RPCEmu and USB

On Windows, at the command prompt, try “net share” which will list the shares that Windows is offering.

What name is the F: drive shared as? Is it by any chance sharing as F$, which would make it a hidden share?

Is the F stick share accessible from the Win side of blackfan, Yes.

I was working on the basis that F is a share of a removable drive on blackfan and enquiring whether that share was accessible from the Windows install on the machine hosting the RPCEmu instance.

Shopping, tomorrow – ah, Saturday. I’d lost track of the days again.

Is it by any chance sharing as F$

Just checked that Alan… Unfortunately No, just plain old F

Dave

G’day folks.
After I’d played “Parker” Yes M’lady where to next M’lady for a while… ;-)

I’ve spent the last hour playing as I threatened to do yesterday…

I’ve had the computers we use for various things running and have used the same F memory stick on all of them, it has been checked at each new stage that it is Shared, and the correct permissions are all ticked.

The results are as follows:

Fays-PC …Running Win 10 Pro 64 bit. fully up-to-date.

VRPC-AdjustSA running RO 4.39 LM98 failed with the error "Connection Down”.
==============

Blackfan …Running Win 10 Pro 64 bit. fully up-to-date.

VRPC-DL running RO 6.20 LM98 failed with the error "Connection Down”.

RPCEmu 0.9.3 running RO 5.28 LM98 failed with the error "Connection Down”.
==============

Lappy …Running Win 10 Home 64 bit. fully up-to-date. (An Acer Swift 3 notebook)

VRPC-DL running RO 6.20 LM98 connects correctly and a filer window displays.

I don’t have a RPCEmu install on the Lappy but I do have a RPCEmu install on a Memory stick, I stuck that in the Lappy USB port and with the F stick in another port I ran the stick RPCEmu.
(It is a copy of the install on Blackfan)
It ran okay as expected, and… and when the LM98 disk for the F stick was run… LM98 connects correctly and a filer window displays.

==============

Fan2 …Running Win 10 Pro 64 bit. fully up-to-date.

VRPC-AdjustSA running RO 6.20 LM98 connects correctly and a filer window displays.

VRPC-DL running RO 6.20 LM98 connects correctly and a filer window displays.

RPCEmu 0.9.3 running RO 5.28 LM98 connects correctly and a filer window displays.

I then copied the RPCEmu install from Blackfan to Fan2 and ran it. (Obviously in a separate place)

RPCEmu 0.9.3 running RO 5.28 LM98 connects correctly and a filer window displays.

==============

So it appears it is computer specific, but tarnations what, what, what?

Dave

Hi Dave,

Yep frustrating here as well.

So I thought I would try and help and now more confused than ever.

So RPCEmu 0.9.3 and USB stick in as Drive E and shared as “e” using Everyone.

Start up RPCEmu and RISCOS Direct and try and access the USB stick via LM98 and says unable to resolve address of the server.

Try RISCOS 4.39 and LM98 and it accesses the USB stick.

Only difference is that 4.39 boots from HD4 not HostFS whilst Direct boots from HostFS as you can’t configure IDE/ADFS style emulated discs.

Time for some sun though my head is already red from all the scratching :-)

RPCEmu and ROD.

Doug, do you have an entry in the Network configure Hosts file for your Win computer?

Double click !Boot, in the Configuration window select Network, then Internet, then Host names, then the Hosts file.

Mine looks like this and the computer is 192.168.0.4 and named blackfan.
Enter the IP address and name of the Under Win computer.

1. Do not alter the loopback entry
   #
   127.0.0.1 loopback localhost loghost
   192.168.0.4 blackfan

Dave

Doug, do you have an entry in the Network configure Hosts file for your Win computer?

Yes tried that on the Direct version as well and still the same.

RISCOS 4.39 just works without it.

Set up for RPCEmu networking is NAT style, as out of the box, and DHCP on both emulators which reside on teh same machine.

