RISCOS Ltd
Encyclopedia
RISCOS Ltd. is a limited company engaged in computer software
and IT consulting. It licensed the rights to from Element 14 and subsequently Pace Micro Technology. It continues to develop . Company founders include developers who formerly worked within Acorn's dealership network.
es and other embedded devices.
In 2004, the company replaced their baseline RISC OS 4.02 product with an updated version of the OS named RISC OS Adjust. This version of RISC OS was based on version 4.39, or Select Edition 3 Issue 4, of the company's Select scheme. In the same year, RISCOS Ltd agreed to produce a fully 32-bit compatible version of RISC OS Adjust for Advantage Six's A9home
product. The A9home was released in May 2006 after a 12 month Beta-testing process, although the current build of Adjust 32, namely RISC OS 4.42, is not yet feature complete.
As a result of lengthy delays in converting RISC OS Adjust to 32-bit compatibility, the company attracted criticism from subscribers of the Select scheme, since they did not receive any products during the conversion.
and A9home, but it has not been confirmed whether or not it will run on newer generation hardware such as the Iyonix PC
and ARMini.
to license its OS for use with emulator
s.
RISC OS as RISC OS 5 for their Iyonix PC
, in apparent contravention of the licence agreement that RISCOS Ltd held with Element 14. In July 2003, Castle bought all technology rights to RISC OS from Pace in an attempt to legalise the situation. In January 2004, Castle also took over Tematic Ltd., the company formed by ex-Pace engineers when they were made redundant in March 2003. The result was a long-running and acrimonious dispute between RISCOS Ltd and Castle over licensing, which ultimately lead to Castle claiming to terminate RISCOS Ltd's license to develop, sell and sub-license RISC OS 4. RISCOS Ltd refuted all the claims made and challenged Castle to identify how and from whom they had acquired RISC OS 5. An end to the dispute was signalled when RISCOS Ltd and Castle agreed to work on attempting to merge their development streams and re-unify RISC OS, with Castle's engineers working on key system functionality and RISCOS Ltd on user-facing elements. One of the conditions was that RISCOS Ltd agreed to be renamed RISC OS Developments Ltd. ROL and Castle subsequently agreed to merge and together, as of 2011 this merge hasn't happened.
Castle's Tematic division was dramatically closed in September 2005. As of December 2005, RISCOS Ltd are still trading under the name RISCOS Ltd.
RISCOS Ltd considered taking legal action in 2008 to prevent RISC OS Open
from releasing a RiscPC compatible ROM image.
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
and IT consulting. It licensed the rights to from Element 14 and subsequently Pace Micro Technology. It continues to develop . Company founders include developers who formerly worked within Acorn's dealership network.
History
RISCOS Ltd was formed to continue end-user focused development of RISC OS after the de-listing of Acorn Computers, following their purchase by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in order to benefit from the shareholding that Acorn held in ARM Ltd. In March 1999, RISCOS Ltd obtained exclusive rights to develop and sell RISC OS 4 for the desktop market from Element 14. A few weeks later Pace purchased Acorn's Cambridge headquarters and staff for £200,000 and then continued to develop their own, in-house version of RISC OS, primarily for set-top boxSet-top box
A set-top box or set-top unit is an information appliance device that generally contains a tuner and connects to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen or other display device.-History:Before the...
es and other embedded devices.
RISC OS 4
RISCOS Ltd completed work on RISC OS 4 and in July 1999 it was released as an upgrade for existing machines. Work then continued on a system of soft-loaded updated versions of the OS, released under an annual subscription release scheme named RISC OS Select in 2002.In 2004, the company replaced their baseline RISC OS 4.02 product with an updated version of the OS named RISC OS Adjust. This version of RISC OS was based on version 4.39, or Select Edition 3 Issue 4, of the company's Select scheme. In the same year, RISCOS Ltd agreed to produce a fully 32-bit compatible version of RISC OS Adjust for Advantage Six's A9home
A9Home
The A9Home is a small form factor desktop computer running RISC OS Adjust32. It was officially unveiled at the 2005 Wakefield Show, and is the second commercial ARM based RISC OS computer to run a 32-bit version of RISC OS...
product. The A9home was released in May 2006 after a 12 month Beta-testing process, although the current build of Adjust 32, namely RISC OS 4.42, is not yet feature complete.
