Risc PC keyboard

[piersw]

I've got two RiscPCs, one sadly with battery corrosion, but the other doesn't but its keyboard no longer works - it worked fine a year ago and we used it for games before replacing it with a Pi400. I thought I'd like a rummage through my IDE and SCSI drives.

I removed the batteries years ago, so no CMOS settings. It boots to supervisor and has a flashing cursor (though there's no beep which may or may not be related). It has the wrong monitor type, but it's quite easy to read the blurry text (StrongARM/Supervisor), and see the cursor. Holding down the various keys on reset does nothing.

As it turns on, the Acorn keyboard lights all flash (though I wouldn't be surprised if that's the keyboard itself doing that). The keyboard lights then turn off and nothing works - no key press does anything, not even caps/num/scroll lock. I've tried three different Acorn keyboards all with the same result.

On the second (corroded) RiscPC, the three keyboards all get further, with caps/num/scroll lock all toggling when pressed. But it has no display.

Any ideas on how to get at least one booting? I've got little more than a multimeter and cheap soldering iron, so the corroded one is way beyond my soldering skills - I can see some chip pins have no tracks to attach to. But that it gets further with the keyboards at least shows the keyboards work.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[thecellartroll]

If the lights toggle then RISC OS is running in some capacity.

I assume that you've held down Delete while powering on?

[geraldholdsworth]

If you can get yourself a PC keyboard with PS2 connector (or even a USB one with USB to PS2 adapter), this will work as well.

[richw]

If getting the Risc PC running proves too tricky, you have another couple of options if you have a USB-IDE adaptor:

1: Plug the drive into a Pi running RISC OS 5. It should mount the drive and you can copy the contents elsewhere.

2: Plug the drive into anything running Linux and use dd to make a disk image file. RPCEmu can mount this as a virtual drive.

Not sure how well this will work for SCSI drives, mind you...

[helpful]

2: Plug the drive into anything running Linux and use dd to make a disk image file. RPCEmu can mount this as a virtual drive.

But note RPCEmu can't read disc images when using RO5. Plus of course if your disc used long filenames, you'll need to use RO4+

Bryan.