ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/4DSPORT/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, Sports Games CD
Sport Games CD
Matt Thompson
Last issue I looked at the Fourth Dimension Racing games CD, this time I am having a play with the Sports CD, this collection contains eight games:
Break 147+SuperPoo
Grievous Bodily Ar
Arcade Socce
The Olympic
Virtual Gol
Holed Ou
Silver Bal
Kick Off.
The collection comes in the usual DVD box with printed colour inlay, as with the other 4th Dimension CD collections it is very easy to install on your machine. With the disc in the drive, load up the CD and a window will appear with the application !Install. Double clicking on this will bring up the following window:
Then you select which games you want to install to the harddisc - all of them by default, then drag the yellow joystick icon to the destination directory on the harddisc and click on 'OK'. The games will now install, and you should end up seeing something like this:
With the installation complete it's on with the games:
Break 147 + Superpool
Break147
Break 147 is a snooker simulation. Upon loading you can choose which type of game you want. Demo mode in which 2 computer players will play against each other, Practice mode which is self explanatory, Match mode is a proper competitive match against the computer and finally in the tournament mode you play a different player in each round. The aim is to try and beat them all and get to the final and become the overall winner. With the single match mode and tournament mode, any of the opposition can be replaced by human opponents instead of the computer, so you can have up to 16 different people playing in the tournament if you so wish!
The actual game of snooker is accurately recreated, all the rules and ball colours and the point scoring systems are all as they would be in a real game. The table graphics look exactly as you'd expect them to look, almost like the real thing! The game control is by the mouse, which works really well, you can rotate the table around to all different angles and different viewpoints to help you with your game. There is a game commentator who will tell you whose go it is as well as the score and other bits of information. The only other sound effects are of the balls being bit with the cue and going into the pockets and they sound realistic, probably sampled from the real thing.
There's not really much more I can say about this really, if you like computerised snooker games then this is certainly one that is well worth considering.
Super Pool
Superpool is basically the same as Break 147 but instead of a game of snooker you play pool (bet nobody guessed that!). The game set up is the same with Demo mode , Single match, and the Tournament mode, as with Break 147 the official rules of the game are followed, and it is played on the same table as before just with a different set of balls. The sound effects, the style of gameplay and everything else is the same, so there's not much point saying the same thing again!
Overall then the combined package of Break 147 & Superpool is certainly worth playing if you enjoy computerised versions of either or both of these games. They aren't difficult to play, although will need a bit of mouse practice I would imagine. I found Superpool more entertaining, but then it's a quicker and easier game to play than snooker, even more preferable is the real thing in the pub, but there you go - worth a go if you like either of these games.
GREVIOUS BODILY 'ARM
This is a sideways scrolling beat-em-up game, in which the object is to get to the end of each level, in order to catch an evil scientist at the end of the final level and destroy him.
Grevious Bodily 'Arm is a pretty basic beat-up-game, the only moves are punch and kick but that doesn't stop it being a decent little game. Starting on the first level in the city streets, you then go through into a warehouse, then an office and then out onto the roof and that's as far as I got, although this is one game I would like to actually finish, I just couldn't defeat what I guess was the end of level boss. (or evil scientist in this case).
Your enemies that are out to stop you range from normal people to cats and machinery, such as saws in the floor in the warehouse, explosions, and in the office electrical cables can harm you. Out on the streets a collision with a manhole will harm you, which is a bit silly really and it wouldn't do that much damage.
The levels aren't difficult to complete and you should find yourself at least onto level 3 - the office quite quickly. It does, however, get progressively more difficult as the levels go on. Controlling your character is easy via the keyboard, or joystick if you prefer, just left, right punch and kick, although on later levels, you find weapons which you can use as well.
The audio in the game is pretty good I thought, with a good musical introduction to the game and a good tune between each level - good stuff. The in-game sounds are punches, kicks, 'oofs' and and noises from the saws and electrical cables etc, and it all works really well. Graphically the game is quite cartoony and the sprites look good and I don't think it looks old really, although the playing area is quite small. I don't think it was this small when I used to play it back on my A3000, this might be to do with getting it to run on later machines - problems with screenmodes etc, thats why the screenshots are small, compared with the other screenshots.
One criticism of the game is that the backdrops could have been involved in the game a bit more, I mean for example on the first level you see gates for the subway, perhaps some enemies could have come rushing out of there, and out of the doors in later levels, would have added to the game a lot I think, but never mind.
Overall I always liked Grevious Bodily 'Arm, it's not the greatest game ever and certainly won't win any awards for best beat-em-up game, but its fun to play and certainly worth a go, and I wonder if this game hadn't have been written for a machine with an ARM processor whether it would have had the same title!
Arcade Soccer
This is a game I used to play a lot back on the BBC and then later on the A3000, as it was an easy to play entertaining football game, there is no management side to this game, just the playing of football. (We used to have championships on this - ED).
Upon loading you are greeted by a rendition of the theme tune to ITV's football program "The Big Match" although I'm sure it sometimes alternated between that and Match of The Day, maybe it didn't, I don't know. Anyway after that it's onto the main menu, there are two parts to the menu, the left hand side is the player menu, and the right hand side the game menu.
From the player menu you select the number of players, whether they are computer controlled or a human player, whether you want to use the keyboard or joystick. The skill level of each player, and also the formation you want to use, such as 4-4-2 or 3-5-2, thankfully there isn't a boring defensive formation that a lot of teams go for these days which is the 1-10-0 formation, give me 4-4-2 anyday!
The other part of the menu is the setup for the game, there are three different types of games, from the simple one game friendly, the challenge match, where you have to beat 24 teams, who get more difficult to beat each match. The final game type is the World Cup where you can play a proper world cup tournament. The teams can be computer or human controlled, depending on how many people want to play.
Game configuration options include the power of kicking, speed of the game, weather, which ranges from sunshine to torrential monsoon conditions and thunderstorms complete with lightning flashes, length of each half, goal scoring replays, and the type of football you want to use.
With the configurations done, it's time to go down the tunnel and out onto the pitch, the action is viewed from above, and in the top left hand corner is a small pitch radar showing where the players are on the pitch, this can be switched off if it's annoying. You can only control the player nearest to the ball who will be highlighted, controlling that player is easy, just the movement controls and a key to kick the ball. One of the features I particularly like about Arcade Soccer is that the ball stays glued to your feet, if you turn round suddenly it sticks with you, other football games such as Sensible Soccer or Superior Soccer (if you can remember that far back!) didn't do this, turn round and you lose the ball, losing the ball like this maybe more realistic but it spoils the game..
The game itself includes the usual football rules, although I think the off-side rule is not implemented. There is an invisible referee who blows the whistle for throw ins, and other things during the game, and as a football game it plays really well, its easy to get into and have a good game either against the computer or in a 2 player match.
The graphics haven't dated at all and still look good now, it does not look 15 years old, the pitch is nice and green and the players look like proper footballers, the audio side of things is minimal but works well. From the opening music, there are just whistles and ball kicking noises, apart from the strange tackling noises which can be heard from time to time, if you are playing in the rain then rain noises and thunderstorms will be heard as well.
Overall Arcade Soccer was great fun to play 15 years ago and I see no reason to alter that view now. I think many of today's football games are far too in depth and almost too realistic this is simple fun to play and is well worth a go.
The Olympics
Remember Track & Field and Hyper Sports back in the 1980s? If you do then this is what The Olympics is based on, if not, then in short it is a multi sporting events game for a number of players.
Upon loading the game a decent rendition of Chariots Of Fire can be heard. From the main menu you can decide how many events you want to compete in, whether you want to practice them first, define the keys used, the number of players (up to eight players can compete against each other), in the next menu you enter your name and country you are from, and then you can start the games, as with the real olympics, medals are awarded for finishing in the top three, with bronze silver and gold medals.
The Events
Diving - in this event you have to perform a number of moves between jumping off the diving board and hitting the water,and need to hit the water with a proper dive rather than a flop into the pool to score good marks with the judges. There are four different types of dives to carry out, forward, backwards, reverse and inwards.
Shooting - using the mouse to control the sights you have to shoot all the clay pigeons that are fired across the sky, the more you shoot the more points you score.
Javelin - you have to run down the track and then when you reach the line throw the javelin into the air, as you'd expect the further you throw it the more points you score.
Swimming - this is a swimming race against 3 other competitors and the object as you'd expect it to be is to finish first. This event reminds me of the old Tynesoft 'keyboard bashers' when you have to tap the Z and X keys in order to build up a rhythm to swim faster, you also need to breath at intervals as well.
Canoeing - this an against the clock event where you have to steer your canoe to the finish and must go through all the gates on the way.
Polevault - another event which involves running down the track and at a certain point you have to launch yourself over the bar using the pole, the higher the bar the more points you score, if you can get over it.
The graphics still look OK after all this time, but some of the athletes look a bit odd and run a bit strangely but doesn't really matter, sound wise the opening rendition of Chariots of Fire is good and there are in-game noises and national anthems, which do the job.
Overall I would say the Olympics is OK, it's nothing amazing and never really was in the first place. I liked the shooting event the best, but didn't really go much on the other events really, I think Summer Olympiad on the BBC Micro was a better example of this sort of game, but it's still worth having as part of a compilation though.
Holed Out
Holed Out is a golf simulation game, which features a number of different courses, a course editor, and different gametypes. Upon loading Holed Out you can read the instructions, advisable the first time round as it gives game and editor control information. From here you select whether you want to edit courses using the course editor or play the game, if you play the game then you have to decide whether you are going to play "Match Play" or "Stroke Play" the difference being that in Match Play the object is to win as many of the 18 holes as possible this is a 2 player game, where as in Stroke Play the object is to complete all 18 holes in as few shots as possible, in this game you can up to four players.
Now it's onto the game and the course will appear and 'you' will be on the course with your bag of clubs. Now you have to decide on which club to use, how much power is in the shot and the direction of where you want the ball to land. The game is mouse controlled and is very easy to play, you can learn how to swing almost instantly, so you don't need to be a golf master to have a few rounds.
At the top left of the screen you will see the "Select a club" menu, move the move pointer around the area to select your required club. When you have picked the right one click on the select mouse button, a cross-hair will now appear, move this with the mouse to the place on the course where you want the ball to land. Now click the middle mouse button and hold it down and the power meter will rise from 0 to 100% when it gets to the required amount release the mouse button and the ball will now be hit into the distance and will then land hopefully in a good place for you to carry on. As in real life it might hit a tree, or go in a bunker or get lost in the water. If you didn't lose the ball then you can carry on with the next shot and repeat the process until you get onto the green. Obviously there is more to the game than whack the ball and hope for the best, there are slopes and wind to take into consideration, once on the green the view of the game moves to above and then with the putter you tap the ball into the hole, round completed!
Graphically Holed Out doesn't look too bad, the courses are well drawn, with the trees, water, bunkers and then the green. Its nothing outstanding but does the job, although the players do look a bit odd! The sound effects are minimal but then this is a golf simulation so you wouldn't really expect in game music, the sampled effects for hitting the ball, ball hitting the tree work well and there's a good sampled plop noise when the ball goes in the water as well.
This is actually the Holed Out Compendium, so in addition to the original release, you also get a number of extra courses plus the course designer. These additional courses are more testing and are for the more experienced player. Should you have the urge then you can also create your own courses with the hole designer which you access when the game is first loaded up. I haven't designed any courses so I don't know how well it works but the accompanying blurb says it is easy to use and highly sophisticated, so it must be good!
Whether you are going to enjoy playing Holed Out really depends if you like golf games or not, I'm not a massive fan really but quite enjoyed a couple of games. The multi player option can add a bit of competition to the game as well, overall it's not a bad game and you get a lot of golf for your money, so if you like golf have a go.
Virtual Golf
A double treat for golf fans on this compilation, after Holed Out, comes Virtual Golf which is as you'd expect is another golf game but a much better one, just looking at the game screenshots you can see how much better it looks, but what is this game like compared to Holed Out ? We shall find out..
Virtual Golf takes the Holed Out idea and takes it much further. This time the game is installed on the iconbar as a multitasking application, although the game only runs in single tasking mode. From the game icon you get a menu appear, from here you can select various configurations for the game, such as sound volume, number of players, type of game, tournament info, hole practice and choose which season to play in, the season you choose has different conditions to play in, with all the configurations done, click on the game icon and the game will begin.
There are a number of different tournaments you can play in and the overall aim is to win all of them, playing the game is via the mouse. The buttons are used, amongst things, to select which club you want to use, and to set the direction in which the ball will go. To actually get the shot taken you have to move the mouse about, it's a bit of a fiddly process but I seemed to get some shots in - I'm not totally sure how though!
A number of keys have special functions, for example pressing 'A' will give you an action replay of the last shot, which is useful to show off your quality shots , not so useful if you want to avoid some poor shots straight into the water! Also pressing Escape will return you to the desktop which will pause the game and you can change setting via the game icon, clicking on the icon will return you back to the game.
The graphics of the game are significantly better than Holed Out, they are scanned images (I think) and they make the course look so much better. The trees look far more realistic and there is more variety in the scenery, on the right of the screen is a map of the course and also a panel which gives the direction of the wind and other relevant information. The sound effects are minimal noises for hitting the ball, landing in the water etc, simple but effective really.
Overall I would say Virtual Golf is a better game than Holed Out but it did get released many years later so it's probably a bit unfair to compare the two, however with the much improved graphics and more realistic look, for golf players then Virtual Golf is certainly worth playing a round on (Ho ho -ED).
SilverBall
Silverball is a pinball simulator and there's not much else to say really. It's as you would expect in a pinball game really, you control the game with the mouse, the middle mouse button to fire the ball up the table, and then then try and get it to hit as many things in table to score as many points as possible. Until you lose control of the ball and it disappears down the bottom of the screen. The flippers at the bottom are controlled with the left and right mouse buttons, this is a pretty basic pinball game, the table is divided into two screens and it plays a reasonably good game of pinball.
The graphics of the game resemble a pinball table well and look alright, you can change the background picture of the table. The sound effects are minimal but functional, beeps and pings and other noises, there is no music. I don't really know what else to say about this apart from it's a reasonably good pinball game, and worth a go if pinball games appeal to you. The best RISC OS pinball game is the now rather obscure Arcpinball this is a superb game, with great sounds, graphics and is a forgotten classic, and should be revived and re-released!
