I realised this week that it is possible to run RISC OS for free on any modern computer running the Mac, Windows or Linux operating systems.
 
Now that's a statement to cause Virtual Acorn's Aaron Timbrell to reach for the phone.
 
So let me qualify it.
 
What is available is an emulation of RISC OS as it was in the 1980s - which is not really RISC OS at all. But it is what became RISC OS a few years later.
 
What I'm bring to your attention is an on-line BBC Micro. You can access it by clicking on the image below. It needs Sun's Java runtime (available for free) installed on a non-RISC OS machine.
 

 
I didn't think this would be up to much when I first saw it. So I decided to test it on both an Apple Mac and a Window's machine with that schoolboy classic piece of BBC BASIC code.
 

10 FOR I = 1 TO 10
20 PRINT "THE BBC MICRO RULES"
30 NEXT

Any teachers who were around in the 1980s will groan when they see this. Many an annoying schoolchild experimented with bigger maximum values of I than 10. The smart kids nested a delay FOR - NEXT loop inside the main one. The geeks added code to stop the <BREAK> key terminating their effort.
 
But there was always the teachers' weapon of last resort : the electrical mains off switch.
 
The good old days, they were.

For
serious
RISC OS
emulation...