Re: RISC OS Upgrade CD announced
druck
> Give yourself a Christmas present. Banish RISC OS 3.6 or 3.7 and enjoy
> the benefits of the extra features of a later operating system at a
> bargain price.
That barrel is being well and truly scrapped now.
---druck
--
The ARM Club Free Software - http://www.armclub.org.uk/free/
The 32bit Conversions Page - http://www.quantumsoft.co.uk/druck/
Ste (news)
druck <ne...@druck.freeuk.com> wrote:
> On 3 Dec 2008 Paul Middleton <ris...@paulmidd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > Give yourself a Christmas present. Banish RISC OS 3.6 or 3.7 and enjoy
> > the benefits of the extra features of a later operating system at a
> > bargain price.
>
> That barrel is being well and truly scrapped now.
On the plus side, hopefully this will move some more people away from crusty
old versions of RISC OS and make things a little easier for developers.
Steve
--
Steve Revill @ Home
Note: All opinions expressed herein are my own.
druck
> In article <4aab1608...@druck.freeuk.net>,
> druck <ne...@druck.freeuk.com> wrote:
>> On 3 Dec 2008 Paul Middleton <ris...@paulmidd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> Give yourself a Christmas present. Banish RISC OS 3.6 or 3.7 and enjoy
>>> the benefits of the extra features of a later operating system at a
>>> bargain price.
>>
>> That barrel is being well and truly scrapped now.
> On the plus side, hopefully this will move some more people away from crusty
> old versions of RISC OS and make things a little easier for developers.
There is very little evidence that such people are still around, even
less that they would spend any money on such crusty old machines.
Theo Markettos
> On the plus side, hopefully this will move some more people away from crusty
> old versions of RISC OS and make things a little easier for developers.
Isn't the issue of the boot drive having to be old format going to cause
some pain for developers? Long filenames are a necessity for quite a lot of
software these days.
Theo
Russell Hafter News
Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> "Ste (news)" <st...@revi11.plus.com> wrote:
And users too!
I have three RPCs running 4.02 and one running 3.7, all
networked.
At first glance this looked like a pretty painless way of
upgrading the 3.7 machine, but it is still going to be more
or less impossible to backup a 4.02 (CD) machine onto a 4.02
(ROM) machine, both because of the long filenames issue and
the 77 directory items limit too.
--
Russell
http://www.russell-hafter-holidays.co.uk
Russell Hafter Holidays E-mail to enquiries at our domain
Need a hotel? <http://www.hrs.de/?client=en__MT&customerId=416873103>
Ste (news)
Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
It's one issue but I wouldn't call it "the" issue.
Stuart
Ste (news) <st...@revi11.plus.com> wrote:
> On the plus side, hopefully this will move some more people away from
> crusty old versions of RISC OS and make things a little easier for
> developers.
Well, my Kinetic is 4.39 (ROMs) but this "standard" Strongarm RPC, which I
am using, is 4.02 with some of the select upgrades (coudn't afford it any
longer) so this will get the upgrade.
--
Stuart Winsor
Don't miss the Risc OS Christmas show
http://rickman.orpheusweb.co.uk/mug/show08/MUGshow.html
Theo Markettos
> At first glance this looked like a pretty painless way of
> upgrading the 3.7 machine, but it is still going to be more
> or less impossible to backup a 4.02 (CD) machine onto a 4.02
> (ROM) machine, both because of the long filenames issue and
> the 77 directory items limit too.
One way of fixing this would be to put the softload on a compactflash card
in an adaptor, and slave your harddrive to that. Then you boot from
ADFS::4 (the CF), and your real harddrive can be found at ADFS::5 (your HD)
Pitfalls:
Extra costs of CF card and adaptor (a tenner, maybe)
Finding a CF card that will allow other drives to slave reliably
Losing any other drive (CD-ROM?) that was on a slave on the IDE bus
The first two could be fixed by some enterprising person testing some
cards and readers and buying a bulk lot of working ones.
Theo
Jess Hampshire
Paul Middleton <ris...@paulmidd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> The RISC OS Upgrade CD -
> A major RISC OS upgrade for RISC OS 3.6, 3.7 and 4.02 users for only 20 GBP.
This is a great idea.
> RISCOS Ltd are pleased to announce the new "RISC OS Upgrade CD" to be
> released at the MUG Christmas show on the 8th of December.
