Help getting RiscPC working.

Hello,

About a year ago I dug out my old RiscPC from the loft and started to play about with RO 5 softload. At that time I did notice it seemed very slow to get to the desktop, even without softloading RO 5 and after doing a power-on-Delete to clear the CMOS. Probably a good minute before getting a usable desktop. I’m sure it shouldn’t be quite that slow?

When I got it out the lift again a few weeks ago I cleaned up the battery as it had gone a bit fuzzy, hooked it up to a fairly old Dell LCD monitor and again after a power-on-Delete it booted. Very slow to boot again. Even opening Apps took a long time. Powered it off and left it for a few days.

This time when I powered it up I didn’t get anything on the monitor. It received a signal (went from standby to on) but nothing. I could hear the POST beeps and the keyboard was working. So again did a power-on-Delete, let it boot, hit Escape several times and then blindly typed *Configure commands to change the MonitorType, Mode and played about with Sync. Eventually I got “something” but not what I was expecting:

I removed everything from the RiscPC. Floppy drive, HDD, CDROM any podules but still the same issue (including the slowness).

I found that if I removed the 2Mb VRAM the display was more readable but still not perfect. I tried removing and swapping around the 2x 32Mb RAM modules, trying different combinations of RAM and VRAM but still can’t get it perfect.

So I’m assuming some hardware has failed somewhere? Has anyone seen this before or got any suggestions?

Thanks.

I’m sure it shouldn’t be quite that slow?

I think it depends what you are loading? As it happens, I powered up my RiscPC on Monday, to make an archive of my old ARCbbs installation (hands up if you remember TWoC!) and it took about a minute to load up all the rubbish. That’s off three different aging hard discs.

It first powered up saying the Command "IconSprites" not found. So it reset the CMOS and it started up, albeit without the CD-ROM.

I cleaned up the battery as it had gone a bit fuzzy,

I ought to do that. Problem is, the base unit is under a pile of stuff, none of which is easy to deal with. God only knows what state the A5000 is in, too.
Maybe this summer I’ll dig those machines out and see what the damage it.

Thankfully the A310 ought to be okay (AA cells with a diode) if a decade of dampness hasn’t rusted it. And the A3000 had its battery removed years ago.

hooked it up to a fairly old Dell LCD monitor and again after a power-on-Delete it booted.

Does the monitor work with a different computer? I have mom’s old IBM monitor which claims to be 14" but is such a piece of crap, the screen has about 1.5" black borders around the edges. It was blurry, uneven brightness, and needed a hairdryer poked in the back before I saw anything at all (instead of a continual ticking).

So, just check that it’s not the monitor. ;-)

Very slow to boot again. Even opening Apps took a long time.

Hmm… Check what FontSize is set to. If your font area is zero, then it would need to load and generate a font character definition over and over and over.
I ran the A3000 demo software on the emulator the other day, and it unkindly killed the font cache, so drawing anything on the desktop took forever but luckily I remembered this from when I was insane enough to do DTP on a 1Mb floppy-only A3000 (damn, Ovation was good!).

several times and then blindly typed *Configure commands to change the MonitorType, Mode and played about with Sync. Eventually I got “something” but not what I was expecting:

What are your monitor type and sync set to now? Do you know what mode you are in? Try MODE 28 (*Configure WimpMode 28), it might be something as simple as your settings specify a multisync monitor instead of VGA, and you’re in a mode that is clocking too slowly for the monitor to cope with.

This could be consistent with the CMOS being reset. Yeah, setting up monitors is a pain. But on the plus side, Acorn hardware was always quite versatile in what it could output. I do not imagine your computer just flaked out one day, that would be poor luck indeed. More likely a configuration needs to be fine-tuned.

Hope this helps.

Does the monitor work with a different computer?

Quite likely – it looks like a DELL model circa 2007-2008, probably a 17 inch unit (I don’t recall the 19 inch units having those wide mouldings). Our guys have been ditching no end of those 17’s recently. The generic MDF, 640 × 480 should produce a working display.

Isn’t the sync bit covered by *configure sync 0
??

re: slow boot – I’ve played with the RPC 600 a bit in recent months and it feels like hours to boot, the SA box is much faster but still slow compared to the dinky little beasties just 6 foot away.

So this is… what? This okay?

*Configure Sync 0
*Configure MonitorType 4
*Configure WimpMode 28
*Configure FontMax 256K

Then hit Ctrl-Break to reboot.

but still slow compared to the dinky little beasties just 6 foot away.

Well, yeah, I noticed. ;-)

Though, to be honest, the biggest impediment for me was that the older machines can only talk to the world via 10baseT. Well. I s’pose I could attempt to burn a CD? Haven’t burned a CD on RISC OS in over a decade. Not even sure the SCSI ribbon is even hooked up.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll see if I can find another monitor to try, along with those *Configure commands.

As for the speed, maybe I just remember the RPC being lightening fast compared to PCs of the time but I’m probably comparing the boot speed now to the likes of my MacBook :)

Hopefully all is not lost.