Pint-sized would be, like, MASSIVE!
Last year the BASIC programming language celebrated its 50th birthday, having first appeared (as Dartmouth BASIC) in 1964, and in May RISC OS Open Ltd joined in the celebrations by releasing RISC OS Pico for the Raspberry Pi.
A very minimalist version of RISC OS that boots straight into BBC BASIC, Pico is available as a downloadable image for writing to a FAT-formatted SD (or micro-SD) card or – until recently – could be purchased on SD card, an option that removes the effort of preparing one and shows some support for ROOL.
The release of Pico came before newer models of Raspberry Pi; the B+ was launched in July, and the Raspberry Pi 2 in February of this year. On those models, the SD card slot is no more, having been replaced by a micro-SD card slot – and the Pi 2 features a different processor. This week, however, ROOL finally caught up with the newer designs, and have released an updated version of RISC OS Pico – it now works on the newer hardware, and is now available as a download, on SD card, or on micro-SD card.
The download remains free, while the SD card version costs £6 plus postage, and the micro-SD card version costs £5 plus postage and VAT – with postage currently £1 in both cases. Class packs are available, which bring 10 copies, with a 10% discount – so that’s £54 plus postage and VAT for the SD card version, and £45 plus postage and VAT for the micro-SD version, with postage for these currently set at £2.50.