Kick Off
This is a previously unreleased game, and it is always welcome to see a new games release, this is a football management game, upon loading you have to select the number of players, from 1 to 4, after that you go to the Team/Manager Initialisation Menu. To the right of the screen there are 4 options 'Quit game' which funnily enough quits the game, and returns you neatly to the desktop. Save/Load allows you save or load a game, on first load this will be unavailable, but when you have saved a game then or are playing a new game the option become available. The third option is Game options but it seems the only option is to select the type of mouse pointer to be used in the game, the final option is play game. Before you click on Play game, you will need to click on the bar on the left hand side of the screen where it says "AthleticCity Town" the next screen will allow you to change the name of the team, the ground you player and the manager, as the following screen shows, any guesses who I support?
Click on play game and the season is under way, you will be returned to the main menu after a quick screen change. If you now click on your team name you will see the list of your players and there are a number of options available from the menu which you change the option by clicking the mouse on the arrows, options available here, are buy and sell players, add improvements to the stadium, view the clubs finances and increase or decrease the clubs loan and then go back to the main menu screen.
Now if you click on play game the matches will start happening, you will see a list of your divisions fixtures, then half time scores and finally the full time results. After which match and team statistics will be displayed along with league tables, injuries and bookings from your match and club finance updates, then its back to the main menu to prepare for the next match.
Back in the main menu, clicking on your clubs name now gives you a different set of options which will stay there throughout the season, from here you can view the clubs finances, about the club, league tables for all four divisions, your squad and league fixtures.
Overall Kick Off is an OK game, whilst it's nice to see new releases, it's not a brilliant one, it's a pretty basic football management game, which is alright but doesn't offer much more than the original Football manager games other than better more colourful graphics, there is no sound, but it's acceptable as part of a compilation.
As with the other 4th Dimension game CDs, these versions have all been updated and include HTML manuals (although Silverball seemed to be missing one) and should all run without any problems on RISC OS 4/Strong ARM machines. All the games seemed to run without any problems, although there was a problem with The Olympics in some of the earlier CD releases, if your copy of The Olympics will not run visit the
Kick Off almost runs fine on the Iyonix with Aemulor Pro but then gave an error message during the game, Break 147 & Superpool and Arcade Soccer work fine , as does Holed Out. Although Virtual Golf and The Olympics didn't work with Aemulor Pro, but that's not bad considering. Grevious Bodily Arm appears to be running, the music starts playing, but my monitor doesn't seem to be able to display the mode GBA uses, whether it can't or I haven't got the correct MDF - I don't know, so it may work.
Overall this is a reasonably good collection of sports game and it really depends on what games appeal. I like football so Arcade Soccer is a particular favourite, The Olympics is OK, nothing spectacular but OK. Grevious Bodily 'Arm, whilst a basic beat-em-up, is good fun and worth playing. If you like golf then Virtual Golf & Holed Out will appeal if you don't they won't. It's the same situation really with Break 147 & Superpool. Silverball and Kick off are OK as compilation fillers, but you can't have too many games on a compilation can you? Overall this is a mixed bag with something for everyone and considering this lot would set you back well over £100 originally £15.00 is a good price.
The next compilation of games I would guess will probably be arcade/platform type games, with the likes of Spobbleoid, Cataclysm, Enter The Realm and Pandora's Box to name but a few, we shall see, but I'm certain that there will be more 4D CD releases.
Product details
Product:
Sports C
Supplier:
The 4th Dimension (APDL
Price:
£14.9
Address:
39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5R
Tel:
0208 778265
WWW:
E-mail:
Matt Thompson
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/ADJUST/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, Configuring RISC OS Adjust
Configuring RISC OS Adjust
With RISC OS Adjust, the system for configuring your computer has changed somewhat. In this short series we'll explain each component in turn.
Display
The Display section lets you set the type of monitor you are using, the default screen resolution, number of colours and the screensaver you wish to use. Click the Display icon to open this window.
With RISC OS Adjust, what formed the 'Screen' section has been split into 'Display'; perhaps recognising the fact that an increasing number of users have RISC OS on laptops as well as traditional computers. Click the Monitor icon to open this window.
Before we explain how this works, we shall describe how the various monitor types are defined. Each monitor is described in a Monitor Definition File (MDF), and these are all stored in a directory named Monitors found inside the Configure sub-directory of the Resources directory within !Boot. If you purchase a monitor from a RISC OS dealer, they will probably supply you with an MDF for the monitor and if you place it into this directory it will appear on the menu described in the next paragraph so that you can select it.
The first item in the Monitor Configuration window lets you select the make and model of the monitor you are using from a menu. As well as some specific monitor types you should also find the standard Acorn monitors. These are all fairly basic monitors, and if you have a normal CRT monitor without a specific MDF, then one of these should provide you with basic video.
If you are using a modern high-resolution monitor, and especially if this is a TFT (liquid crystal or LCD) display you are strongly advised to try to obtain a proper MDF for it. Not only will this let you get the best out of your monitor it will also ensure that you don't damage it as can happen if you use a badly mismatched MDF. There are a number of websites where these can be obtained and helpful advice is often available through the various RISC OS forums.
Once you have selected the monitor type you can choose the number of colours and screen resolution. With a normal Risc PC there is a trade-off between these two values as only a limited amount of memory is available for the video display and the larger the screen resolution the fewer the number of colours you can use.
With machines such as an Acorn A7000, RiscStation or Micro you should be aware that there will be a considerable screen penalty in higher-resolution screen modes.
Click Set to confirm, or Cancel to cancel your settings.
Clicking the ScreenSaver icon opens this window.
From the 'Type' menu select the screen saver you require, then click 'Settings'. Each screen saver has its own set of settings available; controlling the speed and form of the screensaver on screen. Change them to suit your own needs then click Set.
The Saver Delay controls the time between lack of activity and the launch of the screensaver. After this time the screen saver will become active, and is unblanked when the mouse is moved or a key pressed.
DPMS is a particular type of blanking that can be used with most modern monitors. Instead of just blanking the screen it puts the monitor into a special low-power mode, which can be particularly useful with larger CRT monitors that consume a lot of power. Not only does this save electricity and prolong the monitor's life, the lower power consumption means that the monitor will produce much less heat when blanked. This can be an important factor in hot weather; but has the disadvantage that the monitor takes a couple of seconds to unblank.
Click Set to confirm the settings.
Extensions
RISC OS Adjust supports a system of extensions. Where they are installed in the computer with appropriate configurable attributes you'll be able to do so through here.
The machine upon which this article was being written doesn't have any such extensions installed, so you'll have to experiment with these yourself. Click Set to confirm.
Filer
With RISC OS Adjust, the Filer Configuration options have been separated into five windows - Display, File Operations, Name truncation, Miscellaneous and Thumbnailing. Click Filer to open the first window, Display.
The Directory Displays window works just as that within the Filer menu.
The File Operations window also works as per the filer menu within RISC OS.
The Filer Configuration window allows you to set the length assigned for file and folder names in Filer windows. If you often use long names you may wish to increase this, but it affects the spacing between objects in a directory viewer so the more space assigned the further apart they are and the less will be seen at once in any given size window.
The Miscellaneous window provides three options:
Active selection
Lower case all upper
Select renamin
To see the effect of each on the filer, click each in turn then 'Set'.
With RISC OS Adjust, you can now view thumbnails of graphics within a filer window. The Thumbnailing Options window allows you to decide the width and height of the image; the number of colours that should be displayed and the largest size of image to display.
Unless you have lots of memory installed in the computer, you should keep the default values.
Fonts
The Fonts configuration tools allow you to configure attributes relating to fonts within the RISC OS operating system. Click the Fonts icon to open this window.
Within the Anti Aliasing section you can control the quality of text as it appears on the screen. Clicking 'Anti Alias' and 'Cache Bitmaps' will respectively improve considerably the quality of text as it appears on screen and the speed it's rendered at. If you set the 'sub-pixel anti-aliasing' flags the quality of the text will be improved further, but the memory consumption will rise accordingly.
The Font cache limit should never be less than 256 kilobytes; as with RISC OS Adjust using a font for the desktop it's always in use.
Clicking Desktop Font opens up this window.
Using this window you can decide the font, weight, style, size and height of the desktop font. Fiddle with the settings in the 'Font' and 'Size' areas, then click 'Try' to see the result before clicking 'Apply' and forcing it onto your desktop.
The Install Fonts option opens a window into which you can drag a '!Fonts' folder and merge it with the fonts contained on your hard disc. The next option, Open Fonts opens a window into those fonts which you can also drag individual font folders into.
Finally, Rescan Fonts checks the font directory for any new additions and adds them to your system.
Help
The Help option allows you to control how and when help windows should appear on the screen. Click Help to open this window.
Click within the 'Font' drop-down menu to choose the font to be used; and in the delay section enter the delay [in centiseconds] before help should appear at the pointer. As a word of advice, the default will suit the majority of needs.
We will continue our exploration through the RISC OS Adjust Configuration system in the next issue of RISC World.
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/BBC/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, BBC Games
BBC Games
Matt Thompson buys some new BBC games...?
The BBC Micro games market should have finished many years ago, as RISC OS machines took over from the good old Beeb, so it seems rather strange that all these years later here I am with not one, but three brand new BBC Micro game releases.
The games have been released by Cronosoft, who specialise in releasing brand new games at budget prices for old computer systems - such as BBC, Spectrum, Commodore, Amstrad. More on Cronosoft later, but let's turn back the clock to the Beeb years and have a look at these new games, complete with 'The Micro User' style scoring system!
Egghead In Space
This started out as a ZX Spectrum game but was then converted to the BBC, and it is a good old 8-bit platform game of which many were released for the BBC Micro. In this game you take control of Egghead (an egg on legs) who has had his favourite computer games stolen by aliens (yes really!) and he has managed to hitch a ride back to their planet, now he is on a mission to retrieve his games collection.
The game is played by moving Egghead around the screens, avoiding nasties, and picking up and using items along the way. There are the usual key open door puzzles, plus others, such as a light which will illuminate rooms that are dark. You will find that some items will dispose of the alien creatures, for example the Water Pistol is not liked by one type of alien so if you pick it up and head in their direction you will find that they have disappeared.
The graphics of Egghead In Space are in monochrome, so you only get one colour per screen as you can see from the screenshots. Whilst this is not the most colourful of graphical displays it does work well, and was used in many BBC games in the past such as Spellbinder, Return Of The Jedi and Plan B so it isn't anything new. The lack of colour doesn't spoil the game as the graphics are well drawn and detailed.
There's not much in the way of sound in the game, there is a rendition of "The Great Escape" on the title page, but apart from that a few functional in game noises and that's about it really.
Egghead In Space is a relatively easy game to get into, not too difficult or too easy, Egghead is easy to control just left, right and jump. The controls are redefinable, you have 5 lives to start with and will lose one of them if you come into contact with any of the alien beings or fall too far from a ledge. Beware as being an egg you break easily!
I haven't got that far into the game as yet, but I was able to explore quite a large area of the game and solve a few of the puzzles before getting stuck. I don't know how big the actual game is but I think there is plenty more to discover, and unlike many of the old BBC games which I never managed to complete, I'm certainly going to try and finish this one.
I liked Egghead In Space, as I found it to be a quality little platformer and would go as far to say that it is better than some games that were released commercially for the BBC many years ago, I found it a good challenge and it was entertaining to play.
I would recommend it to anyone who used to enjoy platformers back in the 1980s and would like a new challenge, definitely worth a go.
Verdict
Sound .............
Graphics ..........
Playability .......
Value for Money .. 1
Overall ............9
Weenies
Weenies is a game that must have been inspired by Lemmings as there is more than a passing similarity to it, as the object of the game is to save a group of creatures from killing themselves and guide them safely to the exit.
Upon loading you get the main game menu, there are four options here, start game, enter password, load a different group of levels and turn the sound on or off.
Playing the game itself is very easy, but you need to read the instructions first to know what everything does. Using the cursor keys to control the 'flashing block' you move this around the screen and then can place either bricks, rope or ladders to help the Weenies get to the exit, you only have a certain amount of each to complete the level. To place a block you simply press the corresponding number 1) Ladder 2) Rope 3) Brick , you can remove a block if it's in the wrong position by deleting it but you don't get it back! You can place a brick anywhere on the screen, but ladders and ropes can only go in certain places, you can't have a rope hanging in mid air it has to be suspended from a platform above so the Weenies can climb down the rope, and the ladders need a block beneath them so the Weenies can get to the ladders and then climb up them.
The screenshot below, shows the first level, this is very easy to complete, you simply place the brick in the gap and the Weenies can then travel safely across to the exit.
Visually the game looks like a typical BBC Micro game, the graphics are slightly blocky in places, and the levels use three colours plus black, but it looks OK and works well considering the limitations of a 32K machine.
On the right of the screen is the information panel which shows the number of each block available for that level, the time left to complete the level, the number of Weenies currently out and the rate at which they will emerge from the hatch. You can speed this release rate up if you wish to do so, there is also the scanner at the bottom right which is a map of the level and also shows the position of the Weenies on the level. The early levels are just on the one screen but later ones scroll to the left and the right to make for a bigger playing area.
Weenies will die if they fall too far off a ledge so you have to be quick to make sure they don't fall, to complete the level you need to guide all the Weenies to the exit before the time runs out otherwise it will be game over. When all the Weenies have made it to the exit, you will get the password for the next level, and you can then skip the levels you've already completed.
The sounds in the game include a very typical BBC tune at the start of each level and a different one on the completion of each level, the in-game sound effects are minimal beeps and noises.
Overall I think Weenies is a great little game, entertaining to play, addictive and at times frustrating, plus it is an original game idea for the BBC as well, when you remember that Lemmings was never released for the BBC Micro. As with Egghead In Space I would say that this would not have looked out of place back in the 1980s as a commercial title, and is well worth playing.
P>Verdict
Sound .............
Graphics ..........
Playability .......
Value for Money .. 1
Overall ............8
Dominion
This is the final new BBC release, and this time a change in game style, as Dominion is a MODE 7 text only adventure, the story of this adventure is as follows:
You take on the role of Squire Knightson, who is the Lord of Rhodas Manor, whose land is threatened from a dark force led by a powerful Emperor. Knightson must now take on the challenge of destroying this force and save the land. In this quest you will visit far off regions, fight creatures and use magic to complete your quest.
