RISC OS 4.02 reaches end of life | Drobe.co.uk archives

RISC OS 4.02 reaches end of life

By Chris Williams. Published: 15th Apr 2005, 14:51:40 | Permalink | Printable

Adjust is where it's at

Six years after the launch of RISC OS 4.02, RISCOS Ltd have announced that it will be discontinued once existing stocks of ROM chips have run out.

RISCOS Ltd.'s Paul Middleton said: "The time has come to move on and the considerable advantages of the newer version of RISC OS 4.39 means that we now consider it a suitable time to discontinue supply of RISC OS 4.02 ROMs."

He later added: "Having 4.39 in ROM offers lots of advantages for users and encourages developers to support the latest features as standard. We really feel that after nearly 6 years users should finally be upgrading to the latest version."

RISC OS 4.02 was one of the first releases of RISC OS 4, the desktop operating system developed by ROL following the dismantling of Acorn Plc: sporting a cube shaped logo and marking the beginning of the post-Acorn era, 4.02 offered numerous benefits over RISC OS 3.7, including long filenames and improved stability.

RISC OS 4.39 went into production in April 2004 and is a snapshot of the latest RISC OS Select 3 in ROM. Given the advantages 4.39 has over 4.02 and the fact that ROL will be looking to woo customers to upgrade, it's not surprising that the company has declared that 4.02 has reached its end of life.

In the meantime, punters can pick up a set of RISC OS 4.02 ROMs for 75 quid, or RISC OS 4.39 for 99 quid if they're upgrading from RISC OS 3 and 4.0x.

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Discussion

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damnm, just been paid too, might accidentally purchase a set

em2ac on 15/4/05 4:48PM
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Might as well go the whole way and buy 4.39 though.

fwibbler on 15/4/05 4:55PM
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RISC OS 4.0x was a special release to me - it proved our community wouldn't let itself just melt away or be scattered after Acorn's demise. It offered refinements and logical enhancements to an already decent OS. It runs my music RPC to this day, and not Select, because it's fast, clean and manageable.

OK, enough with the nostalgic la-la, I wonder how Select 4 is coming along...

hEgelia on 15/4/05 7:10PM
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I can't see why Select is any less fast, clean or manageable. I use Select on the RiscPC that I DJ with because I couldn't bear to use 4.02.

jonix on 15/4/05 8:29PM
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jonix: It takes longer for Select to boot, it has too many options (since I only work with audio and MIDI) and I quite simply find it too complex for what I need to do. Besides all that unfortunately some (older) music software does not function correctly (or not at all) on Select. The RPC I'm typing this on does use Select though and I do appreciate it when I'm not producing.

There's quite a difference between spinning a record (or mp3 for that matter) and producing one.

hEgelia on 15/4/05 9:17PM
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Ignorant as I am still using 4.02, is 4.39 such a difference?

Could someone please briefly outline the benefits and difference?

Thanks.

Sawadee on 15/4/05 9:21PM
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Sawadee: A 60 second search of Drobe's archives will list articles covering the changes from Vanilla 4.02, Select 1, Select 2 and Select 3 and Adjust. To search for an article, select 'Drobe News' from the AcornSearch box at the top of each page an enter a search term.

Select 3 features [link] [link] Select 2 features [link] Select 1 features [link] Select changes database [link]

Hope this helps.

diomus on 15/4/05 10:50PM
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You can find drobe's coverage of Adjust by slotting 'Adjust' in the box at the top of the page and choose 'Drobe News' to search.

RISCOS Ltd/Developments have a page on some of the changes: [link] (A lot of earlier Drobe articles seem to come out with the middle section squeezed into a small gap, so ignore how they look).

xyzzy on 15/4/05 10:54PM
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Swadee Reading all of this won't necessarily get you much further :o)

The advantages of a given version of an OS vs another one depend often on your usage pattern.

I went as far as RO4.37 and found no real obvious advantages for me over RO4.02 (or indeed RO3.7). Improvements in speed seem very slight and incremental rather than a big leap the Iyonix made.

Other people have different requirements from an OS use different applications and hence find Select/Adjust much better than older versions of RISC OS.

As usual YMMV ;o)

For me the OS version is not the problem, a lack of support for certain file formats is the biggest problem.

blahsnr on 16/4/05 10:50AM
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Just saw that RISCOS ltd billed my VISA. My 99GBP ROS 4.39 set is coming over!

nodoubt73 on 18/5/05 2:06PM
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