I really love these alternate operating system videos, they really give an interesting look on the possibilities there could have been for operating systems today.

@THAT.RANDOM.GUY_

5 жыл бұрын

Perhaps someday we can have these OSs on distinct platforms. You never know. ;)

@ericwood3709

3 жыл бұрын

Yep. I kind of wish Apple would have managed to modernize their "classic" pre-Darwin Mac OS. It was a very elegant system that was just dogged by its lack of protected memory and preemptive multitasking, meaning that the whole system would often lock up if some bit of software misbehaved and having multiple apps running could be a real exercise in patience.

RiscOS was the first GUI-based OS I ever used. The Acorn A3000s we had at school were truly amazing machines. My dad had a PC compatible at the time and I remember it blew his mind seeing them on parents evening. I still occasionally use RiscOS today on my Archimedes A440 whenever I fancy playing PacMania

I know it seems like a toy, but programming in BBC Basic under RISC OS is a much simpler way to develop for an embedded system. Whereas under Linux you'd have to develop in C, compile it, test it, compile it, test it, under RISC OS you can use the GPIO library with BBC Basic and it'll work just as fast! The topic of your next video is "Controlling LEDs with the Raspberry Pi using RISC OS"! Have fun!

@BernardUK

4 жыл бұрын

​ ExplainingComputers : Yes, please do!

@beholder2012

9 ай бұрын

Under Linux there is alternative: you can install TCC (Tiny C Compiler) which allows to treat source C-files like kind of „script” files provided that a) You set them executable, and b) You place in their very first line such kind of invocation: „#!/usr/bin/tcc -run” (optionally with additional arguments required for compilation on the fly, like „-lX11 -lpthread” for example). TCC is so fast, that there were even successful attempts to compile Linux kernel on the fly (well, it was at the time of 2.x or 3.x kernel line AFAIR). And it produces much smaller binary than GCC. OTOH there are a few situations when GCC is clearly better.

@AllensTrains

9 ай бұрын

@@beholder2012 I don't know how RISC OS is doing these days. You might like to make a video explaining this point in more detail. Thanks for replying.

One of the great virtues of the early 80s micros is they tended to support having their power switch turned on and then boot (from ROM) immediately to a BASIC prompt. That characteristic made them great for novices to learn and explore. The RISC OS supporting the Raspberry Pi - where it boots (fairly quickly) from an SD card, and that the RISC OS provides a very quick and easy entry access to get to a BASIC prompt, I believe this combo (RISC OS and Raspberry Pi) comes closest of anything available today (other than antique retro hardware purchased off of eBay) to equaling that early 80s micro experience. And really it's superior than the early 80s micros in that the BBC BASIC is a much better dialect of BASIC than Microsoft BASIC (that was used in practically all the other early 80s era PCs). BBC BASIC is faster performing, as better structure programming capability, and is more full featured. If one is a neophyte and wants to learn an 80s BASIC, it's the one to learn. A;sp the RISC OS is rather nice all and all for an 80s GUI desktop OS. Very compact implementation (fast and lean). And unlike all the others from that era, the RISC OS itself still lives and breaths and is being maintained. If you go with Mac classic or Amiga, or Apple IIgs, etc., all those require finding retro hardware or buying rather expensive (and imperfect) hardware recreations or software emulation programs. Yet a modern, in production, Raspberry Pi can run the 80s era RISC OS (or modified variant thereof). That's almost unique (well, other than allowing that modern PCs can run MS-DOS - but not quite the same proposition). THIS NEEDS TO BE MORE OF A THING ==>> RISC OS/BBC BASIC running on very affordable Raspberry Pi Folks that is your ticket to getting a taste of retro computing - be an experiencer instead of just a passive on-looker

@ExplainingComputers

4 жыл бұрын

Great post. Thanks for sharing.

RISC OS is the OS that pioneered the contextual menu, for which we should be forever thankful.

@The_Ballo

4 жыл бұрын

Xerox Alto menus were contextual. Contextual menus predate global or app menus

This video took me back to 1973 and writing BASIC programs on a teletype ( no visual display in those days ) connected between my school and the Hatfield Polytechnic DEC System 10. I must have been among the very earliest children taught "Computer Science".

