Arculator v2.0 released!

[jpagen]

Have you tried formatting the card in the A3000 first, taking an image of the formatted card and then using that in Arculator? Might stand a better chance of working when you copy back to the card that way.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I only have a Pi Zero which I use to emulate Tube on my BBC Model B.

I tried formatting the card in the A3000 previously using !HFORM.
I still need to do a 'quick' FAT32 format on the SD card after writing the image back, before the A3000 will see the partitions on the card but some of the files are corrupted.
I should add that after a while, the A3000 stops seeing the partitions that it could access previously.

I have done this using different SD cards with the same outcome.

Perhaps this is an issue with the SD Card interface, which there are a lot of other threads about so I should probably post to one of those instead. My interface card has the FC1307A chip. I have ordered a CompactFlash interface so will post an update on a more appropriate thread when I have received and tried that approach.

Thanks again,

[Andy1979]

I tried formatting the card in the A3000 previously using !HFORM.
I still need to do a 'quick' FAT32 format on the SD card after writing the image back, before the A3000 will see the partitions on the card but some of the files are corrupted.
I should add that after a while, the A3000 stops seeing the partitions that it could access previously.

I have done this using different SD cards with the same outcome.

Perhaps this is an issue with the SD Card interface, which there are a lot of other threads about so I should probably post to one of those instead. My interface card has the FC1307A chip. I have ordered a CompactFlash interface so will post an update on a more appropriate thread when I have received and tried that approach.

I've never tried an SD card interface in my A3010 as I already owned a few small capacity (128/256mb) Compact Flash cards that worked.

I didn't have much luck with an IDE to SD card adapter in my Pentium or Pentium III retro systems - I had corruption issues similar to those you have described, but in Windows 95/98. Ended up buying 'industrial' class CF cards instead.

Have read elsewhere that, at least for onboard IDE, you need one of the SD readers with two chips rather than one. Those are older and harder to find.

Best of luck. Sounds like we are trying to do something similar - have access to our files/games/applications from both emulator and the original hardware.

[anightin]

Hi There,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the great work that has gone into Arculator 2.0 -- massive update from 0.99

I'm using it to test a couple of .hdf images created for the Archimedes MiSTer Core which also uses the same format on an A3020.

The process/plan I have at the moment is a little clunky but one that seems to work:

1) HFORM a CF card on a Pi running RISCOS5
2) Configure Arculator with the MiSTer hdf image
3) Create a Spark archive of the .hdf contents in HostFS folder
4) Transfer Folder files over to Pi using an SD card (I have a dual CF and SD card USB reader that works on my Pi)
5) Transfer the archive folder contents over to CF
6) Install the CF in the A3020
7) Test files

Some things I noticed along the way:

1) The Arculator threw an exception reading the .hdf but otherwise correctly identified it and allowed me to carry on through the error
2) I ran out of memory running SparkFS on the Arculator A3020 until I configured it from 2MB to 4MB
2) The file transfers went okay for a while then I started to get 'Archive is Read Only' errors
3) I rebooted the PC and ran Arculator as Administrator instead -- so far so good.

Keep up the great work

[anightin]

Hi There,

Just wanted to say thanks for all the great work that has gone into Arculator 2.0 -- massive update from 0.99

I'm using it to test a couple of .hdf images created for the Archimedes MiSTer Core which also uses the same format on an A3020.

The process/plan I have at the moment is a little clunky but one that seems to work:

1) HFORM a CF card on a Pi running RISCOS5
2) Configure Arculator with the MiSTer hdf image
3) Create a Spark archive of the .hdf contents in HostFS folder
4) Transfer Folder files over to Pi using an SD card (I have a dual CF and SD card USB reader that works on my Pi)
5) Transfer the archive folder contents over to CF
6) Install the CF in the A3020
7) Test files

Some things I noticed along the way:

1) The Arculator threw a debug exception reading the .hdf but otherwise correctly identified it and allowed me to carry on through the error
2) I ran out of memory running SparkFS on the Arculator A3020 until I configured it from 2MB to 4MB
2) The file transfers went okay for a while then I started to get 'Archive is Read Only' errors
3) I rebooted the PC and ran Arculator as Administrator instead -- so far so good.

