The Antenna

Here are some of the things that I spotted which happened in the RISC OS Open source world this week...

An update to Font Directory Pro is now available from Elesar Ltd. The software, originally developed by LOOKsystems, was added to the Elesar catalogue in 2017, with sales and further development handled by Rob Sprowson’s company. It provides a system to make a large font collection more manageable, and is actually a suite of applications that fit neatly together to perform different aspects of that task, such as controlling which fonts are ‘seen’ by the operating system, with the ability to enable and disable individual fonts dynamically. The headline change…

BASCOMP is a single-pass BASIC compiler for DOS, targetting 8086/8088 and using COM files as output. Matthias Eberle has released version 3: "This major release expands the supported BASIC language while improving parser robustness, runtime safety and QBasic-style source compatibility. Much code has been rewritten and all tool chain executables are now faster and more reliable." You can download the latest release from the BASCOMP website. See the version 3 release for additional notes. Note that "development was assisted by a coding AI" so we are unlikely to include this in FreeDOS.

I’ve had a running joke with my wife Dorte for almost as long as we’ve been a couple. I reasoned back in the day that, since she was going to be a doctor — a more reliable source of income than writing about computer games — she should be expected to buy me the Porsche […]

Lidl shananigans, Autism in France, Weather station hacking.

Thanks to AI bug hunters, the Linux kernel is seeing record numbers of vulnerabilities, and it's overwhelming developers.

WROCC's September speaker was Andrew Rawnsley (with his ROD hat on).

A new French-language digital magazine, Mag42, was launched recently by David Feugey – and the second issue is now available. The magazine isn’t RISC OS-specific, but does include coverage of ‘our’ little operating system amongst a few others, and this month looks at how to “expand your RISC OS 5 software library through emulation.” Other systems covered in this issue include MorphOS, Atari 68K (referring to the processor family, not the amount of memory), Haiku, AmigasOS 4, and Apollo. With issue 2 containing 52 A5 pages, Mag42 is delivered as…

Please help us test the next version of FreeDOS! Thanks to Jerome, our distribution manager, we are able to share a new "test" distribution every month. These monthly releases collect all new changes, and act as a "test bed" to become the next official FreeDOS distribution, and we would like your help to test it. The new "T2609" ("T" for test, "26" for 2026, "09" for September) distribution includes an update to UPX and several new translations. Since August, we've also included an updated kernel and other tools. Download the test release and let us know if you have any problems.

So long as Linux is distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses, the OS is  exempt from being required to verify the age of its users in California.

Mysysinf is a DOS port of the "Neofetch" system information utility from Linux and other Unix-like systems. Laaca has released a new update to Mysysinf: "Fritz kindly sent me files with program messages of utility Mysysinf translated to many other languages: Danish, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Dutch, Norwegian, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Portuguese, Slovakian, Slovenian, Serbian, Swedish, Ukrainan. I repacked the program (the binary is unchanged)." You can download it directly as a zip file from Laaca's website. We also mirrored this version in the FreeDOS Files Archive at ibiblio, under /util/system/mysysinf

Bots, Ugh.

It’s the last day of August, and it happens – thankfully – to fall on an official holiday, so it’s time to give the new trial feature its second outing, and look at what RISC OS-related meetings and events are coming up in September. Please note that any meeting dates listed below could change, so please be sure to keep an eye on websites, mailing lists, and news sites in case of any last minute changes! Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) meeting – 2nd September, 7:45pm WROCC usually meets…

The September 2026 WROCC talk is on Wednesday 2nd September and starts at 7.45pm on Zoom. This month Andrew Rawnsley returns as speaker

What does this have to do with the price of beer in Clacton?, The not-vide grenier.

Thunderstorms, Dear Canada, A necessary evil, RSS feed, Forecast accuracy, Bench, Eyeballs.

Here are some of the things that I spotted which happened in the RISC OS Open source world this week...

Anfang der 1990er Jahre – CD-Brenner gab es noch nicht, und USB-Sticks schon gar nicht (wie auch – USB war noch nicht verfügbar, und an Flash-Speicher in anständigen Größen war erst recht nicht zu denken) – waren ZIP-Laufwerke von Iomega mit weitem Abstand die beliebteste Art unter Computernutzern, Daten auszutauschen die nicht auf eine 1,44 MiB-Diskette passten. Davor wurden vor allem im Desktop-Publishing-Bereich oft SyQuest-Wechselplattenmedien verwendet (häufig die 44 oder 88 MiB-Variante in 5,25″, später …Read More →

Book added to the 6502 KIM-1 AIM 65 books pages: Microprocessor programming and applications for scientists and engineers (Richard R. Smardzewski See also:A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1 Scroll, copy paste of the console. New versions of KIM-...KIM-1 connectors: beware […]

