RISC OS 2 Emulator

RISC OS 2 (here after known as ROS2) was used in Acorn 32bit computers fairly soon after there release, circa 1988. It was brought in to replace the rather cludgy Arthur OS which had been used in the period of transition from 8 bit BBC Micros to the far more powerful 32 bit Archimedes while RISC OS was being developed. ROS2 is very much recognisable as a predecessor to the operating system we use today, but was underdeveloped in many ways that in comparison to ROS3 make it very user unfriendly indeed.

This emulator allows you to use a software copy of ROS2 on your Acorn. Essentially it is a copy of the RISC OS modules, originally held on ROM that can be soft-loaded into Acorns running ROS3. It immediately takes you back to the good old days of horrible mode 12 screens (though it can just as easily be run in other modes but defaults to mode 12 for authenticity). You soon notice the difference between the two versions when all your software refuses to run since it is has been adapted for ROS3.

All file operations now go back to the good old days of single-tasking (only being able to do one thing at once) as the horrid white CLI boxes appear when you drag an icon to another filer window. The filer menus seem half empty, with all the nice features, such as settyping we are so used to, being absent from this old OS.

The nice little acorn switcher icon we all know and love is replaced with the archimedes logo that Acorn tried so hard (and eventually successfully) to lose, after the launch of the A5000 (and ROS3) in 1991. It's important to remember that high density (1.6Mb) floppy disks cannot be read by ROS2, neither can PC format disks (natively). It's easy to have forgotten how ugly ROS2 was in comparison with the beautious ROS3 we have today, afterall many of us have been using ROS3 for 6 years now. There was no backdrop functionality, or pinboard (though there were many PD implementations), Acorn's New Look style was many years off being released and thus no textured toolbars, no backdrop texture in windows, no wimp fonts (though again some PD implementations), and generally speaking, much less functionality than the next version.

For me, this RISC OS 2 emulator brings back many memories of long ago days at primary school, wondering at the superb graphics capabilities, windows, menus and even a perculiar looking mouse that enabled you to draw away so easily on screen. Using the bitmap graphics program, Flare, or Pendown the superbly simple wordprocessor and then fiddling about with the Lander demo, the only game that was ever in the disk box. For those of you who don't remember the old days of RISC OS 2 it's well worth taking a look, just to leave you in wonderment at how people ever used the damn thing. It's pretty useful if you want to check that you are still supporting ROS2 users (both of them) when you develop your software, though I can't imagine many are. I should think cheap 2nd hand A3000s can be picked up dirt cheap, and now you can develop software for them on a much nicer Acorn, dropping into ROS2 whenever you want.

I've heard that the emulator has problems on StrongARM RISC PCs, I'm unsure as to whether it works on ARM610 and ARM710 RPCs, but it certainly works fine on my A5000.

Speed Rating: ARM 3

Emulators:
RO2_4all (103Kb ZIP file)