Advance StrongARM patch

Hello,

I’ve dusted off my original Acorn Advance discs and I’ve tried in vain to run the StrongARM patch.

I’ve tried numerous versions of !Patch, but after I drag !Advance to the Patch icon, it displays what it does, but all the menu options are greyed out so I can’t upgrade it.

Any ideas?

all the menu options are greyed out so I can’t upgrade it

The patch will only be enabled for Advance version 1.01. What version are you trying to patch? It wont upgrade versions.

Ah I’ve got 1.00 original on DD floppies with my A3010 Learning Curve circa September 1994.

Anyone got a copy of 1.01 I can have please?

Anyone got a copy of 1.01 I can have please?

See if the top hit on google helps you?

See if the top hit on google helps you?

Not wishing to stir things up, but is all of the material on 4corn legitimate/legal?
It was, when released, a paid for copyright item. Has it been released in free form by the copyright holder?

I suspect they’re working on the “abandonware” principle.

Hmmmm.

I don’t expect anybody is going to crawl out of the woodwork and lay claim to Advance. Which is a bit of a shame in a way as if an owner could be identified, talks could begin on the possibility of a 32 bit version…?

I would hope that no one would get into a twist about Advance being online. This is how so much software is lost.

This is how so much software is lost.

The thing is that the site isn’t dealing with clear freebies or abandonware – look at the C version 5 page for example then think about where the rights to Acorn C lie.
Clue: Rather close by

Late delivery of full stop. :)

bq This is how so much software is lost.

and the odd full stop?

I would hope that no one would get into a twist about Advance being online. This is how so much software is lost.

Not whilst they are still available to buy!
http://cjemicros.co.uk/micros/individual/newprodpages/prodinfo.php?prodcode=ACO-ADV

n.b. we sold one last month¹ and have good stocks for anyone wanting to buy a legitimate copy.

¹ The buyer wanted to be able to run the software from floppy on a RISC OS 3.1 system

Is Advance Risc OS 5.xx compatible? is it 32bit save?

Is Advance Risc OS 5.xx compatible? is it 32bit save?

To answer those questions you would need to test on RO5 but the answer is “probably not”

There is the other pair of compatibility questions to consider: Is it ARMv7 safe?, is it Zero Page safe?

and of course the follow up – does anyone have the source to even get to stage 1 of the process to fix all of the above?

I don’t expect anybody is going to crawl out of the woodwork and lay claim to Advance. Which is a bit of a shame in a way as if an owner could be identified, talks could begin on the possibility of a 32 bit version…?

Advance was bundled by Acorn. It consisted of feature-reduced versions of Impression, Schema and DataPower. Apart from Impression (which is on the way), everything is available 32bit clean.