New to Risc OS - Is there a hard disk image?

Hi all,

I recently purchased a RiscPC 700 (with a 710, RiscOS 3.60, CD-ROM and Floppy drive) and unfortunately its hard drive died before I could do any sort of back up to it.

Now I want to install a fresh Risc OS but I don’t seem to be able to figure out how: I am totally new to this OS (but have experience with other retro computers and linux)

Initially I found !HForm somewhere on the web and used it to format an 8GB CF. But When I chose “Other” on the type of the hard drive I would get an error message, so I had to choose the biggest Connor drive from the options (63MB I think). The OS sees that CF on IDE but now I am struggling to do anything else… I don’t seem to be able to make the CD-ROM work (with the initial hard drive that died I could run Configure and increase the number of CD ROMs, from the shell (F12) I don’t know how).

So my only hope is to find a hard disk image with the OS installed (not the files…) to be able to boot properly. Or a program like Raspberry Pi Imager that can install the OS for my RiscPC 700. Or at least an installation floppy (or set). But I cannot find anything on the web.

Anyone can help? Thanks!

Go to http://www.riscos.com/ftp_space/360/index.htm and download the archives “SparkFS”, “Part1”, “Part2” and “Unarchive”.

SparkFS installation instructions are here

Once you’ve installed SparkFS, use that to unpack the other archives. Start with “Unarchive”, as that contains further instructions for constructing the !Boot directory.

Would this work for the CDROM? (Press F12 for a command line.)

configure CDROMDrives 1

A lot of early CDROM drives were quite non standard and may require a specific CDFS driver module.

Post deleted as no longer relevant

Thank you all for your replies! Unfortunately ‘configure CDROMDrives 1’ doesn’t work, with ‘help configure’ I don’t see it although with its original hard drive it was there… I suppose because the driver was installed on the hard drive. Now I have yet another problem to solve, finding that driver :-( Or maybe if I build the standard image hopefully I will be able to configure it…

About Stuart’s suggestion: I see the downloads are more than 720kb so I cannot move them with floppies into the RiscPC so I assume I will need to use an emulator to build the image? Or am I missing something?

I see the downloads are more than 720kb so I cannot move them with floppies into the RiscPC

The Risc PC floppy drive can read high-density floppies. Hence the 1.4MB zip file can be transferred by using a 1.44MB DOS-format floppy.

Yes! Somehow I assumed wrongly 720kb… Ok… I made some progress but still no cigar…

I used 1.44MB discs formatted as DOS 1.44 on my RiscPC. Downloaded the previously mentioned files on my PC, copied them in the floppies and then from the floppies moved them to my 63MB formatted CF. Now I made SPARKFS/BIN Absolute (&FF8) as described in the instructions (and confirmed it going through the file menu twice) and then I double clicked it. It failed to run with an error “Application may have gone wrong”. When I hit continue nothing happens. Describe says “No writable memory at this address”. Don’t know what this means but I have 8MB RAM installed and 1MB VRAM.

I tried the same running SPARKFS/BIN from the floppy and even from RAM Disk but the result was the same. Thoughts?

Open the task manager (icon on the far right of the screen). You’ll see lots of memory allocations listed.

Two of them will be labelled “Next” and “Free”. Next is probably something like 640K.

Go to the right hand side of the coloured (red?) bar beside the Next and click-drag it further to the right. The amount of memory allocated to Next should grow. When it’s around 4MB or so (doesn’t need to be exact), let go of the mouse button and then run SparkFS again.

This is an easy problem to forget about as modern RISC OS can fiddle the Next size to fit the program you’re trying to run, but the older versions (as on the RiscPC) were not so smart.

PS: I would suggest you try to get yourself a set of RISC OS 3.7 ROMs. Of course, CJE has some in stock: http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/micros/individual/newprodpages/prodinfo.php?prodcode=ACO-RO370

Thanks Rick! I did that and made another step forward: I got SparkFS installed on my hard drive! :-) But when I ran it I got an error “System Resources not found”. I did a search and found this which was similar: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3350 I commented out the line and bingo! I got SparkFS running. I decompressed everything and it all worked. Most importantly I found now a !HForm that is newer and I can now format my hard drive to a bigger size than 63MB!!! But now I need to spend some time with the family… I will report back the progress in a few hours. Excellent support! THANK YOU! And wow… RiscOS is very interesting… Much of a character, I have a lot to learn!!!

