Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/hints/volume_06/issue10

Text File | 1995-02-16 | 11.9 KB | 236 lines

Using RISC OS 3
6.10
Program points
6.10
•    QuicKey – Last month (Archive 6.9 p 61), we reported a problem with
this program. Ian Copestake has written to say that this problem was
cured by an update released in April 1992 – over a year ago! – and was
caused by a bug in RISC OS 3. He says that customers can always obtain
minor updates like this by returning their original disc plus £1 worth
of postage stamps (or a reasonable overseas equivalent). He also asks if
contributors can check that they have up-to-date versions before
reporting problems.
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•    Fourth Dimension games – A. H. Hunt had a problem with Black Angel
(“one of the casket segments was missing at the Planet Valve (23%)”) but
this was rectified by 4D immediately. He also says that Break147 and
Saloon Cars run (for him) without any problems.
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However, Arthur Taylor found that the hint by D. S. Allen in Archive 6.9
p62 on Break147 and SuperPool didn’t work for him. Perhaps
significantly, the relevant line of the Basic program was line 100 not
line 90 in his copy, and also his program wasn’t compressed but was
heavily protected. (I wonder whether the version of Break147 which A. H.
Hunt has would work on his machine, and whether Fourth Dimension can
supply it?)
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•    Rotor − This game from Arcana does not work on RISC OS 3 and Arcana
have, apparently, gone bust. Fortunately, Superior Software have bought
out the rights to the program and sell it as part of their “Play it
Again, Sam 1” compilation. Apparently, if you send your Arcana version
of Rotor to Superior with a cheque for £10, they will send you a copy of
Play it Again, Sam 1.  John Waddell, Renfrewshire.
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•    Recommended programs (which do work) – Arthur Taylor strongly
recommends Simon Burrows’ FontsPlus: he has created four fonts
directories and with FontsPlus on the iconbar he can choose to have all
or none of them active (if none, the ROM fonts are still available); if
he doesn’t load FontsPlus, then they are all available “... simple as
that!”
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He says that other PD or shareware programs that seem to work fine with
RISC OS 3.10 include: DiskBase v0.65, DiskCat v1.50 (disc cataloguers),
FuncKeys v2.02 and KeyWindow v1.40 (keystrips and keys from the desktop)
and a super neat new mode changer from Dave Thomas: !Mode v1.03 – it can
store up to 8 modes in a small desktop window and seems very well
behaved.
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•    Watford scanner − In Archive 6.8 p27, we reported problems with the
Watford Handscanner (1990, issue 2). Apparently, there is an upgrade to
the software (version 1.1) available from Watford.  D Webb, Cumbernauld.
6.10
Disc drive problems
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•    360Kb PC discs − Richard Fallas writes: “While trying to transfer data
to the hard drive of an old PC recently, I discovered that there are no
hard and fast rules about compatibility with 40 track discs. Previously,
I had used my switchable 40/80 track 5¼“ drive (with Beebug Interface)
under the emulator, having set up a suitable device in the config.sys
file. This no longer works under RISC OS 3.10, so I tried to transfer
directly.
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“The disc format was correctly identified and the files written (with
switch set to 80 track) without hitch, but the PC didn’t want to read
them (using copy *.*), although it would give me the directory listing.
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“Being stubborn, I tried again, saving and copying file by file. This
worked... sometimes! The longer the file the greater the chance of a
glitch, but eventually I got all the files across. This worked on files
up to 75Kb in size, so persevere!”
6.10
•    IDE drives – Arthur Taylor advises that you should not assume that the
IDE support built into RISC OS 3 will work with an IDE drive that has
been added to a pre-A5000 computer. He found with his IDE drive supplied
by DT that he had to set the number of IDE discs to zero in !Configure
and then run DT’s setup, after which he had no problems.
6.10
•    ST506 drive fitted to an A3000 – Tony Flaherty was interested to read
of the hardware problem experienced by Colin Wood (Archive 6.9 p61) when
fitting a ARM3 to his A410, since he has recently experienced a similar
problem with his A3000. He writes:
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“I have a basic ARM2 machine with RISC OS 3.1 and an Orion 2 Mb upgrade.
I recently added an external 20 Mb ST506 hard disc using an ex-PC MFM
drive and an Acorn external controller. The drive and a suitable power
supply/fan sit in a home-made expansion box.  I suffer the usual A3000
problems with regard to the oxidation of the memory connectors.  The
hard disc also tends to generate defects if the system is powered down
in an abnormal way (i.e. not <ctrl-shift-f12>).
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“My problem was symptomatically the same as Colin’s in that, initially,
the system froze completely while I was editing a First Word Plus
document eventually forcing me to press <reset>. The screen flashed red
then blue with no further action − a power down produced the same
results, I tried this several times to no avail. Finally in desperation,
I opened the box but nothing looked out of place (no charring or loose
leads).  I powered up the machine and this time all was well, however,
when I verified the disc 20 or defects were reported, when these were
added to the disc’s defect list, using *DEFECT, some of the files within
the first Word Plus application directory where corrupt and this had to
be restored from a backup.”
6.10
Tony wonders, therefore, whether Colin Wood’s assumption that his
problem related directly to the ARM3 upgrade was correct.  Could the
problem lie with RISC OS 3.1?  Does anyone have any views on this?
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Other matters arising
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•    Cache control − In response to the comments about difficulty on
RISC OS 3 with hares, tortoises and ARM3s, David Percival has sent in an
application that controls it properly. It evens notices if you have
typed in a cache-on or cache-off command or have executed one within a
program and it still displays the correct icon on the iconbar!  David
Percival, Swanley.