When you load the game you will see the title page which is shown above after that, the game will start, I couldn't get MODE 7 screenshots from !6502em so this is the text equivalent - which is much the same thing anyway - just imagine it's in MODE 7 style text
"Squire Knightson was at the Rhodes Village"
"Knightson can proceed :"
"North , South"
"What now sire ?"
Typing in North moves you to a new location, same with typing South. In additional to typing direction movements, other commands need to be entered there are basic two word commands such as "Take Item" "Use Item" "Examine Door" and also some more in depth commands (as taken from the manual) "Say To Wizard Cast Spell" and "Give Bread To Wizard" if you type in "Look" you can get a more detailed description of your current location.
I didn't really go a lot on this game, not because it's bad, but because I'm not a massive fan of text adventures, they have never really appealed to me, although I have to admit I did like Project Thesius by Robico which I had on one of those Beau Jolly games collections and found that to be a very good text adventure.
I didn't know Dominion was a text adventure, if I had then I probably wouldn't have bought it, but I just bought the three new BBC games!, however those that used to like text adventures might like to give it a try, i'm sure there is a market for these types of games.
I'm not going to give the marks out of ten for this game as I haven't really played it properly and would be unfair to judge it from the small part I have seen of it.
These three BBC games are available to buy from Cronosoft at www.cronosoft.co.uk and they are available in both emulator images or on tape or disc as you would find them in the shops complete with inlays, if you still have access to a BBC Micro then you can buy Weenies and Egghead In Space on cassette only, and you can buy Dominion on 5.25" disc (remember them?) other formats may be available at a later date, but at the time of writing that is all that is listed on the website. If you want a different format then might be worth contacting Cronosoft to see if they can help, the games are also available as emulator images for use with BBC emulators such as !6502em. All three games are available as images and when you order them you will get the game image file and also the instructions as a textfile sent to you via email.
It is worth mentioning here that Cronosoft also have a lot of new games available for other 8 bit machines with can be played without problem on RISC OS machines, the main market seems to be for ZX Spectrum games and there are a lot of them, all new titles, including some other Egghead games. Some of the Cronosoft games are available as emulator images from Retro Soft see
There are also Commodore games available which should run ok with the Vice range of programs, games currently available for Vic 20 and Commodore 64. In addition there are also some Amstrad games available but the RISC OS Amstrad emulator is a bit out of date and isn't Iyonix compatible, so I don't know how good it is at running these new games. Maybe someone could update it to work on the Iyonix ?
It's great to see some brand new BBC titles being released commercially, and good quality ones rather than just any old rubbish. I particularly liked Egghead and Weenies, a throwback to the good old days of gaming, when games were fun and entertaining to play, and not just about fancy sounds and graphics like so many of today's games are, you need a playable game as well! I didn't really go a lot on Dominion, but I was never much of a fan of text adventures, so naturally it didn't appeal, but probably worth a try for those who used to enjoy text adventures.
Finally if anyone has any unfinished or finished BBC games that they never did anything with, why not contact Cronosoft and get it released and also make a bit of money at the same time, hopefully there will be more BBC releases to come from Cronosoft, we shall see.
Product:
BBC Game
Supplier:
Cronosof
Price:
£2.99 (Cassette or disc) £1.79 BBC emulator disc image
WWW:
E-mail:
Matt Thompson
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/DCW/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, Digital Creative World
Digital Creative World
Dave Bradforth takes a look at recent and forthcoming releases for those using their RISC OS computer creatively
With our series on design coming to a conclusion last issue, we're moving this issue on to 'Digital Creativity' in a truly broad sense. If you keep track of magazines such as Computer Arts and Digital Creative Arts, you'll be aware that Digital Creativity refers to potentially any artwork you produce using a computer.
Whether it's bitmap graphic editing in Photodesk, producing lineart in ArtWorks 2 or page layouts in Ovation Pro you're producing something creative on a RISC OS computer. If you've got any examples of these you'd like to share with other RISC World readers, let us know - if we can use the artwork in an issue of the magazine we'll be delighted and you may win a software prize to thank you for your contribution.
There have been a few developments lately in the digital creative field, so we thought we'd bring some of them together in one place.
XAT releases Tracer Professional
X-Ample Technology, run by Paul Reuvers over in Holland, announced the release around the Wakefield Show of Tracer Professional. Tracer will allow you to take any two-colour bitmap image (sprite format only) and trace it into a vector image (a Draw file) within a matter of seconds.
The program, originally released by DABS Press in the late 1980s, has been updated to run on the Iyonix PC. In that respect it's very useful, but the fact that it will only trace two-colour images and requires a fair degree of setting up before you'll get anything like usable results does limit its usefulness within a creative environment.
Editing a traced image within Tracer Professional
Tracer incorporates a number of facilities for fine-tuning the results, and to its credit will allow you to operate on the work in progress within the main program window. However while the tools are based on Draw, and the output is in Drawfile format, the user interface isn't as simple to follow as Draw and for those who perhaps wish to use ArtWorks or DrawWorks to speed up the editing of files this may again cause some confusion.
Features offered by the program include
Convert Sprites to DrawFile
A full editor that's very similar to Dra
You can save Sprites and DrawFiles togethe
Files can be reloaded for editin
A powerful zoom facility is on offe
The tracing algorithm can be fine-tuned by the use
You can set the image origi
An online manual is offered, but this is one product where it would benefit from a printed offering and given the price point of £49 it would seem to be justified. We like the product, XAT, but feel that it needs a little more work to justify the price - the ability to deal with even 16 colour sprites and a printed manual would be a definitive step in the right direction.
You can get further details at
XAT - no news on Impression X
>
To date, there has been no further news on the development of Impression X; the 32-bit literate version of Computer Concepts classic essential application. While the program still has a strong support base, I'm left wondering what the size of the market will be when Impression X does finally hit the shelves and what format the release will take.
Working on a principle of diminishing returns, and taking into consideration Martin Wuerthner's recent concerns about sales of ArtWorks 2 upgrades, we're left wondering just how many people will be prepared to pay for an upgrade to Impression X when many who are using it have moved onto Ovation Pro or are happy running it through AEmulor.
Perhaps strong sales of the A9home will help to stimulate sales for XAT.
RiScript 5 hits the shelves...
...virtually, anyway. Developed by Jeroen Medema and Roeland van den Bos, RiScript was first released commercially through Uniqueway in 1997. When Cerilica joined the scene and looked to have a clear focus on RISC OS design and publishing products, the product was relaunched with a printed manual through the company.
With Cerilica's team moving onto other things, Jeroen and Roeland reclaimed ownership of the product and for a while things lay dormant. People would ask occasionally what the state of play was; as Cerilica had promised on numerous occasions an Iyonix PC-friendly version of the suite. But nothing was announced.
RiScript makes a comeback - virtually...
Until the end of August when, through the website
Priced at 39 euros the program is ideal for the majority of the needs of the average RISC OS user, but you would still run into major problems providing the files [in quantity] to a printer for commercial output. Given the current development effort being put into the program, this doesn't seem to be a problem that will last forever, and RISC World will be first in the queue to report when things do change.
In the meantime, support the development of the program by buying it - and say we sent you.
When it comes to the development of vector graphics on RISC OS, Martin Wuethner is regarded by many of us as a legend. Why? He's the man who single handedly revived ArtWorks when its previous owners Computer Concepts had long since forgotten all about it.
In the time MW Software have had ArtWorks under their wing, the application has gone from being a title current for professional use fifteen years ago to one that could very easily be used today and beyond. With graduated transparencies, CMYK sprites and much much more ArtWorks is the perfect choice for professional graphic creation on RISC OS.
PDFs from ArtWorks 2.5 - review when the release happens
Before the end of 2005, Martin is expecting to release ArtWorks 2.5. Amongst other things, the key feature in this release is to be Direct PDF export. Allowing you to bypass the RISC OS printer drivers, Direct PDF export will offer advantages including:
Fully vector based export of transparency effects including different transparency types and graduated transparenc
High quality sprite export including masks, without suffering from problems caused by the RISC OS PostScript printer drive
High quality export of graduated fills as PDF shades, without having to approximate the graduation using a series of clipped shape
Full support for CMYK colours, even in conjunction with transparency and files can be produced with full CMYK informatio
The advantage here is clear; you'll be able to submit illustrations for professional printing produced entirely on RISC OS after following a simple one-step export from ArtWorks 2.5 itself. The disadvantage, unfortunately, is that you'll not be able to view the PDF on a RISC OS computer as the platform currently lacks a suitably capable browser.
The MW-Software website, at
So what would you like?
The RISC World team has strong contacts within the RISC OS market; who can often help produce or provide software to meet any need. If you've got a need for a piece of RISC OS software, let us know and we'll hopefully be able to find somebody to help. The email address - email our editor!
About 18 months ago I purchased a Relisys 19" LCD monitor to replace my somewhat aging 21" CRT. One of the main reasons for doing this was that the old monitor was quite a lump and took up a lot of desk space. It gave a good, clear picture at the resolution I normally use, 1280 x 1024, and was capable of 1600 x 1200, although since I couldn't push the VIDC above 58 Hz at this resolution there was noticeable flicker which made it really only usable at this screen size with the Viewfinder card. The Relisys was chosen partly on price, 19" TFT monitors had just become affordable and this was good value, but also because although it was a 1280 x 1024 display it was actually capable of displaying a very acceptable 1600 x 1200 desktop. Obviously this wasn't as good as the smaller resolution, but as the flicker at 58 Hz wasn't noticeable I could actually use it on those occasions when a larger desktop was more important than the quality of the display. As is usual with LCD monitors the display size was about the same as a 2" larger CRT screen, and in fact it was almost identical to the screen size of my old 21" CRT monitor.
Having got used to it I realised that I would never go back to a CRT (anyway, although there was initially a lot of extra space on my desk it soon mysteriously vanished so it wouldn't have been a simple task) and I sold the old monitor at the 2004 Wakefield show.
Bigger and better
Since my earlier purchase the price of TFT monitors has continued to fall and 17" displays are now available for not much over £100 + VAT. This meant that even bigger and better monitors had become affordable, and I was beginning to read with interest the reviews in publications like Computer Shopper.
One of the prime considerations for me was that the monitor would be used most of the time with the normal VIDC display and not the Viewfinder. This is because my main RiscPC is the one that also gets used for a lot of software testing, including games. Many of these don't work with the Viewfinder and so unless I'm doing something that requires high resolution and a lot of colours it tends to be disabled most of the time.
When one of my suppliers had a "special offer" on the Dell monitor I thought it looked like a good buy. I had seen the smaller Dell monitors in operation, and they seemed to be extremely good.
The monitor's resolution is 1600 x 1200 and one of the things that attracted me to it (apart from the price, which for this offer was less than £300) is the narrow bezel around the screen as you can see from the photos below. This means that although the display size is more than an inch wider than my old monitor the monitor itself is slightly smaller.
Click on the picture for a larger image
One possible disadvantage with this monitor, as you can see from the side view above, is that the stand is rather large and bulky. The good thing, however, is that it's very stable (necessary with a heavy monitor) and that you can adjust it's height. To get the monitor positioned as I wanted I put a shelf along the back of my desk and placed the monitor on this, which enabled me to get the display in the position which suited me.
The photos above (and the specification) are taken from the Dell User Guide which is supplied on CD in straightforward HTML and which is readable in almost any RISC OS browser. The finish of my monitor is slightly different, being lighter (silver instead of grey) with the word "Dell" in black rather than white with the buttons being the same colour as the bezel. I have no idea which is the "standard" so if you're thinking of buying and appearance is important to you it might be best to check first.
The Dell has both analogue and DVI (digital) inputs, which may be an advantage if you have a PC as well as a RISC OS computer as they can share the monitor without using a KVM switch as you can switch between the inputs using buttons on the front. In my case the PC has its own monitor (a 17" TFT that can be seen on the right in the picture below) and the Iyonix and RiscPC share the Dell via a KVM switch. As well as showing the monitor itself which, as was previously mentioned, is different in appearance from the Dell photo, this also illustrates how compact the monitor is. The PC's monitor on the right is an "old" 17" LCD that I've had for around four years (and which cost the best part of £600!) and you can see that the overall dimensions of the 20" Dell are roughly the same. The computer to the left is my main RiscPC (I don't like the Acorn cases).
Click on the picture for a larger image
I'm actually using the same MDF that I created for the Relisys, and although it would probably be possible to "tweak" this it's worked so well that I've never bothered. In fact the monitor seems fairly tolerant and although it's far from ideal you can get a perfectly usable display using an AKF85 MDF so you can at least get a picture 'out of the box'.
The Dell 2001 has the usual on screen menu system for adjustment. However, it has a very good auto-adjust system which normally succeeds in fitting the chosen resolution to the screen size. In fact the only desktop mode that defeated it is 1152 x 864, which is a rather non standard size but happens to be the largest screen resolution that can be used with 32,000 colours on a RiscPC. It also works with almost all of the games I've tried it with, and the picture below shows it running Repton in full screen mode.
Performance
Before I purchased this monitor I did a brief search to try to find some reviews. While writing this article I've gone back and found several more and read them (and re-read the ones I'd found previously) in the light of my own experience. There were two main criticisms (apart from some reviewers not liking its appearance).
Some reviewers criticised the colour rendition. Lab tests showed that it's not perfect and so may not be suitable for serious, professional quality photo retouching work, particularly when used with an analogue rather than digital signal. However, they all agreed that you would probably need to pay at least twice the price to get anything significantly better, and this was based on the "normal" price of more that £500. Certainly I haven't noticed any problems, but then I don't use it for "serious" photographic work. If your main use of your computer is photo retouching or other artistic work then this may not be the monitor for you, but do try to see one in action first as in my experience it's not as bad as the reviewers suggested. (I would also point out that for serious work you would need to colour calibrate the monitor and the computer - Ed).
Another fault that some reviewers found is that they suggested that the refresh rate is a bit slow for games. The sort of games they were talking about were the fast action games running on a PC with a high end graphics card, and even then it was only just noticeable. Certainly this problem will not arise on any RISC OS computer and the good thing about it is that the slightly slower response will allow RiscPC users whose VIDC can't manage a refresh rate greater that 56Hz at 1200 x 1600 to use it without visible flicker.
What all agreed is that the Dell 2001 FP is very, very good value for money.
