@armbytes.bsky.social
Tinkerer. I have bucketloads of admiration for the scientists, engineers, innovators, developers, authors and artists who make fun stuff happen. http://acm.org
Gerph's live RISCOS 64 Bit coding - Wimp: Text Render (part 5). youtube.com/live/qAueFni... via
@YouTube
LIVE NOW!!
RISC OS screenshot showing the desktop scrolled up and “*Alphabet EBCDIC” typed at the command line. Thereafter everything is garbled hexadecimal numbers, though the displayed character sheet shows it is indeed the EBCDIC encoding. The output of some unintelligible command produces a wall of digits, most of which are “20” – hexadecimal for the space character in almost every other character set.
Fortunately my MMK keyboard handler for RISC OS doesn’t actually support the EBCDIC Alphabet, or I wouldn’t be able to switch back again!
MacRoman is a useful stress test as its hard-space isn’t 160 (it’s 202), but EBCDIC doesn’t even have space=32 (it’s 64) – hence the wall-of-hex that’s mostly 20
21st March this year is the RISC OS North exhibition at the Village Hotel, Warrington, WA1 1QA
Awesome!
20.02.2026 15:52 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
RISC OS Frosted will be demoing at RISC OS North 2026
19.02.2026 20:07 — 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
RISC OS MODE7 screen but with the eight TTL colours redefined to 12 bit RGB colours.
RISC OS Teletext, but Level 3.5 colours.
The fun but is that though this API is naturally 24b colour, L3.5 Teletext only supports 4096 colours, so it’s quantised internally (and currently colours 16-31 are ignored because of the Kernel implementation).
Today’s new RISC OS nemoBasic feature: CASE/ENDCASE finally gains a ‘finally’ – THEN !
CASE...OF
WHEN...
WHEN...
OTHERWISE...
THEN.... (always happens)
ENDCASE
[Actually there’s lots of nemoBasic-exclusive syntax here – functional LET, functional IF, polymorphic VDU, as well as CASE...THEN]
Here's the article I wrote on how I put together Acorn User's December 1997 cover CD, which used Hyperstudio to create a multimedia interface for Acorn, Mac and PC.
Had just as many issues with this, as with the 200th edition CD, all a bit of a dog's dinner!
archive.org/details/Acor...
Clip of news article from the February 1996 issue of Acorn User, headlined 'Acorn workstation to take US?'
30 years ago, Acorn signed a licensing agreement with Oracle concerning the development of referencing designs for the Network Computer.
It was essentially cloud computing, but many years before it was viable, and was gone by 1999. Pretty much Acorn's last hurrah.
archive.org/details/Acor...
Top, the "Elite" logo - a gold aguila with silver wings and helmet behind the word "ELITE." Left is a screenshot for the BBC Micro B and B+, and right is a screenshot for the BBC Master; both show the player, a first person spacehip, focusing on an enemy ship with stars flying in the background; gauges appear in the bottom left and right, and the now industry standard isomettric radar on the bottom of each screenshot shows the player is surrounded. Below is dense copy, describing the complex aspects of gameplay (exploration, combat, trade, and quests); below that, the Superior Software logo (a red and white interlinked pair of Ss), the Acornsoft logo (an egg), and an order address (mail and phone only) are listed below.
"Elite, the widely acclaimed 3-D space game, is the highest selling game ever published for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron..."
18.02.2026 00:05 — 👍 67 🔁 13 💬 4 📌 0
Just came across my final article for Acorn User magazine, my review of the RISC OS web design software Sitewriter, from June 2000.
archive.org/details/Acor...
Oh wow - Lemmings turned 35 years old on Valentine's Day this year. Actually quite cool looking back that Krisalis converted this to Acorn RISC OS platform before the end of 1991, so we were not left out for too long.
May have to watch this later - youtu.be/Ulx0WE8KnA4?...
Incoming!
riscosopen.org/forum/forums...
#riscos #opensource #magazine
It was just over 8 years ago that I attended an ABUG event in Manchester and met up with some of the most dedicated Acorn computer enthusiasts in the universe. It was also nice to chat with Prof. Steve Furber. Over the years he has given up so much of his own time attending events like this.
15.02.2026 23:21 — 👍 26 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0Tonight!