>
> * If your current operating system is RISC OS 3.6 or 3.7 this CD will
> upgrade your computer to RISC OS 4.02.
> * If you are already running RISC OS 4 this CD will upgrade your computer
> to RISC OS 4.39 'Adjust'.
Is this due to requirements new format boot drive for adjust? I.E if
the module were added to a unipod or similar, could 3.x boot to
adjust?
[snip]
> * Suitable for RiscPC, A7000, A7000+, RiscStation 7500, Microdigital
> Mico & Omega and VirtualRPC-SE & -SA.
What about on RPCEmu?
--
Jess Hampshire
mailto:je...@itworkshop-nexus.net http://jess.itworkshop-nexus.net
Plain text emails with interleaved, trimmed replies please. (RFC 1855)
Jess
Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
!longfiles sorts that out doesn't it? (or is the files per directory
limit important too?)
--
Jess Iyonix
Hotmail is my spam trap use this for reply:
mailto:nos...@jess.itworkshop-nexus.net or
http://jess.itworkshop-nexus.net
David Holden
On 4-Dec-2008, Jess Hampshire <jessha...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> In message <ap.2efef55007.a...@argonet.co.uk>
> Paul Middleton <ris...@paulmidd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> > * If you are already running RISC OS 4 this CD will upgrade your
> > computer to RISC OS 4.39 'Adjust'.
>
> Is this due to requirements new format boot drive for adjust? I.E if
> the module were added to a unipod or similar, could 3.x boot to
> adjust?
No. You can run RO 4.39 from an old filecore hard drive but you can't
sofload it on a machine with a 'base' OS of less than RO 4 if you've got an
expansion card like a Unipod.
--
David Holden - APDL - <http://www.apdl.co.uk>
Dave Plowman (News)
druck <ne...@druck.freeuk.com> wrote:
> > Give yourself a Christmas present. Banish RISC OS 3.6 or 3.7 and enjoy
> > the benefits of the extra features of a later operating system at a
> > bargain price.
> That barrel is being well and truly scrapped now.
Unfortunately I don't seem to have the original of this. Be nice to know
what the offer actually is.
--
*Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies *
Dave Plowman da...@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Jess
"David Holden" <Spa...@apdl.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 4-Dec-2008, Jess Hampshire <jessha...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> In message <ap.2efef55007.a...@argonet.co.uk>
>> Paul Middleton <ris...@paulmidd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>> > * If you are already running RISC OS 4 this CD will upgrade your
>> > computer to RISC OS 4.39 'Adjust'.
>>
>> Is this due to requirements new format boot drive for adjust? I.E if
>> the module were added to a unipod or similar, could 3.x boot to
>> adjust?
>
> No. You can run RO 4.39 from an old filecore hard drive but you can't
Really? I was pretty sure that the instructions for select required a
reformat if you had an old filecore drive. Was this fixed in adjust?
> sofload it on a machine with a 'base' OS of less than RO 4 if you've got an
> expansion card like a Unipod.
In which case is it down to incompatible CMOS usage? (I suffered from
that problem with early versions of select on RO 4.)
And if so, why does a softloaded OS need to use the CMOS at all, why
can't it have a file it reads with the settings in? (or some of them
at least.)
David Holden
On 4-Dec-2008, Jess <phant...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In message <6pqkulF...@mid.individual.net>
> "David Holden" <Spa...@apdl.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> > No. You can run RO 4.39 from an old filecore hard drive but you can't
> > sofload it on a machine with a 'base' OS of less than RO 4 if you've got
> > an expansion card like a Unipod.
>
> In which case is it down to incompatible CMOS usage? (I suffered from
> that problem with early versions of select on RO 4.)
No, you should have read my reply more carefully. It's because of the way
the podules are placed in the memory map.
Kevin Wells
"Dave Plowman (News)" <da...@davenoise.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <4aab1608...@druck.freeuk.net>,
> druck <ne...@druck.freeuk.com> wrote:
>> > Give yourself a Christmas present. Banish RISC OS 3.6 or 3.7 and enjoy
>> > the benefits of the extra features of a later operating system at a
>> > bargain price.
>
>> That barrel is being well and truly scrapped now.
>
>Unfortunately I don't seem to have the original of this. Be nice to know
>what the offer actually is.
>
You can read it on drobe
<http://www.drobe.co.uk/article.php?id=2357>
--
Kev Wells http://riscos.kevsoft.co.uk/
http://kevsoft.co.uk/ http://kevsoft.co.uk/AleQuest/
ICQ 238580561
Useless Fact 03 You burn 3.5 calories each time you laugh.