Keep up the great work

One other thing I also noticed is that the HDF files get corrupted on exit from Arculator so I have backups now that I recycle on each boot.
I've logged an issue on the MiSTer Git site but I suspect there will need to be some collaboration to resolve this :
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Archie ... /issues/11


As an update to the above I've managed now to extract the HDF contents onto 512MB ADFS formatted CF cards so just waiting for the dual 44 pin CF module to arrive now in the post before I can try it.

Here are the images sitting in RiscOSDirect after transfer:

[brazed_blotch]

Have you tried formatting the card in the A3000 first, taking an image of the formatted card and then using that in Arculator? Might stand a better chance of working when you copy back to the card that way.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I only have a Pi Zero which I use to emulate Tube on my BBC Model B.

I tried formatting the card in the A3000 previously using !HFORM.
I still need to do a 'quick' FAT32 format on the SD card after writing the image back, before the A3000 will see the partitions on the card but some of the files are corrupted.
I should add that after a while, the A3000 stops seeing the partitions that it could access previously.

I have done this using different SD cards with the same outcome.

Perhaps this is an issue with the SD Card interface, which there are a lot of other threads about so I should probably post to one of those instead. My interface card has the FC1307A chip. I have ordered a CompactFlash interface so will post an update on a more appropriate thread when I have received and tried that approach.

Thanks again,

Hey jpagen,

I understand you used the FC1307A chip. Do you happen to have a datasheet for this IC, or any info on it? Seems to be quite an illusive chip.

Sorry for the off-topic post everyone. Thanks in advance.

[Manson976]

Just a random question, Is there anyway to launch the machine directly, without loading the GUI every time at start?.

Thanks.

[ash73]

Hi,

I've been playing around with archimedes emulators the last few days, I used to use Red Squirrel but it hasn't been updated for ages so I had a look at Arculator. The latter seems more reliable, but I didn't think the display looked quite so good (the fonts are a bit more blocky) so I did a quick experiment plotting some lines in BASIC in mode 21 (640x512) and Arculator is only displaying 256 lines. The horizontal resolution looks ok.

I'm using a A3000 and RISC OS 3.1 ROMs. I probably missed a setting somewhere, is there a way to improve the display? I know most software doesn't use 512 lines but I wondered if it might be affecting my other modes too, as it doesn't look quite as good as RS somehow.

[IanJeffray]

That's simply not MODE 21. You probably haven't configured for a Multisync monitor inside the emulator.
In BASIC, try

Code: Select all

PRINT MODE

to display the MODE that's actually active, and I suspect you'll find it's actually selected MODE 15 rather than 21.

[ash73]

That's simply not MODE 21. You probably haven't configured for a Multisync monitor inside the emulator.
In BASIC, try

Code: Select all

PRINT MODE

to display the MODE that's actually active, and I suspect you'll find it's actually selected MODE 15 rather than 21.

It's set to multisync, I've also tried VGA it does the same thing.

PRINT MODE does indeed return 15.

[IanJeffray]

Configure IN RISC OS, not in the emulator settings
(Run the !Configure app from the Apps folder...)

[ash73]

Configure IN RISC OS, not in the emulator settings
(Run the !Configure app from the Apps folder...)

Ah thanks, it was set to automatic, forcing it to multisync did the trick.

Fonts on the desktop still don't look great, somehow.

[IanJeffray]

Fonts on the desktop still don't look great, somehow.

Likely your font settings aren't comparable to what you've set up with RedSqizzle. RISC OS is RISC OS, and fonts appear identically, given a RISC OS configuration that's equivalent. Font rendering was always a strong point in RISC OS.

[ash73]

So how do you configure the fonts like that?