16.02.2026 15:29 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
CJEMicros getting back up to speed and need your help
www.iconbar.com/articles/CJE...
We are really pleased to hear from CJEMicros who have emailed us to let us know that they are recovering after the fire at their premises last year.
RISC OS’s rather ugly MODE7 Teletext emulation being changed using Level3.5 attribute modification commands via VDU23,18,240 to 242.
Today's I-can’t-believe-I-spent-the-morning-doing-this RISC OS module: Teletext35.
Updates the MODE7 Teletext emulation to Level 3.5 with attribute modification!
• Put characters on top of control codes
• Freely modify colours of any cell
• Modify the attributes of any character
Rougol February 2026 meeting on Monday - Retro YouTuber Colin Hoad
www.iconbar.com/articles/Rou...
The February 2026 Rougol meeting is on Monday and features Retro YouTuber Colin Hoad
At our meeting on Monday 16th February @colinhoad.com will be bringing some of his collection of palmtops to the pub and talking about his retro computing YouTube channel. Come and have a listen and play!
rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/ind...
This weeks #throwbackthursday has to be the Acorn BBC Master 128 as it celebrates 40 years!
In February 1986, Acorn Computers released the BBC Master 128 microcomputer, the successor to the hugely popular BBC Micro.
Swipe to end for BBC AIV!
#bbcmaster #acorncomputer #computinghistory
Colin Hoad will be the guest speaker at ROUGOL on 16th February, covering his retro Youtube channel, and will be bringing along some handheld computers for people to play with.
www.riscository.com/2026/colin-h...
I'll be speaking at the next @rougol.bsky.social (RISC OS User Group of London) meeting at the Duke of Sussex pub next Monday 16th February! Details available here: rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/ind...
10.02.2026 15:49 — 👍 6 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
RO5 extended INKEY hackery in OS_Byte,129 In an attempt to support additional keys, RO5 added a confused combination of *logical* INKEY numbers that had already been allocated and in use for 30 years (the MMK “Sleep” and “Help” keys) with b0-6 of the *physical* key number for "low-level" key ranges &100-17F and &200-27F, then represented this broken combination in two incompatible ways *within the same OS_Byte*. It cannot be used to detect any of the standard physical keys. The keyboard driver cannot change the mapping, because there isn't one. When detecting a single key, INKEYs &0D and &0F (EOR&FF) were stolen to represent *physical* ranges &100-17F and &200-27F respectively (why only those, why physical numbers?), and the low 7 bits of the *physical* key number (EOR&FF) put in R2. However, when scanning *from* an INKEY, if the start INKEY is &0D or &0F then the start *physical* key b0-6 (EOR&FF) is in R2, *but* if such a key is detected it is returned in R1 as &Pp0D or &Pp0F. Additionally, if it starts at &0D or earlier it completely skips INKEY &0E (“Wake”). Furthermore, because &Pp starts at zero, the key "CommercialAt" returns the same INKEY returned by “Help” on MMK keyboards. Whereas “¥” returns &A0F, Japanese keyboards have always used &2E, and though MMK defined &0C for “Power”, RO5 decided on &110F. There's no API clue that it's done any of this.
I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt be given reason to say it again, but I’ll repeat: Developers are *bad* at interfaces.
And RISC OS developers are particularly bad at RISC OS interfaces.
A huge shout-out to everyone who made it! The next meetup is pencilled in for 28th March – a week after RISC OS North.
09.02.2026 18:21 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Drag'n'Drop 15i2 edition reviewed
www.iconbar.com/articles/Dra...
The latest edition of Drag'n'Drop magazine is now available sporting what it claims is the worst ever cover. Do you agree?
If you've tried to DM here on BlueSky without success, there are other routes at the bottom of this informative article:
www.riscository.com/2026/develop...
Fireside developer chat on saturday night
www.iconbar.com/articles/Fir...
The next developer chat is on Saturday night (7th February) for anyone interested in a very informal event online aimed at RISC OS developers.
MUG celebrates 20 years
www.iconbar.com/articles/MUG...
Midlands User Group (more commonly known as MUG) is celebrating its (first) 20 years of operating!
The Dark and Moody Modded Risc PC Turbo. Super Machine!
23.05.2025 23:03 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
