Questions from someone who last used RISCOS on an A310

Hi,

Its been so long since I’ve used RISCOS and I’ve forgotten a lot (and RISCOS grew a lot since the A310).

I’m hoping someone will help me with a few questions:

I have installed Riscosdirect (5.27) on a Pi3B.

0) RiscOSOpen, RiscOSDirect? Not quite clear how they go together – but I don’t know where to find software so I guess I installed the one that came with more stuff….

1) The user guide talks about NFS, but on my system !Omni only shows Lan Manager – how do I get NFS – I need !NFSFiler it seems but where do I find that? I can’t get a successful connection to my QNAP NAS using “Lan Manager” so maybe I could do better with NFS.

2) The user guide also mentions !VT220 which would be very useful with my PIDP11 and AltairDuino. Where can I find that?

3) “Discs” on the bar opens Resources:$.Discs but nothing in it. This obviously isn’t like “My Computer” since the SD card isn’t there. What appears in here?

4) If I double-click !SSH I don’t see anything happen. How do I use it?

Thanks, and wow – must have been a lot of work to build this modern RISC OS.

Steve

how do I get NFS

That’s (sort of) explained on page 177 of the User Guide – you need to edit the file !Omni.Files.Startup to enable NFS. In other words, change:
SetEval Omni$NFS 0
to read:
SetEval Omni$NFS 1

Alternatively track down a recent build of SunFish. I think there was one on Chris Gransden’s site.

The user guide also mentions !VT220 …

I don’t know of any recent build, sorry.

“Discs” on the bar opens Resources:$.Discs but nothing in it.

That’s where other RISC OS machines on your LAN would appear. See “Disc sharing on an Access network” (pages 151-156 of the User Guide).

0) RiscOSOpen, RiscOSDirect? Not quite clear how they go together – but I don’t know where to find software so I guess I installed the one that came with more stuff….

RISC OS Open are the people who coordinate the OS development, and provide downloads for the main target platforms. RISC OS Direct is effectively an alternative “distro” (in Linux terms) for the Pi, which was intended to promote the platform to new people.

Direct comes with more stuff, as you say. The possible “downside” is that it’s been “curated” to one person’s view of what makes a good system, so some of the configuration might be non-standard and differ from the User Guide.

1) The user guide talks about NFS, but on my system !Omni only shows Lan Manager – how do I get NFS – I need !NFSFiler it seems but where do I find that? I can’t get a successful connection to my QNAP NAS using “Lan Manager” so maybe I could do better with NFS.

NFS is in the standard hard disc image, so maybe it’s been missed out of Direct for some reason? Not sure, and I don’t have a Pi to check on.

2) The user guide also mentions !VT220 which would be very useful with my PIDP11 and AltairDuino. Where can I find that?

Never heard of it, but if the User Guide mentions it being present, you would need to look at the standard disc image again. Where does it mention it – I can’t see it in the index?

3) “Discs” on the bar opens Resources:$.Discs but nothing in it. This obviously isn’t like “My Computer” since the SD card isn’t there. What appears in here?

It’s for Access discs, which was Acorn’s networking system (p151 of the User Guide). Having it on the iconbar as standard isn’t helpful, as it isn’t really used by much on modern systems. Servers accessed via Omni don’t appear in it, as don’t local discs – they all show up elsewhere on the iconbar in their own right.

Hopefully one followup question is OK -

I connected a 500GB USB drive to my Riscos running Pi. A drive “4” appeared – but on trying to open I get an error “Error while reading SCSIFS::4.$ – Disc not understood – has it been formatted”.

So I assume that the format is not supported. It’s in NTFS format so that’s not too suprising.

What are my options? What’s the best way to go? Do I format it to FAT32 on another system, or can HFORM format it specifically for RiscOS?

Thanks

The user guide talks about NFS, but on my system !Omni only shows Lan Manager

In !Omni.Files.Startup you can choose which protocols are activated.

It’s in NTFS format so that’s not too suprising.

NTFS isn’t supported!

What are my options? What’s the best way to go? Do I format it to FAT32 on another system, or can HFORM format it specifically for RiscOS?

You can do either. HForm will format it to a Filecore format that RISC OS will read natively (via SCSIFS, counter-intuitively), or you can format it to FAT32 elsewhere and access it via Fat32FS. You can’t do partitions with Filecore, so it’s an either/or choice.

If you only plan to use the disc with RISC OS, then I’d suggest HForm. Otherwise, using FAT32 is probably a better option.

PS. HForm can be a bit scary, and it’s worth reading the prompts carefully before committing to a format. The version in the 5.28 disc image will try to stop you formatting your boot drive, but I’d guess that those changes (which were quite recent) probably aren’t in Direct yet… :-)

PPS. Fat32FS is probably bundled with Direct. If not, see https://sites.google.com/site/jeffreyadoggett/

Thanks Stuart and Steve for the helpful answers.

