RPCEmu 0.8.11

Just spotted that the RPCEmu site has a new version available. (Previously it was 0.8.10)

http://www.marutan.net/rpcemuspoon/

Compiled it and it seems to be running fine on Ubuntu 12.04 Interestingly, it has “Phoebe (RPC2)” listed in the hardware options.

Cheers,
Becky.

Interestingly, it has “Phoebe (RPC2)” listed in the hardware options.

For those interested in history the last link in the documentation section of that page links to a page where you can download the Phoebe ROM and OS, with the caveat:

" Emulating the Real Machines
You must use the Interpreter version of RPCEmu (not Recompiler)
Regardless of how much memory you chose you will always get 128MB RAM
It is not (yet) compatible with the SyncClock module.
This is a buggy emulator of a buggy/incomplete OS running on unfinished/untested emulated hardware. This is not a sensible option for running RISC OS applications in any way and should be considered for historic entertainment purposes only. "

It is slightly disappointing that the RO5 reference on the RPCEmu site are about 3 years out of date and contain a link to a ROM image of that era. Fortunately the ROOL link ends up at the current ROM and disc image download page.

Communication is encouraged via the RPCEmu mailing list, unfortunately riscos.info is down (again)

Has anyone here had RPCEmu 0.8.11 running on OS X?

I don’t think the Mac port has been updated yet.

Anyone fancy refreshing it? And/or Arculator?! :-)

I have recently compiled and installed the latest version of RPCEmu 0.8.11 and RISC OS 5.20. And RISC OS does look good in 1280 × 1024 and 16 million colours; Strong ARM settings. No HardDisc4 (as expected).

The only place I struggled was getting the Allegro source code dependency to work. Particularly around its installation and then its visibility to the compilation process. What helped was that the developer had added enough checks to the build process to make the issue both identifiable and resolvable.

The platform I’ve installed RPC Emu on is Ubuntu 13.10 (Gnome 3) and on an oldish laptop. I have configured Cairo-dock, so that I am able to launch RPCEmu from the desktop with the iconic Acorn graphic.

Anyway, I’m grateful to all the developers for their hard work to enable this and to those people who put together the various instructions out there on the internet; a big thank you to you all.

The next step for me is to see if I can make any practical use of it; rather than it just being a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Can someone tell me if 5.20 on linux would work sufficiently for email/news? Does no IDE access mean there is no permanent storage, or does HostFS cater for local RISC OS drive !Scrap, !Newsbase.
Or would it be better to use a 26 bit OS?

No idea about 5.20, but I’ve been running 5.21 on RPCEmu 0.8.11 for some time now. I’m not sure how you got the idea there wouldn’t be any permanent storage. HostFS certainly provides all I need and much more flexible than ADFS ever could (think about symlinks…).

However… I’m still seeing weird errors when AntiSpam has to work hard, even though I’m now using a different machine, a different Linux distro and different versions of RISC OS 5 and RPCEmu since I mentioned that the first time. I haven’t been able to figure out what’s causing them, but it looks like sometimes memory pages simply disappear from the map. As before, both RISC OS 4.39 and 6.20 don’t do anything like that. They’re rock steady.

Thanks Frank,
I think the lack of IDE support on the site must be referring to accessing a physical Filecore drive but it sounds like HostFS is adequate anyway.
I wonder if the RO5 dynamic areas versus the way ROL
did it is the cause of the problems. I don’t know much about it except there are differences.
If the program is a GCC port you can set the binaries heap to "" to avoid running out of memory.
I had to this for the !GCC cc1 binary for one large job. Thanks for letting me know the problem anyway.

AntiSpam is a hybrid program, mainly Basic with chunks of assembler, some of which maintain buffers above HIMEM. They can extend the WimpSlot if necessary. Most of that code has been in use for years on everything from RISC OS 4.02 to 6.20 on RPC, Iyonix, RPCEmu, VRPC and RaspberryPi. The only combination that has issues is RPCEmu with RISC OS 5.19 or 5.21.

The errors come from all over the place, like window handles becoming invalid or networking socket descriptors getting corrupted. They’re never exactly the same too. I’ve given up trying to find the cause and just switch to RISC OS 4.39 if I need AntiSpam running on RPCEmu (it usually runs on the Pi these days).

Before I got myself another computer, I assumed it must have something to do with the particular setup I was using. Now the same is happening on an entirely different system, I’m not so sure anymore…

One of the great things abut HostFS is that outside of the emulator you can backup everything quickly, all RISC OS files are accessible from Linux. Once a week I make a zip of the HostFS contents as a backup. HostFS is a very good file system and it also allows files to be transferred to RISC OS with ease. I use RPCEmu for e-mail, newsgroups and a bit of HTML tinkering.

Cheers,
Becky.

Looking around, this is because HostFS stores files with the ,xyz extension method, so yes this would allow linux to back up. However RISC OS files would have to be in an archive to retain their filetypes when introducing new files, unless using a NFS mount or similar, where the extensions are already done.
I have gone with PeppermintOS Four for my laptop, and have to install GCC before I start with RPCEmu. I haven’t seen any requirements regarding the type of Desktop, and hopefully the lightweight one will work.