[IanJeffray]

So how do you configure the fonts like that?

Install UniBoot, for a starter. Then use the Font settings in !Configure to ensure high quality rendering at any size.

[ash73]

So how do you configure the fonts like that?

Install UniBoot, for a starter. Then use the Font settings in !Configure to ensure high quality rendering at any size.

Thanks, had a play with that, not keen. It adds all sorts of patches and networking junk, it even installs some stupid AV software and takes ages to boot up. This is riscos not windows.

I think the difference between RedSquirrel and Arculator is the video/scale filtering setting - if you change it to "linear" it blurs the text, a bit like anti-aliasing, which RedSquirrel must do as standard. Shame there isn't somthing half-way between.

Apparently the system font had no anti-aliasing until Acorn introduced nested-wimp (whatever that is), so if I don't want to add a million patches I'm stuck with whatever the emulator can do.

I had a go at stripping down uniboot to the bare minimum but it was too complicated, so I just added the "NewLook" app to my !boot script instead. It would be a nice enhancement if Arculator anti-aliased the text.

[IanJeffray]

It would be a nice enhancement if Arculator anti-aliased the text.

You appear confused about what an emulator does. Arculator doesn't render text. Arculator doesn't know anything about fonts. Arculator emulates HARDWARE. Exactly the same as RedSquirrel does. If you don't want to install UniBoot (which brings the nested WIMP, providing the outline fonts in the desktop) that's your choice. It's nothing to do with Arculator.

[thecellartroll]

So how do you configure the fonts like that?

Install UniBoot, for a starter. Then use the Font settings in !Configure to ensure high quality rendering at any size.

Thanks, had a play with that, not keen. It adds all sorts of patches and networking junk, it even installs some stupid AV software and takes ages to boot up. This is riscos not windows.

Risc OS 3 is a pretty miserable experience without universal boot. That's why the creators of Risc OS made it! It is really easy to disable the antivirus if you want to, but finding applications that run nicely without universal boot installed isn't so easy these days, and likely you'll be restricted to very old versions of everything.

[schlika]

Hello !

Thanks a lot for Arculator, it is a very nice piece of software and the RiscOS experience is excellent.

I am trying to run RiscIX on it, and I have strange corruptions on the disk system (both scsi & st-506), like these

disk crash

It is absolutely unusable unfortunately, and crashes in the minutes after booting. I can fsck at next reboot, but lots of files get discarded, like many /dev/ files, and the system is totally dead.

I tried both on Windows and on a locally compiled Linux version, on two different machines, and on different emulated machines, same issues ...

It used to work quite well from what I read, has there been some regressions ? Anybody having the same issues ? What can I try ?

Thanks a lot !

[errors301]

I am so pleased to see a new version of Arculator, and on initial trial, certainly the full screen is much better. It also appears to be less system intensive on my laptop (less cooking heat is achieved).

The podules is an excellent move. Out of interest is there intent to make more, or can we help? I use an HCCS Ultimate Expansion System on my A3010, and Arculator has always been perfectly fine reading the first partition, but obviously no others (mine has 4 partitions). It would be great to be able to have Arculator read and write from all 4 partitions as well as the actual hardware (when I say Arculator reads and writes to the partitions, I mean and image, which just gets written back to the CF card in my actual machine.

Thanks

Hi, i also have a HCCS Ultimate Expansion System, i have lost the PSU could we talk as i am trying to make one and having difficulty in specs. Looks like its 5V DC 3A but thats not working. Does the RJ12 on your PSU have more than 2 wires going into it ? im wondering if the PSU supplys V10 V12 as well if it does then the pins goto layers in the board.

Many Thanks!

[Phipli]

Afternoon folks,

I'm trying to build Arculator on Linux, specifically Pop!_OS 20.10 on x86_64.

Following various peoples previous comments I've been able to compile the version from https://github.com/sarah-walker-pcem/arculator but when I launch it, it crashes with a Segmentation Fault as soon as I go near any of the buttons (mouseover, or click).

