Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

There is a module PatchApp in !Boot.Utils together with two patches directories RO4Patches and RO6Patches

That’s the RO6 !Boot not the RO5.2x !Boot which is what Jeffrey and Spow were talking about.
That said Nemo doesn’t need to do a patch to cover any current/future version of RO5.2x+ as the source can be amended and the fix is then in all future releases. Patching all the legacy OS revisions (OS <5.0)¹ is nice for those users though.

¹ “Six” is 4.39+potato as nemo reminded us.

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

There is a module PatchApp in !Boot.Utils together with two patches directories RO4Patches and RO6Patches

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

5.61?

Apparently the next increment after 5.60

Presumably not the 5.61 (23 Apr 2004) that shipped with RO4.39?

Always going to be dificult to cope with and the RMEnsure problem has existed for years for many items that ROL took through an increment jump or five. Toolbox is fun too.

Regardless of the game of ‘one potato two potato’ that led to the major version number arms race

There’s so many comments we could all make on that¹, lets just carry on and hope that we get to a set of numbers that are past the “six” quagmire people keep getting stuck in some time soon.

¹ Since the comments all come down to an essay on “yah, boo, sucks” lets not bother.

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

Patches: RO4 has the very nice ROMPatch module that it inherited from RO3.5 – that’s the ideal fix for all 26bit OSes, as I can supply a single ROMPATCH file that fixes all of them.

In RO4 it’s in !Boot.Utils.RO4Patches (at least it is on mine, but I can never remember what I’ve changed). Can someone confirm that it is somewhere in the RO6 !Boot?

I suppose there is no ROMPatch for RO5?

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

5.24 is coming “real soon now” (tomorrow?) and apparently has WindowManager 5.61.

5.61?

Presumably not the 5.61 (23 Apr 2004) that shipped with RO4.39?

No one is even trying to make version numbers make sense any more are they?

For the record, WindowManager 6.61 (13 Nov 2009) is what shipped with RO6.20.

Regardless of the game of ‘one potato two potato’ that led to the major version number arms race, can we all agree that releasing two different builds with the same version number renders RMEnsure rather less useful than intended?

Topic: Bugs / How can this error happen?

Jeffrey said

A% to Z%? For some silly reason BASIC doesn’t zero-initialise them on startup

Apropos of nothing, it is very important indeed to bear this in mind when using one of those BASIC compressors that renames variables.

It is tempting to use a construction like this in a library or highly modular program:

mydata%=mydata%
IFmydata%=0:PROCinitialiseMyData

This can lead to mystified disappointment when the compressor renames mydata% to be an Integer Variable.

BTW, the ‘silly reason’ is that programs can pass integer values to the next program in the CHAIN. This used to be very common when assembling large machine code programs on the Beeb, but I’ve seen it on Arthur and probably RO2 machines too.

Topic: Bugs / How can this error happen?

Dave admitted

Anyway: 7059 STOP has produced “Stopped” on a couple of occasions.

Was the very first response not…?

Execution has fallen into the FN from an earlier line

If you can’t see the lack of END or the predicated ENDPROC or = that’s causing this, stick this at the start:

TRACETO"$.nemoisalwaysright"
TRACEON

and that will allow you work back to where execution leaked from.

Topic: Porting RISC OS / RISC OS 5.24 approaches

Shouldn’t the version number change from 0.50?

Topic: Announcements / IsocPlayer 0.05

I’ve updated Isocplayer to play mp3 files.

Topic: Community Support / Pi 3 shutting down-ish

OS 5.24 on the Pi is gamma disabled and so should not shutdown inconveniently.

OS 5.25 is gamma enabled.

Topic: Porting RISC OS / RISC OS 5.24 approaches

A Pi OS5.24 ROM has been built here from cvs. Gamma is disabled as expected. Details below.

*fx0
RISC OS 5.23 (12 Apr 2018)
*help BCMVideo
==> Help on keyword BCMVideo
Module is: BCMVideo        0.50 (06 Apr 2018)

*fx0
RISC OS 5.24 (16 Apr 2018)
*help BCMVideo
==> Help on keyword BCMVideo
Module is: BCMVideo        0.50 (18 Apr 2018) 1.50.2.1

Thanks all round for OS5.24, and everything else.

Topic: Porting RISC OS / Allwinner H3

Oh yay. It signed me out and I lost the post :(

Thanks Michael! I’m happy about it.

Just an abridged version of my lost post. RO boot fell over with an undefined instruction. I looked up the address in the Kernel GPA. It’s in HAL_InvalidateCache_ARMvF which happens to have a whole bunch of coprocessor instructions. It always seems to fall over when a coprocessor is involved. Randomly too. I’m not entirely sure how to address this.

edit: been scattergunning with coprocessor commands in the desperate hope that something helps. Tried being systematic starting from scratch. What I have actually did help!

init mod UKError: UndefinedInstruction:Undefined instruction at &FC08CECC (Error Number &80000000)                                                            
*                 

Brexit error?