@sayresyDevino

5 жыл бұрын

class of '78' here and I did ye olde computational magical elictrickery studies too... Been great seeing the technological advancement through the years. I still look at my setup in disbelief at times, lol

@roundel52

5 жыл бұрын

I've been waiting for this video for a while. I had an Archimedes back in 1987, and it is amazing that a sub £20 machine now, runs RISC OS faster than the £1200 machine the OS and the ARM chip was invented for.

@sidewinder666666

5 жыл бұрын

You (and I) were, Frogmella..... I graduated High School in 1974, was programming in BASIC the prior year in the first "Computer Science" class my school offered. Wrote the programs on punch tapes using a teletype, then used acoustic coupler to the T.I.E.S. HP2000C2 system to run the programs and get the output.

@bob_._.

5 жыл бұрын

My school went that route early 1970, so I had 2.5 years with BASIC and XBASIC by graduation in '72.

@jonathanmaybury5698

5 жыл бұрын

@@GoIdenApple That's because he does that thing where he pauses between bits of information, so that the information sinks in better, and it works well too!

I remember using RISCOS in school, I could not understand why anyone would ever use a PC at the time

To keep the desktop tidy, open things using the right button, which closes the parent. Closing things with the right button will open the parent, and if I remember correctly, if you click on the close icon while holding either shift or ctrl (I don't remember which) then the parent opens without closing the child. The apps are directories (folders) that contain their resources, which generally follow a set structure. Hold down the shift key and double-click to open them instead of running them. There is normally a script called !Run that does whatever is needed to run an app, and another called !Boot that deals with the preliminaries when an app is first seen by the file manager. The icon images for the app are in a file called !Sprites. Installing apps is simply a case of copying the whole directory, and uninstalling is done by deleting the folder.

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

Really interesting and really useful info, thanks. I read up as much as I could, but did not get this far! :) The right button open thing sounds neat. I will dig into the app folders too.

Yay RISC OS. I was beginning to think you were ignoring it but that was a great video and demonstrated it quite nicely. I'm very pleased you covered it. I had an Archimedes from 1990 (and a BBC before that) and spent every day programming it when I was a teenager. I still have those original computers.

@barneyrubble5633

5 жыл бұрын

Still have mine as well

@stuartofblyth

5 жыл бұрын

Same here. A capacitor in my Model B's power supply blew up recently, but it's a common fault and there's a repair kit readily available. tinyurl.com/ycj55bgt A pity Interdictor II is missing from the App Store!

@willyarma_uk

5 жыл бұрын

Yep that happened to me, a very loud buzz and the most acrid smell ever, kept working tho! I found a kit online.

I thoroughly enjoy every one of your videos Chris! I feel the world will be OK when I see you on the monitor and hear your reassuring voice and positive demeanor. You could make videos about anything, and I'd be happy watching them. Learning about new computer technology (and future trends on your other channel) is just a bonus! :D

This was really interesting to watch and demonstrates an operating system from around the time I was born. Excellent video.

Always Amazing Analysis. 2019 is off to an excellent start.

Another trip down memory lane. I started with a BBC Microcomputer back in the day and when it was launched I bought an Archimedes and, later, a Risc PC. BBC BASIC is wonderfully powerful and it even includes a built-in assembler. I didn't realise that RISC OS had finally been made open source. I'm going to dedicate a Raspberry Pi to running it.

Yet another fascinating and nostalgic look at an OS seemingly frozen in time. Thanks Chris!

These videos are great, they remind me of the old OpenUniversity lectures that would appear on TV early in the morning in the 1980s.

Great video. I remember the OS before RISC OS on the Acorn Archimedes. Arthur. Good times!

Such an informative video Gives us the brief history and a quick crash course to get started I've watched this video over and over again and learn so much as a beginner Thanks for your upload

I loved how you explained the basic functions of the user interface. Many other channels skip that part and I'm like "Wow, what do all these buttons do?"

