Installing RO5

Hi all,

I’ve been trying to install RISC OS 5.20 on a real Risc PC, which has 4.39 ROMS installed. I had no problem getting it installed on RPCemu, but then it was if 5.20 were not softloaded.

I’ve downloaded the HardDisc4 archive and put that onto a blank drive. After booting, it complained that CallASWI was not present, so I went off and found the PlingSystem archive and merged that into the new !Boot structure, and rebooted. I was then informed that support for RISC OS 4.39 is not present and would not boot…and I haven’t even got as far as putting the RO5 softloader on.

Am I missing something here?
I can’t see any other archives on the site that would ‘fill in the gaps’. I even took the 4xxHook directories from a 4.39 install I had, but to no avail.

Cheers,

Gerald.

and I haven’t even got as far as putting the RO5 softloader on.

I have not tried this, so could be speaking rubbish….. However, I suspect that trying a RISC OS 5 boot on a RISC OS 4 system (and vice versa) might be…problematic. For sure, you ought to be able to run both versions on the same machine with a unified boot, if you pick apart the boot stuff to see what’s what (not the simplest of things) but for now, it might be best to install each version with its specific boot and rename the one you aren’t using to keep it out of the way. Once you have both setups running well on your machine, then you can look to merging everything together.

can’t see any other archives on the site that would ‘fill in the gaps’. I even took the 4xxHook directories from a 4.39 install I had, but to no avail.

Starting with the HardDisc4 download is most of what you need. For pre RISC OS 5 systems you’ll need to copy in the contents of PlingSystem as you spotted.

There is embryonic support for RISC OS 4.3x in !Boot in CVS, but this got pulled in the freeze for 5.20 because of lack of time to test it any more than “yeah, that booted”. I’ve put the contents of RO430Hook online temporarily.

For the purposes of getting to the point of softloading that’s hook directory is probably good enough. I should add that ROOL can ship you 5.20 in physical ROMs in exchange for a few bank notes .

But beware: the ROxxxHook contents are copied over in a one shot event, so dual booting could require some extra tinkering. This was always the case with Acorn, if you owned a 3.60 system, shutdown and replaced the ROMs with 3.70, you’d need to run !ResetBoot to get the new bits installed – they don’t change on the fly. Likewise Choices/Boot for 4.39 and 5.20.

Cheers for that – I’ll try it out later on.

I have seriously considered purchasing the ROMs. I’ve also looked at getting the SCSI upgrade as well…but I have a Castle SCSI card, so I’d need to source an Acorn one – on my main machine I’m having troubles trying to get everything working with 6.20, in particular the SCSI card! I thought that an upgraded SCSI card might just work with 6.20 as well as 5.20…but that’s another story.