The contrast ratio is shown as 400:1. This is lower than many others, including those in the Dell range, for example, the smaller E193FP is 500:1. However the contrast, even in its middle setting, is extremely good and consistent for all brightness settings (which is probably more important) and after some months of using the monitor I certainly have no criticism of it.
Although the 2001 has a 1200 x 1600 pixel panel Dell have obviously realised that people may not want to use this resolution all the time and have put a lot of effort into making the monitor work well at lower resolutions. Using a TFT screen other than at its "natural" resolution will always result in some loss of picture quality and how good the result is will depend upon how good the electronics are rather than the screen itself. All the "standard" modes shown in the table in the specification are extremely sharp despite the fact that they're not the natural size of the screen. 800 x 600 is, as you would expect, extremely good, but 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024 are also remarkably good and are as good as many lesser monitors where that is their true pixel size.
This is important when using a RiscPC because if you don't have a viewfinder card you will need to reduce resolution to use more colours. Obviously if you intend to use the monitor with an Iyonix this will not be so important, and although I've concentrated on it's use with th RiscPC as you might gather it does work perfectly with the Iyonix.
The three pictures below were going to be photos showing 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 1024 and 1024 x 768. However, I could not manage to get a satisfactory photo of either of the two larger sizes, the resolution of a 4 megapixel camera simply couldn't do it justice. I have therefore resorted to using screen "grabs" which although somewhat artificial do serve to illustrate just how much extra desktop workspace a higher resolution monitor can give you. In each case click on the small picture to see the full size image.
Click on the picture for a larger image
At the time of writing Dell have a special offer on the 2001FP with 20% off the normal price of £520 so you would pay just £412.66 including VAT and carriage. This is a rather large discount and suggests that it might be discontinued at some time so don't delay. The smaller, 19", E193FP with its 1280 x 1024 display and analogue only input costs just £245.88 inclusive for those that don't want the larger monitor.
The specification of the Dell 2001FP has been extracted from the manual and is included as a separate file. Dell 2001FP specifications.
Dave Holden
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/DIGICAM/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, Getting started with Digital Cameras
Getting started with Digital Cameras
Dave Bradforth introduces the world of digital photography to RISC OS users
With good quality digital cameras now starting at a touch under £50, it's never been easier to get into digital photography with help from the computer. Even with a RISC OS computer, there's a good choice of software and hardware available to help you produce better photographs.
Based in part on an article on The Cybervillage, we've put together here a comprehensive get started guide to digital cameras for RISC OS. From buying batteries and memory cards through to finding the most appropriate software to achieve the desired effect, we've got a bit of everything here. If you have any further questions please direct them to us at the usual address and we'll update in a future issue.
Getting Started
When it comes to getting started with digital photography, there are a number of sites offering a starting point. Located on the Nikon website, '
Exploring the basics of photo imaging, the Epi-Centre website has '
Digital Photography Review, edited by one-time Acorn User news editor Ian Burley, is one of the most comprehensive digital photography resource sites on the Internet. Featured within this is a section called simply '
Newsstand magazines
Unlike magazines for the RISC OS platform, of which only Qercus is still available through the UK newsstand (on occasion), there are a number of magazines regularly published in print form guiding you through different parts of the process involved in buying or using a digital camera.
Before you've actually bought the camera, Digital Camera Buyer from Highbury Entertainment (01202 200200) talks through the latest cameras on sale in each issue; with often over 60 reviews stuffed into a relatively small title. The layout is very arty, with a good selection of photographs illustrating the capabilities of each camera and cameras to suit the majority of budgets. It's a shame that some of the more capable lower-end cameras are left out; but on the whole the balance in Digital Camera Buyer is extremely useful.
From Future Publishing, Digital Camera Shopper has recently adopted Mark Sparrow (one-time technical editor on MacFormat) as its editor. With a similar focus to Digital Camera Buyer what's nice about Digital Camera Shopper is that the magazine often has tutorials relevant to the topic to back up the reviews and features of new products.
Technique magazines, such as Digital Photographer and Digital Photography Made Easy are useful for relevance, particularly when you can take the techniques described and adopt them in a RISC OS software package. It's just a shame that where the PC and Mac OS X platforms have Photoshop CS 2, RISC OS is limited to Photodesk as a leading example of bitmap graphics editing software. (We explore the different packages available later on).
Shopping
When it comes to buying your digital camera, there are a number of suppliers you can turn to for useful help and advice.
If you're looking to buy a digital camera for use on RISC OS, it may be worth spending the extra money to guarantee RISC OS support by buying through your friendly RISC OS dealer. CJE Micros or Surftec may be in a position to offer the hardware and any support drivers you may need.
If you're not too fussed, then looking at the high street and Internet there are a number of locations you could be looking towards.
Batteries
One of the first things you'll discover about using your digital camera is the amount and speed at which they consume battery power. Some models use dedicated rechargeables, while others will allow you to use standard off the shelf rechargeable AA cells. Unfortunately, standard Alkaline cells bought in the shops will last you about ten minutes; so the secret to ensure you don't end up spending your entire life changing batteries is to get special high capacity cells called Ni-MH.
The capacity of batteries is rated in milliAmperes per hour (mAh), and the bigger the number the more power stored within the battery. Standard AA cells are not designed for the current drain demanded by digital cameras, and as such they lost only a few minutes. The free batteries supplied with a new camera, are often low capacity - rated at under 1500mAh whereas many cameras these days demand over 2300mAh Ni-MH cells and as such last longer.
This is where Hahnel Batteries come in; they make some of the most powerful batteries available to buy. Sherwoods Photo Ltd is one of the more typical UK online dealers supplying them.
One tip - Ensure you buy a recharger that can recharge four cells at once in much less than 8 hours. This ensures they're ready for the use the next day when you charge them overnight. Be wary of 'free' rechargers as they can often take between twelve and fifteen hours to recharge a set of batteries.
Memory Cards
Digital Cameras need lots of portable storage if you don't want to run out of space taking pictures whilst out and about. Needless to say, most manufacturers seem to only supply the smallest memory cards when you buy. You may find that one way for a shop to offer better value for money is by bundling a card with the camera - indeed it can become a useful bargaining point when buying over a counter.
No matter which size you end up with, chances are you'll want a bigger one - so why not look out for the new age of cameras that will not only allow for the use of memory cards but also floppy disks, CD RWs or even DVD RWs; increasing by an exponential amount the number of photographs you can store on a single item of media.
Be aware that unless your RISC OS computer has RISC OS Adjust, or a recent version of RISC OS 5, you'll not be able to access a DVD RW on your computer.
RISC OS Issues
Just a few years ago, RISC OS was blessed with a number of suppliers offering driver software and cameras for RISC OS. Interconnex, Spactech/Photodesk and Computer Concepts all offered a digital camera at some point; of which only the Photodesk software is still available through CJE Micros.
Whereas it used to be a case of serial or USB, the only cameras you'll be able to buy now are USB - all serial cameras were discontinued a couple of years ago. At the moment, USB is an option for those with an Iyonix or older machine fitted with USB card.
There are two conflicting USB standards for RISC OS - one designed by Simtec, which seems to have been adopted by the majority of developers supplying camera kit for the RISC OS platform; and the other by Castle Technology which seems to have attracted limited support driven mainly by Castle itself.
Card readers can be separate devices that can be plugged into a USB port, or placed into an empty floppy bay in the machine. For Risc PC owners, this is a viable choice; but may require a cable located outside the machine that is fed back into it in order to access the USB ports.
Viewing and Manipulating Images
There are a number of free or shareware options are available, including Thump, Variations, PicIndex and others. Some will allow for the printing of proof sheets on A4 pages (such as Variations).
Commercially, Studio 24 Pro (originally designed by Pineapple Software) has one of the widest tool sets available in any commercial package. There is a plug-in interface which was designed for the application, unfortunately when the new publishers tried to find out details on how to develop through it the details had long since been lost.
ProArtisan 24, originally from Clares Micro Supplies, is one of the few 32-bit capable graphics packages for RISC OS. Like its sister product Compo, ProArtisan is available from APDL and allows the absolute beginner to get into the basics of digital image manipulation with little or no fuss.
Archiving Images
You can archive images on CD or DVD if you have a CD/DVD burner fitted to the machine. With a little effort, you can produce a set of resized images from your originals (using Paint, ChangeFSI or ProArt) and perhaps a cover sheet as a PDF (constructed using Ovation Pro with help from RiScript) and you'll be able to easily share your files with others.
To go one step further, you could perhaps use software to build web pages from your images - this can then easily be incorporated onto the CD. PC and Mac users running PowerPoint have a template available to produce a CD catalogue; as do users of Macromedia Flash MX.
Summary
You can now do pretty much anything with digital images on a modern RISC OS computer. So long as you have a RISC OS 4 or later machine; with a CD or DVD drive. You should be in a position to take your images, create directories of different sized images, produce printed sheets of thumbnails for easy references, create web pages of them, burn them to a disc and place them into a display folder.
If you get really involved you can archive your images in a lever arch file - a different and cheap holiday album. For a better look at your snaps, insert the disc into a computer and view.
So there we have it - a complete introduction to getting started with a digital camera. It's based on an article, but ended up different ... thanks go to Ross McGuiness for help with this piece.
Dave Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/DISC/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, DiscWorld
DiscWorld
Aaron Timbrell rounds up the software directory
It's back to normality for DiscWorld this issue, as we are once again including a full commercial product...
NightSky - worth £14.90
NightSky is a versatile and comprehensive astronomy package. It quickly and accurately draws starmaps for any place on earth and any date and time. The sun, moon and planets are included as well as the Milky Way and also selected deep sky objects - clusters, nebulae and galaxies.
>A sample starmap. On the real thing you can zoom in to examine areas in detail.
Allows display of the NightSky at any time from anywhere on earth
Can show stars down to magnitude 7.55 (26104 stars)
You can specify faintest magnitude displayed controlling how many stars are shown
For each star the following information is given: Name; Right Ascension and
Declination; Magnitude; Distance; Absolute magnitude; Surface temperature; Luminosity and Spectral class
In addition each star can have text associated with it which is accessed via an icon
We supply text for the most interesting stars but you can edit this and add your own
Constellation boundaries can be shown and constellations can be 'joined up'
The Moon, Sun and planets can be shown
The map can be updated in real time or accelerated time
Lunar and solar eclipses can be observed. This demonstrates the accuracy of the program. NightSky shows that the solar eclipse of 11th August 1999 will be total at Falmouth but partial in Manchester - try this on other programs
Occultations can be predicted and watched
The star catalogue can be processed for dates between 20000BC and 20000AD
Proper motion is allowed for. This is not limited to the date range above
Deep sky objects can be shown e.g nebulae, clusters, galaxies et
"An entertaining and educational program.. .. well worth buying"
Archimedes World
"Comparisons of NightSky with 'The Sky' which is available on PC:
The Sky requires 13.5Mb for Windows version - NightSky runs on a 2Mb machine.
The Sky with 10,000 stars costs twice the price of NightSky with 26,104 stars
NightSky has set a standard which competitors will find hard to
surpass. If you've got an Arc and even the smallest interest in the sky,
buy this application; it's guaranteed to get you bitten by the astronomy
bug. I have no real criticisms.... The keywords of this application are
flexibility with accuracy..."
Risc User
"I particularly like the way you can specify a star simply by
clicking on the constellation and then the Greek letter. One particularly
nice feature is the ability to plot the path a planet would make through
the sky over time. ..the functions that NightSky offers go much further
than Orrery and let you produce more comprehensive results. Is NightSky
worth the asking price ? Most definitely."
Acorn Computing
The complete DiscWorld line up
As per usual we have our collections of the latest RISC OS games and applications, as well as support files for this issues articles. So the full DiscWorld line up looks something like this:
Games
All the games from this issues games world column.
NightSky
The full version of NightSky for our lucky readers...
PD
All the latest PD, shareware and freeware releases from the PD column.
ToolBox
This contains two sets of Toolbox Modules. The Castle archive contains the latest 26/32 bit neutral system components, required if you want to run a lot of new software releases on 26bit machines (ie. anything that isn't an Iyonix). The RISCOS Ltd archive contains later and improved versions of a number of modules and is suitable for all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/DWORKS/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, A Secret History of DrawWorks
A Secret History of DrawWorks Part 5
Aaron
Last issue I was left with a small problem. The new versions of RISC OS Select being produced by RISCOS Ltd, didn't work with DrawWorks. Note that as far as I was concerned it was Select that didn't work with DrawWorks, not the other way round, an ego is a wonderful thing. The entire iSV catalogue had also been passed to APDL, although I was still responsible for some of the maintenance.
The first concern we had related to what other changes RISCOS Ltd might want to make to Draw before producing a final release. We didn't want to produce a new DrawWorks designed for Select until we were sure that no more changes were going to be made to Draw. So despite the increasing calls for a new DrawWorks the decision to wait was taken.
Eventually in mid 2002 we were happy that RISCOS Ltd were not going to make any more fundamental changes and work started on the new DrawWorks, to be called DrawWorks Select, taking DrawWorks Third Millennium as the basis. The first task was to map out all the new menu positions from the Select version of Draw. As users will no doubt be aware a number of things moved around the Draw menu tree. The changes were all highly sensible and highlighted how badly designed Draws menu structure had become over the years. As an example both the zoom and grid options had now moved to a submenu, where they should have been since 1988!
DrawWorks needs to know where all the items are on Draw's menus so that it can "fool" Draw into thinking that a user has clicked on a menu entry, even though in reality it's another program performing the actions.
The modular structure of DrawWorks meant that it was quite easy to add a new routine inside DrawWorks that mapped the old menu locations, to the new locations if a Select version of Draw was being used. In the end, and much to my relief, calls to this new routine only had to be inserted in four places in the entire DrawWorks application. The result was a version of DrawWorks that at least mainly functioned under RISC OS Select. I then had a small brain wave, instead of re-coding the module that controls Draw features not accessible directly from menu clicks, why not simply use the same menu mapping before calling the module? This saved a considerable amount of time. The final stroke of good fortune was finding that although the position of Draw's indirected data used for menus had moved, the data order hadn't. All that was needed was a new memory offset to start from.
