The 'Freebies' Page

Free Software

(Please note: I will shortly be updating all these programs, together with some others, and these will become 'Trustware', issued as a single modestly- priced ZIP archive 'package')

Here are a few 'freeware' odds and ends which some folk might find useful. All are in ZIP archives. All of these are for RISC OS computers (formerly Acorn).

Risc PCs including 'Virtual Acorn'
All work fine (unless otherwise indicated) under all versions of RISC OS, from 3.10 to 4.02, and on all the later versions of 'RISC OS Select' up to 6.20, which seems to be the last ever.

Iyonix Computers:
They also work on the 'X-Scale' -powered 'Iyonix' computer, now out of production, but formerly designed and built by Castle Technology, which runs RISC OS 5 up to version 5.20.

Raspberry Pi:
All of the programs marked will run under RISC OS 5.21 on the Raspberry Pi computer.

!Calcula - A BASIC expression evaluator. Version 2.08 (24-Jan-2006)
!BuildHTML - A utility to build HTML pages from text files. Version 1.10n (08-Oct-2003)
!IndexHTML - A utility to index a directory full of webpages. Will do a whole site. Version 1.00j (14-Jan-2004)
!AcornDBC - Turns an Acorn Database file into a TAB delimited ASCII file. Version 1.00b (14-Oct-2003)
!PhunLogCk - A website log checker for log files created by 'Apache'. Version 1.00l (24-Oct-2005)
!UnRAR - A front end for a decoder of 'RAR' archive files. You will need to download the binary utility from here

Older computers will also need the 32-bit Shared C Library and the 32-bit Shared Unix Library. (29 May 2006)

Note: The following application did not work on my Raspberry Pis.
!D2EPS - A front end for a converter of Acorn 'Draw' files to 'EPS' files. You must also download the binary utility from the author here or from here.
If you're using an Iyonix, download Ewen Pring's 32-bit version. (29 May 2006). This has now been ported to the ARM v7 'Beagleboard' computer. (1 Aug 2013)

Free Graphics

Lampoonery - Some GIFs poking fun at 'Micro$oft', 'Netscrape' etc. (40k).
More Lampoonery - More GIFs poking fun at 'Offarce 97', and a discredited political party! (62k).
(Some of these have ended up here).

Use these freely on your pages.

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Raspberry Pi

If you haven't heard of this before, it's a credit- card sized 'motherboard' computer costing about £25, though you need to add bits to it to make it a fully-functional desktop computer. Functionally, it's more or less identical to its 'Iyonix' predecessor.

RISC OS for the Raspberry Pi is free and can be downloaded from RISC OS Open. It is also on the Raspberry Pi NOOBS image which can be downloaded free or purchased pre-loaded on an SD card from the RaspberryPi Foundation. NOOBS is also readily available from several other sources, including CPC and RS Components.

What RISC OS on Raspberry Pi Might Cost

A case for Raspberry Pi will set you back about £5. A pre-loaded RISC OS or NOOBS SD card will cost you about £10. A 2-amp power supply will cost about £6. A USB mouse and keyboard will cost another £10, the lot totalling about £60 allowing for odd extras such as connecting cables. If you have a modern TV with HDMI input that's all you'll need. CPC also do starter packs of everything but the monitor.

If you already have a VGA monitor, an adaptor cable will cost about £9. If your monitor has speakers, you'll also need a mini-jack to mini-jack lead.

Please note: This costing is based on the newer Raspberry Pi 'B+' model which has 4 USB sockets.