Soft Load or ROM
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Robert Ferguson (3446) 1 post |
Hello, I have what i am sure is a very silly question!, just got a a7000+ running 3.7. I have seen later versions of risc os and would be interested in trying one out. Is it a simple as changing the ROM chips? or is there more to it? also heard that you can soft load ROM – what would i need to do so that i could try version 5 for example? many thanks |
Jeffrey Lee (213) 6043 posts |
There are a couple of things to be wary of when trying RISC OS 5 on a RiscPC/A7000.
RiscPC/A7000 ROM softloads can be downloaded from here. Physical ROMs can be bought from the store |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7897 posts |
I think the generally accepted minimum base install for a soft load is RO4.02, but you could try a simple run through of the same sequence.
New ROMS and new !Boot as in the HardDisc download. IIRC the disc format for 3.7 doesn’t do long filenames1 whereas 4.02 does hence the normal base for softload being 4.02 to ensure both a 4.02 and 5.2x OS will see the drive contents correctly. 1 It’s been a long while since I looked at a RO3.7 install. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7897 posts |
Aemulor for pretty much everything has been made free, except currently the IOMD platform under discussion here. There is a teaser about a version for RPCEmu so if this is just experimentation then purchasing a Raspberry Pi and using handy keyboard/mouse/display is probably more economic. |
Stewart Goldwater (1577) 79 posts |
heard that you can soft load ROM – what would i need to do so that RISC OS 4.02 “Easy Upgrade” is available here: |
Rick Murray (539) 13326 posts |
£12 £15 for 4.39 and £20 for 6.20. I wonder. If one was to choose to stay stuck in the dark ages, which would represent the best value? Does 4.39 need a 4.xx ROM? Edit: Yes, the later ones need a 4.02 ROM which doesn’t appear to be for sale. Or, for £30, advance into the modern age! https://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/risc-os-5-22-roms |
Adrian Lees (1349) 122 posts |
Oh sorry, my wording could have been clearer. It’s not an idle comment. A couple of years ago, I had it running under RPCEmu and I think it ran Publisher etc. I’ll need some time to set up RPCEmu again (new PC, new OS since then) and try it; if it works okay, I’ll upload it. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7897 posts |
Not at all Adrian, my wording could have been clearer if I hadn’t been writing from work, with someone at the side of my desk waiting to speak to me about the stuff I’m paid for. (Mind you it was a small break for lunch so…) You realise of course that with Aemulor available for free for every model of machine produced in the living memory of all, except certain of us more-mature types, there isn’t a good case for anyone to run an old OS because even the “can’t afford Aemulor” bods have no excuse. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3110 posts |
I’m very impressed with the Aemulor, but I don’t think I actually have any use for it, since all the software I’m interested in seems to run happily on the Pi without it. What am I missing? |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7897 posts |
The opportunity to run software that hasn’t been updated to run on a 32bit mode OS. If you haven’t come across software that you’d like to run that falls into that category then I’d say you’re missing absolutely nothing. If the software on your system does all things you want why would you want to run another bit of software that does something you’re not interested in? For those who do have a reason/desire to run said old software there are many positive points in having something that allows that. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3110 posts |
Well, all that goes without saying. What I’m wondering is what software there might be that might interest me that I perhaps don’t know about. I sort of miss Impression Publisher & Photodesk, but have moved to Libre Office & The GIMP on the Mac and wouldn’t go back now. |
Rick Murray (539) 13326 posts |
I’ll await bring impressed by Aemulor. I exorcised the 26 bit stuff. I guess I’ll need to fire up the PC and rummage around in the emulator. I might have an ancient copy of ArtWorks or something. That said, those who want to remain chained to a prehistoric system will undoubtedly find another excuse. It’s political more than logical. A bit like Brexit. |
Jeff Doggett (257) 231 posts |
Aemulor, like Fat32fs, are programs that I feel have done more harm than good. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3110 posts |
I don’t think I have copies of any of my old 26-bit software, other than the things I wrote myself. I’ll deal with the assembler components of those if I ever find I need them. Most of my own software is pure BASIC, and works fine on the Pi – there were a few things with chunks of assembler in them, but nothing that’s still relevant to anything I’m ever likely to do again. |
Rick Murray (539) 13326 posts |
ORLY? So remind me, where’s the version of FCFS I can use to get information from old backups? Everybody says Impression was the best DTP package. So where is it? People left when Acorn threw in the towel. More will have gone in the 26/32 divide. The sad truth is that loads of stuff never got converted, and probably never will, and the new applications in the market are… What, exactly? The list of things in !Store doesn’t quite resemble the publicity in a copy of Acorn User from ’92. |
Rick Murray (539) 13326 posts |
…and if it helps coax even a few people from the comfort of their crusty RiscPCs, that’s a good thing, right? |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3110 posts |
Impression Publisher was a brilliant DTP package. I ran an office with a dozen RiscPCs (originally A540s and A5000s) using it, for five-and-a-half years. Sadly, poor compatibility with what other people were doing killed it, but it was brilliant for all that time. |
Rick Murray (539) 13326 posts |
Same old story, and I’m not entirely certain things are that much different these days… There are the popular boys, and there’s everything else.