Topic: Bugs / How can this error happen?

A few things I can think of:

Do you have anything that uses A% to Z%? For some silly reason BASIC doesn’t zero-initialise them on startup, so if you’ve got a code path which is reading from one of them before it’s been initialised then you could be getting some undefined behaviour from that (although it does seem a bit odd that it’s always the same place where it dies).

Maybe try TRACE ON & TRACE OFF around the initialisation code as well? (assuming you can spool the output somewhere useful)

Plus if you can get the output of LVAR when it fails then that might be useful (e.g. launch it via “*BASIC FooFile” rather than the default “*BASIC -quit FooFile”, so that you’re left in BASIC after it finishes)

Topic: General / HOMM2 and Chaos Engine on RPi?

A short follow-up to the topic: I just received my copy of HoMM 2 from R-Comp and it works great under AemulorPi.

Topic: Bugs / How can this error happen?

Thread’s drifted a bit, annit? :-)

Anyway: 7059 STOP has produced “Stopped” on a couple of occasions.

So we’re further on and we’re no further on. There are no GOTOs in the code. You can see the previous lines in the code (and the last non-blank line before that is ENDPROC). So how can line 7059 be executed?

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

It’s in $.Utilities.!Patch on my computer. Where you looking?

At the wrong component in CVS! PatchApp != PatchesPatch.

Topic: Announcements / Wakefield 2018 is Next Weekend

Iconbar has a show report and pictures if you were not able to attend.

Many thanks for that speedy service to us RISC OS people far far away (currently Fuerteventura :-)).

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

Once I have Patched All The Things I’ll release a Patch file – is !Patch still supported on RO5?

Nope – it was never 32-bitted.

It’s in $.Utilities.!Patch on my computer. Where you looking?

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

What other 5.xx have been released? 5.25 and 5.23? LazyWeb: Whence these?

For the past few years the convention has been that even-numbered OS versions are stable builds, and so have a modicum of post-release support (e.g. updates & patches), while odd-numbered OS versions are development builds (no patching, just upgrade to a newer dev/stable build which has the bug fixed). Also, ROOL’s motto is that every (desktop) RISC OS 5 machine ever released can always be upgraded to the latest version of RISC OS 5, so there isn’t much of a reason to actively support RISC OS 5 releases which are older than the current stable release. Perhaps this also explains why they don’t offer old versions for download.

If you want to see what module versions went into any particular stable release, you can look at the (non- “Dev”) products files in CVS. But since the products files don’t capture the DDE version I’m not sure how reliable it would be to use that info for producing patches.

Once I have Patched All The Things I’ll release a Patch file – is !Patch still supported on RO5?

Nope – it was never 32-bitted. The ROOL way of doing things would probably be to softload a newer Wimp during the boot sequence (which the boot sequence will already do, for 26 bit OS’s at least)

Topic: General / AMCOG Games : Beta testing

It looked really good on display at Wakefield.

Topic: Announcements / Wakefield 2018 is Next Weekend

Iconbar has a show report and pictures if you were not able to attend.

Thanks to the organisers for a really great event – worth the trek to Yorkshire. They even arranged the weather.

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

What other 5.xx have been released? 5.25 and 5.23?

5.24 is coming “real soon now” (tomorrow?) and apparently has WindowManager 5.61. [Edit: Confirmed]

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

I have patches for the following versions:

What other 5.xx have been released? 5.25 and 5.23? LazyWeb: Whence these?

Once I have Patched All The Things I’ll release a Patch file – is !Patch still supported on RO5?

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

such a bad fracture that he needed two 4" titanium rods screwed into his bones.

Oh, that sounds horrendous. Was it on ice?

At least you were moving at the time.

There seems to be an accumulation of gravel at the end of the driveway. I am guessing I slipped in that (and judging by my other hand, landed in it). The thing is, I applied the brakes and then I was sideways on the ground vaguely aware of the bike landing on me. That bit in between… I don’t actually remember. But, then, I’m 75kg of gloopy rice and Mars bars so I guess gravity did its bit pretty quickly. :-)

The routine has always been bugged

I guessed that would be the case, CMP hasn’t changed its behaviour.

However, the fix is trivial and can be patched in place.

Nice, the in situ patching should help with the closed-source-never-to-be-touched-again Wimps.

Good detective work, there, Holmes. :-)

Topic: Bugs / Catastrophic WIMP bug

Further to the bug: It was introduced in RO3.80, WindowManager 3.99.

Unfortunately the checkhandle routine does have to preserve (the other) flags – there is at least one usage that requires it. However, the fix is trivial and can be patched in place.

The routine has always been bugged – it’s in the 26b versions too. This requires a patch for all versions… I’ll knock one up.