Although we all know and love RISC OS and its consistent – if sometimes quirky, and sometimes lacking (if we’re being honest) – user interface, you may not realise that it wasn’t the operating system Acorn originally intended for the Archimedes range of computers it was developing back in the 1980s.
Before RISC OS was built for the new ARM-based computer range (in its original form, Arthur), the company was aiming for a preemptive multi-tasking operating system, with multi-threading support, and more, to be called ARX. That operating system was being developed in Palo Alto at the Acorn Research Centre, by a team headed up by Jim Mitchell.
Making use of Zoom to join the group in London from his home in California, Jim will be the guest speaker for the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) at their next meeting, which will take place on Monday, 18th May.
You may have attended other meetings and heard tales of ARX from the team that brought us Arthur and RISC OS, or read articles from other sources, but Jim will tell us all about it from the perspective of the person who was in charge of the would-be operating system’s development, and with a bit of luck a few other members of the development team will also be on the Zoom link to help answer questions and throw in their own recollections.
Before working at Acorn, Jim spent twelve years working for Xerox PARC, where quite a few computing technologies that we now take for granted were first developed, such as ethernet, laser printers, file sharing, and many more – but in particular, the WIMP paradigm that underpins the way we interact with computers today, including – of course – when using RISC OS.
As usual, the meeting will be a hybrid one, with some people attending in person and others attending online. If you can make it to the venue, your destination is:
The Duke of Sussex
(Upstairs in the Chichester or Petworth Room)
23 Baylis Road,
London,
SE1 7AY.
There are directions to the venue on the ROUGOL website, and you can expect to find members lurking from around 6:30pm. The meeting proper will commence from around 7:45pm.
If you can’t make it to the pub, but can make it to your own desk, you can use Zoom if you have a device that can run the software. You’ll also need the log-in credentials, which remain the same as previous meetings – so if you’ve already joined one you should have them, but if not you can get them by contacting ROUGOL. The Zoom meeting should be open for people to join from around 7:30pm.
