Selecting ISO file

I’m trying to open and select an ISO file so that I can then copy some of the RISC OS content to my HostFS folder.

From the RPCEmu menu I select Disc, CD-ROM, ISO Image, I then select an ISO Image located on my Mac, once the ISO file has been selected I then click Open. Then I go to the CD-ROM Icon located on the left side of the Icon Bar, on clicking on the CR-ROM Icon I get a message from the CDFS Filer “CD-ROM drive not found” not sure why I’m getting this message or is it something I should have done before.

I’m a Mac OS user, and running RPCEmu version 0.9.3.

If anyone can help would be great help indeed.

Thank you.

If you’re using RISC OS 5, CD-ROM drives (and IDE hard drives) are disabled due to a data loss bug. This is documented at https://www.marutan.net/rpcemu/ro5.html

If you’re using RISC OS 3 or RISC OS 4, CD-ROM drives should work. I’ve certainly had them working on RPCEmu 0.9.3 (macOS Catalina) and RPCEmu 0.9.4 (macOS Big Sur).

Stuart,

I’m using RISC OS 5.28, I have not used or tested RPCEmu 0.9.4, I’m using the latest version of mac OS Monterey Version 12.0.1.

As already mentioned, RPCEmu does not support CD-ROM drives when emulating RISC OS 5.

A technique I’ve used is to create a separate RPCEmu data directory and populate it with a RISC OS 3.7 build – a suitable “Easy Start” bundle is available from https://www.marutan.net/rpcemu/easystart.html (grab the “Other Platforms” edition, not the Windows edition).

Once the new data directory has been populated, it can be used as follows:

• Shift-doubleclick on the RPCEmu application in Applications – this will allow you to choose the RISC OS 3.7 data directory you just created.
• Once booted into RISC OS 3.7, go into HostFS and create a new “Transfer” directory.
• Mount the ISO image and click on the CD-ROM drive icon.
• Copy the items you want to the HostFS “Transfer” directory.
• Shut down RISC OS and close the RPCEmu window.
• Using macOS Finder, move the “Transfer” directory from the HostFS directory inside the RISC OS 3.7 data directory to the HostFS directory inside your RISC OS 5 data directory.
• Shift-doubleclick on the RPCEmu application in Applications and select your RISC OS 5 data directory.
• The files should now be available in the Transfer" directory on the HostFS drive.

A roundabout way of getting the ISO contents, but it does work. There may be a “long filenames” problem (as you’ve used RISC OS 3.7) but most RISC OS ISO images don’t use long filenames anyway.

I will try the above and see how I get on.

Thank you.

Is this possible to have 2 RPCEmu folders, for example one called RPCEmu 3.7 and another called RPCEmu 5.28 If I unzip the ISO file on my Mac then copy a folder into my HostFS folder, when I start RPCEmu and under RISC OS, does not recognise RISC OS file types, guessing this option is not a good one.

Yes, just name the directories as you see fit! I have several such instances for testing.

Unzipping archives via the host will most often lose RISC OS file type information.

One minor thing to mention: If you’ve not used RISC OS 3.7 before, double-click on !Boot (in HostFS) to get to the Configuration window.

Another potential option is to put the ISO file in HostFS and then use CDFaker to mount it inside RISC OS 5, although I haven’t tested this in RPCEmu (I don’t know whether the RPCEmu CD ‘lockout’ will get in the way here or not).

I’m using the latest version of mac OS Monterey Version 12.0.1.

The latest version is 12.1, not 12.0.1.

When I now start RCPEmu using RISC OS 5.28 after a short while on start up I get the following error message @Application may have gone wrong, Click Continue to try to resume or Quit to stop Application, when I Click on the Continue button, RISC OS desktop appears, not sure why I’m getting this error message.To close RISC OS down correctly I select the menu over the Rask Manager then select Shutdown.

I’m currently running RISC OS 5.28, with in mind there is a folder called RO528-RPCEmuData located in my Documents folder, can’t remember but is this folder automatically created, of course understand that this is where all RISC OS files are located, added or deleted.

