Welcome to

ArcLibre

A free ROM for the original Acorn Archimedes, restored from RISC OS's public source. No proprietary code, nothing taken from a ROM image: just switch on and the desktop starts.

Download arclibre.rom Boot it here Source

Experimental. A 2MB ROM for ARM2 and ARM3 machines, tested on an A440/1 with 4MB.

ArcLibre is a work in progress. Its goal is RISC OS 3.11 compatibility, so unmodified desktop applications, games and utilities run on it. It isn't there yet, but the desktop, its own applications and a growing list of games and applications already run, unmodified.

What works

The desktop and its parts are checked from a cold boot, with the results kept in the repository; the games and applications have been played and used on it.

  • The desktop: Filer, ADFSFiler, Task Manager and Pinboard, with the mouse, keyboard, fonts and sound.
  • Edit, Draw and Paint: make a file, save it, and open it again after a fresh boot.
  • BBC BASIC, from F12's command line or in a TaskWindow from Edit.
  • Floppies and an ST506 hard disc, with copy, move and delete in the Filer.
  • RAM discs, pipes and devices: RamFS, PipeFS and DeviceFS.
  • Squash, Chars, interactive Help and the screen blanker.
  • Games: Zarch, Nevryon, Lemmings, Star Fighter 3000, Pacmania, Cannon Fodder, E-Type and Elite.
  • Applications: Impression II and PipeDream 4.

Still to come

Where help, testing and bug reports go furthest.

  • Full RISC OS 3.11 compatibility for applications and games.
  • Printing, and more filing systems and devices.
  • The other applications RISC OS bundled.
  • More of the Archimedes' software, tried and made to work.

Where it comes from

Public source

The kernel and modules come from the public, cleaned RISC OS 3.60 sources, restored for the original machines.

Apache 2.0

The sources carry Acorn's copyright and the Apache 2.0 licence. Every component's repository and revision is recorded.

Reproducible

The ROM builds from the source archive alone, and the published source is checked to rebuild the same ROM.

Using it

In MacArch, import the arclibre.machine.json that comes with each release (Import Machine… on the welcome screen). It sets up the A440/1 ArcLibre is tested on, with the ROM and its CMOS settings.

Or skip all that: MacArch in your browser runs it already.

Building it

# On macOS, from the repository
make arclibre-rom      # build/arclibre/arclibre.rom
make arclibre-test     # the cold-boot checks
make arclibre-package  # dist/arclibre.rom and its source