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Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

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Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#31

Post by qwerty456127 »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #2

"A software emulation of 32-bit ARM would be needed, with perhaps a 10x performance drop." Well, my Archimedes was 8Mhz, and my Pi is 1500Mhz, so we have some room there perhaps?

Don't forger the fact 187.5 times the frequency is not the only improvement. Today you also have 4x the cores, 8x the bits and hardware 4Kp60 HEVC en/de-coding. There probably are more things (like AES encryption, linear algebra and FPU) hardware-accelerated, I don't really know. This way your emulated Archimedes can probably do much much more than it was supposed to.

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#32

Post by fitbitq »

makapuf wrote: post #18
lsllc wrote: post #4

RISC OS is written mostly in ARM assembly, but it's a pretty complete (if dated) OS. I think it would be interesting to convert the sources to LLVM-IR and then abstract the hardware specific parts giving you a cross platform version of RISC-OS. Yeah, it'd be a lot of work ... but I think it'd be very cool. Why? 25 years ago there were dozens of OS's: AIX, Ultrix/OSF-1/Tru64, HP/UX, DG/UX, SCO (yuck), MS-DOS, Dynix/PT…

Listing some I know of: linux windows macos freebsd redox fuchsia ios android(sharing the kernel but sufficiently different from linux) chromeos plus many more experimental but available os

Harvey OS

Redox OS

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#33

Post by lproven »

makapuf wrote: post #18
lsllc wrote: post #4

RISC OS is written mostly in ARM assembly, but it's a pretty complete (if dated) OS. I think it would be interesting to convert the sources to LLVM-IR and then abstract the hardware specific parts giving you a cross platform version of RISC-OS. Yeah, it'd be a lot of work ... but I think it'd be very cool. Why? 25 years ago there were dozens of OS's: AIX, Ultrix/OSF-1/Tru64, HP/UX, DG/UX, SCO (yuck), MS-DOS, Dynix/PT…

Listing some I know of: linux windows macos freebsd redox fuchsia ios android(sharing the kernel but sufficiently different from linux) chromeos plus many more experimental but available os

• linux That's 2 so far. 2.5 if I'm being generous.

Do keep going, would you?

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#34

Post by lproven »

fitbitq wrote: post #32
makapuf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listing some I know of: linux windows macos freebsd redox fuchsia ios android(sharing the kernel but sufficiently different from linux) chromeos plus many more experimental but available os

Harvey OS Redox OS

Both xNix-like.

Harvey is Plan 9, which is Unix 2.0.

Redox is xNix redone in Rust, I think because they've never seen anything that isn't xNix.

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#35

Post by lproven »

qz2 wrote: post #21

RISC OS is quite frankly dead in its current incarnation. And I say that as a somewhat prolific Acorn customer in the 80s and 90s. It was after all a quick hack because they weren’t going to deliver ARX. Some of the impedance mismatches between the OS and everything else in the universe are glaringly irritating today such as paths and file type metadata. But a lot of the better ideas from the operating system should…

Did you read the blog post? (I wrote it, BTW.)

That is more or less what I was arguing for, you see.

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#36

Post by lproven »

zozbot234 wrote: post #12

> It's too late for virtual memory, and we don't really need it any more -- but the programming methods that allow virtual memory, letting programs spill over onto disk if the OS runs low on memory, are the same as those that enforce the protection of each program's RAM from all other programs. Strictly speaking, I don't think this is true - virtual memory and process-based memory protection are separate issues. One…

[Author here]

OK, I will give you that one. :-)

But they are at least related concepts, no?

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#37

Post by lproven »

ilaksh wrote: post #6
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #2

"A software emulation of 32-bit ARM would be needed, with perhaps a 10x performance drop." Well, my Archimedes was 8Mhz, and my Pi is 1500Mhz, so we have some room there perhaps?

I saw some YouTube videos of RISC OS running on Pi.

[Author here]

I have RISC OS running on a Pi, and it's not the first one I've had, either.

https://twitter.com/lproven/status/1310304554395860996

http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2015/12/day-8-zx-spectru...

I don't just make this stuff up, you know. :-)

I still have my A305, too, and an A5000 as well.

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#38

Post by lproven »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #20

What is the point of this discussion for others not in the ecology?

[Author here]

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

-- George Santayana (The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress)

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#39

Post by [deleted] »

lsllc wrote: post #4

RISC OS is written mostly in ARM assembly, but it's a pretty complete (if dated) OS. I think it would be interesting to convert the sources to LLVM-IR and then abstract the hardware specific parts giving you a cross platform version of RISC-OS. Yeah, it'd be a lot of work ... but I think it'd be very cool. Why? 25 years ago there were dozens of OS's: AIX, Ultrix/OSF-1/Tru64, HP/UX, DG/UX, SCO (yuck), MS-DOS, Dynix/PT…

[deleted]

Re: Modernising RISC OS in 2020: is there hope for the ancient ARM OS?

#40

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

lproven wrote: post #33
makapuf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listing some I know of: linux windows macos freebsd redox fuchsia ios android(sharing the kernel but sufficiently different from linux) chromeos plus many more experimental but available os

• linux That's 2 so far. 2.5 if I'm being generous. Do keep going, would you?

That's 2 families, not 2 operating systems. If you can tell me with a straight face that Debian, FreeBSD, and iOS are the same thing, then we're really not having the same conversation.
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