Options now are, if I have 2 different RPCEmu folders one running RISC OS 3.7 and another folder running RISC OS 5.27 will I need to have 2 different RPCEmu folders created in my Documents folder.

Can’t remember is RISC OS 26-bit or 32-bit.

Where is the best location to find the correct RISC OS ROMS for both 3.7 and 5.27

I have downloaded both 3.7 and 5.27 bundles.

Any help here would be great.

Thank you.

Application may have gone wrong, Click Continue to try to resume or Quit to stop Application

Isn’t there a “Details” or “Describe” (or some word starting with “D”…) button? If so, click on that, and let us know what it says – it should give you the real error message, and not the one that Acorn thought was less scary for users.

Steve,

On clicking on the describe button, I get the following RISC OS message “Module ‘ObeySupport’ is not 32-bit compatible” Question is, where is this module located.

Would like to have both 3.7 and 5.27 running, not at the same time of course, but being able to run these 2 different versions of RISC OS.

On clicking on the describe button, I get the following RISC OS message “Module ‘ObeySupport’ is not 32-bit compatible”

It sounds as if you’re mixing and matching 3.70 and 5.28. That’s not possible: RISC OS 3, 4 and Six are 26-bit¹, while RISC OS 5 is 32-bit. They don’t mix easily, unless you know which bits can be shared around. There’s also a lot of differences in internal structure between the different strands, as over the years, things have been re-factored and disentangled in different ways.

If you want to use both OSs, you’ll need different HostFS folders for each to go with the different ROMs. See Stuart S’s comments for how this works; I have a similar setup here.

¹ Note to the pedants: don’t. It’s not relevant to Geoff’s question.

Another potential option is to put the ISO file in HostFS and then use CDFaker to mount it inside RISC OS 5, although I haven’t tested this in RPCEmu (I don’t know whether the RPCEmu CD ‘lockout’ will get in the way here or not).

I’ve used that in the past. Somewhere in the RPCEmu 0.8x sequence

First step I have removed and uninstalled the version of RPCEmu that I had, now will try and setup both 3.7, 5.28 which I think is the latest version.

Next step, which version would you recommend to use, I have downloaded RPCEmu-0.9.4a, RPCEmu-0.9.3b and RPCEmu-0.9.3a my previous installation was using 0.9.3a. In each of these folders I have downloaded all files, as an example for the RPCEmu-0.9.31 folder.

RPCEmu-0.9.3a-Debug.dmg
RPCEmu-0.9.3a-Debug.zip
RPCEmu-0.9.3a-Release.dmg
RPCEmu-0.9.3.a-Release.zip
RPCEmu-dev-0.9.3a.tar.gz
RPCEmu-dev-0.9.3a.zip

Which install method would you recemmend to use and why.

“Module ‘ObeySupport’ is not 32-bit compatible” Question is, where is this module located.

ObeySupport is part of Zap. That error implies a 26bit build of Zap is attempting to start.

Why not just use the RPCEmu Easy Start bundles as-is? [Edit: Forgot that the ‘Other platforms’ ones don’t contain the RPCEmu executable!]

One issue that I’m now having at the moment I unzip RPCEmu-0.9.41 Release then copy the bundle folders across, then attempt to start RPCEmu and after selecting the correct folder when your first start, I get the following error message “Could not open ROM files directory ’/Users/firstnamesurname/Desktop/RPCEmu-0.9.4a-Release/roms/”: No such file or directory" even though I’m sure the correct ROM is in the correct folder, this error message now happens for 3.51, 5.27 and 5.28

That error implies a 26bit build of Zap is attempting to start.

Or that there’s a lingering 26 bit piece within a 32 bit build of Zap.

Geoff, you should be using one of the “Release” files of RPCEmu. The DMG and ZIP variants are the same, but are packaged differently as some people were having problems with the DMGs.

