Hello - New member

Hi all,
I was a user back in the day. I had a series of Archimedes machines and even wrote a few DIY applications myself. I’m not particularly ‘techy’ nor really want to get into the depths but would really enjoy having a fairly good ‘dabble’ as a trip down memory lane.

I’ve got a windows machine and have installed the RPCEmu software (version 0.9.4). It’s all working and I’m loving it. Welcome back to !Edit, !Draw and friends.

I’d like to play some more and am wondering about getting a bundle of software. I still have a bunch of old Acorn Discs but expect that I won’t be able to use them on my PC – I have a floppy drive somewhere but imagine it won’t handle ADFS. Ovation, Impression, Artworks, Apollonius PDT, Photodesk and the like. !TwinWorld was a favourite game of mine. (I’ll bet I won’t have the dongles any more though!)

I’ve downloaded !Fireworkz and !Pipedream and copied these across to HostFS.$.HardDisk4. I can ‘see’ them but when I try and run them the just open their !Boot files in !Edit

I note that the Raspberry Pi has a download with 101 bits of software all ready to go – is there a bundle I can get hold of like this or do I need to download one at a time.

Anyone out there got any suggestions for an old timer looking to getting back to a bit of RiscOS?

BremhillBob

I’ve downloaded !Fireworkz and !Pipedream and copied these across to HostFS.$.HardDisk4. I can ‘see’ them but when I try and run them the just open their !Boot files in !Edit

That sounds like you unpacked the Zip files under Windows. The correct method of installing them is to copy the Zip files to HostFS and unpack them from RISC OS.

If you haven’t got anything to unpack Zip files, download the self-extracting version of SparkFS from here then copy it to HostFS, set its filetype to “Utility” under RISC OS and double-click.

I note that the Raspberry Pi has a download with 101 bits of software all ready to go – is there a bundle I can get hold of like this or do I need to download one at a time.

Have a look at https://www.marutan.net/rpcemu/easystart.html – the Risc OS Direct download contains a lot of up-to-date applications.

Perfect Stuart, thanks so much for getting back.

Yes – that’s exactly what I’ve done! I’ll try and resolve that now.

Thank you for the link – looks like JUST what I was after.

I’ve had a quick look at the ‘Donations’ page but I don’t understand what ‘Bounties’ are or how that bit is supposed to work – if there a beginners overview anywhere?

Thank you

Loving it. Got Spark Installed and have uncompressed these two programs – they seem to be working a treat.

Now to go and grab the rest!

Any thoughts about accessing ADFS discs?

Ah …. I have the download and can see all the software inside the HardDisk4 folder.

I’m guessing that I maybe need to use SparkFS to make sure all the filetyping is correct so I just can’t copy files in windows? I maybe need to copy the entire file (rpcemu-win32-0.9.4-bundle-direct-issue-1.zip) across to my Harddisc4 – open it from there with SparkFS and then save out the bits I need?

I’ve had a quick look at the ‘Donations’ page but I don’t understand what ‘Bounties’ are or how that bit is supposed to work – if there a beginners overview anywhere?

There’s this page but it’s a bit opaque. As a very brief introduction: RISC OS 5 development is largely done free-of-charge by people in their spare time. This is all well and good for small (or low-priority) stuff, but there are some things that would be too much to expect of a spare-time approach: for these you’d need to offer money. The bounty scheme allows RISC OS users to donate towards these “big-ticket” items.

Any thoughts about accessing ADFS discs?

Most modern floppy disc drives assume that you are using DOS format discs, and can’t read Acorn ADFS discs.

There are some hardware add-ons (the GreaseWeazle springs to mind) that will allow a PC to “image” a floppy disc – this image can then be read by “mounting” it in RPCEmu. If you’re interested in this approach, head over to the StarDot forums – they know far more about the subject than I do.

rpcemu-win32-0.9.4-bundle-direct-issue-1.zip

That’s a complete package including RPCEmu itself. This can be unpacked under Windows: you can then swap over the HostFS folders as required.

Glad you found your way to the RPCemu version of RISC OS Direct – absolutely the best place to start given what you mention about wanting software :)

RISC OS Direct was produced by RISC OS Developments for the Pi range as an easy-start system with a wider range of software, and then adapted to RPCemu by Peter @ marutan

Of the programs Bob mentions, the state of play is as follows:

Ovation – there’s a free version of Ovation 1 from Rick Murray’s blog pages – Rick, could you link that please?
Ovation Pro is now also free, and available via !Store or direct download from David. !Store should be in your Apps folder, and provides access to a broad range of software

Artworks is the trickiest – it is still a paid-for program. I believe there’s a version on !Store, or you can buy direct from mw-software.com

Fireworkz basic is free from Stuart Swales’ site (and included in Direct), or the Pro version can be bought on !Store from us (R-Comp)

Apollonius PDT is now safe for 32bit systems, and is on my hard drive, but I forget quite what the release state is. I think I may have put it on !Store as a free download. If not, it is available from me on request, I think. I recall that I got permission to distribute it from the original author when he resurfaced for a usergroup meeting last year. Part of me thinks there might be one or two unresolved (minor) bugs, but it has been a while.

PhotoDesk has just had a massive price cut and is available on !Store – no questions upgrade (which you’d qualify for based on your message alone) is only 29ukp.

TwinWorld is a free download via JASPP, I believe, and Jeff Doggett did a 32bit update for it too.

Anything else, please do ask :)

Best wishes,

Andrew

Ovation – there’s a free version of Ovation 1 from Rick Murray’s blog pages – Rick, could you link that please?

Yup, certainly.

https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20160723#ovation

But, given…

Ovation Pro is now also free, and available via !Store or direct download from David.

You’d be best going with OvationPro. It can do everything Ovation can do, plus a lot more.