Book added to the 6502 KIM-1 AIM 65 books pages: Microprocessor programming and applications for scientists and engineers (Richard R. Smardzewski See also:A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1 Scroll, copy paste of the console. New versions of KIM-...KIM-1 connectors: beware […]

Rehabilitating Richard

Andrew Rawnsley, wearing his RISC OS Developments hat, will be the guest speaker at the next Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) meeting, which takes place on Wednesday, 2nd September, and he will be talking on the subject of 64-bit. RISC OS itself is currently a 32-bit operating system, with the code that makes it up running in the ARM 32-bit architecture, AArch32. For some time now, newer ARM CPUs have had a 64-bit architecture, AArch64, and with it a new instruction set – and the wider ARM-based world has…

User ExPLIT on the German forum Verein zum Erhalt klassischer Computer e.V. has build an Apple 1 Replica 1 TE from the design files by Vince Briel. He was not so happy with the NTSC composite signal of this Replica 1. So he reworked the source files of the Propeller to support PAL formatted video. […]

Some things we noticed this month. What did you see?

35 years ago, a Finnish student began a humble project that would forever change the course of technology.

China has ordered several government agencies to drop a Chinese-developed version of Windows 10 in favor of either KylinOS or UOS.

My KIMSI I acquired a KIMSI in August 2026. It was build into a plexiglas/aluminium case, with a KIM-1 (Rev G) and a ‘microcalculator board’. I took the system apart, no room to store the big ugly thing. See also:A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1A demo of the new facilities […]

My KIMSI I acquired a KIMSI in August 2026. It was build into a plexiglas/aluminium case, with a KIM1 (Rev G) and a ‘microcalculator board’. I took the system apart, no room to store the big ugly thing. See also:A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1A demo of the new facilities […]

A boxed VIM-1 acquired in August 2026. More SYM-1 photos here. See also:A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1 Scroll, copy paste of the console. New versions of KIM-...KIM-1 connectors: beware the Chinese cheap variants!The KIM-1 needs 2 edge connectors. The […]

Here are some of the things that I spotted which happened in the RISC OS Open source world this week...

In August 2026 I acquired an boxed engineering SYM-2 prototype. It comes with two large circuit diagrams illustrating the design. Next photos by Paul Schroeter. See also:A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1A demo of the new facilities in the KIM-1 Simulator 2.2.1 Scroll, copy paste of the console. New versions […]

My holiday is almost over, Yesterday, Today, What the hell France?, Generic 8 channel 24MHz logic analyser, Using a cheap 8 channel logic analyser with Linux, An example of using Pulseview, Tomorrow?

Kevin Wells has released a new version of Currency, his application that provides a way to check exchange rates for different currencies, as well as the GDP (gross domestic product) and population information for different countries, without having the struggle of dealing with websites that may not work in RISC OS browsers. It does this by using Wget to relay information to the API (application programmer interface) provided by a remote website, and parsing the results in order to display it for the user. The websites it uses are Exchange…

Looking back from the vantage point of today, it’s hard for even me to believe, but it’s true all the same: I used to be a full-blown car guy. I bought my first car, a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle, for $800 in 1989, when I was sixteen years old. The bad thing about a Beetle was […]

Cooler at last!, The Stream, My oven, Brexit Benefits, United States debt has hit $40 trillion.

With continued DRAM and eMMC shortages, Pine64 has decided to discontinue production of Linux devices.

Autism: Because mummy never had sex with me!

KDE, Techpaladin, and Kubuntu Focus have announced a new initiative that will provide at least three years of support for KDE Plasma 6.6 LTS and related software.

Ghosts.

Loose ends, Blocked bots, Guttering.

My friend John Gruber is incensed by the idea that AI watermarking schemes adjust the output of a given LLM so that the output can later be assessed as likely coming from it in particular: They say “imperceptible” and “doesn’t change the meaning, quality, or readability”. Their words. Not almost imperceptible. Not slightly changes the meaning, quality, […]

Tonight (17th August) is when the next RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) meeting will take place, and like last month’s meeting it hasn’t been possible to arrange a guest speaker, so the meeting will again be an open one for general discussion of all things RISC OS. Following the group’s own record of having eighteen consecutive meetings with a guest speaker, this month sees the group’s second consecutive meeting without one – I’ll have to check with Bryan Hogan, who organises the meetings, to find out if is…

Today is the day!, Other stuff, EDF app estimations.

There’s another new test release of StrongED available – version 4.70a21 [zip file] – with an upgrade [zip file] available to use by anyone who already has version 4.70a20 (noting that it is unsuitable for use with any other versions). And if you want to look at it, the source code [zip file] is also available. The main change in this version is to search and replace – quoting developer Fred Graute, “yes, again” – to provide control over the way it handles Dump files with three options: Skip, ASCII,…

Yet more tweaks, In other news..., Demise, Classes.

Here are some of the things that I spotted which happened in the RISC OS Open source world this week...