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The Icon Bar: General: RISC OS 4.02, 4.33 and 4.37
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RISC OS 4.02, 4.33 and 4.37 |
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PaulV (17:46 1/5/2013)
forestman (20:29 1/5/2013)
filecore (05:37 2/5/2013)
apdl (08:12 2/5/2013)
forestman (20:21 2/5/2013)
bhtooefr (21:34 2/5/2013)
apdl (06:21 3/5/2013)
PaulV (09:20 3/5/2013)
bhtooefr (09:58 3/5/2013)
helpful (10:08 3/5/2013)
PaulV (15:00 3/5/2013)
sirbod (17:39 16/8/2013)
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Paul Vernon |
Message #122341, posted by PaulV at 17:46, 1/5/2013 |
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Posts: 135
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I bought a RISC PC 600 with an ARM 710 processor from the charity stall at Wakefield last week. The machine was fully working with a 4GB IDE drive in and 4.02 ROMs installed. I also bought a set of 3.70 ROMs in case I wanted to downgrade the machine a bit.
Before I do anything major with the machine though, I decided to explore what was on the drive. It appears to have been formatted and installed with a basic disc image and as such, there isn't much on there at all.
I did however find a couple of folders in the "temp" folder which were called SelectCD2 and SelectCD3.
Looking in these directories, it seems that they are installers to allow the machine to softload RISC OS 4.33 and 4.37 respectively.
Now although I grew up with Acorn machines and I've got Arc's and Raspberry Pi's running RISC OS, the whole RISC PC era is one that I bypassed by moving to Amiga's and PC compatibles. To that end, RO4 is new to me so I'm hoping someone could provide a quick run down of the "features" of RO4 and the differences between the three versions that I apparently have access to.
Thanks
Paul |
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jon black |
Message #122342, posted by forestman at 20:29, 1/5/2013, in reply to message #122341 |
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Posts: 25
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Hello.
I am in exactly the same situation as you except running os 3.70.
I found this article which may help...
http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1522,3.html
However I can't comment on which is best except people normally talk about 4.02 or 4.39 as the major releases of 4.
There are a few other comments on a thread I started on this topic called discos versions and features...
http://www.iconbar.com/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=12063&page=1#122343
[Edited by forestman at 21:46, 1/5/2013] |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #122346, posted by filecore at 05:37, 2/5/2013, in reply to message #122342 |
Posts: 3868
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Long story short,
Since RISC OS is absolutely useless for anything modern except as a nostalgia machine, I'd say stick with what works, play your old games [...]
RO 3.71 and an ARM710 isn't exactly power computing, but it is probably the sweet spot for the majority of RISC OS games. Depending on what you want to do with it, of course, but by and large most legacy apps that you'll find will work best with that combination. |
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David Holden |
Message #122348, posted by apdl at 08:12, 2/5/2013, in reply to message #122341 |
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Posts: 138
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I did however find a couple of folders in the "temp" folder which were called SelectCD2 and SelectCD3.
Looking in these directories, it seems that they are installers to allow the machine to softload RISC OS 4.33 and 4.37 respectively.
Now although I grew up with Acorn machines and I've got Arc's and Raspberry Pi's running RISC OS, the whole RISC PC era is one that I bypassed by moving to Amiga's and PC compatibles. To that end, RO4 is new to me so I'm hoping someone could provide a quick run down of the "features" of RO4 and the differences between the three versions that I apparently have access to. If you're using RISC OS 5 then 4.02 is (functionally) very similar. The biggest advantage over earlier OS versions (as well as a speed increase) is support for long filenames and more than 77 objects per directory.
RO 4.33 and 4.37 were interim versions. They may well have minor bugs, although 4.37 should be pretty stable. However the 'official' full release of this series was 4.39. This has lots of extra features (most of which will probably be present in 4.37) including an image viewer, DHCP stack and multi-user option.
Almost everything will run on 4.02 and any later version can be softloaded, so if you find anything that won't run on a later version you can temporarily revert.
Although it's not shown yet a new 4.39 softload will be available from the riscos.com website at a very good price in a week or two. |
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jon black |
Message #122354, posted by forestman at 20:21, 2/5/2013, in reply to message #122348 |
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Soft load straight from 3.7 all the way to 4.39?
And very good price......
Interesting!!!! |
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Eric Rucker |
Message #122355, posted by bhtooefr at 21:34, 2/5/2013, in reply to message #122354 |
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Posts: 337
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In the past, it's been... you could softload from 3.60-3.71 to 4.02, but no newer (because 3.71 and older don't support more than 4 MiB ROMs for softload, and the base OS determines what you can softload). But, the boot filesystem must be the old style with the short filenames and 77 object per directory limit, so you don't get those advantages softloading 4.02.
