Show report: London 2017

The question on everyone’s lips for countless years to come will be “Where were you on 28th October, 2017?” Okay, they probably won’t be asking that – but I’m asking it now. Well? Where were you? I’ll tell you where I was: Feltham. More specifically, the St Giles Hotel – in the conference rooms on the first floor, where this year’s London Show was held. If you weren’t there, I’ll assume you’re reading this because you have an interest in RISC OS, and would like to know what you missed.…

20th birthday update for PIC suite

If you are designing or developing a piece of hardware and need to use a microcontroller, you will need a way to program it. There are many tools to do this available for other platforms (x86 in particular) – but there is also a solution for RISC OS users in the form of Rob Sprowson’s PIC suite. PIC Suite is a set of applications that make it possible to develop for Microchip’s range of 8-bit PIC microcontrollers, and it has reached its 20th birthday. To coincide with this, Rob has…

AMCOG Games compilation now available from Elesar

With a growing catalogue available from AMCOG Games, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there would eventually be some kind of compilation available – and that has been the case since this year’s Southwest Show, when the company began selling a CD featuring their first five games. The individual games continue to be available via !Store, but if you wanted to buy them as a compilation, on CD, the main way to do so has been to pop along to a RISC OS show and hand over…

High vector builds of Aemulor now available

A couple of years ago, RISC OS Open Ltd started building versions of RISC OS with “zero page relocation” – with the memory map changed such that the kernel’s workspace that started at the bottom of the addressable memory was moved to a higher location. This was an important step for security and stability, and for the future of the operating system. However, it wasn’t ever going to happen without some casualties along the way; software that in some way tried to use or access certain information held in that…

New edition of Doom Trilogy, with some added Wolfenstein 3D

No mention of eye of newt or toe of frog. Fans of first person shooters should have a soft spot for Doom from id Software. While it wasn’t the first game of this type, it’s certainly one of the pioneer titles that helped popularise the genre, and led to a number of follow-ups and expansions. The game  featured texture-mapped surfaces and varying room and level heights – a step up from the simpler Wolfenstein 3D, the previous game from the same company – as well as mood-setting MIDI music, and…

The Long Gap is almost over – the London Show is almost upon us

So what’s in store for you lucky RISC OS users this year? The Long Gap is the period between the annual Wakefield Show, which usually takes place in April, and the London Show, which takes place a whole six months later (that’s half a year, doncher know), towards the end of October. It’s October now (and has been for a week and a day), which means the Long Gap is almost over, and the London Show is imminent – it takes place on Saturday the 28th – so it’s time…

Show report: Southwest 2017

Seven months on? This must be some kind of a record! The RISC OS Southwest Show this year took place on 25th February – so this show report sets quite a record for the time between the event and its appearance at just under seven months. Unfortunately, this is a reflection of the amount of time I’ve had available in that intervening period to sit down and write the report. Which is to say: very little. To make matters slightly worse, I usually refer to the photos I’ve taken at…

Elesar Ltd at the Midlands User Group on 16th September

The guest speaker for the next Midlands User Group meeting is to be Rob Sprowson, who will be popping in to talk about all things Elesar Ltd, with its growing range of both hardware and software. Hardware, of course, includes the Titanium motherboard, designed from the outset with RISC OS in mind, while software includes Elesar’s own CloudFS and LOOKSystems’ Font Directory Pro.

GoLinux update gives Linux booting a boost

Reduced inertia to get you going. Elesar‘s GoLinux application allows a Titanium-based computer to boot from the RISC OS desktop straight into Linux1 – Debian (Jessie) – effectively  making those systems equipped with the software dual OS machines. This can be hugely useful, because even the most ardent of RISC OS users would have to admit there are many shortcomings in the software available for the platform – so being able to switch from RISC OS to Linux, all in the same box – allows a lot more software to…