Getting screen resolution to work on IY s/l 5.20

I have a soft-loaded Desktop on a new HardDisc5 which is identical to the RO 5.16 Desktop on my regular HardDisc4, except for the Auto screen mode. Any re-configured mode is immediately forgotten and I just don’t undestand why, having followed the steps as outlined by Steve Reville. I also read the articles by David Pitt and Cris Hall on:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/2013

where they had the same problem.

Using a new and separate HHD (Master on the second bus), I had started with the vanilla !Boot from Rool’s ‘HardDisc4/5/20’, and followed the ‘official’ reconfiguring process, not doing it by hand. But clearly, due to frustration, I have both added to various directories and reversed them, so now I’m sure it’s a mess and I’ll have to start over again.

Could an expert make a script for !Reporter to list the boot sequence? This is as much for my own education as for finding a solution.

But as an immediate solution maybe I could see a list of the contents of successful PreDesk and Tasks directories, and also where some of the contents of the 5.16 PreDesk should be placed?

You can use the *spool command…

Create a obey with !Edit content

*Spool bootmessages

inside. Name it !!!!Spoolstart and a second one with

*Spool

inside. Name it Spoolend.

The first take to
!Boot.Choices.boot.predesk (!!!!… it shouldt be the first file in predesk)
and the second to
!Boot.Choices.boot.tasks (Or start it by hand if you see the desktop.)

After reboot you find a textfile named bootmessages in the root of your drive. All screenmessages are stored in the file.

Any re-configured mode is immediately forgotten and I just don’t undestand why,

check the content of the file !Boot.Choices.Boot.Predesk.Configure.Monitor immediately after you make a working change and before a reboot. If there are no vertical bar characters at the start of the lines then set the file permissions to stop all writes.
Reboot and see how things go.

Could an expert make a script for !Reporter to list the boot sequence?

It does not need a script to do that … just customisation. See the help manual for how to start !Reporter at boot. If that does not make sense, please contact me directly (see help file) with an indication of your level of RISC OS experience and I will try to help.

This is as much for my own education as for finding a solution.

It is certainly a good way to see how the many commands are issued at boot!

Thank you Raik – I don’t have complete understanding:
I create a file with ‘name’
in the file I type: *Spool bootmessages
next line: !!!!Spoolstart
save it as an Obey file

I create a second file with ‘name’
in the file I type: *Spool
next line I type: Spoolend
save it as an Obey file

as you see, I’m not with it ;-)

If you do correct my files, what would I expect to see? A useful series of messages?

At the moment I get a binary dump.

When first I was configuring the Desktop, there were umpteen error messages. After many corrections I now have a clean boot – everything works – DHCP, the internet, progs that I have so far tested.
Just the Desktop to fix.

Steve;
still the same Auto screen mode.
Configure dir seems to be over-written: there are no Configures in 520Hook, 510Hook or 500Hook and the first one is a RPC one with VRAM in Hook400. However I have tried putting Configure (the dir) in each one of those in turn.
ADFS::HardDisc5.$.!Boot.RO500Hook.Res has the two: !Configure and dir Configure

These are the files in PreDesk:
!!SoftLoad
dir Configure
SetUpNet

These are in Tasks:
!Boot, type Desktop
*FlrSetup
*IcnClipBrd
*Pinboard
*PinSetup
*ScrnSetup
*TimeSetup

Would you, and everyone running 5.20, have the same set?

Excuse my bad english.

!!!!spoolstart and spoolend are the names of the obey.

Both contain only the spool command.

For start:
|open a file and save all screenoutput
*spool bootmessages

For end:
|close the file bootmessages
*spool

Have you open the binary dump with !Edit?
The messages are text, the chars of graphical output ignore.

Edit: You can also use my boot_spool .
The spoolfile is default set to text.

These are the files in PreDesk:
!!SoftLoad
dir Configure
SetUpNet

Can you post the contents of !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk.Configure.!Run.

Success!!
Many thanks to you all, in reverse order :-)

David Pitt:
The Run file was missing this line /BootResources:Configure.ClrMonitor

but that was not all —

Raik
your bootmessages were compared, one from HD5 and the other from HD4, the well-behaved one.
The good file told me I had to put DALimit and SoftSCSI into PreDesk. David’s PreD doesn’t include SoftSCSI, so probably it’s not neccessary. I presume the above ClrMonitor line cleared the ‘VIDCBandwidthLimit not found’ error.

Martin Avison: Intensive reading of the Help files has at last got me understanding !Reporter. I was delighted when the red banner showed up, so Stage One, well and good. On the Desktop, though I could see the window scrolling, but at the end of booting, that window went blank. New lines appeared as I searched in RAM, Root et al. On the other hand, HD4 produced a wonderful file, with the self same configuration.

I will continue to experiment, after I’ve had a month’s rest, and repo~ err come back to you.

:—)

…but at the end of booting, that window went blank.

Do you meant totally blank? Even when scrolled? That should not be possible!!

New lines appeared as I searched in RAM, Root et al. On the other hand, HD4 produced a wonderful file, with the self same configuration.

Not sure what you are referring to here: ‘Searching’ & ‘HD4’ do not produce lines in Reporter by themselves. Commands and Errors are the normal things which produce Reporter output.
What settings are you using in Customisation for Boot and BootLog?

Martin, yes, that window opens the moment the Boot sequence produces the desktop, and that window shows line after line of Wimp details, while the Icon Bar loads up and the Netsurf Welcome window is being drawn (booted by the Boot Run), all taking quite long enough time to observe the scrolling lines. But the moment the Desktop is complete, the content of the window vanishes. If you suggest that scrolling up several pages would reveal content, well that may be true, but that was the first time I had seen a Reporter window in action. I dearly wanted to see what the Startup sequence was up to, so I repeated the process twice more, to no avail.

I then closed Reporter, put in place the bootmessages files and got a good looking file which I saved.
All on HardDisk5, which sits on the second bus as Master.

Then I connect the power to HardDisc4, and I power up so I now have two harddiscs on the icon bar, run Reporter, with the exact same confuration, on HardDisc4 and first time get a lovely long file with clean sequence and no error message. However, as I didn’t have a similar file for HD5 to compare that against, I closed Reporter and installed the bootmessages files. In an instant the problem on HD5 was solved.
Two marvellous new skills for me.

The Reporter configurations for Boot and Bootlog were the same as outlined in the Help files.

Following on with the story next morning:
booting from HardDisc5…

Running Reporter in a successfully reformed Boot-ing in RO 5.20, it can be observed that the window is recording the final steps of running the icon bar components. As soon as the last item completes (the Netsurf window), the contents of the Reporter window vanish.

There is no scrolling of the window as it is empty.

Saving from that Reporter window produces a file in RAM, with two lines:
Reporter 2.66d (11 Feb 2012) List Sun 14th Sep 2014 09:44
Reporter 2.66d (11 Feb 2012) Listed 0 lines

HTH

The latest released Reporter is v2.67a – that may make a difference. If not, please email me.