If you have 4.02 in ROM, you can softload anything later. |
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David Holden |
Message #122356, posted by apdl at 06:21, 3/5/2013, in reply to message #122355 |
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Posts: 138
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In the past, it's been... you could softload from 3.60-3.71 to 4.02, but no newer (because 3.71 and older don't support more than 4 MiB ROMs for softload, and the base OS determines what you can softload). But, the boot filesystem must be the old style with the short filenames and 77 object per directory limit, so you don't get those advantages softloading 4.02. It is possible to softload 4.39 onto 3.7, but not practicable.
The original softload CD I did for ROL actually made provision for this, but because of the larger ROM it's impossible to use it on a machine with any podules, including a NIC. This is because the softlware is downloaded from the podules during the first boot from the base OS and this is then overwritten by the bigger OS ROM when it's loaded, thus trashing the podules.
If you have 4.02 in ROM, you can softload anything later. Exactly. To this end RO4 ROMs will be available again soon which haven't been (other than secondhand) for some time. |
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Paul Vernon |
Message #122357, posted by PaulV at 09:20, 3/5/2013, in reply to message #122356 |
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Posts: 135
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Thanks for the feedback. It's most helpful and enlightening.
It's interesting that I seem to have two interim versions of RISC OS on the HDD, I take it they were released publicly in some form such as release candidates as they aren't the accepted official release versions of RISC OS 4.
I know this might be an odd question but does the DHCP stack in RO4 do any better than the DHCP stack in RO5. Support for certain types of DHCP server still isn't right and DHCP on RO5 in my network environment doesn't work. It's a known issue which garners an apathetic response when raised.
Paul |
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Eric Rucker |
Message #122358, posted by bhtooefr at 09:58, 3/5/2013, in reply to message #122357 |
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Posts: 337
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RISC OS was under the Select scheme for quite a while, and I wouldn't call the "interim" versions you have as not official release versions.
Select releases were public, official releases (although some were beta), under a subscription scheme. 4.33 was Select 2i3 (the release version of Select 2), 4.37 was Select 3i3 (the release version of Select 3).
4.39 was Select 3i4, which included "substantial improvements to the Toolbox modules as well as all the other features of the Adjust ROMs" according to the Select page. The reason why it's considered a more "official" release is, it's also the final Select 3 release (Select 4 being the initial releases of RISC OS 6), and it was the first (and last 26-bit - the A9home releases all being Adjust) Adjust release.
Running 4.02 ROMs with 4.39 softload is probably the best bet, though - that way, you can very easily drop to 4.02 if needed. I don't think you can downgrade through a softload?
[Edited by bhtooefr at 10:59, 3/5/2013] |
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Bryan Hogan |
Message #122359, posted by helpful at 10:08, 3/5/2013, in reply to message #122357 |
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I know this might be an odd question but does the DHCP stack in RO4 do any better than the DHCP stack in RO5. Support for certain types of DHCP server still isn't right and DHCP on RO5 in my network environment doesn't work. As with so many things, the networking is much better in RISC OS 4.39 than RISC OS 5 :-(
See http://gerph.org/riscos/ramble/internet.html for some info about which DHCP servers it was tested with.
We really need a merge of the sources. |
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Paul Vernon |
Message #122360, posted by PaulV at 15:00, 3/5/2013, in reply to message #122359 |
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Ah yes, it seems the DHCP bugs I reported in RO5 were fixed in RO4. |
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Jon Abbott |
Message #122544, posted by sirbod at 17:39, 16/8/2013, in reply to message #122341 |
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I've been trying to softload RO4.02 over RO3.70 today, without much luck. It seems to POST but shows three "Abort on data transfer" messages and doesn't show the processor type. At this point it's at the Supervisor prompt, where *MODULES works, but *HELP MODULES reports "Message token HUTMMOD not found". Pressing SHIFT-Break to reset reports "Abort on data transfer at &03968760"
Softloading RO5.20 over RO3.70 works perfectly however.
I've tested with both an ARM610 and StrongARM, both produce the same results, I've also tested after resetting the BIOS. The only other addition to the machine is an ANT NIC and 1MB VRAM.
Am I correct in presuming softloading RO4.02 over RO3.70 should work?
EDIT: It seems holding R to reset the BIOS on boot wasn't working properly, importing the BIOS from an emulated machine has fixed the problem.
Think I'll knock up some code to auto-load the correct BIOS as the softload happens. Resetting the BIOS every time I softload another OS is going to be painful otherwise!
[Edited by sirbod at 19:52, 16/8/2013] |
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The Icon Bar: General: RISC OS 4.02, 4.33 and 4.37 | |
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