Re: RISCOS Ltd Press Release 24/04/2008

In message <4f97236c1ajohn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John Cartmell <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

That may seem reasonable to you - but it is not logical. Just because *you*
can't see new RISC OS hardware being developed does *not* mean that it won't
be developed. I can see new hardware being developed - but the 'free' options
that Chris worries about may well make that possibility less likely to happen.
I'm not worried because I don't think there is much (or any) chance that the
'free' options will surface in a quality that will pose a challenge - but I do
see Chris' worry as more reasonable than your pessimism.

Any new RISC OS system needs to offer something different from
existing systems.

Power, price or portability.

The first two are very unlikely from native arm solutions, but could
be achieved in other ways.

Power: More power could be achieved with a coprocessor and
replacement modules to use it instead of the Arm processor for
intensive tasks. However this would probably be best as an upgrade to
an Iyonix.

Portability: There is a ray of hope with the A9 PDA, otherwise we
would need a port to an existing Arm PDA or notebook.

Emulation on x86 systems offers all three, plus the option of running
differnt programs.

There are a few possibilities using x86 and emulation that haven't
been developed (yet).

An emulator only system. (An ultra slim OS that only runs the
emulator.)

A port of RISC OS to x86. Ideally containing an emulator to run
existing Arm programs. The emulation part of the RO5 open license
reads to me like a port would be acceptable if it used emulation to
run existing programs. (Though it may have to be limited to *only*
running Arm programs.)

A hybrid of the two above, where the bootloader loads an Arm emulator
and the OS is ported to the resulting system.

(The above 3 possibilities would obviously lose a great deal of
flexibility in hardware)

Another useful possibility would be to modify an existing linux
distribution to look and feel like RISC OS. (Puppy linux perhaps?)
This could also be used with an emulator to keep a consistant
interface.


--
Jess Iyonix
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