The end result was that after only a few days work I had a version of DrawWorks that ran correctly on RISC OS Select. All the features worked, this was now renamed as DrawWorks Select V 4.01. I then designed a new logo for the program, as well as fixing a few long term bugs and tidying up a few things that I had never been happy with. One of the most amazing bugs related to the metric grid spacing/subdivision controls in DrawWorks, these were totally faulty because I had copied data from the Imperial menu structure! Out of interest I went back through the old versions of DrawWorks, the same bug was present in all of them, so this options had never worked since it was introduced. Even funnier was the fact that nobody had ever reported it either.
This version was then finally sent to Dave Holden at APDL for him to have a look at.
Dave then improved the configuration settings and as an aside made a few "unimportant" changes to tidy the program up a bit further and sent it back to me. It no longer worked properly, help! I then spent ages trying to work out why. I didn't want to undo all Dave's changes as some of them were essential, especially being able to specify the location of !Draw. Those with a perverse mind might like to have a look at the two small changes made that broke DrawWorks. Dave Holden's change is top each time, with my comment underneath.
DH: New OS variable DrawWorks$Running instead of using DWD$Dir.
AT: Put back the DwD$Dir variable as its needed to prevent Draw loading new templates when Dworks not loaded.
DH: OS variable DWD$skin removed (can't see it used anywhere).
AT: Put back the DWD$Skin variable as its used in the !Draw run file
Dave also made a sensible change to a variable used in several places inside DrawWorks. The variable was handled badly in a number of places, and Dave had corrected this. Unfortunately I had already noticed my slack programming and had compensated elsewhere, but had neglected to document the fact, whoops. This caused several days of hair pulling before doing a comparison on a working and non working version revealed the change. In my defence I would like to point out that although I didn't document my low quality programming in the first place, Dave didn't document his "fix" either. So slapped wrists all round.
Finally we had a working DrawWorks Select, with new configuration options, that we were both happy with. It didn't have any new features, but had a number of bug fixes, and ran on the latest version of RISC OS. What we didn't know was that RISC OS 5 and the Iyonix were round the corner...
I am having a bit of trouble writing this editorial, this is actually my third attempt. The first draft was complete rubbish, the second draft tried to make an important point, but managed to argue itself into a corner within two paragraphs. So I'm stuck. The problem is simple, I was trying to write a short piece about RISC OS companies that vanish up their own posteriors, doing nobody any good in the process. The difficulty is that writing the piece didn't do me any good either and before I knew it I was in full illogical ranting mode.
The problem, from my perspective, is quite simple. I want RISC OS to be inclusive, I want everyone to be able to contribute. Some try contributing and make a total mess of it leaving unhappy customers in their wake, think Cerilica or MicroDigital for example. So I started writing, and I ended up with a big long rant about failure. I read what I had written again this morning and it came across as exceptionally negative. The RISC OS desktop market is small, and there I was slagging off companies that had tried, but failed. It's very easy to write a piece like that, too easy in fact.
That got me thinking, why was I criticising those that at least had a go at it, surely those that really deserve criticism are those that never tried in the first place. There is a lot of good hard work done for the RISC OS Market, look at the new versions of ArtWorks for example, or TechWriter, both by Martin Wuerthner. Adrian Lees is continually beavering away on stuff for Spellings Computer Services. I know CJE are working on new versions of some of their products, APDL are continuing to 32bit their software range, Advantage 6 have the A9 poised for a full launch. Many companies and individuals can, and do, work hard for RISC OS.
Some of these projects might fail, has anyone seen Cino for sale? No, but we know why, ADFS simply isn't fast enough for it to work properly. When, or if, a new ADFS is produced it will be worthwhile finishing Cino. Should the Cino developers be criticised? No, for the simple reason that until someone tried nobody knew if it was going to work. So next time you think of slagging off a RISC OS company think twice, at least those that are still here are trying hard, it's those that aren't here anymore that might make a better target.
Editors Rant of the month
The following is about the vehicular faith, not specifically about computing.
Regular readers may well remember that last issue I was stuck with three dead vehicles. For non regular readers I would heartily recommend a bowl of All Bran. Anyway, as I said last time, with no usable vehicle (Dead Camper, Dead Shogun and accident damaged Beetle) the only sensible thing to do was buy another heap of junk. As time was rather a pressing issue the choice of vehicle was irrelevant, as long as it had some tax and MOT, and wasn't pink it would do. My first port of call was the local second hard car dealer. "Yes, I've got the ideal car, a 5 door Fiesta with a new MOT", lovely. I walked up to see it. First impressions looked good, it was clean and tidy and all the paperwork matched up. Things went downhill from there, although it ran it didn't sound very healthy, on opening the bonnet there was evidence of bubbling from the water reservoir, hmmmm. I checked the oil filler cap. Had someone poured a large jar of Hellmans in there, or was the head gasket blown? I spoke to the car dealer about the blown head gasket, "Oh, okay then". Right, so you know the gasket was blown but thought you'd chance your arm, well I don't think I will be buying a car from you in this lifetime.
So the hunt for a new vehicle continued. Friends came up to stay the day after the beetle was damaged and "volunteered" to drive me around to a couple of car dealers. First call was one in Burton. We hadn't even driven 2 miles when I spied a Citroen Xantia parked on the side of the road with a big for sale sing in the window. We called the mobile number written on the sign. The chap selling it was out, but would call me back. We decided to go back home and wait. A mere hour or so later we were back at the car with its Lambretta powered owner. Everything looked good, it had a long MOT, longish Tax and everything worked (apart from all the things that didn't). It drove OK, so I paid the princely sum of £450 and drove it home.
All went well for a week or two, then when driving back from Burton (yes, Burton again, you would have thought that by now I would have realised that Burton is the kiss of death for my cars) the big "stop now or else" light came up on the dashboard, damn. A quick look at the gauges showed nothing amiss, but wait! The water temperature warning light is on, and so's the cooling fan, ugh. After waiting for half an hour I removed the radiator cap, which showed that there was water a plenty. So we started the engine and revved it a bit. Normally this would result in some water moving around, but no, could be the water pumps had it. I popped into a local shop and purchased two bottles of overpriced Peckham Spring mineral water and poured this over the radiator, we now managed to limp the three miles home.
Next day I warmed the car up and started poking about. The water pump wasn't leaking, but the car was still running hot, but only a small section of the radiator was hot, the rest was stone cold, and the water still wasn't moving. Ahh, well Watson, we have either a bad airlock or a silted up radiator. So off came the hoses and out came the garden hose pipe to back flush the cooling system. This removed a pile of unwanted crap, I also gave all the hoses a good squeeze, they were all very crunchy, which indicated further deposits of crap. I re-filled the cooling system and tried again, still the water wasn't moving. Sod it! I left the radiator cap off and jammed the throttle open. After about half a minute there was some water movement, then a ton of air bubbles, then things started going to plan. Thank heavens for that, the car's fixed and it didn't cost anything. Now read on....
Elated at my success with the cooling system I gave the car a clean. Fatal. A couple of days later the "Stop now or else" light came back on again, along with the brake warning light. Luckily I was close to a Halfords and got into the car park. I checked the hydraulic reservoir (Citroens have one reservoir for brakes and the hydraulic suspension), it was almost empty. I topped the car up with a bottle of LHM fluid and the warning lights went out, so I drove home. A couple of days later the light was back on, time for a look. There was nothing wrong under the bonnet, but poking my head underneath revealed a big soggy mess under one front wheel arch. Removing the wheel revealed a broken hydraulic pipe, help! I removed the pipe and had a look around the garage for something that was similar, but came up blank. And that's where I am, I'm hoping I can buy two new pipes (if the one on the passenger side is knackered the one on the drivers side won't be far behind). Don't you love cheap cars?
(A quick update I have found a company that sells the pipes for £6 each - so I have ordered them -now all I have to do is fit them!)
Moving back to the Beetle I spent two weeks trying to track down the make of the front suspension units. They aren't standard VW parts, but are special slim aftermarket ones designed to allow the fitment of wide alloy wheels. In the end the best suggestion was to buy two new front units from a specialist, however the credit card busting £600 bill for these didn't appeal for some reason. So I had a brain wave. I removed the damaged front strut assembly and stuck it in the boot of the Citroen (next to the bottles of Peckham Spring and LHM fluid) and drove round the local industrial estate looking for a small engineering company that might be able to repair the damage. I was lucky, Andawest Engineering thought they might be able to repair it, and a week later they had! Even better the bill came to £25 inc VAT. Of course the repaired strut now wouldn't fit back on the car as the new welding needs to be ground back to get the strut to fit, but you can't have everything, or can you?
Whilst the automotive malarky was continuing I needed another vehicle to run around in. Can you spot the flaw here? In case you can't here is the problem expressed in BBC BASIC.
10 number_of_cars%=
20 number_of_broken_cars%=
30 REPEA
40 number_of_cars%+=
50 WAI
60 number_of_broken_cars%+=
70 UNTIL FALS
As I had a few days (at this point I was still pouring LHM into the Citroen) I did an eBay search. In the end I picked up what I consider to be a bit of a bargain, although it was Hayley who originally spotted it. So I am now the proud owner of a Roller, purchased from a chap in Ilkeston (£6 to get there on the bus) for the miniscule amount of £200. It's got a full service history, 12 months MOT and has only covered just over 50,000 miles in it's 21 years on the road. It's a special edition model and is one of a handful that still exist. I will tell you more next time after I have given it a full service, but in the meantime here is a link to the ebay auction.
Well I did say it was a Roller, but I didn't say it was a Rolls Royce did I?
Printing RISC World
The new look of RISC World means that you will no longer get the yellow background when printing articles from RISCWorld. However you will still get the blue border on the left unless you turn off the printing of background images. The example below shows the print dialogue box from Fresco.
As you can see the option "No Background" is ticked. If you want to print out any of the RISCWorld pages and don't want to waste ink on a blue border then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/FSTEPS/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, First Steps with RISC OS 4
Contains material taken from !Help by David Eccles. We are grateful to David Eccles for his help.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature, without the prior written permission of Alligata Media.
All information given in this guide was been obtained, and is offered, in good faith. However, Alligata Media cannot accept any liability, consequential or otherwise, for any loss or damage arising from the use of any information in this guide.
All trademarks are acknowledged. We have referred to a variety of products in this guide. The mention of these products does not necessarily imply endorsement by the author or publisher.
This guide was produced using Ovation Pro on a StrongARM Risc PC running RISC OS 4.02; with a little help from Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS on a G4 iMac.
Published by Alligata Media.
Project Editor
David Bradforth
Tel:07946 405555
Email:david.bradforth@alligatagroup.co.uk
Distributed by:
APDL
39 Knighton Park Road,
Sydenham
London SE26 5RN
Email: info@apdl.co.uk
Web: www.apdl.co.uk
6. The Filer
Filer Menu
Display
Selection
The Selection sub-menu
Select all
Clear selection
Options
The Options sub menu
New Directory
Set work directory
Open Parent
7. Copying, Moving and Renaming Files
Copying within a directory
Copying between directories
Copying multiple files
Renaming while copying
Moving Files
Warning
Renaming
Illegal characters in filenames
Transferring files to other systems
Alligata Media
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/GAMES/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, Games World
Games World
Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.
It's been a quiet couple of months on the RISC OS gaming scene, but as ever, I have been digging deep and if you know where to look there is still quite a lot of news for the RISC OS gamer.
StarFighter 3000
Chris Bazley has released another
Fixed bug that caused the application to be being paged in as often as possible even when configured to run slowly, thus reducing the time available to other tasks. Also the game would not have run properly if started after the centisecond timer had gone 'negative' (six weeks from machine reset)
The Configure dialogue box now always opens centred on the screen instead of simply being brought to the front if already open.
Made provision for internationalisation of system variables for Castle's proposed help system.
For consistency pressing F12 will now cause the main window to lose input focus whether or not the game is suspended.
Fixed bugs accidentally introduced in version 3.02 where insufficient memory to load the 'TexData' file, or configuration / high score files too big, would go unreported instead of aborting initialisation.
Fixed longstanding bug where detail map could not be scrolled to eastern and northern extremities by clicking on global (small) map. Also fixed over-aggressive clipping of target crosses & object dots on map.
Fixed minor bug where 'Ship status' instead of 'Toggle HUD' was erroneously displayed by the Configure dialogue box as the action associated with a mouse or joystick button.
Updated G.A.G.'s ResFind utility (used internally) from version 2.01b to 2.12.
Internal changes to use more Toolbox interfaces in preference to directly calling the Window Manager, improve division of code between source files and take advantage of ObjAsm's provision for literal pools.
Fixed bug where 'Not enough memory' would be reported on initialisation if pointer shapes Sprite file not found.
Long intervals between game updates are now capped at one second so that timer-driven animations do not skip excessively after multitasking has been suspended (e.g. due to a Wimp error report).
If the key definition window is given the input focus unsolicited then the previously highlighted icon is now selected. This eliminates problems after the input focus is borrowed (e.g. for a transient dialogue box).
Unclaimed key presses are now reliably passed on to other applications. Previously this only happened when the game or key definition window had the input focus
Chris deserves all RISC OS gamers vote of thanks for his sterling work in keeping StarFighter updated on a regular basis.
Iyonix 3D graphics
.Simon Wilson, famous for his PCI TV card driver software for the Iyonix, has released a
New Games
RISCWorld favourite Neil White has also been beavering away and has ported some more SDL games to RISC OS. Neil admits the ports are a little "dodgy" and may not run on all machines, but I have included them in the software directory anyway. Note that all these games require the SharedUnixLibrary Version 1.07, which is also included in the games directory.
Entombed
You and your team of archaeologists have fallen into the "catacombs of the zombies." There's no time for research, though; the walls are closing in, and the zombies have sprung to life! Fortunately, you've discovered an ancient mystical potion which allows you to create and destroy walls. Bottles of this potion are strewn about the catacombs. Grab them, and you can break through walls when you get stuck, or create a wall behind you, if you're being chased. The longer you survive, the faster you have to move.
BlockMan
BlockMan is a small puzzle game involving block-pushing. If you've ever
played Sokoban, it's a bit similar, but more sophisticated. If you've
ever played Chip's Challenge, you may find BlockMan vaguely similar to
some of its block-pushing levels. If you've played CyberBox, the basic
mechanics will look very familiar. If you haven't played any of those
games, don't worry. You control BlockMan, a cartoony robot stuck in a factory. You must get
out of the factory. Each level in the factory has an exit, but blocks
are in your way, and you need to push them out of the way. That's the
basic idea. The factory is shown from a top-down view, and you control
BlockMan with the arrow keys. If you get stuck, you can press R to restart a level. (Apparently
BlockMan is capable of a very limited form of time travel.)
ttt
ttt is a very simple one- or two-player Tic Tac Toe game played using a mouse. You can play against the computer, or against another human player.
