RPCEmu, HostFS, Set Type

[ScurvyGeek]

Hello all,

This is probably (hopefully?) ridiculously simple, but I can't remember enough about RISCOS to figure it out.

I have a copy of RPCEmu on my Mac, HostFS is configured as the boot drive, and I've copied the contents of an old hard drive to the Data/HostFS folder such that the contents appear.

However, due to the way that these files were originally archived, the types have all been munged. Hence my !Boot just opens in !Edit rather than actually doing something.

Is there a "batch" way of fixing this, or if not what should I "Set Type" on the !Boot and other files to achieve normality?

[paintings]

Correcting the filetypes "by hand" will take a long time. For example, a typical application will contain files named thus:

!Boot - This is usually of filetype "Obey" (&FEB)
!Run - This is usually of filetype "Obey" (&FEB)
!Sprites - Filetype "Sprite" (&FF9)
!RunImage - Often BASIC (&FFB), but could be "Absolute" (&FF8) instead. Other filetypes (e.g. "Utility", &FFC) are theoretically possible.
Templates - Filetype "Template" (&FEC)

Applications may have their own filetypes for their data files. There's a list at https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documen ... le%20Types but it doesn't show every file type in use.

There are some "filetype guesser" applications out there that should automate the process a bit, but I'm unable to suggest anything specific. Also, because they're guessing the filetype they won't be 100% correct.

Have you really lost all of the filetypes? Can't you open the archive - or even mount the hard drive - on a RISC OS machine (e.g. a Raspberry Pi running RISC OS 5)? If there's any way of retrieving the file types from the original hard drive that would be the best thing to do.

[jgharston]

Also, how did you "copy the contents of an old hard drive" ? You need to access the contents of the drive in a manner that understands the contents of the drive, including the metadata, and store it in the HostFS mount in a manner that understands the metadata.

[ScurvyGeek]

Thank you both!

Sadly the data was copied off a dying hard drive some years ago. I still have it, but now all it does is a castanet impression.

I can't recall exactly how I did it, but it was something along the lines of using a Raspberry Pi running RISCOS with a USB --> PATA adapter to copy the data off, and across the network to a NAS.

Bit lost in the mists of time, but whilst the files are intact the metadata is gone!

I'll manually edit some of the obvious candidates, but if you could point me towards one of those "best guess" apps I'd be extremely grateful.

[ScurvyGeek]

Actually - there may be another alternative.

Looks like I took a dd image of the disc before my file level attempt at "recovery".

Is there any way I could convert this to an ADF for use in RPCEmu, or is it a case of restoring this to a new hard drive, plugging that into a Pi run-in RISCOS, repeat the process I originally used but done properly?

[paintings]

Looks like I took a dd image of the disc before my file level attempt at "recovery".

According to this thread viewtopic.php?f=29&t=14577 it's a simple matter of copying it to your RPCEmu data directory and renaming it to "hd4.hdf". If you're in the right place there'll already be a zero-length "hd4.hdf" present - you can safely delete that. If the existing "hd4.hdf" isn't zero-length, rename your disc image to "hd5.hdf", start RISC OS, and increase the number of hard drives to 2 (double-click on !Boot and select "Discs" from the page displayed). Depending on the version of RISC OS you are running, you may have to restart RISC OS for the change to take effect.

EDIT: Two things can go wrong. Firstly, if the original disc was larger than 256MB it may have used LBA addressing (which RPCEmu does not support). Secondly a limitation of RPCEmu means that you can't have two hard drives and a CD-ROM drive at the same time: you have to disable the CD-ROM drive from the RPCEmu menu bar (Disc > CD-ROM > Disable).

[acorndave]

I'll manually edit some of the obvious candidates, but if you could point me towards one of those "best guess" apps I'd be extremely grateful.

Typefind is pretty good
https://www.davidsharp.com/riscos/

[ScurvyGeek]

Thanks all,

Dimply renaming the .dd file to hd4.adf didn't seem to play ball, so I may have to investigate further.

I appreciate all of your assistance, though, and will take a look at Typefind!

-Austin.