On !Omni the user guide on RODirect says (in total) “Omniclient is blah blah blah blah blah … TODO: New Chapter.” so I presume this is out of date since my page 177 is about printing. The title page says “Issue 1, March 2016”. I guess I need to look for a newer version. Meanwhile I’ll try what you suggest, thanks Stuart.

Steve the mention of !vt220 is page 171 in my user guide – its a section titled “Networking with non-Acorn computers”.

Is this the ‘RISC OS 5 User Guide’ (with a bird on the title page) or something else?

On !Omni the user guide on RODirect says (in total) “Omniclient is blah blah blah blah blah … TODO: New Chapter.” so I presume this is out of date since my page 177 is about printing.

I thought that Direct has approval to bundle the final PDF of the manual, but it sounds as if they went with an early work-in-progress draft. How useful. :-(

The full guide is this one here – which is in printed form just like the old Acorn ones were. There was talk of possibly making the 5.24 guide free in PDF form once the 5.28 one was out, but I don’t know if that’s still the plan.

the mention of !vt220 is page 171 in my user guide – its a section titled “Networking with non-Acorn computers”.

I can’t find that text in even the old draft of the 5.24 User Guide that I have here – though it does have the full Omniclient chapter, so it must be later than the one you have.

ETA: Got it… It’s text in the old RISC OS 3.5 User Guide, so I suspect it disappeared from the RO5 manual in the subsequent editing. In which case, VT220 presumably never made it into the 32-bit era.

There was talk of possibly making the 5.24 guide free in PDF form once the 5.28 one was out, but I don’t know if that’s still the plan.

The PDF should be freely available.

By all means, charge for a nice printed one. But to not have the system’s user guide available for reading…what madness is that?

Bundled with the RISC OS Direct SD card image is the March 2016 PDF of the User Guide (in Documents.UserManual). It is not included with the ROOL RISC OS 5.28 SD card image.

Bundled with the RISC OS Direct SD card image is the March 2016 PDF of the User Guide

This is one of those WTF situations.

You can freely download iterations of the User Guide from the site when edit/check/revision work is in progress.
You can download a 1GB bundle and ferret out the same guide for no charge.
You can’t get a completed guide from the site and ROOL recommend you read the guide.

Guys, do you really want to make it that hard to find?

It’s like a HGTTG scene. Douglas Adams would love it.

The user guide also mentions !VT220 which would be very useful with my PIDP11 and AltairDuino. Where can I find that?

Not sure about the original !VT220 appliocation. However, David Pilling’s Hearsay does various terminal emulation. Find it at https://www.davidpilling.net/hearsay.html

There was talk of possibly making the 5.24 guide free in PDF form once the 5.28 one was out, but I don’t know if that’s still the plan.

The 5.24 one was available from the miscellaneous downloads page earlier in the year, but it disappeared (probably when 5.28 came out).

Bundled with the RISC OS Direct SD card image is the March 2016 PDF of the User Guide

This is one of those WTF situations.

You can freely download iterations of the User Guide from the site when edit/check/revision work is in progress.
You can download a 1GB bundle and ferret out the same guide for no charge.

Except you can’t… The version in the Direct image (at least the RPCEmu version), is ancient. The section that the other Steve mentions above contains the fun text

TODO! Far too brief, need screenshots & worked examples

and mentions VT220. Then, as already stated, instead of the ten pages of Chapter 16 covering Omni that are in the printed manual beside me, the Direct PDF has Chapter 17 – which carries the Puzzle icon as its header image, and contains merely the following insightful information:

OmniClient is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah TODO! New chapter.

Going by the copyright info, it’s a draft two years older than the final manual. To be honest, given that Direct is supposed to be promoting the platform in a good light, I’m lost for words as to why it was even included.

And yes, it would be really good if the full 5.28 PDF was on this site for free. I’d have argued that the revenue was useful to ROOL, but Steve R¹ said in his London talk the other week that they were being sold at cost. If so, then please make the PDF available.

¹ This is getting confusing. At what point do we need to start allocating quota-based entry visas to Steves thinking of using RISC OS?

The 5.24 one was available from the miscellaneous downloads page earlier in the year, but it disappeared (probably when 5.28 came out).

Just before, that was a clue that 5.28 was due very soon. Other clues followed.

Anyway, more usefully – for people who have a Pi and imaged it with the RISCOS Direct bundle the UserGuide should be in $.Documents.UserGuide if you look.

If you don’t have a Pi imaged with the Direct image and you do have a PC, then grab the RPCEmu Direct bundle from the RPCEmu ‘Easystart bundles’ page

If it were me I’d have put a link to the UserGuide on the desktop, instead of Paint, Edit and Configure – two of which are visible in Apps, as expected, and the latter could be easily added to Apps anyway.
So, remove three icons and add one that’s useful, but I suppose that destroys the fashionable clutter of icons on the desktop.

Anyway, more usefully – for people who have a Pi and imaged it with the RISCOS Direct bundle the UserGuide should be in $.Documents.UserGuide if you look.