Is this down to a difference with the DHCP clients on 4.39 and 5.28 and the slightly different way they get /store the information from the DHCP server i.e. my Router?

I may be talking rubbish but are your shares called F and SSD? With drive letters of F: & R:
I recall sometimes share names have to be at least three characters!

share names have to be at least three characters!

Well that’s a new one to me… and I think not in this case. Thought the names are longer than three characters so if you are correct it shouldn’t be an issue.

Quick recap.

The memory stick has a name, but its share is by the letter F and in LM98 it is only referenced by the F.

The portable USB SSD also has a name and its share is by the letter R and in LM98 is only referenced by the R.

On this machine Blackfan and another Fay-PC.

SSD referenced as R will work in LM98.
Memory stick referenced as F will not work in LM98

I can have the two items in USB sockets next door to each other, or one at a time into the same socket, R works F does not.

My lengthy test of earlier today show that on the Lappy (Notebook) and Fan2 the LM98 works with both VRPC and ROD installs, regardless of the type of device connected.

Dave

Considering Blackfan and Fan 2 are very similar computers both running Win 10 Pro 64bit. The VRPC and RPCEmu ROD installs are the same, I feel it’s got to be Win side related, but what is beyond me. :-(

D.

share names have to be at least three characters!

Back from testing out that idea.

The F stick has a name of “TempTester” designated F.

The LM98 disk is BlackfanFstick.

When an attempt is made to connect…

Error when reading LanMan98::BlackfanFstick.$ – Connection down.

Redone the name of the stick to “FF” still designated F.

When an attempt is made to connect…

Error when reading LanMan98::BlackfanFstick.$ – Connection down.

Dave

…Anyway, back to the main plot.

So we know RPCEmu 0.9.3 and ROD RISC OS 5.28 will work correctly with LM98 on the Win 10 Home Notebook, Lappy, and the Win 10 Pro Desktop, Fan2 But will not work okay on the other two desktop computers, mine in particular, Blackfan.

The next and obvious question is, how on earth do I go about finding what permits it to work on first two, but prevents it from working on the other two?

I’m a retired Bob-The-Builder, and as computerate as I might be, what chance have I got to solve that riddle?

Thanks
Dave

Could it be some content on the drive? I’m thinking among other things of drives (Cruzer comes to mind) that have encryption software on. Another possibility might be a file on the root level of the drive with a weird name, or strange content. AV software might block it from being shared.

Can you create another USB drive which you then set up as drive F and share? Does that work on all computers? If so (and it may not even need to be set up as F for the test), can you copy the content of the troublesome drive on to it, and then does it still work?

The existing drive works on Home edition, and on some Pro editions of Win10, but are they all at the same level of Windows updates? Recent updates tend to increase security restrictions, and this is looking to me like a security problem.

Thanks Alan,
That gives me something to chew on today…

Thanks
Dave

Testing memory sticks: Some with Directories and files, others with just a text file.
-—————————————————————————————————————————

Stick————- Type—— Size——— Letter- Fan2- Lappy- Blackfan
Hama————- USB3—— 16 Gigs—— D——- Y——-Y——- N
SanDisk———- USB2——- 8 Gigs——- F——- Y——-Y——- N
Data Traveler—USB3—— 16 Gigs—— D——- Y——-Y——- N
Novatech———USB2—— 64 Gigs——D——- Y——-Y——- N
TDK Transit——USB2——- 8 Gigs—— D——- Y——-Y——- N

TDK Transit—— USB2——- 8 Gigs—— F——- Y——-Y——- N
New formatted Fat32 and one text file.

Retried a TDK Transit as drive S. same result.
Also tried a couple of unnamed drives as G and V same results.

All My computers, as of yesterday 18/07.2021 were fully updated.

All three were scanned and reported by Belarc Advisor.

Blackfan— Win 10 Pro X64 version 2009 (Build 19043.1110) LM98 Memory stick doesn’t work.
Lappy— Win 10 Home X64 version 2009 (Build 19043.1110) LM98 Memory stick does work.
Fan2—- Win 10 Pro X64 version 2009 (Build 19043.1110) LM98 Memory stick does work.