I tried compiling with debug enabled, but it still just seg faults without any additional debug info (yes, it does say more up to that point, but at the point it crashes it doesn't say anything extra).

Does anyone have any tips?

Cheers!

[Phipli]

Its OK, the version at https://github.com/pdjstone/arculator works if you make the changes in this thread.

Thanks for the awesome work folks

[bakoulis]

Its OK, the version at https://github.com/pdjstone/arculator works if you make the changes in this thread.

Thanks for the awesome work folks

I confirm this is the working version.
Why Sarah don't update the official repo with this changes?

[IanJeffray]

Just adding to this thread for amusement/reference. I just found out (by sore experience) that RISC OS 3 doesn't boot on a 'real' A305, with only 512K RAM. Nor is it intended to, according to the upgrade documentation, reference:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19815&start=120#p304091

However, it DOES boot and work completely successfully as far as I can see, on Arculator (which is partly what led me down the path of trying to 'fix' the real hardware... oops!)

So just for silly 'amusement' - here's a "never before seen" screenshot of RISC OS 3 on an A305:

Since I've now understood that A305 and A310 both use an 8K page size, I can't see that there's any 'technical' reason that RISC OS 3 should really require 1MB, though obviously once booted to desktop, it's hardly got any sane amount of working RAM left, so maybe it as deliberately throttled on that basis. I wonder exactly what prevents it running on the real hardware, though, that Arculator is doing differently.

[Manson976]

Is there any cmd line support to launch a reconfigured machine directly without the need of the gui??

[SarahWalker]

Nope. I meant to add command line support, but forgot before the v2.0 release. Sorry!

[Manson976]

Cheers sarahwalker I will be looking forward It was for loading your program "awesome work by the way big improvements overall," through launchbox, at the moment it just gets stuck at the ui when loading games hopefully in the next update with command line support cheers as always.

[dpsharp]

Hey Sarah (or anyone else who's interested),
Do you have a view on how difficult it would be to get Arculator v2.0 working on latest versions of Mac OS? Is it just a case of getting the libraries in place and building it and it should work or is development effort required?

I've spent 1-2 hours or so installing SDL and building wxWidgets v3 and trying to get Arculator's configure script to identify them (SDL fine, wxWidgets more problematic) but it's slow progress as I've not used any of XCode or these libraries before. I've been able to build a wxWidget minimal sample app so something's working there.

If the Arculator sources are something you think should just build & run then I'll persist a bit more but if it's going to require me to write much code then I won't have the time for it. I only want it to support using some RISC OS 3 tools for a different project but I don't know of any other Arc emulator that will run on modern Macs as ArcEm and Jon Welch's Arculator port from 2007 won't. I don't need the podules to work if I can get HostFS usable.

[IanJeffray]

I don't know of any other Arc emulator that will run on modern Macs as ArcEm ... won't.

What constitutes a "Modern Mac" ? I've only got a MacPro [2012 - pre-trashcan] and not touched ArcEm in a while... does BigSur even still support X11 ?

[dpsharp]

"Modern Mac" - For my purposes and to maximise future longevity of any effort, let's say anything running MacOS Big Sur. I'm personally only interested in the ARM-based Mac hardware but x64-binaries (including the recent RPCemu port to MacOS) run just fine for me with Rosetta2.

I note OpenAL which is one dependency listed in the Arculator linux source code that has been deprecated by Apple since MacOS Catalina so may be an issue for some but isn't for my needs. I can get by.if sound doesn't work if I'm forced to comment out the dependencies there to get a build running until someone wants to take that project on.

For ArcEm X11 has been deprecated for a while on MacOS, there is the open source XQuartz but that's not had a release build since 2016. I'd prefer Arculator v2 as it's just awesome on Windows and compatibility is very impressive.

[richw]

Can you run Arculator under WINE in macOS?

I tried this once, a few years ago, and I think RISC OS booted!