getting better and better. Really looking forward to seeing the improvements expected in Scratch as well.

James avatar

Excellent. I now have my much treasured Zarch and Conqueror floppy disks close to hand  …and a deep feeling of regret having thrown out my last beige box equipped with a floppy disk drive about 2 months ago. Didn’t see that one coming…

mahjongg avatar

If you got the floppies, its legal for you to try to download Zarch and Conqueror somewhere.

SImion Feildish avatar

Can I use Visual Basic 6 to program this?

IbanezJem avatar

I doubt it very much, but if you take the time to work through the tutorial of DrWimp which is provided in the Programming directory, you should be able to get something up and running in the WIMP environment.

Craig Moore avatar

Wow… this sounds beautiful… haven’t used a Archimedes in about 16 years… might consider getting a Pi if this is true…

The Wizard In Green avatar

Runs like a charm from a cheap ICIDU 16Gb class 10 card. I’m impressed by its smoothness and speed.

Willrandship avatar

So, what’s the status on Graphics Acceleration, and how much should I care? I mean, this is an extremely lightweight OS, so it probably won’t matter for general use, but some 3D graphics would still be quite nice.

Jem avatar

Warning – RISC NOOB ! ( 2 hrs and counting) Having trouble with Hexen / Heretic. Running the !Run doesn’t launch the game, just gives ‘Unable to determine user home directory’. Any help welcome
P.S. This RISC is FAST !

Chris Gransden avatar

There should be an application !UnixHome in the Apps.Support folder. If so just double click on it or install UnixHome using !PackMan. Then try again.

Jem avatar

Thanks Chris ! I had literally just come across the !Unixhome fix on another website. Installed and didn’t work BUT as you say, you have to double-click on it (maybe even each time before the game is run). Future queries will be on the Pi forum under the RISCOS section. Hexen running now :-) Awesome work !

n r avatar

sorted , once I plugged it into my router directly all 3 network LEDs lit up.
It blows my RISC PC into the weeds and i thought my turbo strong arm was fast.
Can’t wait for more updates. Keep up the very good work , many thanks.

Praetorius avatar

Dabbling in RiscOS is proving a lot of fun. This is a great environment to explore. Thanks to everyone who toiled to make RiscOS for the Raspberry Pi possible !

I have a quick question: while I would certainly not say that RiscOs is slow, faster is often “nicer”.

I have been running my Pi with heat sinks at 1 ghz under Raspian and I do like the speed uplift. The Pi seems to take this all in its stride, and runs perfectly and never gets hotter than about 48 degrees.

Is there a way to overclock the Pi while using RiscOS?

Thanks for any help or suggestions

Rich G avatar

I tried this for the first time last night. It is truely excellent. It have a RiscPC but have not used it for a couple of years. To see RISC OS working so well and so quickly on this very small and inexpensive hardware is wonderful. Thanks to all involved for making this happen.

I’m temporarily using a Windows 7 laptop as as a wireless – ethernet bridge and that works great.

Jeff avatar

My Pi works fine with the Wheezy os. But when using riscos, it will only boot with composite video. When I connect the hdmi adapter, it just sits there with a blanks screen and won’t boot. Any suggestions?

liz avatar

This is an old post, and people won’t be checking comments any more – come and ask your question in the RISC OS section of our forums!

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