That's all from me for this issue, when I return in November I hope to have some more blockbuster games releases for you to savour.
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/HUGHJ/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, The Hugh Jampton Experience
The Hugh Jampton Experience
It's the man of the moment, assuming the moment was 4:32 in the morning on the 12th of August 1976...Hugh Jampton
Once again I find myself bringing up the rear (so to speak), and filling up another column of low quality tat just to make up the numbers. Oh well. Anyway as usual we have are consistently ignored caption competition. I'm sure you remember it...no...? Where you write a caption...? No? Look have another Sanatogen and read on....
The caption competition
Here is our action packed picture from last issue...
After a quick look our eager patients quickly came up with following...
Cherie says : "What strange expression? Tony and I often go on the slide together I was perfectly relaxed."
or "When Tony said I can't wait to get you in the sack, this isn't quite what I had in mind."
or "Heeeelp, are you sure this is the popularity slide everyone's going on about ?"
John Crane
"The high price of Windoze 2006 raises eyebrows"
Thomas Shevels.
Wonderful stuff there, and the winner has to be John Crane. So sorry to Thomas, but John's captions really gave me a lift, but then that's what Crane's do best! (Save me - ED). Anyway lets move on to this issue's photo...
Send your entries to hughj@riscworld.co.uk, one lucky winner will not be invited to attend a gala presentation ceremony and not receive a huge winners cheque.
And now a new feature....
Hugh's hall of illusions
I've been sent a few of these recently, so I thought it would be a good idea to share them with you. Firstly cover your right eye and look at the circle. If you move your head forward towards the monitor the cross will vanish, so remember don't drive with one eye covered!
Here is a slightly different optical illusion. Stare at the black dot in the centre of the image, now move your head back and forward. The shapes round the edge start rotating...
Anyway that's enough of that, lets have the pictures...
Hugh's picture gallery
So what do you think was going on here then...
Lets hope it doesn't lead to this...
Or even worse having to run this...
Still at least there may be a reconciliation at the end...
And to finish off here is a man offering an essential public service...
That's all I an be bothered to write this time...go on...go home...be off with you...
It's so thin it's on the front cover of Heat, it's the RISCWorld letters page...
So lets start this months 5 second trawl through our mailbag with this from Vince Hudd...
Hi Aaron,
Notin your comment in the latest RISCWorld that you don't et as many letters as you used to, I thouht I'd hel out y sendin you a small selection: A C D
F H I K L M N O R S T U V W Y.
You will notice that the list isn't the comlete set that we tend to use - this is ecause I don't have any of the missin ones sare to send, as you will no dout notice y the lack of their aearance in this email
HTH
VinceH
Thank you, I have had the letters you sent valued at nearly a one hundredth of a penny. According to the auction house they would have been worth more if there had been an entire set. Apparently collectors are only interested in the entire alphabet these days, which is a shame as it should be possible to make a full set from a number of incomplete ones. Anyway that's enough pointless drivel from me, lets have another letter...(surely some pointless drivel from someone else? - HJ)
Hi Aaron,
What should I do with my old RW CDs? I mean the ones that have been collected together on 1 CD eg Issues 1-5? I don't like throwing anything away that can be useful to someone, do you have a use for them? I don't know anyone where I live that uses RISC OS or would be interested in RISCWorld. I don't mind making a parcel and posting them.
Laurence Simmonds
Thanks for the e-mail. I don't have a use for the CD's I'm afraid as I have copies of all the issues (even the ones I didn't edit). It might be worth seeing if anyone on the comp.sys.acorn newsgroups would like them. Other than that I can only offer my top ten things to do with old RISCWorld CDs.
Use two of them to make big Elton John style glasses - you can see out of the holes in the middle
Take out several RISCWorld subscriptions and use the CDs to tile your bathroom (note that the ink isn't waterproof
Put the CD's silver side up on a spindle and sell them as CDR's at a boot fair
Make a Llama scarer for your garden (I have actually done this and haven't seen a single Llama attacking the vegetable patch)
Hang several of them from string and suspend them over the garden to make your own "War of the Worlds" style alien attack fleet
Make a silver cover for your car's speedo so you can't see how fast the AA van is towing you
Using two car aerials, two toilet roll tubes and two CDs make yourself a pair of fencing swords
Using a pencil, a cotton reel, two CDs and an elastic band make a realistic powered racing car
Make expensive looking silver covers for 6 inch loudspeakers
Throw them away
Do any of the above help at all? If not why don't some of our readers write in with suggestions?
To finish off here is an almost repeat of something from last issue...
Dear Aaron,
Why is this issues letters page even shorter than the last one?
Hugh Jampton
You know the answer already, we aren't getting many letters. At this rate the letters page will have wasted away by next issue, so why not help save the RISCWorld letters page from extinction by e-mailing us to the following address savetheletterspage@riscworld.co.uk.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/NEWS/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, News
News
The latest news from the RISC OS world
Lower price on VirtualRPC-Adjust
At VirtualAcorn we are keen to ensure that users keep up to date with the latest developments in RISC OS. As such we are delighted to announce that from today the price of VirtualRPC-Adjust, complete with RISC OS 4.39, has been reduced to only £119 (plus p & of £1.50 for the UK and £3.50 for overseas).
The upgrade price for users of VirtualRPC-SE has also been slashed to only £79 (plus carriage). To qualify for the upgrade price users will need to return their VRPC-SE CD, the RISC OS 4 licence sticker and the DVD style case with the colour cover.
These new prices will mean that even more RISC OS users will be able to enjoy the RISC OS Adjust experience.
Fore more details visit
Direct PDF Export in ArtWorks 2.5
I am proud to announce one more big step ahead for the platform's
most popular advanced vector graphics solution: ArtWorks 2.5, to be
released before the end of 2005, will offer direct PDF export. PDF is
the industry-standard file format for the exchange of high-quality
documents for on-screen viewing and professional printing.
The usual way to create PDF documents under RISC OS is to create a
PostScript file using the RISC OS PostScript printer driver and use
third-party software to convert that file to PDF. Unfortunately, this
approach suffers from various shortcomings in the PostScript format
and in the RISC OS PostScript printer driver, which often leads to
loss of quality.
ArtWorks 2.5 will overcome these problems by offering Direct PDF
Export allowing you to export print-ready PDF files supporting all
ArtWorks 2 features without involving any intermediate file format.
Finally, you can submit fully vector-based documents with full CMYK
information for printing, even for files that use advanced features
like dynamic clipping, different types of transparency and graduated
transparency effects.
You can find more information and an example screenshot of a complex
ArtWorks illustration with transparency being rendered on a foreign
platform at:
The projected upgrade price from ArtWorks 2.4 to version 2.5 will be
30 Pounds (subject to change). Final pricing information and other
upgrade options will be announced with the release of ArtWorks 2.5.
Castle launches ABC Developers CD
Castle is pleased to announce the immediate availability of !ABC
DEVELOPERS CD for a special introductory price of just 39GBP - carriage
is free.
!ABC is fully 32-bit and suitable for producing code to run on the new
32-bit IYONIX pc range, older Acorn computers and other RISC OS
computers.
The ABC Developers CD contains the ABC Basic Compiler, PDF format
manuals for BASIC, Programmers Reference manuals 1 to 5a and ABC
release notes.
BASIC is available on all RISC OS computers and the ABC compiler is a
perfect complement to provide even faster execution of BASIC code.
Full pricing and other details are available on Castle's web site at:
For further information please contact:
Castle Technology Ltd
Ore Trading Estate
Woodbridge Road
Framlingham
Suffolk
IP13 9LL
Tel: 01728 723200
Fax 01728 621669
Unix Porting Project new address
The Unix Porting Project's postal address is changing. IDR Solutions has
agreed to handle postal subscriptions. All other contact details and
subscription methods remain the same.
For the new address and subscription details, see the project
subscription page. Please ensure you use this for future correspondence.
Thanks to Mark Stephens of IDR Solutions for his support of this
All rights reserved. This program is licensed for use on a single computer by a single user.
This version is supplied for the use of RISC World subscribers only.
Published by -
APDL
39 Knighton Park Road
Sydenham
London SE26 5RN
Phone : 020 8778 2659
Fax : 020 8488 0487
E-mail : info@apdl.co.uk
About NightSky
Conventions used in this guide
Animations.
1. Tutorial
Introduction
Loading the Program
Plotting a Map
Basic Map Operations
SELECT-drag
ADJUST
Home
MENU
Keyboard Short-cuts
F5 to F8 and Shift-F5 to Shift-FS
Demonstration animations
Demos.Monthbymth
Northern1
Northern2
Southern1 and Southern2
EquatN and EquatS
Demos.TotalSolar
Falmouth99, Manchr99 and Wien99
Demos.Annular
Demos.Lunar
Demos.Partial
Demos.Precess
UrsaMa
Occn/Trans
Demos.Planets
2. The Desktop
The Program Icon
The Palette Icon
Interactive Help
Iconised ('minimized') windows
High resolution icons
The Territory Manager
3.The Menus
3.1 The Icon Bar Menu
Info
Places
Places -> Save places
Places -> Create new file
Places -> Show places
Adding a new record
Precession...
Occultations...
Technical Note
Quit
3.2. The Draw a Map Menu
Here: NOW
Here:then
There: NOW and There: then
Options...
The Map Window
Mouse clicks in the Map Window
The Tagtext File
Editing the password
3.3 The Map Menu
Save map
Automatic saving
Print ->
Moon
Planets ->
Info
Plot RA/dec and Plot Altaz
Find (F4)
The Information Windows
The Star Information Window
RealTime (F9)
Refresh every ->
Step ->
Wipe old map
Lock onto ->
Lock onto Earth's Shadow
Restricted ->
Starting RealTime mode
Time Flow
Zoom ->
Label ->
Map Title ->
New Map ->
Additional Note
4. The Options Window
OK
Cancel
Save
Default settings
Use now
Files Loaded
Precess to Year
Map plotting
Map plotting action
Map saving
The Moon
Constellations
Co-ordinate Grid
Auto-labelling
Star IDs
Fonts
The other labels
Colours
Using the Colour Tool
Notes on particular colours
System font only onscreen
5. Keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/PD/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, PD World
PD World
Paul Brett with the latest freeware and PD releases for RISC OS.
Once again welcome to PDWorld, the column that covers all the latest PD and freeware software released for RISC OS. So what new software has been released for RISC OS recently?
PrintPDF V0.32 - Steve Fryatt
I covered this in the last issue, however Steve has been working hard and has released a new version with a number of changes.
Writes GhostScript parameters to a file in PipeFS and calls "*gs @" to get around command line length restrictions on RISC OS 3
Opens a "conversion finished" pop-up when child task terminates
The "conversion finished" pop-up can be selected from the Choices window
While GhostScript is converting a file, the destination is given load and exec addresses of &DEADDEAD
Added FileName option token, and use it to override FileName token in Messages file when set
Full path and filename is remembered between conversions if 'Reset for every conversion' option is off
Steve said in his announcement that "The main change in this release is the way in which parameters are passed to GhostScript, hopefully solving the "Too long" errors seen on RISC OS 3. Previous versions called *ps2pdf, which could result in the command line length exceeding the 255 character limit on older systems. Version 0.30 calls GhostScript directly, and passes all the filenames and conversion parameters in a separate command file. This not only removes the risk of conversions failing if the PDFs are saved too far down a directory tree, but it also opens up the possibility of making many more conversion options available in future versions."
He then went on to add "The new version also includes an indication of when the conversion completes, reducing the risk of moving or opening the PDF while GhostScript is still creating it. Version 0.20, which was never announced, adds the ability to run PrintPDF without an iconbar icon to save space on the desktop".
PrintPDF
For those that don't know PrintPDF provides a front end to GhostScript that allows you to print a PDF file from any applications that uses the RISC OS printer drivers. It's possible the generate PDF files under RISC OS using GhostScript alone, but a lot of messing about is involved and it's quite easy to accidentally overwrite the file during the process. PrintPDF greatly simplifies the process and provides a neat and tidy solution.
FileNuke - Paul Vigay
FileNuke is a small utility designed to delete a file permanently using "military grade file overwriting". As I am sure RISCWorld readers know once a file is deleted it can still be recovered using conventional means as the data is still stored on the disc. Eventually the space on the disc will be re-used by another file over writing the old file. However it's still possible to recover the data that was there before. I seem to recall that some years ago IBM technicians reformatted a hard drive 10 times and were still able to recover the original data from it. FileNuke overwrites the file multiple times using a number of different byte patterns to render it unrecoverable by any known means.
FileNuke
So if you have sensitive data (bank accounts etc) that you need to ensure are totally deleted then FileNuke is for you (it's also ideal for conspiracy theorists - ED).
RoTunes - Paul Vigay
Paul has also been busy developing his iTunes clone for RISC OS, RoTunes. This allows users to play MP3 files using a similar interface to iTunes on Apple computers. To load, double click on the !ROTunes icon. This will place an icon on the iconbar. If it's the first time you've run it, and no library database exists, a window will open asking you to import some MP3s. Drag the directory containing your MP3s into this window and click 'Add to Library' to being the import and building of the main library. To be recognised by ROTunes, MP3 files must be filetyped AMPEG (&1AD) or they will be ignored.
RoTunes
RoTunes requires a copy of AmPlayer, this can be downloaded from
SedBar - Stewart Brookes
SEDBar is an add-on buttonbar, designed to enhance your experience of using StrongED. The idea is to offer time-saving shortcuts for frequently-used features, avoiding the need to traverse menus or memorise keystroke combinations. Double-click on !ButtonBar and then double-click on !SEDBar. It is very important that you follow that sequence (if you don't, then things will go horribly wrong...). Once you've done that, try opening a StrongED document. There should be a new buttonbar running down the right-hand side of the document window. At present, there is no guide to what the buttons do. Please use interactive help, and remember that Adjust does something different with most buttons.
TTF2f - J M Bell
TTF2f converts TTF and other font formats supported by
TTF2f
That's all I have for you this time, I will be back next time.