By the way… If I used a StrongARM card instead of a 710 on my 700 with 3.70 ROMs will it work? I am considering purchasing RiscOS 5.28 ROMs… But initially I want to get my hands dirty a little bit before I do this jump… Learn and understand the old before I go to the new, so that I can appreciate it better.

I am having a blast! I have my CF built, the CDROM now works (if I am not mistaken CDFS was added from the !Boot addition) and on top of that I found the software for my Aleph One PC Card and I can now also boot it. Again, a big thanks to all!

By the way… If I used a StrongARM card instead of a 710 on my 700 with 3.70 ROMs will it work?

Yes, the SA card should work from RO 3.70 onwards. If you install an SA CPu card on your RiscPC and need to run old games, you’ll probably need StrongGuard software or try to find the SA collections of patched games.

I am considering purchasing RiscOS 5.28 ROMs… But initially I want to get my hands dirty a little bit before I do this jump… Learn and understand the old before I go to the new, so that I can appreciate it better.

If you’re considering purchasing RO 5.28 for the RiscPC, please note that it will reduce the compatibility with expansion podules and software. You’ll need Aemulor then to continue running old software (and for games probably best to use ADFFS).

Why not use RO 5.28 on a Raspberry Pi instead?

Why not use RO 5.28 on a Raspberry Pi instead?

That is what I did. I have never regretted it.

In my opinion, by far the better option. I then sold the Risc PC.

Ok, great information Paolo Fabio, that makes things a bit more complicated than what I was thinking…

I am a big lover of old computers, I have a room full of those and I use them a lot on my spare time. I play games (still love the pixelation!) but I also like to mess with the operating systems… They used to have personality those days. So I doubt I will sell my Risc PC any time soon… :-) But there is a possibility I get RO 5.28 on a Raspberry Pi too at some point…

Ok, great information Paolo Fabio, that makes things a bit more complicated than what I was thinking…

You could look at housing a Pi in the spare space in the RPC, then you can continue using the PC Card on the 26 bit OS¹ and use the Pi for new software.

IIRC RISCOSBits do something called a Pi-Pod which is a mounting and connection kit.

¹ The PC card software has not been updated for use in 32 bit systems

Like this ?

But there is a possibility I get RO 5.28 on a Raspberry Pi too at some point…

Just throw my €0,02 here…

You can get a Pi sorted for less than the cost of any second hand Acorn era kit.
(and with hardware like an HDMI to VGA adapter, you can recycle your monitor, or a cheap old flat panel device)

The Pi, any model, will run rings around any Acorn era hardware. I mean, roadrunner dust trail style.

It also runs on a lot less power. This matters now that energy prices have gone gonzo. My Pi 1 and an LCD screen are currently running off a big battery (15,000mAh I think) as a thunderstorm passed through earlier. Been on 151 minutes (TIME reports 910445), battery is at 76%.

Access to modern USB hardware. No trying to find odd mice or fixing an old keyboard. No keeping ancient floppies going. It’ll happily work with a USB stick.

While you may lose some software (Aemulor could help), the look and feel and behaviour and API is largely unchanged, so it’s like you remember… just turbocharged, dipped in chocolate, and with a cherry on top.

Really, unless there’s a specific reason to keep the RiscPC running, look at a Pi.
It’s an inexpensive entry point into what RISC OS can do in the 21st century.

Really, unless there’s a specific reason to keep the RiscPC running, look at a Pi.
It’s an inexpensive entry point into what RISC OS can do in the 21st century.

I second that.

I have a Risc PC, but the only thing I’ve used it for in many years is as a monitor stand. My main desktop machine is a Raspberry Pi.

Hey Joseph,

I am a big lover of old computers

Ha! many here are (as you’ve probably noticed). I have a full rack filled with many Acorn RISC OS systems from my first Archimedes (circa 1988) and then most of the subsequent models Acorn has ever produced, and I still use them to test some of my code or when I feel nostalgic, but that’s it.

My RISC OS development system is a mini.m machine, my always-on RISC OS system is a Raspberry Pi 3B+, I also use a Panda Board, Wandaboards and created a full cluster of Raspberry Pis running RISC OS for AI and very large math computations.