List of USB drives used in the past 30 day, no problems reported.

Dave

Is it just a problem trying to access a shared drive from the same system that is hosting the emulator? i.e. can you mount the USB plugged into, and shared by, Lappy from a RPCEmu instance running on Blackfan? I have a vague memory of X86 emulators in the past having problems communicating with the host via its Ethernet adaptor’s IP address (rather than using a host-only connection) on SOME systems when the emulator networking was configured for NAT (usually I configure bridged networking).

Ah Stuart, though I have tested that aspect, I’ve avoided getting into that quagmire as it would confuse the core issue.
I hardly ever connect to a stick in another machine. (The three machines are mostly used for different things).
But as you’ve asked… :-)

The local problem, getting Blackfan LM98 to connect with the Host USB, but only with Memory sticks, exist over the LAN as well.

LM98 in Blackfan can connect to a stick in a USB port on the two “Yes machines”. (Lappy and Fan2).

But… LM98 on either of the two “Yes machines” cannot connect to the USB stick in BlackFan LM98. “Connection down”

In all cases The Host OS (Win 10) can connect to any of the other Host machines over the LAN okay.
Yes even to the BlackFan Win 10 Host OS.

This situation on Blackfan exists on both VRPC-DL and RPCEmu installs…

Dave

I had another poke around things today, no change in the situation, so I think it’s time to admit defeat and move on.
I have a mass of other things to do… Or as us old fogies say… There are just not enough days in an hour to get all the stuff done. ;-) (Not a typo). :-)

Thanks to everyone who came up with suggestion, much appreciated.

Dave

so I think it’s time to admit defeat and move on.

Quite understand, and sympathise! However, I think some useful things were learned along the way, insofar as the problem appears to be related to a specific Windows installation (Blackfan) rather than RPCEmu or LM98 generically.

Thanks to everyone who came up with suggestion, much appreciated.

You’re very welcome; I’m just sorry the issue wasn’t resolved.

insofar as the problem appears to be related to a specific Windows installation (Blackfan) rather than RPCEmu or LM98 generically.

George, I don’t think it’s quite that simple, there are two machine involved in the fail, Her Fay-PC and my Blackfan, and there is no problem at all with USB sticks Win 10 Host to host on all the 4 computers, no problem at all.

It’s only when LM98 comes in to play the problem arrives on two of the machines.

Dave

I started this thread with…

I’ve probably asked this before in the past but don’t remember.
Is RPCEmu capable of connecting to USB? (Particularly say a memory stick)

While tidying up my Firefox bookmarks I discovered one from March/April 2018 where I asked the same question… Did the same tests etc… All forgotten.

Here we are in halfway through 2021 and the problem remains unresolved.

Back then in March/April 2018 the Notebook and Fan 2 could (Like now) access LM98 memory sticks, while Blackfan could not.

Funny old business… :-)

Dave

Back then in March/April 2018 the Notebook and Fan 2 could (Like now) access LM98 memory sticks, while Blackfan could not.

You could get a pin-money job testing things – clearly, when you break something, it stays broke. :)

…clearly, when you break something, it stays broke. :)

Sir, you are closer to home than you might imagine… :-)

The difference being, in the past when I did do some Beta testing and broke things, as long as I could explain what and how I’d broken it… Then it was the developer/maintainer of the app who had the lovely job of finding a solution.

I’m not that ‘klever’. Witness how long this has been ongoing. ;-)

Dave

Still occasionally having thoughts about this LM98 problem, particularly on RPCEmu…

I guess the obvious thing is eliminate LM98 from the equation, but then another question arises.

Is there another RISC OS (5.nn capable) app that could replace the action of LM98 to access a memory stick?

Dave

Omniclient.

Omniclient.

Aha! I see that is in RO 5.nn Networking, is there any documentation (Somewhere) to help me set it up?

Thanks

Dave