RPCEmu and RISC OS 5.17

I’ve been using RPCEmu and RISC OS 5.17 (IOMD Build) on Mac OS for a while now. Though I appreciate there are no guarantees over stability and that these are ‘works in progress’, I’ve been really impressed by both.

There are a few glitches I’d like to report, but it’s not obvious to me whether they’re issues in the OS build or in the underlying emulator. So that I can report them to the right place, I’d be interested to know if anyone is using 5.17 on real RiscPC hardware (is this possible even?). If so, the following are some minor issues I’ve noticed:

1. Spaces in filenames in the Filer are replaced by %A0, which causes knock-on problems elsewhere.
2. The snapshot feature in Paint doesn’t work – after pressing OK on the dialogue box, the camera-shaped pointer pops up, but nothing happens when I try to drag a box for the snapshot. Pressing Escape returns the normal pointer.
3. Mouse drags don’t work reliably most of the time – they’re jerky and sometime fail completely (I’m guessing this IS an RPCEmu issue, though it would be nice to confirm this).

Also, are the IOMD builds identical to the others, with the exception of low-lying stuff like the HAL? I’m working on some of the Apps with a view to submitting changes back to ROOL in due course, and it would be good to know that the OSes are the same at ‘app level’. In particular, does the IOMD build have Unicode facilities in the same way the Iyonix/OMAP versions do?

Many thanks for any help.

I’d be interested to know if anyone is using 5.17 on real RiscPC hardware…

I’ve not yet finished arranging with Tom to lend him a Kinetic card but I assume (perhaps wrongly) that he’ll be using it in a real machine.

Spaces in filenames in the Filer are replaced by %A0, which causes knock-on problems elsewhere.

That’s an issue with RPCEmu’s HostFS implementation.

The snapshot feature in Paint doesn’t work – after pressing OK on the dialogue box, the camera-shaped pointer pops up, but nothing happens when I try to drag a box for the snapshot. Pressing Escape returns the normal pointer.

This could be RISC OS or it could be RPCEmu. Your 3rd point makes it sound like RPCEmu, but at the same time I’m not sure if I’ve ever tried grabbing a screenshot in Paint using a recent Iyonix/OMAP/IOMD ROM image.

Mouse drags don’t work reliably most of the time – they’re jerky and sometime fail completely (I’m guessing this IS an RPCEmu issue, though it would be nice to confirm this).

Chances are that that’s an RPCEmu issue. Although I haven’t tried taking snapshots with Paint, the mouse worked fine for me the last time I tried a ROM image on a real RiscPC. Admittedly I didn’t use the ROM image for long, but I don’t think there’s anything that could have happened to the mouse drivers that would result in dodgy behaviour.

Also, are the IOMD builds identical to the others, with the exception of low-lying stuff like the HAL?

Yes, from an application programmer’s point of view they should be identical.

The snapshot feature in Paint doesn’t work – after pressing OK on the dialogue box, the camera-shaped pointer pops up, but nothing happens when I try to drag a box for the snapshot. Pressing Escape returns the normal pointer.

...I’m not sure if I’ve ever tried grabbing a screenshot in Paint using a recent Iyonix/OMAP/IOMD ROM image.