Inside the DMG and ZIP files is a folder named “Data”. This contains files such as “cmos.ram” and “rpc.cfg”, plus folders such as “hostfs” and “roms”. You need to copy this entire “Data” directory to somewhere on your hard drive, e.g. the “Documents” folder. You can rename it if you like. You need to copy your RISC OS ROM file into the “roms” folder.

You can reset the folder by holding down the SHIFT key when double-clicking on the RPCEmu application. This will bring up the prompt again. Choose the “Data” folder (or whatever you’ve called it).

For example, if you copy the “Data” folder into /Users/Geoff/Documents and rename it to “RPCEmu”, you’ll have a folder named /Users/Geoff/Documents/RPCEmu. So in this case when you are prompted by RPCEmu to choose the folder, you would need to go into the “Documents” folder and choose the “RPCEmu” sub-directory. Your ROM file would be copied into the /Users/Geoff/Documents/RPCEmu/roms folder.

The reason for this dialogue box in the first place is to allow people to copy the RPCEmu application into their /Applications folder. Applications aren’t supposed to write into this, so the data files need to be in a separate location. The dialogue allows people to choose their own place to store these files. I seem to recall some debate about this originally (on Stardot), so this was the solution I came up with.

Timothy,

That’s a great help indeed and very useful, so I have done like you have suggest, I was just not copying the files in the correct location, for example into the Documents folder.

I have been using RPCEmu-0.9.4a-Release, to start with I used a RISC OS 5.27 distribution from the easy install packages, simple enough to copy and paste, then copied another folder this time renaming it as RISC OS 3.7 on testing 3.7 seemed to work well and also able to open any ISO file with ease and simple enough now that I have a better understanding of how to setup RPCEmu.

Now with the 2 easy bundles RISC OS 3.7 and 5.27 are there other distrubtions, previously I have used 5.28 but can’t rearmer where I got 5.28 from.

How many different RISC OS versions are there for distribution as did like the look of 5.28 or is 5.29 abvailable and has anyone done much work on this.

5.27 does come with 26-bit emulator and StongEd and !Zap which are hwlpful where as 5.28 did not, or in the version that I had at the time.

On starting both 3.7 and 5.27 the screen size is small and experimented with different sizes, if RPCEmu is closed down and then re-started the screen size is small again, but can’t remember what the process was to make sure the screen size has been changed it stays that size.

How many different RISC OS versions are there for distribution as did like the look of 5.28 or is 5.29 abvailable and has anyone done much work on this.

At any given time there are two versions of RISC OS 5: an “even numbered release”, which is stable and has had proper testing, and an “odd numbered release”, which fell out of the autobuilder last night with whatever source was in Git at the time. At present, 5.28 is the stable release which was released in October 2020; 5.29 is the nightly test build. Many people happily use the “odd numbered releases” as daily-drivers; they’re usually fine, but it’s just that there’s no guarantee that there won’t be any show-stopping bugs lurking (there isn’t for the stable releases, either, but the odds are less).

You can get both ROM images from this page for RPCEmu, with the corresponding 5.28/5.29 disc images here.

5.27 does come with 26-bit emulator

See http://sendiri.co.uk/aemulor/

and StongEd

See http://www.stronged.iconbar.com/

and !Zap

Unfortunately 32-bit Zap is only available via Plingstore, as far as I know. Pingstore is here but you’ll need a working network connection on a RISC OS box to use it.

which are hwlpful where as 5.28 did not, or in the version that I had at the time.

A lot of the bundled software will be freely available from the authors’ websites.

Unfortunately 32-bit Zap is only available via Plingstore, as far as I know.

Arguably Store should have a web accessible interface of some kind ¹. It would also be a useful resource to point people towards, as I don’t think store:Zap%20Ultimate is recognised as a valid URI ².

Luckily I keep a non-walled copy “just in case”. https://heyrick.eu/blog/files/zu149r07.zip

¹ If only for the freebies at first.

² That part isn’t actually that difficult. Manga responds to “manga:” URIs.

Steve,

Thank you the weblink, will also take a look at the Pingstore.

Just as a matter of interest, is RISC OS 4.39 available.