Kevin Wells
Russell Hafter News <see...@walkingingermany.invalid> wrote:
>In article <LJb*hN...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, Theo
>Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> "Ste (news)" <st...@revi11.plus.com> wrote:
>
>> > On the plus side, hopefully this will move some more
>> > people away from crusty old versions of RISC OS and
>> > make things a little easier for developers.
>
>> Isn't the issue of the boot drive having to be old format
>> going to cause some pain for developers? Long filenames
>> are a necessity for quite a lot of software these days.
>
>And users too!
>
>I have three RPCs running 4.02 and one running 3.7, all
>networked.
>
>At first glance this looked like a pretty painless way of
>upgrading the 3.7 machine, but it is still going to be more
>or less impossible to backup a 4.02 (CD) machine onto a 4.02
>(ROM) machine, both because of the long filenames issue and
>the 77 directory items limit too.
>
A second hard drive formatted to the new format?
--
Kev Wells http://riscos.kevsoft.co.uk/
http://kevsoft.co.uk/ http://kevsoft.co.uk/AleQuest/
ICQ 238580561
The older I get the faster I used to be.
Dave Plowman (News)
Kevin Wells <kevin...@talktalk.net> wrote:
> >Unfortunately I don't seem to have the original of this. Be nice to know
> >what the offer actually is.
> >
> You can read it on drobe
> <http://www.drobe.co.uk/article.php?id=2357>
Thanks. I'm still confused - I had to buy new ROMs last time I upgraded.
--
*When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane *
Ste (news)
> Kevin Wells <kevin...@talktalk.net> wrote:
> > >Unfortunately I don't seem to have the original of this. Be nice to know
> > >what the offer actually is.
>
> > You can read it on drobe
>
> > <http://www.drobe.co.uk/article.php?id=2357>
>
> Thanks. I'm still confused - I had to buy new ROMs last time I upgraded.
Ever since we were developing RISC OS 4 in-house at Acorn (which was
originally meant for the Phoebe machine), there was a ROM image softloader
which was used to allow people to softload a RiscPC version of the RISC OS 4
ROM build on their older (RISC OS 3.7) RiscPC.
There was basically a bit added to the boot sequence which would see if the
machine was booting on RISC OS 4 and if not load the RISC OS 4 ROM into
memory and "reboot" into that - then the boot sequence would start again but
this time you'd be running RISC OS 4.
I presume RISCOS Ltd either inherited the ROM softloader or wrote one
themselves.
Martin Bazley
spouted the following:
> On 3 Dec 2008 Paul Middleton <ris...@paulmidd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > Give yourself a Christmas present. Banish RISC OS 3.6 or 3.7 and enjoy
> > the benefits of the extra features of a later operating system at a
> > bargain price.
>
> That barrel is being well and truly scrapped now.
>
> ---druck
>
[Posting here because NewsHound won't allow me to reply to announce
messages, apparently even those with follow-ups set. It's either that
or Harriet.]
On the contrary, I have two RiscPCs with 3.7 in ROM. I also have no
intention of upgrading. This is partly because of all the software I'd
sacrifice, but also because the original post mentions in passing that
you need 20MB of free RAM. My first computer has 17MB in total, and
substantially less in practice. My second computer has 38MB (including
2MB VRAM), which would substantially reduce the amount of memory
available for day-to-day usage, which I use for handling oversized
images.
I also don't think there are many practical benefits without buying a
second hard drive (and there's always raFS for that sort of thing
anyway). I'm sure there is an infinite range of bigger, better and
faster machines out there (maybe not so many that aren't RiscPCs) but I
don't need any of the features.
Except filer thumbnailing. That would be cool.
I'm afraid there is still a reasonably thick layer of primeval ooze at
the bottom of that barrel, and as someone whose entire this year's
contribution to The Market was 12UKP to APDL for a games CD, I'm
probably going to remain at the bottom of it.
--
__<^>__ === RISC OS is a work of art. Some people adore it, ===
/ _ _ \ === others can't see the point of it, and it's really ===
( ( |_| ) ) === expensive. ===
\_> <_/ ======================= Martin Bazley ===================
John Sandford
Martin Bazley <mar...@bazley.freeuk.com> wrote:
> Except filer thumbnailing. That would be cool.