Thank you, Christopher. I found this informative as well as entertaining. I was introduced to RiscOS 2 in 1995 when I began working at a school. It was quite an intuitive system and although I was unfamiliar with it, I soon understood how to get the best from it. The biggest problem by far was the lack of printer drivers. Most new printers came with Windows or MacOS drivers. Our local Education Support Centre had to code drivers from scratch and then release them to schools - it usually involved a twenty minute drive to the centre to pick up the floppy disks. On the plus side, I got to have a conversation with one of the IT guys with whom I had been to FE college. The other problem was teachers in that department buying printers and then asking me to install them in classrooms. My first question was if they had driver disks for that printer and the answer was usually “Isn’t that your job to create the drivers?” Of course, it wasn’t. One printer sat in its box for three months until the IT support guys received enough requests for a driver to be written. They were busy guys and didn’t turn out drivers unless there was enough demand. Thankfully a shift in how IT was delivered in schools saw the Archimedes systems consigned to recycling while Windows XP computers replaced them and a new IT guy at the school took over.

I love the Pi’s versatility! I recently got a Raspberry Pi 3 B+with my Christmas money and am eager to try so many things on it (your channel was a factor in my decision to buy one). Going to try out RISC OS now! :)

It took only a week to get yet another awesome video ❤️ It shows how ingenious Acorn machine was back then including standard VGA modes and video output.

Great video... this is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks for thinking outside the "modern" box and reminding us of the roots of how it was done back in the day. Great stuff.

It's like a software version of vintage computing... I love it. Thanks for this one Chris, I look forward to trying it out.

Seeing menu options flash upon selection... Oh, the fond memories of old Macintosh...

What a trip down memory lane. I grew up with an A410 and an A3000 running RISC OS 4 and have very fond memories of playing all sorts games on them. Twin World and Zool were two of my faves. My dad switched to Mac in 1995 but at least one of those machines lived on and some years later my grandmother wrote her thesis on it.

Happy new year Chris awsome video as always

Yet another fantastic video with Sunday morning breakfast. This is a wonderful introduction to RISC OS, anyone that is interested should look into interviews posted on KZread with Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber. They are the architects of the ARM processor and RISC OS.

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

I will check out those videos.

Thank you for introdusing us this unique OS..!!!!

Man, I need to start setting some time apart to actually learn this type of OS! Very interesting. Thank you for such an awesome vid 👍

Great video with great information as always Chris. 2019 is looking good already. Thanks for the CISC & RISC explanation as well.

Thank you Chris for your wonderful review...

I purchased the very first version of the Raspberry pi 256meg SBC when it released, it runs riscOS super fast, I love this OS, it very weird after using windows for so many years but it not that hard to learn and basic is an awesome language to learn with.

Really good software, spotted it on the NOOBs SD card but wasn;t too sure about using it, you've inspired me to try it and it brings back the heady days of the 80's with the BBC BASIC!

Another great video, although I feel bad now for binning my RiscPC 600 a few years ago. It cost me £2000 in 1994

I tried using RISC OS last week prior to your video coming out and I was struggling a bit with a couple of things, I now know why. That middle mouse button was missing. Thanks for the video Chris it has come out at the right time for me. All the best for the new year to you, Mr Scissors and Stanley the knife.

"...this is novel, we don't have that in other operating systems..." Except in the Amiga's Intuition since 1985. 🙂

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

Yes, as an Amiga user for many years, I should not have forgotten this! :)

oh yeah..I had forgotten basic.. now I have to get another pi just to put the oisc set up on it to play .. and I love those oled games.. thanks Chris.. thanks for bringing back old memories...

As ever Chris, great fun.

I love you Chris for showing this install, it answered all my questions, and the mystery of a need for 3 button mouse,..thanks Love cheers

I really enjoyed this segment

Great video as always.

You sir, are VERY good at explaining all things computer related. You should be a teacher... 😉

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

Thanks. I have been a university lecturer for about 28 years. :)

@FAMUCHOLLY

5 жыл бұрын

@@ExplainingComputers Yep. A good one at that....😉

Thanks for explaining the Risc arch

Genuinely fascinating. Thanks.

I loved risc os, and it's amazing how well it aged, given the other os's from 1990.

This brings me back to my high school days.