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/SE2005/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, RISC OS South East Show 2005
RISC OS South East Show 2005
The RISC OS South East Show 2005 previewed by RISCWorld
RISCWorld is delighted to see that the Surrey and Sussex Acorn User Group are once again hosting the RISC OS South East Show, on Saturday the 22nd of October this year. Once again the show will be at Guildford college and start at 10:00 am, running till 4:00 pm.
The packed show from last year.
Guildford College is a nice venue as it has plenty of car parking and is easy to get too from the M3 and the M25.
Full details are still emerging as we go to press, so for the latest news visit the
You can expect the usual compliment of exhibitors as well as a range of interesting topics being covered in the lecture theatre. As usual there will be a wide range of special show offers from those exhibiting. Ticket prices are £5 on the day. RISCWorld hopes to see you there!
RISC World
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/SPRING/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, Spring Clean your RiscPC
Spring Clean your RiscPC
Dave Holden removes the fluff...
The idea for this article was prompted by a couple of people who have contacted me recently with rather aging machines which were starting to become somewhat unreliable and unstable. The symptoms were non specific and non repeatable; strange disc errors which vanished when the drive was verified, programs which normally run perfectly crashing unpredictably, computers sometimes not starting up properly but then seemingly OK on the second or third try.
In each case the owner felt that this was just due to old age and approached me with a view to purchasing a "new" secondhand machine to replace their ailing one. Rather foolishly (from my bank manager's point of view) in each case I suggested that before deciding that the machine was in its death throes they give it a much needed overhaul. After I'd explained what they should do, they followed my advice and the computers were one more returned to youthful good health. This resulted in happy customers but a distinct lack of transfer of large amounts of cash from them to me which would have been the case if I'd been a more predatory and ruthless businessman and helps to explain why Bill Gates has ceased to worry about competition from APDL.
The problems
There are three main areas that can benefit from a clean up. These are -
Dust and fluff. This involves stripping the computer and cleaning all the accumulated muck and dirt.
Contacts. Corrosion can occur on plugs and sockets resulting in poor electrical contact.
Software. It's amazing how much rubbish can mysteriously appear on your computer, especially in !Boot. A ruthless culling can work wonders, but that will be another article!
The first two of these require disassembling the computer and the procedure for this will be described in detail. The recent spate of hot, humid weather will have exasperated this problem and explains why I'm writing this article now towards the end of the summer rather than in the spring as the title suggests would be more appropriate.
First one important thing. In the instructions below I may use technical terms like left, right, front and back. For some reason people get confused by these. The front of the computer is always the front, even if you have it turned around with it's back towards you, and it's the left and right sides of the computer that I'm referring to, not your left or right side, and this doesn't vary no matter how you are standing in relation to it.
Safety precautions
To clean the computer you will need to completely disassemble it. Don't be alarmed, it's really very easy and takes only a few minutes. The only tool you will need is a medium sized phillips screwdriver although a pair of thin nosed pliers may also be useful.
First a note about safety and static electricity. From the point of view of safety you should always ensure that the computer is unplugged from the mains supply (Note; unplugged means the mains lead removed from the socket, not just switched off) and all connections to external equipment disconnected. The exception to this is described below for discharging static electricity.
All electronic components are sensitive to static electricity. With the exception of the Strong ARM processor card (if you have one of these) none of the components used in a RiscPC are particularly sensitive to static, but you should take reasonable precautions. The main "don'ts" are to make sure you aren't wearing nylon clothing (shirt, overall, etc.) or standing on a nylon carpet (which is why home computers weren't popular in the 70's - ED). The important point is to discharge any static in your body to earth before touching any of the computer's internal parts. Ideally to do this you should use a special mains lead in which the live and neutral are disconnected and only the earth lead is used and wear a wrist strap connected to earth. Assuming you don't have one of these you can discharge any static by plugging in the normal mains lead with the power switched off at the socket, remove the computer's top cover as described below and then touch the metal top of the power supply, which is connected to earth. You can now unplug the mains lead.
If you have a Strong ARM processor then, as this is the most static sensitive part of the computer, this should be the first item removed. ideally it should be stored in an anti-static bag, but if you don't have one of these handy a piece of kitchen foil is just as good. Under no circumstances put it in an ordinary plastic bag.
Getting at the works
All RiscPCs used to be supplied with a Welcome Guide which described how to disassemble the case and replace the ROMs, VRAM, and other "user upgradable" components. Since many people don't have these, especially if they purchased their machine secondhand, much of what follows is a step by step guide to disassembling your computer and you can skip over it if you are familiar with this procedure.
Remove the lid by turning the two clips at the rear corners at the top of the case so they are pointing outwards. These are the rear case retaining pins and go all the way down to the base of the computer and lock all the case components together. There are two more of these at the front, concealed under the lid. With the pins turned outward the back of the lid is unlocked and can now lifted up and as you lift it the front will come clear of the lip which retains it. Now, keeping the top of the retaining pins pointing outwards from the case, pull them completely out.
At either side at the front of the case there are two similar pins. The main difference is that these don't have the locking lever on top like the rear ones, just a small projection on the side of a rounded top. Turn them so that this projection is pointing inwards, at right angles to the sides of the case, and pull them out. These pins are often quite stiff and as there isn't much to get hold of it may be necessary to use something like a screwdriver to lever them up slightly. Once you have lifted them a fraction they will slide out easily the rest of the way.
It's probably best to remove the processor (or processors if you have a PC card) first. These are the vertical PCB(s) at the left hand side of the computer and just pull out upwards. Try not to twist them sideways as you extract them or you might bend some of the pins. If there are two cards the rear one is the PC card, and because it is bigger you should remove it first to make it easier to grip the ARM processor card. If the main processor is a Strong ARM be sure you follow the anti static precautions described above.
Some processor cards may have cooling fans attached and the power leads for these will need to be unplugged. These are normally plugged into the CD ROM drive power socket with a "daisy chain" power connector. Sometimes it can be difficult to remove the power connector from a CD ROM or hard drive, and as there isn't much space between the rear of the CD ROM drive and the processor card it's best to remove the processors before you try to unplug the power connectors so that you can grip it properly and so that if it does require a bit of force to remove it you don't wack the processor card if it comes loose suddenly.
If you have any expansion cards fitted these will need to be removed. Unless they are "short" cards like the APDL or Simtec IDE interfaces you will need to undo the small screw at either end of the plate on the rear of the computer and extract them through the rear of the case. You may find it useful to rock the card slightly from side to side to "unstick" it from its socket on the backplane. If a card has leads attached to it, such as an IDE or SCSI interface, you will need to unplug these before removing it. Make a note of where these leads are plugged in and which way around. All ribbon cables have an identifying "stripe" along one edge, and if you're in any doubt put a sticky label on the end of the cable noting which socket it was plugged into and its orientation.
If you have more than one expansion card note the order in which they are fitted. Sometimes there can be clashes between different expansion cards if they are installed in a particular order, so if it was all working before you pulled the computer apart make sure you put it back the same way.
When all the cards have been removed you can extract the backplane, the vertical circuit board they plug into. This just pulls out vertically. Now you can remove the top "slice" of the computer, but first you will have to unplug any leads from any drives mounted in it. Hard drives, floppy drives and CD ROM drives all have two main connections, a power cable and a flat ribbon data cable. In addition a CD ROM drive may have a small audio lead. Be careful when removing these, they often have a small retaining clip which needs to be pressed in to release them. Once the leads have all been unplugged lift off the slice and repeat for any others until you have stripped the computer down to the bottom "tray".
The next item you will need to remove is the power supply. There will probably be two leads still connected, one to the hard drive and the main power lead to the motherboard. The motherboard connector has a retaining latch on either side and these need to be squeezed between finger and thumb to release them before you can unplug it. Next remove the main power switch button. This just pulls off, but you will probably need to grip its shaft (gently) with a pair of pliers to pull it off the actual switch. Be careful not to twist it or you might break the switch. Once this is removed you can undo the single screw at the front of the power supply and remove it by lifting the front upwards and sliding it slightly forwards to release the catch at the rear.
Some machines have an aluminium spacer under the front of the power supply and this just lifts out.
You should now have something like the picture below.
Click on picture for larger image.
Dust and fluff - the insidious enemy
All the time the computer is running the fan is turning, drawing air from outside and blowing it over the components inside to cool them before exiting through the numerous small slots in the case. During the life of the computer millions of cubic feet of air will pass through its insides, and inevitably this air will contain dust particles. As the dusty air swirls around the nooks and crannies inside the computer these particles get left behind and form a fine coating over (and under) the electronic components and printed circuit boards.
You might think that a fine coating of dust wouldn't do much harm to encapsulated electronic components and printed circuit boards, but think what this dust is probably made of. Some of it will be organic material, minute flakes of skin and hair, the bodies of some of the tiny creatures that share our homes and offices, etc. This accumulated gunge can cause interference with the high speed signals travelling on the PCB tracks, especially where it congregates in the narrow space between the pins of the surface mounted integrated circuits. The deposits may, depending upon their composition, retain moisture, which makes things even worse.
The larger version of the picture of the motherboard (above) illustrates this. This picture and the others in this article were taken from a secondhand RiscPC 700 and are typical of the sort of thing I normally find when I disassemble a machine, so they probably represent what you might expect to find inside your own if it's a few years old. The grey-brown dust can be clearly seen near the edge at the bottom right of the board and also over the leads connecting to the power and hard drive LEDs and the speaker. Further up are similar deposits just behind the VRAM module (also on the right hand end of the VRAM module itself, although that is not very clear in this picture) and around the pins of the VIDC chip. These areas are, of course, right in the path of the air from the power supply fan and so are exactly where you would expect to find the worst accumulation of fine dust and dirt.
Being naturally gregarious these particles of dust also tend to group together and form fluffy deposits which not only cause the same problems as the fine dust but also block the air intake and outlet holes and so restrict airflow. The next picture shows the air inlet on the side of the power supply. This is actually only a part of the debris. If you look at the previous picture above you will see that there is another lot of fluff along the right hand side and this is what fell down as the case was taken apart. Since all of this is sandwiched in the narrow gap between the side of the case and the power supply it can seriously restrict the airflow into the computer and may, in extreme cases, lead to overheating and eventual failure of the power supply.
Click on picture for larger image.
As you may imagine the inside of the power supply will be equally filthy, and if the outside or fan (see later) looks grubby you will need to open it up and clean it. There are two small screws on the top of the power supply and when these are removed it opens by hinging along the bottom edge. A small vacuum cleaner is probably the best tool for this, but if you don't have one then take it outside and use a brush and a lot of lungpower to remove the muck.
A useful tool for blowing dust out of areas like this is an aerosol of compressed air. These can be obtained from most electronic suppliers (such as Maplin) and are not very expensive. They look just like any other aerosol container but just blast a fine jet of compressed air which is ideal for dislodging dust from under and around components.
I was intending to include a picture of the inside of the power supply but unfortunately it was so horrific that had I done so this entire article would probably have required some sort of health warning or perhaps a PG rating. I'm sure that by looking at the outside of the casing you will be able to imagine what the inside looked like, though it may be better not to.
You will probably need to use some sort of brush to remove the dirt from many of the computer's parts as even a vacuum cleaner won't remove the more solid accumulations. The ideal tool for this is a small paintbrush, about 3 cm wide. Make sure it's a natural bristle brush, not artificial fibres, as otherwise vigorous brushing and poking will almost certainly generate potentially harmful static electricity.
Turning to the other side of the power supply the fan will almost certainly be filthy. The picture below shows the fan and you can see that the blades and the inside of the housing are coated with muck. This quite often forms a sticky deposit, not like normal dust at all, and in extreme cases you may need to use something like an old toothbrush rather than a soft bristled brush to dislodge it.
Click on picture for larger image.
If the fan blades are dirty then the fan will not be working at maximum efficiency and the air passing over the dirty blades will make a lot more noise than if they were clean and polished. Also the dirt may unbalance the fan, leading to more noise and increased friction and wear of the fan bearings.
When you have cleaned the power supply it's a good opportunity to lubricate the fan. If you peal back the label you will see a small black rubber plug, about 1 cm in diameter, in the centre of the fan. Remove this carefully and below it is the fan bearing. Apply just one drop of light machine oil and replace the plug and label. Don't use more oil and, if there already seems to be plenty there don't apply any. If you use too much then any excess will find its way into the airflow and will be blown into the computer.
Finally use a brush to clean away any dirt from the inside and outside of the case parts, in particular making sure that all the small slots that are so essential for proper air flow are clean.
Dirty contacts
While the motherboard is still held firmly on the base it is a good idea to remove and replace the RAM and VRAM chips a couple of times. This action cleans the contacts and removes any minor surface corrosion. The VRAM (the rearmost module) is removed by pulling it vertically out of its socket. Make sure that you don't damage the four cylindrical capacitors as any sideways force exerted on these can break the solder joint and pull them off the board, so be careful how you grip it. The VRAM needs quite a bit of force to extract it, and you must be careful not to twist it as you remove it or you may snap one of the side pillars. Don't panic if you do accidentally break one of these, it won't affect the function, but it's best not to do it. The best way to remove the VRAM is to firmly grasp each end of the PCB between forefinger and thumb and then brace the middle finder of each hand on the motherboard (making sure the fingers are on a piece of actual PCB and not on a component) and you can then exert the necessary force to pull out the VRAM in a controlled way without jerking or twisting.
You may have one or two main RAM modules. These are mounted in slanted sockets and have a small metal retaining clip at each end. Push the two clips outwards and you will find that the RAM module can be moved upright and then removed from its socket. The easiest way to do this is push the clips with your index fingers and, when they're released, you can use your thumbs to push the module upright. Unlike the VRAM this should not require any force, so if it doesn't move easily something is wrong.
Removing the hard drive and PCB
It is not essential to remove either the hard drive or the motherboard. However, if you have found a lot of dust and dirt it might be best to do so. The photo below shows the debris I found under the motherboard in another computer I was cleaning, Remember that although the RiscPC case is a plastic material the brown coating on the inside is actually electrically conductive to form a radio frequency screen. Lumps of fluff sandwiched in the narrow space between this (earthed) coating and the motherboard might well cause problems, especially where humidity is high.
Click on picture for larger image.
To remove the hard drive first unplug the data cable from its socket on the motherboard. Even if you don't intend to remove these components it's still a good idea to unplug and refit both ends of the cable a few times to clean the contacts. The drive bracket is retained by a single phillips screw between the drive and the motherboard. Once this is undone the bracket can be removed.
