Having finally got hold of a copy of the Arthur OS emulator, I had enormous trouble getting it to work. So I've decided to write a quick user manual (in between doing my Mechanics revision) to help out.
What is Arthur?
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As far as I can ascertain, Arthur is the Operating System (OS) used on the Acorn just before RISC OS came into being. It was used on the very early Acorns, and Archimedes, and I believe may have run on the Master Compact, though I don't know. Having looked at most of the modules supplied in the emulator, I believe that it was first developed in 1987.
How do I get it to run?
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The first thing to remember is that Arthur is different to RISC OS, in that it is an OS supplied on disk, rather than ROM chips, as a result of this, using Arthur will not do any damage to RISC OS itself, as installing Windows 95 could on any other PC OS.
As the emulator has to install its own modules, replacing the more recent RISC OS versions, it must be run before RISC OS. This can be a problem, seeing as RISC OS runs automatically when you turn your Acorn on, and you cannot very easily remove the ROM chips, nor do you have to!
Don't try and run it from an archive, or other image filing system, god only knows what'll happen - I sure don't!
Firstly, you need to have about 542Kb *EXTRA* of free RMA (module area) on top of that used up, and a fair amount of Sprite Area too. Do this from the Task manager window.
To run Arthur, click MENU over the switcher icon (the Acorn on the bottom right of the icon bar) and click SELECT over the 'Exit' option.
You will find that the screen has turned black, with just a white '*' in the top left of the screen, similar to if you had pressed F12 to enter the command line.
You should now type simply type the full filename of the 'Arthur' Obey file supplied with the program. For example, on my Hard disc, named 'IDEDisc4', I placed the emulator files inside a directory called 'Emus', then inside a directory called 'ArthurOS'. I therefore typed at the * cursor
ADFS::IDEDisc4.$.Emus.ArthurOS.Arthur
and you will find that the emulator loads.
You will now be presented with a rather unorthodox and perculiar looking desktop, I know very little about this, other than that it is similar to RISC OS 2, except that it has *many* unfinished bits.
To get back to RISC OS, I recommend you Ctrl-Break the computer.
The emulator appears to run in mode 12 (old desktop modes) and I see no method to change it. One of the most interesting things for me is to see early versions of many of the currently used modules in this emulator, developed to later versions used in brand new StrongARM RISC PCs, 10 years later. For example, WindowManager 1.00, Desktop 1.02 and many more.
Contacting me:
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David Sharp
11 Woodlands Drive
Grantham
Lincs
NG31 9DJ
Email: DavidSharp@ThePentagon.com
The Acorn Emulation Page - http://www.come.to/emulate
My Acorn Software Page - http://www.come.to/david.sharp