As a result of lengthy delays in converting RISC OS Adjust to 32-bit compatibility, the company attracted criticism from subscribers of the Select scheme, since they did not receive any products during the conversion.
RISC OS Six
In October 2006, a beta-version of RISC OS Six was made available for download by subscribers to the Select scheme. RISC OS Six represents the next generation of RISCOS Ltd's stream of the operating system. Significant portability, stability and internal structure improvements, including full 26/32 bit neutrality, have laid the foundations for the company's future releases, all of which will be based on version 6. The first product to be based on RISC OS Six will be Select Edition 4. Select 4 runs on the Risc PCRisc PC
The RiscPC was Acorn Computers's next generation RISC OS/Acorn RISC Machine computer, launched on 15 April 1994, which superseded the Acorn Archimedes. The Acorn PC card and software allows PC compatible software to be run....
and A9home, but it has not been confirmed whether or not it will run on newer generation hardware such as the Iyonix PC
Iyonix PC
The Iyonix PC was an Acorn-clone personal computer from Castle Technology. It was released in 2002 and runs .- History :The Iyonix originated as a secret project by Pace engineers in connection with development of set-top boxes . Pace had a licence to develop RISCOS Ltd's OS sources for use in the...
and ARMini.
Licensed emulation
In 2003, the company reached an agreement with VirtualAcornVirtualAcorn
VirtualAcorn is the brand name of several commercial emulators of Acorn Computers computer hardware platforms.-Development:VirtualAcorn is developed by Graeme Barnes and Aaron Timbrell. It is a commercial version of the freeware emulator Red Squirrel, developed by Barnes...
to license its OS for use with emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
s.
License dispute
In November 2002, Castle Technology Ltd released a modified version of Pace's 32-bit32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
RISC OS as RISC OS 5 for their Iyonix PC
Iyonix PC
The Iyonix PC was an Acorn-clone personal computer from Castle Technology. It was released in 2002 and runs .- History :The Iyonix originated as a secret project by Pace engineers in connection with development of set-top boxes . Pace had a licence to develop RISCOS Ltd's OS sources for use in the...
, in apparent contravention of the licence agreement that RISCOS Ltd held with Element 14. In July 2003, Castle bought all technology rights to RISC OS from Pace in an attempt to legalise the situation. In January 2004, Castle also took over Tematic Ltd., the company formed by ex-Pace engineers when they were made redundant in March 2003. The result was a long-running and acrimonious dispute between RISCOS Ltd and Castle over licensing, which ultimately lead to Castle claiming to terminate RISCOS Ltd's license to develop, sell and sub-license RISC OS 4. RISCOS Ltd refuted all the claims made and challenged Castle to identify how and from whom they had acquired RISC OS 5. An end to the dispute was signalled when RISCOS Ltd and Castle agreed to work on attempting to merge their development streams and re-unify RISC OS, with Castle's engineers working on key system functionality and RISCOS Ltd on user-facing elements. One of the conditions was that RISCOS Ltd agreed to be renamed RISC OS Developments Ltd. ROL and Castle subsequently agreed to merge and together, as of 2011 this merge hasn't happened.
Castle's Tematic division was dramatically closed in September 2005. As of December 2005, RISCOS Ltd are still trading under the name RISCOS Ltd.
RISCOS Ltd considered taking legal action in 2008 to prevent RISC OS Open
RISC OS Open
RISC OS Open Ltd. is a limited company engaged in computer software and IT consulting. It is managing the process of publishing the source code to RISC OS...
from releasing a RiscPC compatible ROM image.