I've just looked through most of the comments here and added a new Reply to several where I though a useful note might be added. I realise that the original posters will be unlikely to return here, but it's possible that you, Chris, may resume coverage of RISC OS at some point, and I would encourage that :-) It's quite interesting how certain usability themes recur, and I've tried to rebut the misconceptions, as well as bringing issues of wi-fi and RISC OS hardware other than the Pi up to date. One or two other real users of the OS have done likewise, I'm pleased to see. The annual London RISC OS Show is happening tomorrow (26-Oct-2019) so we'll get all the latest updates, and perhaps be able to discuss the feasibility of producing our own RISC OS videos to complement this one of yours. Thanks, again, for giving RISC OS some oxygen of publicity. It looks like it was well worth the effort.

@ExplainingComputers

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for contributing to the comments here. This video is still generating steady traffic, so the comments are a useful resource. :)

Wow. Great video. I've been around computers for a long time but hadn't heard of this OS before. I felt like I was in a time machine or a parallel universe or something. Very interesting as usual.

Informative, thanks from Orlando

This is fantastic! It's like Acorn's OS has come full circle on Acorn's hardware. I can't wait to play around with this. I have a special place in my heart for lean & mean OS' that originally did wonders on modest hardware, like AmigaOS, BeOS, etc.

what a nice little os! , very well explained , amazing video as usual!

@johnlancaster2598

5 жыл бұрын

Its very fast, compact, & efficient. In the early days the interpreted BBC BASIC running under RISC OS on the Acorn Archimedes was far faster than similar compiled languages on the Apple Macintosh. I had a very capable Desk Top Publishing package (included a sophisticated word processor) that was actually smaller the M$ Word for windows document READER program (that's reading & displaying word docs, no edit abilities). When Oliveti took over Acorn the new management couldn't really understand the idea of a non IBM compatible PC, so eventually it was sold off (allowing major shareholding in its former ARM subsidiary to be sold). Since then RISC OS development has been slow, until recently. Now a lot of catch-up development is being done, and some businesses are seriously evaluating using the operating system.

RISC OS is a true Windows Icon Menus Pointer, OS vs windows where you can do a lot with ALT keys! Also if you look at the file system it has type then ID, so that you don't run into Windows 26 drive letter issue. Plus there are the fonts based on Bezier curves which mean each font is scalable in 0.001 pt increments. You touched on the ! which is a directory it just has a ! at the start which makes it an app (Like OS X uses .app) in the directory there are files that set up the app for use on the system no need for a registry! Installing is just copy it over. There's a lot to like about RISC OS and that's from 1987!

@pearcomputers

3 жыл бұрын

more is yet to come and soon, 5.28 >> www.riscository.com/2020/rpcemu-risc-os-direct/ . but first, what do you grow in an orchard?

love all your videos...thankyou

Oh that brings up memories.... How I loved my Acorn Atom with the BBC basic Rom. The Atom itself was sweet as well. You could switch into 6502 Assembly just by putting it in square brackets. At 1 Mhz clock speed that was very welcome to speed things up.

Thank you for your time, nice video

Nice and informative. Thanks for valuable info sir. I wasn't aware of that Acorn"RISC"machine.

Lovely video. Thank you.

Thank you, as usual, beautifully explaining things so that even an old dog like me understands everything :D

The vintage looking GUI is really cool!

Awesome video thanks for sharing

Takes me back to my early ZX81 & ZX Spectrum days writing basic programs or copying in the basic code from the pages of one of the magazines. Before it came out on tape Manic Miner was originally printed in a magazine.

Great video Chris...Would love to see a show on the Anki Vector...

Wow that OS looks really neat

I love Risc OS. When I was a kid I hated it as it was the "School computer" and wanted nothing to do with it at home, where it was Atari TOS all the way, but now, I love the elegance and attention to aesthetics of the UI, and the simplicity of the structure. It's all round a very elegant system compared to the painfully self-conscious over-styalised MacOS or the, to be blunt "fugly trainwreck" aesthetic of Windows.

Wow thats taken me back! Where was the Zarch / Lander demo? Used to have the A440/1 when it 1st came out :) Also programmed ARM assembler. My machine came with Arthur 1.2 before I was able to do a chip replacement to get a new version of RISC. Imagine my surprise when i got into the latest and greatest in the PC world only to find it was 16 bit and not really multi tasking....

Real operating systems come with a programming language included.