RISC OS 5.28 on Pis are absolute fun, I am even using one for some of the NASA Open APIs and another to calcoulate some stuff for Biochemestry like Ionic Strenght or kinetic parameters calcoulation for enzime reactions.

I do not have much time to code on RO (due day job), but one of the things I really wish to do is proper MIDI composition on RO 5, I know RO 5 could be a good platform for it, for many reasons. Oh well, if I win the lottery and won’t need to work anymore, then I’d definitely would spend full time on RO 5 and a bunch of PIs.

Recently I also managed to have my RO interconnecting and using cloud based AI engines for human language interpretation, it’s a simulation obviously, but it’s total fun to have a WIMP app talking back to you like it would be some kind of “eccentric human” lol

Oh and obviously I am coding stuff to improve the Desktop experience, which has been left a bit too much behind IMHO (no offence, just can’t bother anymore with the old ancestral ways of the 80s early desktops).

So, I definitely recommend to use RO 5 on a Pi and echo all the others here. Good luck and have fun! :)

Just for interest, here are the ROMark stats for an original Pi 1 running at 1GHz:

RISCOSmark 2.04 (30-Dec-2015) by Richard Spencer 2003
Comparison with RiscPC SA 202MHz running RISC OS 4.02 800×600,256
(HD benchmarks are in kilobytes/sec)

MOS Utilities 5.28 (19 Oct 2020)
FileSwitch 2.87 (12 Oct 2019)
C Library 6.08 (05 Sep 2020)
USBDriver 1.31 (04 Jul 2020)
FileCore 3.75 (06 Jul 2017)
Shared Sound 1.20 (18 Jun 2016)
SCSIFS 1.36 (19 Aug 2020)
LanManFS 2.66 (31 Aug 2020)
ShareFS 3.60 (07 Mar 2020) Access+
SharedUnixLibrary 1.16 (3 Apr 2020) © UnixLib Developers, 2001-2020
LanMan98 2.06 (15 Oct 2015) CIFS client.
HAL-based system (BCM2835 VDU device) tested at Tue,07 Dec 2021.20:30:05
Filing system: SDFS – CSD not set
Graphics Resoloution: 1920×1080, 16M colours

Test Benchmark
Processor – Looped instructions (cache) 715264 402%
Memory – Multiple register transfer 2757 1701%
Rectangle Copy – Graphics acceleration test 1453 600%
Icon Plotting – 16 colour sprite with mask 14597 729%
Draw Path – Stroke narrow line 5714 366%
Draw Fill – Plot filled shape 4560 312%
Draw Render – Render draw file 5841 644%
HD Read – Block load 8MB file 22140 742%
HD Write – Block save 8MB file 3740 122%
FS Read – Byte stream file in 516 249%
FS Write – Byte stream file out 44 22%

Bear in mind that this applies while running a 1920 × 1080 display in 16M colour, which no RISC PC could get anywhere near. I like the Pi 1 as a RISC OS machine: it is single-core, so no wasted CPU resources, the graphics performance under RO is comparable to later Pi’s, and mine runs happily at 1000 MHz. But the Pi 4 is broadly 4-5 times faster in real-world performance!

Like this ?

A perusal of that link suggests that I appear to have found a spare hyphen and inserted it.

Bear in mind that this applies while running a 1920 × 1080 display in 16M colour, which no RISC PC could get anywhere near.

Another vote for the Pi.

Never mind 3840×2160 in 16M colours, which is no trouble at all for a Pi4 (at 50 or 60Hz).

Ha ha ha!!! A lot of Pi enthusiasts too! That’s what I call “a vibrant community” :-) I get it guys… I had no doubt a Raspberry Pi is much cheaper and much more powerful than the RiscPC 700 I purchased! But quite honestly I don’t care :-) I have a (relatively) big room full of old computers and consoles (80s and 90s) and I am extremely happy with my RiscPC. I like my games and my deskrop pixelized. In fact I enjoy putting my beloved machines on my large desk, connect them all on a PS/2 + VGA KVM, hunt and/or construct converters for their mice, keyboards and weird video out connectors and fix dead and old computers that people throw out of their lofts, basements and garages. Will I ever run RiscOS on a Raspberry Pi? Very likely! As I said I find the OS very interesting and with character. Will I ever replace my RiscPC? Pretty unlikely in the next couple of years at least :-) BTW… I just installed a 64MB stick… Now I feel like a king!!!