RISC OS 5.20 on RiscPC: Castle USB podule and floppy drive problems and !PC cards

This is my first post on here, as I’ve been away from the RISC OS scene for a few years now. I’ve just recently upgraded my old StrongARM RiscPC to RISC OS 5.20 (full rom upgrade, from RISC OS 4.39). Everything went fine, except for a couple of things, and was wondering if anyone on this forum would be able to help me.

Firstly, I have a Castle USB podule, which I bought new around 2005. It worked fine with RO 4.39, but when it’s fitted with RO 5.20, the machine powers on but doesn’t boot up. Before writing this post I had a poke around the forum, and it seems that Castle wrote the USB stack themselves and is completely different from the Iyonix USB stack. I only ever used it for a USB mouse and a Canon IP 4000 printer, which has a parallel port as well anyway, so it’s not too much of a loss if I can’t get it to work. However, if anyone knows of any driver’s out there, that would be a great help.

Secondly, the floppy disc drive doesn’t work, there’s power going to the drive, but it doesn’t initialise on startup (i.e. make that weird sound with the light coming on briefly). It worked fine in RO 4.39, but not in RO 5, even with swapping the cables and connectors around and messing with the jumper switch on the back. It’s the original drive fitted by Acorn (made by Sony). It also completely fails to appear anywhere on the iconbar, even after messing around with the settings in !Configure. Anyone else had a similar experience, is this normal?

Lastly, do the old Gemini II PC cards work with RISC OS 5.20? Did Aleph One ever make the software 32 bit compatible?

Apart from that, RISC OS 5.20 is an improvement over RISC OS 4.39, Thanks to everyone who helped develop it!

Oliver

Firstly, I have a Castle USB podule

This was discussed recently but I can imagine it’d be quite a hairy challenge, and perhaps not worth the bother for so few USB podules. If it’s only a mouse you’re using it for perhaps buy a PS/2 to Acorn adapter instead?

the floppy disc drive doesn’t work, there’s power going to the drive, but it doesn’t initialise on startup

Run !Configure and check the discs plugin. You may need to tell it there’s a floppy installed (which in turn does *CONFIGURE Floppies 1).

do the old Gemini II PC cards work with RISC OS 5.20? Did Aleph One ever make the software 32 bit compatible?

The source code is available, I’m surprised nobody’s updated it for RISC OS 5 as an intellectual exercise. I can’t think of any reason off hand why it wouldn’t work.

The trouble is that so few people bought the Castle USB podule in the first place, and, of those, so few are still using it. If someone did the work, there are probably only about three people in the world who would benefit.

If it’s only a mouse you’re using it for perhaps buy a PS/2 to Acorn adapter instead?

I suspect most users of the podule will be happily using USB mice and PS/2 versions aren’t as common these days. Then again I don’t suppose RPC’s are as common these days.

The source code is available, I’m surprised nobody’s updated it for RISC OS 5 as an intellectual exercise. I can’t think of any reason off hand why it wouldn’t work.

One thing that does come to mind is the old GuardDD utility to guard against accidental deletion of “DOS partition” files. Would something similar be of use on the Pi?

BTW casually throwing the code at a compiler (old one on RPCEmu) you get nice errors like:

Expecting or but found ‘…’

Of which the ARM info centre document says:

This can occur for a number of different reasons, for example:
1) C2322E: Expecting or but found ‘“C”’
is reported when attempting to compile some C++ header files (e.g. stdcomp.h) with the C compiler instead of the C++ compiler.
2) after an earlier error e.g. missing semicolon, or bracket.

I’m guessing there’s no C++, in which case there’s a missing semi-colon or bracket…

InstallPC compiles (almost 32 bit clean), as does the DivaCode (with quite a few non-32 bit elements, but at least the compiler doesn’t have a paddy as with the main app)

The question is how many people want to run a 486/586 based PC card to run Win95(at a push)?

One thing that does come to mind is the old GuardDD utility to guard against accidental deletion of “DOS partition” files. Would something similar be of use on the Pi?

Good idea, I think it should be in all builds using SDFS and hopefully also Moves of the DOS partition could be blocked.

The trouble is that so few people bought the Castle USB podule in the first place, and, of those, so few are still using it. If someone did the work, there are probably only about three people in the world who would benefit.

On a par with people who still use the Yellowstone RAPIDE drive controller I suppose.

The question is how many people want to run a 486/586 based PC card to run Win95(at a push)?

I’d be very happy if !PCPro was running under RISC OS 5.
That software is the last reason for not making the switch from 4.39 on my Risc PC…

The source code is available, I’m surprised nobody’s updated it for RISC OS 5 as an intellectual exercise. I can’t think of any reason off hand why it wouldn’t work.

BTW casually throwing the code at a compiler (old one on RPCEmu) you get nice errors like:
Expecting or but found ‘…’
Of which the ARM info centre document says:
This can occur for a number of different reasons, for example:
1) C2322E: Expecting or but found ‘“C”’
is reported when attempting to compile some C++ header files (e.g. stdcomp.h) with the C compiler instead of the C++ compiler.
2) after an earlier error e.g. missing semicolon, or bracket.
I’m guessing there’s no C++, in which case there’s a missing semi-colon or bracket…

Or indeed it was written for an older compiler and -Ec in the options will suppress the errors related to the legacy items, to then allow you to see some of the other errors (commenting out the CD control options then allows MOST of !PC elements to compile – something in that generates the show stopper above)
Then you have the PCSupport and PC_IO modules not building since the makefile calls aasm for that bit.
For some reason the text in the source suggests the PCSupport was converted from C to assembler (with nice 26 bit stuff)

Some of it now builds – with non-32 bit elements littered through. PCDevHelp, PCMem, PCNE2 seem to build clean. RunImage is littered with 26 bit code, some modules don’t build (as above)

“…as an intellectual exercise” Hmmm, interesting definition of exercise.

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies.

I stopped using my RPC for serious work around 2008 and now use Ubuntu linux. I upgraded my RPC to 5.20 more out of interest than anything. I do plan on buying an RPi to run RISC OS, but not in the immediate future.

I understand regarding the Castle USB card. Even Castle themselves stopped support for it long ago.

Regarding the mouse, I decided to use a Trust branded serial mouse. The Acorn to PS/2 adapter is a good idea, but PS/2 mice are kinda becoming legacy now too.

Its no loss that the PC card doesn’t work. I used to run Win 95 on it but not for anything serious, and I can still access the ‘Drive_C’ partition in RISC OS 5, so am able to pull any docs off of it.

It’s great that RISC OS 5 runs on second gen Acorn machines, having a standardised version of RISC OS across all hardware made in the last 20 years or so. However, much of the above issues are legacy problems and I assume time would be better spent porting RISC OS to current hardware than messing around with legacy USB cards that are probably in use by 5 people worldwide :P

Thanks for all your help,

Oliver.

Its no loss that the PC card doesn’t work.

That, I suppose, depends on how much difficult to convert 26 bit assembler there is.

Sprow may be right, at least in one aspect: twiddling with this has given me an insight into how make files hang together. Whether anything will work at the end of things remains to be seen.
It’s a relaxation, away from networking.

Just out of curiosity, did something come out of this? :)

Thanks and kind regards,
Stephan