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13th May 2021
Hello fellow Geminauts!
I know I haven't updated in a little while, and I'm sorry about this, but I genuinely have had nothing interesting to say!
Anyway, today I wanted to talk to you about a few things, such as: Ham Radio, AArch64 and RISC OS 5 (Open), and OpenWarp - a new theoretical OS I have devised, and which IMHO could be revolutionary.
Firstly, I am studying for my Foundation (Tech for USA Geminauts) Ham Radio License! It's been a *long* time coming, but I've finally committed to it, and I plan to do lots of interesting things with it, such as Winlink Email over radio, and UUCP over Ham! I also hope to do some other cool radio stuff/experiments involving my RC2014 (which I have also *just* started building, finally)
Secondly, there is bad news, a few days ago at the time of writing, the major ARM chip fabs announced that by 2022, they will no longer be making any chips that support the ARM 32-bit ISA, which means... the end is nigh for RISC OS. Now you might say that this isn't an issue as you could just recompile the OS, right? WRONG. RISC OS is mostly written in ARM assembly, which until now, hasn't been *too much* of an issue, however, if you know a thing or two about the existing ARM ISAs, you'll have realised that ARM64 is *so* wildly different from any ARM chips previously, like, much closer to x86 assembly, that *ALL* of RISC OS will have to be rewritten, by hand, by a small group of volunteer devs; this also means that most of RISC OS' core software (everything from BBC BASIC V to WIMPS) will no longer be compatible, let alone standard user programs, meaning, if we actually *had* the manpower to rewrite the system, it would be RISC OS in name only (much a like ARM64), and that means RISC OS will be a little more 21st century, and a little less 1987, which is a *massive* let down for many users, putting aside the fact that we are essentially now constricted to emulation, or second hand Ebay hardware.
Thirdly, I must speak about OpenWarp, a theoretical operating system for my also theoretical concept system - Warp/9. OpenWarp was a naive teenage idea me and a couple of my nerd friends came up with (well... mainly me, as a serial mad dreamer), OpenWarp is/will be (take note of prepositions) an OS built to run on a concept open architecture system, Warp/9. OpenWarp would be a totally new OS, written from the ground up throwing out years of useless legacy code (come on, Windows 10 can *still* run Star Trek: Bridge Commander happily, IT'S 20 YEARS OLD!) in favour of a high-speed (faster than Linux, we're aiming for Haiku/BeOS speed), multimedia oriented, software dev equipped, networking and server ready system, open-source system available for the average user; with built in media players, text editors, compilers, debuggers, *and* web, IRC, and UUCP server tools all of our own making, bundled with the OS. On top of this package, we'll also have a high-speed and information-heavy GUI, designed for productivity. All of this will be running on The Warp Kernel, a microkernel, similar to MINIX3, resulting in a modular setup, and of course, high-speeds. I am drafting a full essay on this system, and I will amend this entry with the W3 link to my collected essays ;) For those who want to read further etc.
And... that about wraps it up! I hope you enjoyed this long-overdue entry, and I'll see *you*, next time...
Thanks for reading,
Joe. H, ~rebello
(There is a long thread on the ROOL forums about RISC OS and ARM64, and remember to join the discussion I started on comp.sys.acorn.misc about the topic)