The FAQ says, double click !Boot …

… okay, thought the newbie, I can handle that.

Well … how can I explain it now … it doesn’t do anything. RiscPC 600 with SA200, RiscOS 4.02, boots fine from harddisk, I can start !Edit, and !Paint and some stuff. I can trigger the CLI and BASIC, all good. But I can’t seem to configure my system (time, keyboard, and finally an IP address) when I can’t open !Boot, right?

Any help is appreciated.

I presume you’re double clicking with the left button of the mouse?

I can’t seem to configure my system (time, keyboard, and finally an IP address) when I can’t open !Boot

There could be several underlying causes, depending on what symptoms you are seeing. For example:

• Nothing happens
  Most likely the machine had previously been used in a classroom, or you have been given a “classroom” version of !Boot (i.e. with the !Configure application removed).

• An error message appears
  Either it’s a “classroom” machine (as above) or someone/something has messed about with the !Configure application (inside !Boot) so that it won’t work.

• The machine locks up
  A rather more severe case of “messing about with !Configure”. For example, someone may have shoehorned in a version of !Configure that is unsuitable for RISC OS 4.02.

The obvious fix for most of these would be to get a “full” version of !Boot, for example “RO4 Install” from www.riscos.com and use that to replace !Boot (I suggest you move the existing !Boot out of the way – this allows you to regress to the old !Boot if the new !Boot doesn’t work at all).

Für den Fall das wir uns verstehen ;-), kontaktiere mich über www.riscos.berlin.

It happened really “nothing”, so perhaps my !Boot is locked or empty. I tried to follow the advice to go for a new copy of !Boot out of RO4 Install but how do I transfer 4.6 MB to my mainly empty RiscPC? It has !SparkFS installed, fortunately, but otherwise it’s empty.

I attached a Fujitsu DynaMO 1.3 GB IDE MO drive to the onboard IDE port, as Slave. It has not been recognised my !SICK (“Slave not present”). I had 540 MB (512 Bytes/sect) FAT16 formatted medium in there. Can’t “see” it.

Next newbie error, I guess …

Any other hints how to get the file onto the RiscPC? Didn’t want to burn a CD just for that (and would need to connect a drive first anyway)

If your !Boot was completely empty (or at least missing a !Run file), then I would expect a double-click on it to give an error message of something like File 'ADFS::HardDisc4.$.!Boot.!Run' not found

What happens if you hold Shift down while you double-click?
That should open a filer display of the contents of !Boot, which would give some clues.

Ha, Shift-Click was new to me, ta.

Content: https://s1.hoffart.de/~goetz/share/IMG_3529.jpg

Ah, you have a !Boot file instead of the original !Boot directory. That explains it.

So you need to reinstate the original !Boot structure and all will be well.

Data transfer between machines is always a chore, there are many options but most are either expensive or complicated. Some are even both…

There is a stripped down “Universal Boot” somewhere which fits on two DOS floppies, that might be the easiest option.

Other options include an Ethernet card, burning a CD, a parallel port ZIP drive, ZModem via serial port/nullmodem, IP/PPP via serial port, special transfer software/hardware for parallel port like ZeriLink, splitting up things and working with floppies, SCSI podule and SCSI2SD and a Raspberry Pi to write the SD card in filecore format, an IDE-SD-card interface that actually works with ADFS and again a Raspberry Pi…

Okay, which Terminal software fits onto a floppy disc and includes ZModem (and can hopefully drive the RiscPCs serial port with 230kbit/s)?

Next option would be ZeriLink.

I’ve got an iCube network module installed, but without config this is (yet) useless.

Use !Connector. Max speed of a Risc PC serial port is 115kbaud.

Unfortunately, pub/systems/acorn on ftp-uni-stuttgart.de is no longer available :-( But Andreas’ original !Connector site is still available:
http://connector.a-m-z.org/download.html

Another option would be to hand-configure the i-cubed network card, but you would still need some transfer software.

Cool, I’ll try that stuff. Now I’m waiting for my SCSI and my FastSerial podules to arrive.

Okay, the podules arrived, at least the Power-Tec SCSI is recognized (added FileCommands, Boot Splash message).

Now I want to transfer ro4install.zip from my macOS to my RiscOS. I ’split’ted the 4.8 MB file into 4 segments to fit on floppy discs, and transferred these 4 segments to the hard disk of RiscOS. But I can’t figure out how to join the 4 into 1 again with “!Split”. The doc says it includes joining, but how to invoke it? Whether I drag the first of the sequence or all 4 in one go onto !Split (from steve-potts.me.uk), it only offers to split, not to join …

I also tried to find the equivalence of ‘cat aa ab ac ad >> file.zip’ for RiscOS command shell, but I don’t understand ’list’s syntax and/or redirection in RiscOS. I googled a bit and found Gregor Basse’s RiscOS command quick reference card, but it doesn’t include that stuff.

After that I thought “okay, perhaps try ZeriLink”. The RiscOS download is a “bin” file — how can I work with that on RiscOS? Dragging it to SparkFS didn’t do anything.

Any hints are appreciated. I know these are very basic questions, and I first read the FAQ and the general introduction to RiscOS, but I didn’t cope with it …

But I can’t figure out how to join the 4 into 1 again

Something like this should work:

*print part1 { > ro4install }
*print part2 { >> ro4install }
*print part3 { >> ro4install }
*print part4 { >> ro4install }

Aaah, thanks. I need a Rosetta stone¹ entry for RiscoOS. :)

1: http://bhami.com/rosetta.html

Addendum: To get the “Join” menu of !Split, adjust-click on the icon bar icon. This may be easier than fiddling around at the command line :-)

I was able to transfer ro4install with !Connector (only 617 bad CRCs at 57600bps …) and install it. Finally I can configure my system, thanks!

Could I ask for a small pointer on how to use ZeriLink?

After that I thought “okay, perhaps try ZeriLink”. The RiscOS download is a “bin” file — how can I work with that on RiscOS? Dragging it to SparkFS didn’t do anything.

John’s software is always a PackDir archive, so you either need PackDir itself (from John’s site) or you need a copy of SparkFS with the PackDir module activated (I don’t think it is active initially).

Okay, got it, thanks to all contributors!