Yes, the 2016 draft with “TODO” and “Blah Blah Blah” throughout. It is not the actual User Guide.

Hi,

SteveP: I have the version that comes on the Direct book and have skim-read it at least.

For me, sadly, the printed User Guide is essentially made of unobtainium.

I’m in South Africa. The South African Post Office’s international mail centre is currently a total f*up, as it has been for most of the last 4 or 5 years. The only way to get post into South Africa with any speed and reliability is to use private courier services to ensure that it never gets anywhere near the South African Post Office.

I ordered an item from the US about 2 months ago which unfortunately they sent using “Express Mail Service” with the USPS. Up to now, the SA Post Office has not even scanned it at the Joburg International Mail Centre. It will be lying in a mountain of unsorted mail. I was informed that they are having “operational issues” at JIMC – which is code for “we are pushing mountains of mail around with front-end-loaders”.

It will take between 4 months and never to receive this item. Given that SAPO hasn’t even scanned it at the JIMC after 2 months its not looking good. My only chance is to hassle them weekly and track it every inch of the way since the one thing they do seem to do efficiently is to fail to advise you your parcel is collectable and instead return it to the sender.

SAPO is a member of the Postal Union and participates in EMS Mail – https://www.ems.post/en – they totally fail to meet the standard but ordinary jimmies like me can’t complain to the EMS organisation they just deflect you back the the unanswered email addresses of the SA Post Office.

Brits have the Royal Mail, so I don’t think you understand the challenges and WHY anyone would say “for heaven’s sake, don’t POST it to me”.

So for me it is highly frustrating that there is no digital copy available. When all is said and done it would cost me £50 and months of frustration to get it into my hands so I’d happily pay that £50 to get it as a PDF. Or maybe it could be offered as a Kindle book and then its all DRMed up so protected.

£50 of all profit for whoever currently sells the hard-copy book at cost.

So for me it is highly frustrating that there is no digital copy available.

The PDF you have is the digital copy of the guide, the only difference between the printed copy and the PDF is a quantity of dead tree. In fact I don’t think the paper copy has been reprinted since the 2016 edition, so check the datestamp on the copy in the 5.28 based Direct – it may be the revised 2020 and therefore more up to date than the dead tree.

My concern is that it’s hidden away when it ought to sit on the Miscellaneous downloads page, like it does when active updating is happening.

Even on the Direct image it’s tucked away in a directory in a directory while less useful icons “decorate” the desktop.

In fact I don’t think the paper copy has been reprinted since the 2016 edition

I have a 2018 paper copy.

check the datestamp on the copy in the 5.28 based Direct – it may be the revised 2020

It isn’t. I’ve downloaded Direct just now and it has the 2016 draft with ‘TODO’ notes all through it.

ROOL only made the final user guide freely available a couple of weeks after RISC OS Direct was finalised/released – between 2018 and 2020 it was locked behind a physical (paper) paywall. I am actually surprised any userguide was included – where was it in the image, please? The Pi4 update will include the current version now that it is no longer being restricted.

Perhaps the User Guide should be publicised by placing it on display in an unlit cellar in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’. The cover picture could be changed to show a leopard rather than a parrot.

where was it in the image, please?

As in earlier post:

Anyway, more usefully – for people who have a Pi and imaged it with the RISCOS Direct bundle the UserGuide should be in $.Documents.UserGuide if you look.

I had a look at the RPCEmu bundle for that info – no operational Pi (still not cleared the computer room bedroom 4 er, junk room)

Andrew:

> ROOL only made the final user guide freely available a couple of weeks after RISC OS Direct was finalised/released

If its available somewhere I’d be much obliged to receive a link to where?

SteveP as to RODirects approach and access to docs:

Well I had no trouble finding the user guide and did read it. I was a user and developer on Archmedes (I did what I believe was the original port of Binkleyterm for Archimedes for instance). I went looking and found a reference back in 1990 Fidonet news). But I’ve forgotten a lot after 30 years of Unix mostly. It was easy to find the Documents directory and the UserGuide in there and I did read it which is where my questions mostly arose.

I think its legit to say this:

• Why put the “Discs” app up since it doesn’t do anything useful for 99% of people it seems – just confused me.
• Up to date user guide would be great – a nice app to present it if Netsurf is not good enough web browser would be fantastic
• It would have been great to have a “what’s different about RISC OS on Pi” document to refer to to cover the main points.
• A page collating links to Internet resources in one place would be awesome.
• I don’t remember desktop icons as a RISCOS thing – is !Pinboard a more recent addition? So I could also do within the icons on the desktop

Steve (D)

(Wifisheep’s videos are helpful).

Why put the “Discs” app up since it doesn’t do anything useful for 99% of people it seems

It is useful for me. My ARMX6 has its harddisc shared. I can therefore see it from any other machine in Discs.

Up to date user guide would be great

Agree. Also it would be nice to have an app to display it. Like Organiser does for example – a laid flat side by side page display with turned up corners to turn the page. Like many on-line catalogues.