@ozgurkarter4368

3 жыл бұрын

@Lee its most probably better than commodore basic.

@cokeforever

3 жыл бұрын

language is what you speak, it is a property of you as a programmer; in case of basic and this os you would rather say 'interpreter', but you may also need a compiler and a linker ;)

This is so much fun to watch. Thanks. It brings me back to when I started with the Spectrum for Basic, and windows 2, 3 and 3.1 (for the IP stack). Maybe I still have some basic code in a box somewhere?

What a great video, thank you.

thanks for replying so quickly.

Thank you so much for this video. I like Risc OS and being able to run it on the Raspi is very nice. Thanks also for having remind that the middle button of the mouse has an important feature (Which is was completely out of my mind prior I see your video)

@BernardUK

4 жыл бұрын

The Menu (middle) mouse button is similar to the right button under other systems. RISC OS calls its right button Adjust as it provides an action that is an altered version of the left (Select) button, e.g. scrolling in the opposite direction, marking the end of selected text, and many other ergonomic functions as appropriate to the task.

I believe Acorn showed RISC OS to Bill Gates, but he wasn't too interested except for the icon bar which later made its way into Windows '95 as the Windows taskbar.

@roundel52

5 жыл бұрын

Apparently a few years earlier the boot was on the other foot when Bill was trying to sell MSDOS to Acorn for the BBC micro or something... Hermann Hauser replied "why would we want MSDOS when we have MOS?" Ans and Bill went back to Seattle with his tail between his legs

@robinhodson9890

3 жыл бұрын

They also had to explain to him what a network was.

119MB for a whole OS? this alone make happy and excited, this video more than anything else remind me of the geeky years of the late 80s and the 90s, thank you sir, you gave me a reason to buy the Pi.

@cdl0

5 жыл бұрын

The bare OS is under 4 MB. All the rest is bundled apps, resources, and other goodies.

@Abdulla79

5 жыл бұрын

That's impressive, which makes me ask why Windows 10 need 18GB of space?

@onion2445

5 жыл бұрын

​@@Abdulla79 A massive, decades-old codebase with an insane amount of legacy support and backwards compatibility.

@Abdulla79

5 жыл бұрын

Yeah i know that but i think there is more to it than that, and i think it's time to start new OS, offer legacy compatibility as a emulator for those who need it.

I knew RISC OS was available on the RPi, but I didn't know much about it. Thanks!

What gets my juices flowing these days is alternative operating systems.

Great video! Always wanted to have an Acorn Archimedes (the one that looked like Amiga/Atari ST) and now I can at least have an OS that looks very similar. :)

Awesome did not know about this os. thanks again.

Thank you very much for this spot, I just look for nice things to bring the RaspBerry closer to my gandchildren. It remenbers me to the good old time with my Pat 1979 and the first 8KB programms.

Thanks for creating this video. RISC OS was, and has the potential to be, a great operating system for the 21st Century. I can't think of any other OS specifically written for the ARM processor, so the fact that it is open sourced under the Apache 2 licence, means it can be given the shot in the arm it needs to make serious inroads into niche computing markets. I use Windows and Mac OS regularly, but do miss the immediacy and ease of use that was apparent in tools such as !Paint (the lack of Undo notwithstanding) and !Artworks (the latter formed the basis of Corel Xara/Xara Studio). It's definitely worth a try!

Reminds me the old times of Windows 3.11

OMG I did BBC programming at college many moons ago. The old BBC computers with the cd sized floppy drives. What an interesting video thank you.

I love how the SD Card is just like :0

I will have to try that on my Raspberry Pi Good Show as always and RISC looks very interesting :)

Seeing Basic takes me back. I started on a ZX81 and continued through to VB.net but when I dropped Windows from my life , I switched to Python and C+ f or Arduino. Think it worth a look as I only have to swop SD cards.

