Arculator v2.1 released!

[sirbod]

Sarah, I think there might be an issue in the ST506 emulation. Under RO3.11, if I add the supplied 50Mb HD4 (AKD52 or native) as 32 secs, 8 heads, 795 cylinders, format with !HForm using the same values and then perform the following DiscOp, Arculator crashes:

Code: Select all

SYS "ADFS_DiscOp",,1,(4<<29) OR &3FFFF00,&10000,512

The issue might be around checking the disc limits, as reading a sector at 55Mb works, when it should return a disc error:

Code: Select all

SYS "ADFS_DiscOp",,1,(4<<29) OR &3700000,&10000,512

I've also noticed issuing a DiscOp 3 to ask for a sector ID list doesn't appear to return, but I'm not sure if that's a RISCOS issue:

Code: Select all

FOR A%=&10000 TO &10100 STEP 4:!A%=0:NEXT
!&10040=1<<29
SYS "ADFS_DiscOp",,3 OR (&10000<<6) OR (1<<4),4<<29,&10000

EDIT: With the first example Arculator outputs "Hit limit" to arclog.txt when it quits

[sirbod]

The issue might be around checking the disc limits, as reading a sector at 55Mb works, when it should return a disc error

I believe this issue might be across all filesystems as I noticed an HDF attached to the ICS podule had increased from 50MB in size to nearly 2GB after I formatted it with the wrong parameters.

EDIT: I've also noticed that DiscOp 1's succeed for ST506 :4 up to &40000 if you detach the HDF in the machine config. A read from &40000 returns Disc Error 9.

[Ronin47]

Just thinking out loud here, but is there any likelihood that a version would be made for Apple Silicon machines?

I run a 14" Macbook Pro (M1 Pro CPU) and there seem to be a dearth of Arch emulators for that config.

I know that others have used Linux VMs on Mac, but having only moved relatively recently to an M1 and being unfamiliar with Mac Hypervisors in that environment, I'm not sure how well that would go for me.

I understand ArcEm is well regarded for Mac, but as a 32 bit app, I don't believe it will work either.

Are there any other options that might work on my machine that I've missed?

Many thanks.

[IanJeffray]

Just thinking out loud here, but is there any likelihood that a version would be made for Apple Silicon machines?

As far as I'm aware, there's no binary distribution for OSX anyway.

Have you actually tried building it from Sarah's sources, targetting OSX on ARM and found an issue?
(If not, that's probably what you should look at trying)

A an Intel/MacPro owner, I'm still feeling the burn from Apple switching CPU camps yet again.

[Ronin47]

Just thinking out loud here, but is there any likelihood that a version would be made for Apple Silicon machines?

As far as I'm aware, there's no binary distribution for OSX anyway.

Have you actually tried building it from Sarah's sources, targetting OSX on ARM and found an issue?
(If not, that's probably what you should look at trying)

A an Intel/MacPro owner, I'm still feeling the burn from Apple switching CPU camps yet again.

I'll be honest, I'm not usually found 'building form sources' much, it's never ended well for me

Perhaps it's time I got my hands dirty and had a go, see what it turns up!! It's about time I got more familiar with this sort of stuff.

I kind of shifted to Mac relatively recently being a Windows user since the year dot, but Windows 11 changed my mind and I moved to Catalina on a mid 2012 MBP to see if I liked it, then over to M1 MBP about a year later.

I read a lot about the Apple CPU switching annoyances (I also have a 17" Powerbook G4 too and your 'feeling the burn' comment makes a lot of sense.

[SarahWalker]

Just thinking out loud here, but is there any likelihood that a version would be made for Apple Silicon machines?

I don't own a Mac made in the last decade.

[Ronin47]

Just thinking out loud here, but is there any likelihood that a version would be made for Apple Silicon machines?

I don't own a Mac made in the last decade.

That might have something to do with it...

[dbr]

Hi folks,

Just wanted to share that I have got arculator running happily on the latest MacOS

I'd be interested if anyone could give it a try and let me know if it works for them / what issues you run into.

You can find it here:
https://github.com/richstokes/arculator-mac

[SKS1]

Dumb user Q. Having been using Arculator v2.1 happily emulating an A540 w/ RISC OS 3.11 of late, today I span up an A440 w/ RISC OS 2.0 to test a resurrected PipeDream 3 build. However I couldn't see the hostfs in the latter configuration. Am I an idiot? (Yes, clearly).

[pdjstone]

Not a stupid question - HostFS only works on RO3.

[SKS1]

Merci! I shall have to burn it to an ADFS floppy hard drive image then. [Edit: I am shocked that it works after all these years!!!]

https://twitter.com/taynappe/status/1565012365766234113

[geraldholdsworth]

Just wanted to share that I have got arculator running happily on the latest MacOS

I'd be interested if anyone could give it a try and let me know if it works for them / what issues you run into.

I downloaded the whole thing, ran the mac-install.sh, and it went off and did a whole bunch of stuff. When finished, nothing had changed. No arculator application waiting for me to run.

[IanJeffray]

I seem to have found a funny bug -- Configured an A5000 with an AKA31 in slot 0, Colourcard in slot 1. RISC OS won't get past the desktop splash screen. Either podule is fine on its own. And a real machine is fine in such configuration. Guessing that perhaps the podule emulation is what's going odd.

