The What, How and Why of RISC OS

The what, how and why of RISC OS INTRO his may be the series and the RiscPC. In collaboration first time you with several other companies, RISCOS Thear of RISC Ltd have taken over the development OS computers. and production from the original Acorn You may think that company. New energy is being put into RISC OS is new the further development and renewal of on the PC market. this concept. Others have joined in as And you may won- well. The British firm RiscStation is de- der whether it is a veloping the R7500, MicroDigital are reliable and viable developing the Mico and Millipede are system; whether it developing the Imago motherboard. In may be interesting this leaflet you will find images of the to you and wheth- RiscPC produced by Castle er it is compatible Technology. with other systems. There is only one answer to these questions: he proof of the pudding is still in the read, try, ask, test, eating. So, don’t be afraid, have a and compare. Tgo. You’ll be surprised... he British firm Acorn has pro- Tduced computers since the nineteen-seventies that are very pleasant to work with indeed: the Acorn Atom, the le- gendary BBC, the Electron, the Master, the Archimedes, the A- 2 HARDWARE Processor this way all options he RiscPC offers the use of several like telebanking, processors. trying out alternat- T ive operating systems, operating he primary processor is always an programmes that ARM processor (Advanced Risc you use at your TMachine). ARM processors have workplace or run- been specially designed as RISC pro- ning PC-oriented cessors (Reduced Instruction Set CDs and CDROMs Computers), enabling exceptionally fast are open. processing. Standard ARM clock speed is 75 MHz, while StrongARM clock speed is 200 or 233 MHz. This may seem a little sluggish today, but it amounts to as many as 140 Mips or more. 600 MHz and 750 Mips ARM processors are currently under development. In case you are wondering if the fan isn’t working, ARM processors require no cooling, and very little energy indeed. Which is why you may find these chips in Psion palmtops and many mobile phones. ARM operating systems are of course RISC OS, but also UNIX (Risc BSD) and Linux The RiscPC secondary ARM processor may be used, or a PC-card if you want to The casing Ause PC applications. So DOS, he RiscPC Microsoft Windows, BeOS, Unix, Linux, motherboard is anything goes. The processor makes Tsituated at the full use of the internal memory, devices bottom of the cas- that function with RISC OS as well. In ing, which has 3 room for the power Controllers supply unit, cards isk drives, hard disks or CD drives and several drives. can be connected to the built-in If you need more DIDE controller. If you wish, a second IDE controller can be installed. Several SCSI cards can be fitted as well. There’s room to move for scan- ners, zip, jaz or DVD drives, CD writers or rewriters, which, incidentally can be connected to parallel ports as well. Video/memory/sound or 2 Mb VRAM is provided for the screen image. That is enough for a 1range of up to 16 million colours. Resolutions go as far as 1280 x 1024. Specially designed technology enables lightning-speed generation or refresh- ing of the image. The modular slices AM memory can be expanded to 256 Mb. Usually 4 or 8 Mb is more room, extra slices Rthan enough, since operating sys- may be mounted tem and programmes are very small in on top. In this way size. you can stack up to seven storeys, 16 bit Soundblaster compatible enlarging the sys- soundcard is included in the tem at your will. Asystem. 4 RISC OS The advantages of OS in ROM they were meant to he operating system is contained in do so from the out- ROM. It is located in two 4Mb ROM set. This makes for Tchips. It is very small but at the easy and speedy same time very powerful, because it action. was written especially for the ARM processors. This gives it a headstart from The desktop the moment you switch on the com- he desktop is puter. In addition, hardly any disk the entire work- space is needed for the operating sys- Ting area visible tem to work, and all the infamous vir- on your screen. It uses that many people are worried shows the win- about cannot affect it. Consequently, dows of your pro- re-installing your operating system to grammes. The get rid of any bugs or malfunctioning is large area occupy- never necessary. All programme de- ing most of the signers have kept to the original screen is called concept through the years, which the pinboard. It means a pleasant consistency in can be specially design. Routines that apply in one pro- set up at the click gramme apply similarly in another. of a button for any kind of work envir- The art of multitasking onment that a par- he multitasking capabilities are ticular job requires. among the strong points of the RISC To do this, you Toperating system. No matter wheth- drag and drop all er one, ten, or fifty programmes are icons representing active at any given moment, whether the programmes there are just three or three hundred that you want to windows open on your screen, operat- use to the pin- ing speed is hardly affected. On top of board, and save that, the whole system has been so this constellation consistently designed that active pro- under a suitable grammes can work together because name. In this way, 5 for any wizard-like constructions to find what you want. The mouse he mouse has three buttons: the one on the left is used for selecting, Tthe one in the middle for context- With anti-aliasing defined pop-up menus, and the one on the right for various tricks and treats. You will find some of them mentioned under ‘windows and tricks ‘ but there are many more. Because this system is so simple and effective, your mouse has an easy time and chances of RSI are small. Without anti-aliasing Drag and drop frequent action is exporting and im- porting files or objects. With RISC a small file is AOS this is simply a matter of drag- saved that brings ging and dropping text or icons. Simply back your tailor- drag a picture you just made with pro- made set-up at the gramme A into the active window of click of a mouse. programme B and it’s there! No cutting The status bar is and pasting! Quick and easy. situated along the bottom of the Anti aliasing or ‘fuzzy font technique’ screen and con- n order to produce on your screen tains icons of in- crisp, easily readable letters, even stalled devices on Ismall eight-point ones, RISC OS uses the left, and active Anti-Aliasing: a hardly visible edge of programmes on grey pixels is generated around each the right. Very letter which eliminates the jagged effect neat, and no need along the outline. This produces beauti- 6 fully smooth letters which are easy to clicked on with the read, however small they are. The pic- right-hand mouse tures shown here illustrate the effect. button. The same Less strain on the eyes! effect applies to the left-right but- The fonts tons. Moreover, onts are managed by the operating both vertical and system as well. The bare system in- horizontal scroll- Fcludes six standard fonts. But there bars can be moved are thousands that can all be installed. simultaneously by They can all be scaled smoothly from dragging either of two-point size to whatever size fits onto them with the right- hand mouse button. If you have a window lying ‘behind’ another window, you can move it around by ‘grabbing’ it by its title bar with the right-hand mouse button without it popping to the front. The three buttons of the mouse Modular construction your paper. There is no distinction he operating between screen fonts and printerfonts. system contains Tdozens of mod- Windows and tricks ules working to- ne handy trick to know is that the gether, which in buttons for scrolling up and down their turn are used Ohave a reverse effect if they are by active applica- 7 tions. Many indis- allows for childishly simple installation pensible items are of programmes (drag-drop-instant ac- therefore present tion) and enables the user to set up his from the start and work area at will, depending on the need not be nature of the job to be done. Moving defined separately and removing of programmes and files for each individual is as simple as can be. Saving and programme. In this copying of programmes and files is a way, programmes matter of one click and one drag. remain small and Simplicity itself! need little memory space, thus speed- ing up the computing process. Computing achieve- ments are impressive ISC OS man- ages several Rfiling systems, devices and tasks, co-ordinates the active programmes, allows for sheer limitless multitasking, provides clear messages for the user through a beautiful and com- fortable user inter- face, can be con- figured with ease, 8 PROGRAMMES Programmes in ROM Kit, Vantage, OM contains a range of ready-to- Vector, Topmodel2 use programmes and applications Rfor sound (Maestro), bitmap Graphical bitmap editing(Paint), vector editing (Draw) Aim, Compo, and text editing (Edit), a compression Photodesk3, utility (Squash) and interactive help Studio24 Pro (Help).

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