Whilst trawling the net for something else recently, I stumbled accross a newer version of Henrik Bjerregaard Pedersen's VNC server than I had not found before. Although Hernik originally produced it, others have taken the source code and improved things over time. For those not aware, VNC stands for Virtual Network Computer and is a technology available for remotely viewing another computer's screen and also optionally taking over its mouse and keyboard to perform tasks remotely as if you were actualy sat at the machine in question. VNC is truly multi-platform and is available for many operating systems, including RISC OS [3]. The RISC OS version of the VNC server is not as polished as those for other platforms, but it is certainly functional. My main use for the server is to remotely control my Risc PC from my Windows laptop, from other rooms in the house.

I had been using 0.08, which was happy enough on my Risc PC under RISC OS [4] 4.39, but had been forced to resort to an earlier 26-bit only version (0.06) when I upgraded to RISC OS 6.06 for some reason.

With version 0.08 the server correctly handled CTRL key presses with other keys, but 0.06 didn't support that, so this was somewhat annoying when trying to use the Risc PC remotely from my laptop for RISC OS 6. But I'm now very happy to report that the new version I stumbled across is apparently quite happy on RISC OS 6 and gives me back the CTRL keypresses that I was missing from 0.08.

The new version (0.10) updated by Jeffrey Lee, as with 0.08, is somewhat unofficial but appears to work fine. You can find the zip containing the required files at: http://www.phlamethrower.co.uk/riscos/vnc_serv.php [5]

Thanks to Hernik, Crispian Daniels, David Llewellyn-Jones and Jeffrey for all their work on this extremely useful utility. I for one use this very frequently and it is very much appreciated that I can sit using a laptop in one room but remote control my main Risc PC in another. 

I have in the past, on a couple of occasions tried this as far as 200+ miles away over the internet and been very happy with the results. I think it is fair to say that, although there have been a couple of attempts at RISC OS VNC Servers, this one is the best I've used.

There are more VNC clients than servers for RISC OS, which allow a RISC OS computer to remotely control some other computer (RISC OS or otherwise) which is running a VNC server.

The most recent popular client is Avalanche, available at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j-peacock/ [6] R-Comp [7] provide a commercial offering of RISC OS Client remote control software, although I'm not entirely sure what the current feature set is.