'First Steps with RISC OS 4' book unveiled

By Chris Williams. Published: 3rd Mar 2004, 02:27:42 | Permalink | Printable

Again

Alligata Media have announced further details of their latest book, titled First Steps with RISC OS 4. Alligata had hoped for the book to be in print by May 2003, but it appears to have been, um, delayed until now.

The book, to be printed in a binder format, will cover topics including the RISC OS 4 !Boot system, the RISC OS desktop, applications, printing and more. According to Alligata's Dave Bradforth, the book aims to "take apart the RISC OS operating system and address many confusing issues in a simple, friendly, step-by-step style", and is "structured to address many of the issues for which a simple printed reference would prove handy".

If you're interested in a copy, drop Dave an email from the address below so he can get an idea of numbers before sending the title to print. We did contact Dave to ask about a possible Select and RISC OS 5 edition of the book but he sadly hasn't replied. We'll let you know if we get more details.

Links

Email Dave - his announcement

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Discussion

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I'd advise Dave not to put the "4" in the title. Even if RISC OS 5 is not yet included, he ought to leave his options open, and either RISCOS Ltd or Castle Technology Ltd could, presumably, call their next offering RISC OS 6 or something even more wildly exotic ! The binder is obviously intended to make it future proof, so future proof the title too.

martin on 3/3/04 7:33AM
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A Networking Glitch I've just successfully networked, via an ethernet switch (a fancy hub), my new Iyonix with RISC OS 5.05 to my Kinetic RiscPC with 4.03. The Iyonix kept refusing the "Hosts" file that the Kinetic had no problem with. Eventually, by putting in an extra line with a hash, (#), between each line of IP address plus IP name, it accepted it. It took over an hour to sort that one out. I,m not sure if that's the best solution or if I was doing something else wrong but it seems, to me, typical of the small but puzzling problems one runs into with setting up any system. It will be interesting to see if David can cover all of the angles and likely problems in his new book.

martin on 3/3/04 7:50AM
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Well, with Select you run into much fewer of these small but puzzling (and often very time consuming) problems. In this case, a well working hosts file would have been created by the relevant !Configure plugin for you. :-)

There are four things I want to be solved, before I will buy a new RISC OS machine (be it an Omega or an Iyonix): Select available on it, the Simtec stack available on it, a fully working Ethernet interface, and a PCI-SCSI-card with high performance filesystem (so I can put my Promise UltraTrak SX4000 to good use on RISC OS).

JGZimmerle on 3/3/04 7:59PM
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Something like that should be included with a new RISC OS machines.

Revin Kevin on 3/3/04 8:23PM
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JGZimmerle: You mean you haven't bought an Omega yet?!?

martin: To be fair, the book is probably exactly what it says it is, i.e. First Steps with RISC OS 4. It doesn't say it will resolve every configuration issue, nor does it claim to be comprehensive, nor does it say the author wrote it with RISC OS 4.3x in mind, nor owns an Iyonix.

I've not seen the book, but I doubt it will "take apart the RISC OS operating system" in the way that many would interpret that phrase. But that doesn't matter; it's probably very valuable for those who may not have easy access to user manuals for the RISC OS 3 user applications, or some of the more basic RISC OS 4 additions.

Personally, I'm moving from RISC OS 4.xx to RISC OS 5.05, so I'm more in need of a supplement for Castle's (very good) existing RISC OS 5 Welcome Guide. But there are still some users who will be using legacy systems, so will need a guide to old versions of the OS. Much credit to Alligata Media for supplying that.

dgs

dgs on 4/3/04 12:26AM
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For dgs' comment - my views exactly. I've got along with the RISC OS 4 installation guide and Acorn's OS3 User Guide - but have obviously made a lot of silly mistakes. Would be very interested in a loose leaf guide. It would also be helpful to put in all the other partial guides - like the APDL Idea leaflet, !CDBurn, and all the RComp bits.

PaulMorrison on 4/3/04 4:52PM
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@dgs: No, I have not yet bought one, but my father has. He is planning to equip his whole company (Europe's biggest educational touring-theatre, preforming to about 40000 people per month) with Omegas, once the network card is completely finished.

JGZimmerle on 4/3/04 8:16PM
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JGZimmerle:

He's going to buy omegas?!!!!!!

Why doesn't he just buy Iyonixes which are cheaper for the same eqipment level, have a fully working network port and are *much* faster?

crazy :rolleyes:

epistaxsis@work on 4/3/04 8:50PM
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*cough* Needs to run a decent OS version *cough* ;-)

imj on 4/3/04 10:17PM
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I thought the Omega can run on select

Revin Kevin on 4/3/04 10:19PM
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Revin Kevin:

Yes, I think this is what imj was implying.

fylfot on 4/3/04 10:56PM
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Nah. Select can run on Omega. Not the other way around, for certain!

It's a sticky predicament to decide which way to go for a machine just now, certainly. My choice has been for VirtualAcorn on a fast PC. Emulation shows it's running at an effective 455Mhz here -- RISC OS starts and does all the Select boot in under 5 seconds, networking works flawlessly, get to use cheap and speedy PC peripherals, albeit in a vaguely clunky way (eg using the flashcard reader is a bit of hassle in setting up mounts and soforth). A fast machine really does justice to Select -- shame it's not on that XScale there.

If you want a true RISC OS machine, I'd still point at RiscPC or Iyonix -- certainly not the Omega as its history is too much of a mess to suggest it'll be supported (Anyone recall the Mico USB debacle? -- still ongoing afaik!) and without Networking support and the current unjustifiable blame that MD are placing on ROL for that, I think anyone would be mad to go for an Omega really -- the benefits over a RiscPC with ViewFinder are just not there. JGZimmerele care to explain exactly why Omega is worth it for his father, rather than a RiscPC ?

imj on 4/3/04 11:09PM
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May I ask what program you used to reach that determination of 455mhz Ian? I'd be interested to see what rating I achieve here with VRPC. Cheers!

The Doctor on 5/3/04 11:43AM
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