[sirbod]

I seem to have found a funny bug -- Configured an A5000 with an AKA31 in slot 0, Colourcard in slot 1. RISC OS won't get past the desktop splash screen. Either podule is fine on its own.

It's not something daft like embedded SharedCLib / FPEmulator in the Podules which conflict?

[IanJeffray]

I seem to have found a funny bug -- Configured an A5000 with an AKA31 in slot 0, Colourcard in slot 1. RISC OS won't get past the desktop splash screen. Either podule is fine on its own.

It's not something daft like embedded SharedCLib / FPEmulator in the Podules which conflict?

Neither podule provides either of those things, BUT, Arculator now (annoyingly...) does provide FPEmulator in its Extnrom.
However, turning off the Extnrom option in Arculator still results in the hang.
As far as I can see, it's JUST that combination of those specific two podules together, in either order, that causes this issue.

[SarahWalker]

I can reproduce the hang on v2.1, but not on current git head, so looks like this is already fixed.

[IanJeffray]

I can reproduce the hang on v2.1, but not on current git head, so looks like this is already fixed.

Would you consider doing another release? (It's been over a year since 2.1). I've tried several times to get the Windows version to build, but never succeeded.

[SarahWalker]

v2.2 is in progress, but probably a few months off.

[geraldholdsworth]

Is there any chance someone, who knows what they're doing, can compile this for macOS Intel 64bit?

I've tried the link above, but presumably that is for ARM macOS only as it never worked for me. It did something (well, quite a lot), but no application appeared.

I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to C++...which is probably why I've given up, so far, on getting Elkulater compiled on XCode. Delphi/Lazarus projects I can deal with.

[baz4096]

Is there any chance someone, who knows what they're doing, can compile this for macOS Intel 64bit?

There's a few of us over on Discord trying to get this working. We're at the stage where it compiles and launches, but dies with an SDL error upon launching a machine.

I say 'we', but really I'm just providing the hardware and occasional minor insight...

[geraldholdsworth]

Excellent...thank you.

[geraldholdsworth]

I've recently found that VMWare Fusion is now free (certain versions) and works quite well, with Windows 10 installed, running Arculator 2.1. I'm using Player version 12.0, as any newer versions won't run on Catalina.

The mouse is controllable, unlike in Oracle VirtualBox. However, I have no 'End' key on my Mac keyboard so the 'Click + End' to release the mouse is not an option, plus I haven't found out how to get the RISC OS menu button (middle mouse). I think this might be finding the right keyboard and mouse configuration in Fusion.

[IanJeffray]

=I have no 'End' key on my Mac keyboard so the 'Click + End' to release the mouse is not an option

That's annoyed me too as I use a mac keyboard on a PC. The 'workaround' is just to hit the Windows key.

[Hozza]

Not sure about when it's used on a PC, but for a standard Mac keyboard fn+Right Arrow is an End keypress, so fn+control+right arrow should release the mouse.

[geraldholdsworth]

Not sure about when it's used on a PC, but for a standard Mac keyboard fn+Right Arrow is an End keypress, so fn+control+right arrow should release the mouse.

Yep, that worked. Thank you.

Also, by default, CMD+Click emulates the middle mouse button in Fusion, which will be the Menu button on an Archie mouse.

[debaser]

Thanks so much, Sarah, for all of your hard work on this. Arculator runs so many games perfectly.

Do you have any advice on how to set up a virtual machine for the best possible compatibility and power with games? I have played around with the options, but I am just sort of trying things randomly. From Wikipedia it looks like the A5000 is the most powerful computer there, but I might be wrong. Also, is there a specific version of RISC OS which will give me the best results?

Thanks again!!

[SarahWalker]

A5000 with RISC OS 3.11 is your best bet for most stuff. A few earlier games don't like RO3, for those an A3000 with RISC OS 2 is reasonably suitable.

[IanJeffray]

A5000 with RISC OS 3.11 is your best bet for most stuff. A few earlier games don't like RO3, for those an A3000 with RISC OS 2 is reasonably suitable.

Fair advice, but I'd actually say that ARM3 and 12MHz RAM is rather "high end". Even a 25MHz ARM3 on an 8MHz platform can cause some games to be unplayably fast. For those, my SpeedCtrl app can help, but consider a "third way" for emulation - a 4MB ARM2 A3000 with RISC OS 3.

I agree it's only -really- old stuff that you'd need to go back to RISC OS 2 for, including those early terribly-behaved games that would even reconfigure the machine... ugh...

JASPP's games list has good info on "compatibility", but not a "recommended" setting for each game (e.g. it says Wolfy is 'compatible' with ARM2 but ... ug!)

[jubber]

I love my newly fixed A5000 (thanks Ian!) but the best machine for gaming, imho, is an A3010. Sweet spot of power, ram and compatibility - go for a 4mb configuration. Every game that assumed 1mb, RO2/3, ARM2 ran well. A few games need 2mb, also not a problem. Many demand RO3.1, and a few can do with the extra speed in 3D.

[debaser]

Great, thankyou! I will make setups for all of these suggestions and hopefully that'll cover all the games I want. Cheers