I’m an OvationPro person. Works on both RISC OS and Windows, mostly the same (if we glide over one with abysmal non-Latin language support), still works fine today, even reading files I made nearly thirty years ago. Not exactly compatible with anything else, but then I don’t need it to be. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3110 posts |
And therein lies the key. |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7897 posts |
Clive as a long(ish) term user of Impression but apparently not OvPro, speaks in favour of the one he knows. Returning to the thread subject I’m somewhat ambivalent. On one hand I think people should move on to modern RISC OS / updated software on modern hardware (the latter essentially demands the former) but on the other I can see that some people love specific software and want to use that as long as possible. If that hasn’t been updated then it needs a crutch. 1 knowing what I now know about the random effects of (incorrect) zero page use and the amount of disruption to the Impression 32-bitting process that the high-vector change created, I think we can assume some of the random base-over-apex behaviour of Impression was down to zero page problems. Anyone who disputes the value of the work on removing those in all programmes needs to consider how instability affects sales. |
Clive Semmens (2335) 3110 posts |
Indeed, I was never an OvPro user. I don’t think it existed when we set up the J Physiol operation (1992). I briefly played with it to see if it was worth changing at one point, but the Impression operation was running well (200 densely-packed A4 pages of academic papers, with lots of maths, chemistry & diagrams, once a fortnight, from authors’ original files from all kinds of systems, to camera ready copy) and we decided it wasn’t worth disrupting things. |
Rick Murray (539) 13326 posts |
So have I, but not entirely legitimately. Way back when, I was sent a copy of Impression Style with the instruction to try it as I would like it. Probably somebody who wanted Frobnicate in a format other than OvationPro.
I can’t speak for stability, I didn’t run Style long enough to crash it. I found it… unpleasant. The layout, the design, the menus… I guess it’s a subjective thing, but it seemed to me at the time that OvationPro was designed by somebody who put some thought into its appearance and behaviour, while Style… less so.
The stories I dumped on my blog relied heavily on my crappy HTML exporter, plus some patching up in Zap to fix the bad HTML and remove the “fl” and “fi” ligatures (which seem to confuse the mobile mode parser). ;-)
Yes. This. Without a doubt. How old is the RPC now? But updated OS and updated hardware does not necessarily equate to updated software.
I see Aemulor to be a sort of RISC OS equivalent to NTVDM (the “DOS console in XP etc”). It’s there (was, I think they finally killed it in W8.1, but now we have DOSbox to replace it) for people who wanted to run 16 bit MS-DOS applications. I could, for instance, run WordPerfect or TurboC++ in a window just like I had a mini PC of the old variety. Because, you know, sometimes it’s just useful to be able to do.
