Long FileNames RO 3.5+

Has anyone put together a group of modules – that provide Long FileNames for RO 3.5+ machines?

ie:- That can be installed in Flash card – Podule/Nic or as one file that can be loaded from the Floppy Drive at Boot.

So a later version of RISC OS can be loaded/used.

Get RO 4.39.

Long FileNames for RO 3.5+ machines?

You want LongFiles by Jason Tribbeck.

Get RO 4.39.

You want a slap. ;-p

You most definitely want raFS and not that clever, but ultimately ugly hack LongFiles, which reduces the maximum number of files in one dir from a ridiculously low number of 77 to an insanely low number of 76.

Has anyone put together a group of modules – that provide Long FileNames for RO 3.5+ machines? So a later version of RISC OS can be loaded/used.

One approach is to have two hard discs, one short filenames (since FileCore can still read those) that you boot off but that is small, then a larger one with long filenames.

Alternatively, you can indeed put the appropriate module into a spare NIC or podule, but you also need a second simple module to reinit any of Filecore’s clients since the podules get enumerated last by which time ADFS (etc) have already registered with the one in the main ROM.

Both schemes seem a little round-about though & purchasing a ROM copy would inject a few pound notes into the ecosystem, a pre 4.02 machine has had 15+ years of service. If you’re wanting RISC OS 5 ROMs for your Risc PC then ROOL should be able to help shortly.

It was just an idea – for the ones with RO 3.7 etc who havn’t changed to RO4 and above – a chance to try later versions out – without having to change the ROMs.
ie to see if all their software stilled worked.

RO 5 in ROM – mmm – how difficult would it be to make a faster processor card :-)

RO 5 in ROM – mmm – how difficult would it be to make a faster processor card :-)

A faster processor card than a RiscPC? Cheap and easy… just buy a Pi. :-)

I’m not being facetious (much!), compare the cost of upgrading a very old system with a slowish processor and treacle-like memory bus and I/O world against the cost of buying a Pi, putting your programs on there, running that. It may be less easy if you have some specific piece of hardware¹ that you use, otherwise…

¹ Is Jon Kortink still around? I was half expecting a USB-to-podule interface or something along those lines!

It was just an idea – for the ones with RO 3.7 etc who havn’t changed to RO4 and above – a chance to try later versions out – without having to change the ROMs.

For evaluation purposes the long filenames bit isn’t essential: FileCore in RISC OS 5 can still read short filename drives and the boot sequence is all <= 10 letter names.

RO 5 in ROM – mmm – how difficult would it be to make a faster processor card

The Kinetic shows that it’s entirely possible, so a (eg.) 1GHz ARM and some DDR could be put on a processor card, but its surroundings would be unchanged – VIDC and IOMD. You could bypass VIDC for something not on a VGA connector, at which point for all intents and purposes you’ve designed a whole motherboard – it’s just mounted vertically!

a whole motherboard – it’s just mounted vertically!

One of the Amiga processor cards did that trick and more: 2 processors (m68k & ppc), ram, SCSI and a local PCI bus for a graphics card

RO 5 in ROM – mmm – how difficult would it be to make a faster processor card

I have mounted a RPi or a BeaglexM on a 3,5" drive tray. So you can easy replace the floppy ;-)

The old extensions all have the problem that the data must be sent over the slow bus of the RiscPC and they are very expensive.