Try !Photofiler www.davespace.co.uk
John
--
John Sandford West Herts UK
Hemel Hempstead RISC OS User Group email info @ hhrug.org
Timothy Baldwin
<theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
A partitioning system would solve that. A special purpose partitioning
system for ADFS limited to partitions of 1MB and rest of the disc would
take a less than 40 lines of assembler and 20 lines of BASIC, as a
modification ADFS and HForm.
As a separate module it would twice that size, and slower.
Theo Markettos
> On the contrary, I have two RiscPCs with 3.7 in ROM. I also have no
> intention of upgrading. This is partly because of all the software I'd
> sacrifice, but also because the original post mentions in passing that
> you need 20MB of free RAM. My first computer has 17MB in total, and
> substantially less in practice. My second computer has 38MB (including
> 2MB VRAM), which would substantially reduce the amount of memory
> available for day-to-day usage, which I use for handling oversized
> images.
I think the announcement was a bit confusing in that respect. AFAIK a
softload only takes the size of the uncompressed ROM image, so for RO4.0
that would be 4MB. I think when they say '20MB free RAM' they actually mean
'20MB RAM'... if you had, say, 16MB RAM and lost 4MB you'd be down to 12MB
which would be a bit annoying these days. I don't know the size of the RO
Adjust image (am I right in thinking the ROMs in Risc PCs are compressed and
expand in RAM?), but let's assume it's 6-8MB. So you'd be down to 10 or
8MB, which would be even more annoying.
I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find some RAM for little cost... I have a
stack of 8MB SIMMs I'll happily send on if it's of any use.
> I also don't think there are many practical benefits without buying a
> second hard drive (and there's always raFS for that sort of thing
> anyway). I'm sure there is an infinite range of bigger, better and
> faster machines out there (maybe not so many that aren't RiscPCs) but I
> don't need any of the features.
Fair enough. Though 'buying' probably means 'grabbing a hard drive from the
nearest skip' if you're so inclined. It'll almost certainly cost less than
12 quid :)
Theo
Timothy Baldwin
<Spa...@apdl.co.uk> wrote:
[About softloading RISC OS 4.39 over pre-RISC OS 4]
> No, you should have read my reply more carefully. It's because of the way
> the podules are placed in the memory map.
I fail to see how this is relevant, would not the new version reinitialise
the page tables as required? And if not, it is trivial for the bootloader
to change the mappings.
David Holden
On 4-Dec-2008, Theo Markettos <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> I think the announcement was a bit confusing in that respect. AFAIK a
> softload only takes the size of the uncompressed ROM image, so for RO4.0
> that would be 4MB. I think when they say '20MB free RAM' they actually
> mean '20MB RAM'... if you had, say, 16MB RAM and lost 4MB you'd be down
> to 12MB which would be a bit annoying these days. I don't know the size
> of
> the RO Adjust image (am I right in thinking the ROMs in Risc PCs are
> compressed and expand in RAM?), but let's assume it's 6-8MB. So you'd
> be down to 10 or 8MB, which would be even more annoying.
You are perfectly right. I'm very sorry if anyone was confused, but you have
stated the case perfectly. A user would lose 4MB of their free RAM for RISC
OS 4.02 and 6MB with RISC OS 4.39.
Jess
> You are perfectly right. I'm very sorry if anyone was confused, but you have
> stated the case perfectly. A user would lose 4MB of their free RAM for RISC
> OS 4.02 and 6MB with RISC OS 4.39.
But 4.39 fits in ROM on a normal RPC. Why does it take 6 MB if
softloaded? (I remember 4.37 was 6MB)
David Holden
It's compressed to fit in 4MB ROMs but expands during initialisation.
druck
> You are perfectly right. I'm very sorry if anyone was confused, but you have
> stated the case perfectly. A user would lose 4MB of their free RAM for RISC
> OS 4.02 and 6MB with RISC OS 4.39.
Or 12MB originally due to a bug in the softloader that came with
Select 3i4. I assume this has been fixed now as the one with RO 6.x
doesn't exhibit the fault.
---druck
--
The ARM Club Free Software - http://www.armclub.org.uk/free/
The 32bit Conversions Page - http://www.quantumsoft.co.uk/druck/
druck
> Ever since we were developing RISC OS 4 in-house at Acorn (which was
> originally meant for the Phoebe machine), there was a ROM image softloader
> which was used to allow people to softload a RiscPC version of the RISC OS 4
> ROM build on their older (RISC OS 3.7) RiscPC.