Remind me… weren’t these the guys who wanted to write a replacement OS because they thought Arthur sucked? :-)
Hands up who runs Firefox on their phone. How many times has it crashed today? Ever had Google’s Navigation get stuck in a loop where it keeps “Rerouting…”? Ever had your WiFi signal just drop out in the middle of using it when you can see your router (so it’s not a weak signal issue)? Ever had iOS 7 randomly lose entire email accounts (can’t speak for iOS8+, I didn’t update)? Ever had RISC OS 3.70 on a RiscPC get into a cascading error where everything would fall over in turn? Ever had your television box get stuck in a loop booting, rebooting, rebooting, rebooting? Ever had the horror of realising a one-line omission in your webcam’s firmware means a slightly malformed request can entirely bypass the password mechanism (entirely!) and serve up information giving confidential details? If software in the eighties was as unreliable as today’s offerings are, companies would go backrupt in a week. But this level of unreliability is the new normal. Because of FlashROM and the ease of updating over the Internet, it is now the done thing to roughly test an application (as in, “does it start?”) and then drop it on the users to find the bugs. I maintain double standards. I would be less critical of bugs in packages like PhotoDesk or ArtWorks or the like, as these days it is ONE person maintaining them. And I can say from experience that the insides of PhotoDesk are rather obscure. Oh, where was I… Yeah, something about crashy software being the end of the world. It isn’t. People are conditioned to expect that sort of thing these days. “Mummy, why is the fridge restarting itself?” Maybe, on reflection, it will be the end of the world. Just not in the way you thought. ;-) 1 The proper expression is “hana yori dango” (花より団子) which literally translates as “dango (rice dumplings) over flowers”, and means to have a preference for functional and useful things (dumplings) in preference to purely decorative items (flowers). One could say RISC OS embraces this – we can easily scroll our windows in two directions, but we don’t have rounded icons. :-P |
Ron Briscoe (400) 78 posts |
@ Rick Murray, You do know who wrote Fat32FS or do you? |
Steve Pampling (1551) 7897 posts |
I’ll raise you: The gift/curse from work is an iPhone and it has Safari. It crashes so often I think the icon ought to be a crash-test-dummy. There’s a local(ish) bar/restaurant (down at Edgehill) their web site (admittedly full of dumbass size graphics) will crash Safari before the page finishes loading.
You forget, that was when Microsoft made the money that put them where they are now.
Ian Hislop on “Have I got News for You” recently made the comment that Apple were actually a profit making tax avoidance company that happened to have a small manufacturing arm that they could subsidise from tax avoidance. He didn’t use the tag on comment of “allegedly” either.
I seem to have hit a funny vein with that one. :) |
Rick Murray (539) 13326 posts |
The person who wrote that post. That’s why I didn’t comment on Fat32FS. :-) That said – why would it be a bad thing? Clearly DOSFS has… issues… and a third-party addition has fixed those issues. Why is this bad? It’s the logic everybody uses when talking about the fact that RISC OS has practically zero options for filesystem corruption recovery. BTW, Jeff distributes his software as bsd. That’s compatible with RISC OS. Maybe somebody could take a pair of scissors and… :-)
My mother says she doesn’t drink but if she did she’d raise a glass to you. I don’t use the iPad Mini much these days as she’s purloined it; however apparently your description is exactly correct. Mom says Daily Mail (I keep telling her to look at the Graunaid instead), pretty much any weather site, Amazon (half the time)… A brief look at some of the crash logs (of which there are loads – thank you Safari) seem to indicate that modern sites throw loads of information at the browser – I have seen the Daily Fail, when they don’t have anything much to write about a big news story, will just dump thirty or forty odd photos that are mostly the same thing – and since a portable device is memory restricted and doesn’t swap, it basically runs out of resources. And being written by dickheads, rather than noticing this and handling it (or just stopping loading content), it carries on until the OS terminates it for being an errant task. That’s iOS for you. The underlying OS is pretty solid, so long as you don’t mind it being that way because it terminates tasks for using too much memory, taking too long to respond, or because it’s a Tuesday…
? MS-DOS wasn’t that bad. Well, it was basically a nice wrapper over some BIOS calls, with a sort-of filesystem thrown in (come on, we all got to love/hate SCANDISK). Win3 was okayish, depending on what you wanted to do… as long as that wasn’t anything to do with TCP/IP which was painful. But I think it was that – Windows 3 – that really put them on the map. Sure, they made a lot of headway with DOS, but there were competitors – PC-DOS and DR-DOS, for instance. Windows was the break-out must-have product. And that was the ’90s.
Well, it sounds accurate. I’m sure the Europeans think a few unkind things regarding Apple and Ireland. |
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