@ExplainingComputers / Christopher. Wow, talk about a blast from the past. I was a big fan of the Amiga, Atari ST, the classic Apple Macs and the Acorn Archimedes (also being a kid back in the 1980's that was taught in British schools, I fondly remember the education / Acorn BBC project). ARM processors and RISC based operating system, let's live like it is the early 1990's again :-) (btw, I learnt some Forth, Lisp, Assembly and BASIC using BBC B's and BBC Master computers)

That's fascinating. I was intrigued by the futuristic (in the early 1990s) user interface on the Acorn Archimedes, which I encountered only in one or two shops at the time (Clery's in Dublin city centre comes to mind). Looking back now it's reminiscent of how the Amiga's Workbench was way ahead of its time. Back then I had moved from a Commodore 64 to the Atari ST (and some exposure to DOS and Windows 3.11 on my friend's 486 PC), and had no idea how much better things could be. Sort of a shame RISC OS (and the Amiga's Workbench) didn't have more commercial impact, as I think we might be in a better place today.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on any modern use cases for this OS.

Ah finally, I always wanted to see an overview , but there wasn't really good videos on it... Was going to try it, but didn't have the SD card to spare...

The best computer youtuber of the earl.

Wow, amazing. I never heard of this before.

Retrotastic. I love these alternative OS vids. Makes you wonder what actually makes one become "the one." Life today could be so different if just one other of these OS's had been taken up by more people first. Timing? price? Ease of use? Advertising? Why did "we" go for DOS and then 3.1? Hmmm.

@totalermist

5 жыл бұрын

Short, simple and correct answer: Microsoft. They basically bullied manufacturers and resellers into shipping with DOS and Windows.

@factorylad5071

5 жыл бұрын

R0lica It's because the general cross section of the computer buying public prefers to be spoon fed , they do not like reading manuals and want some thing that works straight out of the box, no questions. Having an inferior computer that works (like the 8086) , is a price they are willing to pay, as they do not use it seriously anyway.

@maxxdahl6062

2 жыл бұрын

That and Acorn never had any foothold in the US. I heard they THOUGHT about bringing their computers and OS here to the US, but then decided against it.

I was watching another video last week talking about how Microsoft and Apple where getting behind the ARM architecture. This would be a good time to bring the RISC OS up to-date. I read a few of the forums on the RISC OS web site and there is talk about it.

Thanks, you are best.

Cool Beans. For a old OS it still provides some most useful attributes. Think I'll relearn some Basic. Time to do some PEEKs and POKEs ? Think I could come up with some basic MACHINE Control programs for a simple I/O port ? Is the ARM any good at Basic Math and a ADC/DAC ?

Last time I saw a screen like that was on an Archimedes 5000 that I was fortunate to get a hold of. Just like with the Amiga/Motorola combination I found Arm Assembly very pleasent unlike intel 8086/x86. Its cool that more software that would be labled abandonware is now opensource, alot of lessons learned over time thats for sure. Nice video to start the year out with,

@davidkatelansky5694

5 жыл бұрын

MASM has a lot of baggage, but I used to write in A86 (a shareware assembler) and thought it was the best language I'd ever seen (up to that time). I've written plenty of C programs on RISC systems (Alpha and AS/400 PowerPC - and lately my Raspberry Pi) but no assembler.

Thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing😀👍

Funny, back in the day, I worked at Silicon Graphics building RISC computers and one of my favorite basic programs was "Simon's Basic" on my Commodore 64. Yeah I'm old, thanks for the memories.

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

I remember those SG machines, I knew a group who used them for early VR research.

@hydrochloricacid2146

5 жыл бұрын

You were part of the MIPS team?

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

I was based in the Business School in the University of Nottingham, and next door was the Computer Science Department. There a project under Steve Benford did a lot of quite pioneering work on VR in a project called the ACE (Advanced Computing Environments) Lab. I visited on a few occasions -- even filmed there! -- as I wrote the first UK e-business book in the mid 1990s, so we often talked about collaborations.

@MarkTheMorose

5 жыл бұрын

@@ExplainingComputers www.nottingham.ac.uk/ComputerScience/People/steve.benford ?

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

That's the man! A great guy. He had several Silicon Graphics workstations at the time doing various VR stuff. I left the university in late 2015, so have not seen him since.

Even though I know I'll never use an OS like this, it's still interesting to see what old OSes were like from before I was even born

Still waiting for a port of TempleOS to ARM

Oh, just yesterday I was wondering if you were going to make a video on this :)

@ExplainingComputers

5 жыл бұрын

Spooky!!