The RISCOS Ltd Archives

This section of the website includes archive materials from RISCOS Ltd (1998-2013)

A quick history

RISCOS Ltd was founded in 1998 by various Acorn dealers and developers. RISCOS Ltd's purpose was to take over development of RISC OS and, initially, fix the faults with Acorn's unreleased RISC OS 3.8, which had been designed for the ill fated 'Phoebe' Risc PC replacement. RISC OS 3.8 needed considerable work before it could be released, in the end so much work had been done that the new version of RISC OS was called RISC OS 4.

The new RISC OS 4.02 was released in 1999 and proved very popular. It's was released as a pair of drop in ROM chips for the main operating system and an upgrade CD to install the new Boot sequence and apps. RISCOS Ltd continued development of RISC OS for a number of years, releasing new versions every few months as part of it's 'Select' subscription service. These 'Select' releases were designed to be softloaded on top of RISC OS 4.02.

Some 3 years after RISC OS 4.02 had been released RISCOS Ltd released RISC OS 4.39 (named 'Adjust') as a pair of ROMS and an upgrade CD. There were over 1000 improvements over the earlier RISC OS 4.02. RISCOS Ltd also developed a 32 bit version of RISC OS (4.4x) which was released for use with the Advantage 6 'A9' computer.

The final operating system series released by RISCOS Ltd was 'RISC OS 6'. Inititally this was available as a free demonstration which could be softloaded on top of either RISC OS 4.02 or 4.39. This demo version included many improvements and over the next few years there were several new releases finally culminating in RISC OS 6.20 which was also supplied as a softload as, by now, RISC OS had grown too large to fit on 2 x 2Mb ROMS.

Aaron Timbrell (3QD Developments Ltd - 2013)

RISCOS Ltd Document Archive

Company information

RISCOS Ltd's original mission statement
This document sent out the aims of the company after completing and releasing RISC OS 4.

Spelling and Pronunciation
A document designed to show people how they should write and pronounce the words RISC OS and RISCOS Ltd.

Privacy Statement
Covers the use of personal information stored by RISCOS Ltd.

Responses from the 2001 Product Survey
A collection of comments that were made by users who responded to the RISCOS Ltd 2001 survey.

Operating System Annoyances
Case Studies Of The Top 132 Annoyances With Operating Systems Other Than RISC OS.

Frequently asked questions - 2001
A collection of FAQ documents from 2001. These mainly relate to subscription schemes such as the 'Foundation'. Some of these relate to products that were not released by RISCOS Ltd, for example the 'Ant Suite'.

RISCOS Ltd product information
Articles covering products developed and/or released by RISCOS Ltd that were not RISC OS upgrades for computers.

RISCOS Ltd product Brochures
A collection of product brochures and 'show guides' featuring RISCOS Ltd products.

RISCOS logos
A collection of RISC OS logos in RISC OS Drawfile format.

The RISC OS Foundation
Articles that relate to the RISC OS Foundation and to Foundation RISC User magazine (FRU).

The RISC OS Products Database
This database was a massive project undertaken by RISCOS Ltd and Rebecca Shalfield. The aim was to catalogue and index every item of hardware and software that was available for RISC OS. The project took several years to complete.

Problems running software on RISC OS 4
This document is designed to assist users who had problems running specific applications on the 'new' RISC OS 4.

Customer Newsletters
A collection of newsletters that were e-mailed to registered customers.

© Copyright 3QD Developments - 20/08/2015