Some early RiscPCs didn't have this screw. Instead the rear of the bracket slotted into a socket in the base moulding. It is easily released with a wide bladed screwdriver. This method was used with the base unit illustrated above.
If your computer is fitted with a network card this must be removed before the motherboard. It is retained by two small screws which pass through the back of the computer case. Once these are undone you can pull up the front edge of the card to release it from its socket and then remove it.
There is only one screw holding the motherboard. This can be found at the right hand end of the frontmost RAM socket and can be clearly seen in the earlier photo of the motherboard, just to the left of the connectors for the speaker and power and hard drive LEDs. Obviously you will need to unplug these leads before you remove the motherboard. note that they can only be replaced one way.
There are three plastic clips along the front edge of the motherboard. These can be released either by levering gently with a small screwdriver or pushing the clip with your thumb while pulling the PCB upwards gently. The latter method is safer as it is possible to damage the motherboard if you are careless with the screwdriver.
Once the front edge of the motherboard is unclipped you can lift it up slightly and work the rear section free. With the front of the PCB lifted up slightly the rear needs to be simultaneously lifted and pulled forwards. Don't use force or you will bend the steel backplate, it needs to be at just the right angle and then it will slide free.
If you don't want to remove the motherboard then you can use the aforementioned compressed air spray to blow the dust out from under it.
Putting it back together
Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly. The order of assembly should be to fit the motherboard, hard drive and power supply into the base. Once the motherboard has been fitted and is firmly held in the base you can insert the RAM and VRAM. When all the cables have been connected fit the first case slice with the floppy dive and (usually) CD ROM drive, again connecting the data and power cables. Look out for the floppy drive data cable. It is possible for this to be trapped and damaged so make sure this doesn't happen. You can now repeat this for a second slice, but it's normally easiest to fit the processor card or cards after fitting the first slice.
The ARM processor card goes into the front motherboard socket with the side of the PCB with the components on it towards the front. If you have a PC card this goes into the rear socket with the components facing towards the rear.
When you have assembled all the slices you can fit the backplane. Slide this down its guide slots, first making sure that there are no cables running over the socket. In particular the floppy drive power cable or the CD ROM sound lead. The board should slide easily down until it reaches the socket and then it will need a final, firm push to seat it in its socket.
Depending upon what (if any) expansion cards you have you may need to fit them one at a time, connecting data leads as you go.
When all the slices have been installed you can fit the retaining pins.
There are a couple of points to watch out for. All the RAM cards have a small notch cut out at the bottom of one end, as shown below.
Whichever side of the RAM card the chips are (they may be on both) this notch goes to the right hand side of the computer, towards the power supply.
You should not need to use any force when inserting the main RAM modules. Place them in the socket vertically and then, when they are seated properly in the bottom of the socket, just lean them towards the front of the computer until they click into place.
The VRAM is rather different. This slides into the the socket guided by the rails at each end. Make sure you insert it carefully, keeping it level. When it reaches the bottom of the guide rails and it doesn't seem to want to go any further you will need to use force to push it right into the socket. The best way to do this is to push firmly in the centre of the module. You'll know when it's seated correctly, there will be a distinct "crunch" feel as it seats itself in the socket.
Disc drive power cables can only be inserted one way. You will see that two of the corners of the plug are chamfered and the socket is similarly shaped. Almost always the chamfered side goes upwards, but this is not universally the case, notably with a few CD ROM drives, so do check. It is possible (though not easy) to force the plug in the wrong way round, and if you do manage to do so then you may damage the drive.
The data cables are a different matter. It is now common for there to be no locating lugs which means they can be fitted either way. However, all ribbon cables have an identifying "stripe" on one edge, normally red although it may be blue. This is actually pin number 1. In the early days of IDE drives pin 1 could be at either end of the socket, but the location is now always the same. Where both IDE and floppy drive cables plug into the motherboard this stripe should go to the left, in the end of the socket close to the edge of the PCB.
The data cable to the hard drive mounted in the bottom of the case has to do a 90 degree turn before plugging into the drive. You can see this in the first picture above. The cable plugs into the drive with the identifying stripe towards the rear of the computer. As there isn't a lot of space here you might find it easiest to plug the data cable into the drive first and also connect the power cable before you mount the drive. You will also see that the data cable normally passes under the raised centre section of the drive retaining bracket. This isn't essential, and some brackets may not have this raised section so you may need to put the data cable over the top of the bracket.
All current IDE interfaces and most SCSI interfaces have the data cable sockets running from side to side of the card, and in this case pin 1 is the left hand end of the socket. Castle SCSI interfaces have the data cable connector on the left hand side of the PCB running from front to rear and pin 1 is at the back. You need to be particularly careful with these interfaces as the cable connector has no plastic shroud so it is possible to connect the cable onto only one line of pins, and if you do this you can blow the small surface mount fuse on the card.
Unless you have a very strange machine any IDE or SCSI drives, both hard drives and CD ROMS, will be mounted right way up and with the front of the drive towards the front of the computer. In this case pin 1 will be towards the left and so the data cable will plug in with the identifying stripe on the left hand side of the computer.
The exception to this is the floppy drive. With a very few exceptions all floppy drives are the other way around, so the stripe will go at the right hand side.
Fitting the lid can be a bit fiddly if you've not done it before. Fit the front edge into its groove with the rear edge raised about 15 cm. Now lower the back of the lid, making sure the front edge remains properly located. If the back of the lid doesn't seem to want to fit properly into its place then you can be fairly certain that the problem is that the front isn't properly located, so lift it up and start again.
Problems
If you've fitted it all back together properly then everything should spring back into life when you switch on. If it doesn't, then there are a couple of common problems.
If a hard drive doesn't seem to be working check the connections. It's easy to forget something. Even I have been known to assemble a machine and then, when the hard drive doesn't seem to be working, discover that I'd forgotten to plug in its power lead. Similarly since the processor card is often the last thing that's installed it's not unknown to find yourself staring at a completely dead computer and then realise that the processor is still sitting on the shelf where you placed it for safety.
Possible the most common problem is a missing floppy drive icon. Look at the drive light. If it's staying on then the cause is almost certainly the data cable. It will either be plugged into the drive the wrong way around or located on just one set of pins, which is possible because most floppy drives don't have shrouds around the cable connector.
The final problem that can arise is with CMOS RAM. During the cleaning process this might become corrupted, so if your computer does weird things or doesn't seem to want to start up properly this might be the cause. First try switching on with the Shift key held down. This will stop the computer running !Boot and so you are more likely to get to the desktop. You may need to try switching on with the Delete key held down to reset CMOS RAM it to the factory default. You'll then have to use Configure to alter some of the settings but it should get the computer working again.
Giving your RiscPC a good spring clean in this way can give it a new lease of life. In the next issue I'll be taking a look at various ways you can improve the cooling and airflow in your machine which not only helps improve reliability but can also prolong its life.
Dave Holden
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/SW2006/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, RISC OS SouthWest 2006
RISC OS SouthWest 2006
All the details on RISC OS South West.
The RISC OS South West show will be going ahead once again, this year on Saturday the 18th of February 2006 at the Webbington Hotel, Loxton, nr Ashbridge in North Somerset. Which as regular visitors will know has been the venue for a number of years. This show is the main RISC OS event for west country RISC OS users.
The Webbington Hotel
Finding the Webbington
In previous years there has been a free minibus service from Western-Super-Mare station, although so far RISCWorld doesn't know if this will be available this time round. Those travelling by road should take note of the following map, and turn off their GPS units!
Times and exhibitors
The show opens at 10:00 in the morning and closes at 4:30, the admittance charge is a £3.50 for adults, £2.50 for Arm Club and RISC OS Foundation members, those who are under 16's can get in for free provided they are accompanied by an Adult. Refreshments will be available on site and the hotel has an excellent restaurant for those who need an evening meal before departing homeward.
An exhibitors list and details of the show theatre will be available from the
RISC World
ÿÿÿÿISSUE3/VA/INDEX.HTM Issue 3, VirtualAcorn Tech Support
VirtualAcorn Tech Support
More from Aaron's tech support notebook
It's been a busy couple of months for tech support with some real head scratchers coming in. I can't claim to have solved all of these myself, so where possible I will try to include full credit to the brains behind the solution.
Power Management
There has been a long standing issue on a couple of customer's laptops. The fans on these machines would run continuously while VirtualAcorn was running, showing that the processor was working full time, even though the VirtualAcorn power management was installed. This is designed to return all unused clock cycles to Windows, or to put it more simply, VirtualAcorn only gets the CPU time/power it actually needs to do whatever it's doing at the time. If you are sitting at a machine typing into a word processor then RISC OS doesn't need much oomph to keep up with you, so you don't need to run the computer's processor flat out. Despite trying lots of things, nothing seemed to make any difference to the machines and eventually I was out of ideas.
I was then contacted by Phil Spiegelhalter, who had a laptop with exactly the same problem. Not only did he have the problem, but he also had the solution. His Laptop was usually set to "Presentation" mode, so that Windows didn't know what power saving to apply, so didn't apply any! Setting Windows to "Laptop" mode started the VirtualAcorn power management so that machine ran much cooler, for much longer.
So for anyone who has a laptop it might be worth checking the power management settings under Windows. To do this open the Windows control panel and go to the "Power Options" icon and double click on it. This will open the Power Options window, make sure you have Window correctly configured to run as a "Laptop/Portable".
In the example above the Power Scheme is set to "Home/Office Desk", this setting will allow VirtualAcorn power management to work on a desktop PC. For Laptops the correct setting should be chosen. Going back to the two customer machines in both cases the users had re-installed Windows themselves and for some reason the Power Scheme had been set the same as Phil's machine, to "Presentation" mode. Correcting this solved the power management problem for them. This brings me neatly onto my next topic, re-installing Windows.
Re-installing Windows
A lot of our tech support time seems to get taken up with customers who have re-installed Windows themselves. Doing a re-install isn't a difficult task, provided you know what you are doing, the problems arise because Windows makes it too easy for a user. Quite rightly some users assume that Windows will sort everything out for them, after all that's what it looks like it's doing. Indeed there is a lot of hand holding done by the Windows installer, unfortunately if users aren't careful they can find themselves getting hand held right down a sewer.
The Windows installer will re-install Windows for you, what it's rather unlikely to do is install other things that aren't part of Windows. If you buy a PC from a large company, such as Dell, then you will have a re-install CD for your machine that will put everything back to factory spec, normally including loading all the drivers, a PC from a smaller manufacturer, or worse still one "built by a friend who's into PC's", won't have a full re-install CD. After Windows has been installed there may still be lots missing.
Graphics Drivers
Windows will not install the drivers for your graphics card, that's something you need to do. On old versions of Windows it was obvious if the graphics card drivers hadn't been installed, your machine would be stuck in 640x480 16 colours. On WinXP that doesn't happen, instead Windows uses it's own VGA drivers that do a quite fair job in the desktop, you are quite likely to find that Windows has correctly set up the resolution and colour depth for your monitor and it will not be obvious that anything is wrong, until you start VirtualAcorn. At this point, one VirtualAcorn has been unlocked, an error message will appear on screen (typically "Unable to create back buffer") and VA won't start. Of course at this point the user comes to us, as it's our software that isn't working. Of course it's nothing to do with VirtualAcorn, it's because they haven't installed all the drivers needed.
So how can you tell if the drivers for a graphics card have been installed? It's actually very easy. Simply right click on a blank piece of the Windows backdrop and click on Properties. The Display Properties window will open. Clicking on the Settings tab will open the Display settings window. There will be a picture of a monitor. Under this will be some text, something along the lines of "Default monitor on ATI Radeon 7500". If there is nothing after the work "on" then the graphics drivers have not been installed, have a look at the examples below.
Correct graphics drivers installed
No graphics drivers installed
As you can see I've put a red ellipse around the problem area to make it more obvious. Of course graphics drivers aren't the only problem.
Other Drivers
Windows relies on a number of drivers to work correctly, the graphics drivers are simply one of them. If you need to re-install Windows then please remember that as well as installing Windows itself you will need, as a bare minimum, to also install:
Graphics Driver
Sound Driver
Network Driver
Motherboard drivers (for USB etc
Modem driver
Drivers for any other 3rd party expansions card
Drivers for any printers you hav
You will need to dig through the CD's that came with the computer to make sure you have everything you need before you start. Trust me there is nothing worse than doing a re-install, then wanting to do on-line to download the latest drivers, only to find that you have mislaid the driver for your broadband modem.
Doing a Windows re-install is not difficult, but actually installing Windows itself is only half the job. VirtualAcorn will not work unless you have installed all the drivers the machine needs.
Re-naming HardDisc4
We have been asked a couple of times now about how to rename the HostFS::HardDisc4 mount. I don't recommend renaming a harddisc under RISC OS for a number of reasons. Firstly there's a high degree of probability that some things in your boot sequence simply won't use relative names.
As an example suppose there is a reference to:
HostFS::HardDisc4.$.Printing.!Printers
In the boot sequence - if you rename the harddisc to, for example Jim, then the real path to the file would now be:
HostFS::Jim.$.Printing.!Printers
So RISC OS would no longer "find" !Printers and would throw up an error on booting.
If the entire !Boot sequence uses relative names, such as:
.^.Printing.!Printers
then renaming the harddisc shouldn't cause as many problems, although apps (and the pinboard) may still complain that they can't find things.
You can "rename" the existing HardDisc4 from the HostFS control panel by making a new HostFS mount that points to the HardDisc4 folder (as seen by Windows) with a new name (for example Jim). You would then have 2 HostFS mounts that point to the same Windows folder. Removing the one named "HardDisc4" would just leave the one called Jim, which would then become the first drive, and hence the boot drive.
Also note the mount flags for Bootable and Show DOS extensions need to be set so the new mount has the same flags as the old HardDisc4 mount.
However I really don't recommend doing this, if you really must and are prepared for the potential problems then firstly back up the file:
C:\Program Files\VirtualAcorn\VRPC-xxx\Models\Arm 7 RISC OS xxx(Jit)\Model.cfg
(where xxx is determined by your version of VirtualAcorn)
So if it all goes wrong you can put things back. Also note that if you do rename the harddisc and it does all go wrong we won't be able to provide any support and will simply tell you to put it back!
More tech support fun and games next time.
Aaron
P.S. Regular readers might be interested to know that "Mr Snap" now has a cousin in Australia.