The softloader goes back far further than that. I was softloading
RO3.6 black over 3.5.
> I presume RISCOS Ltd either inherited the ROM softloader or wrote one
> themselves.
It fell of the back of a lorry ;-)
Jess
[snip]
> On the contrary, I have two RiscPCs with 3.7 in ROM. I also have no
> intention of upgrading. This is partly because of all the software I'd
> sacrifice, but also because the original post mentions in passing that
> you need 20MB of free RAM. My first computer has 17MB in total, and
> substantially less in practice. My second computer has 38MB (including
> 2MB VRAM), which would substantially reduce the amount of memory
> available for day-to-day usage, which I use for handling oversized
> images.
32 MB SIMMs should be freely available (ie postage cost). And 64 MB
should be pretty cheap.
I'm sure if RAM is the problem, suppliers will do a bundle of upgrade
CD and RAM.
Harriet Bazley
Martin Bazley wrote:
> [Posting here because NewsHound won't allow me to reply to announce
> messages, apparently even those with follow-ups set. It's either that
> or Harriet.]
>
Sigh.
The reason why your message was bounced by Newshound - at least, judging
by the numerous occasions on which the same has happened to me - is
undoubtedly that you typed and sent it while Newshound was still
fetching from the FreeUK news server. Newshound then tried to post it
as soon as it started its next news fetch, which happened to be from (at
a guess) news.gmane.org, which does not carry the comp.sys.acorn groups.
Therefore it bounced back with a 'no such group known here' error, or
words to that effect.
It is a known problem with using Messenger/Newshound with multiple news
servers, and has been complained about before. So far as I know,
however, no-one has ever come up with a fix.
--
Harriet Bazley == Loyaulte me lie ==
Computers can never replace human stupidity.
Rob Kendrick
Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> Is it even worth the hassal of trying to rip the image out of some
> ROMs (not that I'd even know where to start) ?
It's a single * command to do it. Googling will get you the rune you
need, and I suspect the RPCemu documentation already have it.
B.
Tim Powys-Lybbe
They do. But it is unnecessarily complicated in splitting the roms into
four parts; someone suggested that this was to allow transfer by floppy
discs.
--
Tim Powys-Lybbe t...@powys.org
For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/
Doug Webb
Rob Kendrick <nn...@rjek.com> wrote:
> B.
No doubt it is but unless you were then going to mothball said RiscPC
or it's ROMS that you have saved the ROM image from or it was an
earlier version of RISC OS you had spare and had just put in the
RiscPC, then I suspect a little thing called copyright and end user
licence might come in to play.
For those of us who want to stay the right side of legality then for
the sake of a £5 the RISC OS "Virtaully Free" option is a good one.
Doug
--
The Xmas MUG Show 2008 - 6th December at Birmingham University Guild
of Students. Visit http://www.mug.risos.org/show08/ for more
information. Using an IYONIX pc and RISC OS 5.13, the thinking
person's alternative operating system to Microsoft Windows.
diodesign
> In message of 7 Dec, Rob Kendrick <n...@rjek.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:24:33 +0000 (GMT)
> > Stuart <Spam...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > > Is it even worth the hassal of trying to rip the
> > > image out of some ROMs (not that I'd even know where
> > > to start) ?
>
> > It's a single * command to do it. Googling will get you
> > the rune you need, and I suspect the RPCemu documentation
> > already have it.
>
> They do. But it is unnecessarily complicated in splitting
> the roms into four parts; someone suggested that this was
> to allow transfer by floppy discs.
FWIW, it's not a mandatory requirement to split the ROMs up. I use a
single ROM image file called 'rom'. You can copy the
ripped ROM image from your ROS machine to your PC or Mac over a
network, rather than split it up for floppies - I can't remember the
last time I even used a floppy.
C.
Jess
Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <1eba830...@itworkshop.invalid>,
> Jess Hampshire <jessha...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> In message <ap.2efef55007.a...@argonet.co.uk>
>> Paul Middleton <ris...@paulmidd.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> > The RISC OS Upgrade CD - A major RISC OS upgrade for RISC OS 3.6, 3.7
>> > and 4.02 users for only 20 GBP.
>
>> This is a great idea.
>
> Well, I went with the intention of buying this to upgrade this RPC, saw
> the 4.39