6.10
•    Redraw problems (Archive 6.8 p29) − A problem of incorrect screen re-
drawing in !Edit was mentioned. Tim Nicholson has had the same problem
with Deskedit! He says it seems to be a particular problem with
unformatted text that only has carriage returns/line feeds as paragraph
breaks and nowhere else. Since both pieces of software have the same
problem, he wonders if the bug is in the SharedCLib? Has anyone else had
the same problem?
6.10
•    Printing after Artworks (Archive 6.5 p31 and 6.8 p24) – Roger King
reported a problem with spurious fine horizontal lines about 4mm long
scattered throughout printouts when printing from another application
after printing from Artworks. Steve Hutchinson found that putting his
LaserDirect podule in a different slot (as recommended by Computer
Concepts) solved this problem for him. Unfortunately, this didn’t work
for Roger. However, he has now found a cure: after printing from
Artworks, select “Queue control” from the printer icon and then select
“Flush buffer”. He observes that it would seem that Artworks is leaving
something “nasty” in the printer buffer, although a CC representative
with whom Roger discussed the problem suggested that Acorn’s printer
drivers might be at fault.
6.10
•    Photocopying via LaserDirect (Archive 6.8 p24) – Tim Powys-Lybbe has
got version 2.10 of the LaserDirect printer driver which works quite
satisfactorily and he has no more problems “photocopying” from Scanlight
Plus.
6.10
He adds cryptically that “some things may not print totally as one would
expect in Paint or Scanlight Plus, particularly their positioning on the
page, but putting them into Draw or Impression totally solves the
problem.”  A
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Hints and Tips
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•    Altering Impression frames − Here is another one of those hints that
everyone but me probably knew about all the time: If you want to change
the attributes of several different frames, (like making them all
transparent) all you do is click on the first frame, call up Alter frame
(with <ctrl-f10>), make the changes and then click OK with <adjust>
instead of <select>. This keeps the Alter frame dialogue box on screen.
Then click <select> on the next frame to be changed and make the change
in the Alter frame dialogue box which is still there on screen. This
speeds things up no end.  Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany.
6.10
•    Background printing − Various comments in Archive have suggested that
you need the Ace PROdriver in order to get background printing. However,
Keith Sloan’s PD program !Spooler (on Shareware 24) works with a
Panasonic 1124 + Impression II on RISC OS 3.11 − cheaper than using a
PROdriver!  Chris Dawson, Derby.
6.10
•    Disc storage boxes − Looking for new disc storage boxes? Look no
further than your local Supermarket or D.I.Y. Superstore! I have
recently purchased the Module 2000 Box and Lid (Ref. no’s. Unit 2 and
Lid 2) manufactured by Addis, the plastic kitchen accessory
manufacturers. The size of the box is 450×190×127.5mm and comes in
various colours. The combined cost of the box and lid recently was £4.78
and it holds approximately 144 discs. (I have arranged them in four
rows, each holding 36 discs). What is more, it is made in Britain, like
the Acorn Archimedes, and better in style and strength. Give me Addis
any time!  Timothy Brown, Kent.
6.10
•    Floptical drives − I offer the following as ‘Hints’ arising out of the
fairly extended process of getting my floptical drives to work (with
much help from Morley), in the hope that they will be useful to other
new owners.
6.10
The drive will not work at all with older ROMs fitted to the SCSI
interface board − you need version 1.12 at least. If you already have a
SCSI hard disc (or other SCSI peripheral) there should be no termination
resistors in the floptical drive. They are easily removed but you have
to remove the drive from its case first − they are close to the ribbon-
cable connector on the underside of the drive.
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The drive is recognized as two devices. The 21Mb disc counts as a hard
disc and appears as SCSIDrive5 in my case (as I already had a SCSI
drive), while the facility for reading and writing to ADFS discs counts
as a floppy drive. I could not get the floppy device to be recognized at
all using the SCSI_conf program on Morley’s support disc, but had to do
it manually, using: *configure scsifslink 0 2 (followed by a reset).
This gives a ‘floppy’ icon called SCSIDrive0. (My drive arrived set up
as SCSI device 2 − you would need to modify the configure command if it
was set up to be another number.) There is no conflict between the SCSI
and ADFS floppy drives, although they are both called 0, and anyway the
computer will not allow you to call the SCSI floppy drive 1 if there is
no SCSI floppy drive 0.
6.10
The writing under the SCSI drive icons changes from the drive name to
the disc name when a disc is mounted. This is potentially confusing
until you know about it, because the default name of the 21Mb disc is
the number of the drive. I got into even worse confusion because I had
tested the Floptical on its own, so the disc became labelled “disc4”.
When I restored the real SCSI hard disc as well as the Floptical, I got
an error message saying there was a conflict of disc names.
6.10
By the way, since the floptical drive will not format discs, does anyone
know of a source of high-density floppies formatted ADFS 1.6Mb? Philip
Draper, Borehamwood.
6.10
In view of this problem with flopticals being unable to format 1.6Mb
discs, we are offering pre-formatted discs at £17 for 10. Ed.
6.10
•    Pocket Book battery connections − The middle battery connector on the
Pocket Book/Psion 3 does not allow the use of AA batteries with indented
positive and/or negative terminals (e.g. Ever Ready’s rechargeable
cells.)  Paul Bisonnette, Otterfing, Germany.
6.10
•    SigmaSheet does not return to the desktop neatly. If programs such as
Ovation are running, their Alt-key combinations will be lost when
SigmaSheet returns. To solve this, amend the SIGSHEET program as
follows. Look at the end and find DEFPROCexit and change it to read:
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DEFPROCexit
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*FX 4
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ON:*FX 225,1
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*RMReInit InternationalKeyboard
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IF INKEY−2 : END : ELSE *Quit
6.10
John Waddell, Renfrewshire.  A