home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- 08/08/95
- Questions and Answers
- ---------------------
-
- Q. I need to know if <product> works on my Risc PC. Where do I find out?
-
- A. Your best route is to ask the vendor of that product. Of the products
- Acorn has tested, over 95% work without modification. Of the remaining 5%,
- many of the software houses have since produced newer versions which work
- correctly. A large percentage of the incompatible software comprises games;
- problems running these pieces of software are commonly connected with
- screen modes. "Game On!," a utility to patch some of these games, has
- recently become available from:
-
- The ARM Club
- FREEPOST ND 6573
- London
- N12 0BR
-
- Directory Viewers
- -----------------
-
- Everyone is familiar with double-clicking Select on a file, directory or
- application. However there are actually a number of other things you can do
- as well (some of these are not present in RISC OS 2.00)
-
- Double-Click Adjust - as Select, but the directory viewer closes
-
- Single-Click Select - select this object, deselect any others.
-
- Single-Click Adjust - select this object, adding it to any others already
- selected in this viewer. Also, deselects a selected object. In effect, it
- toggles the state of this object.
-
- Menu - selects the object under the pointer if nothing is selected
-
- SHIFT Double-Click Select - Open a directory or application. Load a file into !Edit
-
- SHIFT Double-Click Adjust - As above, plus directory viewer closes
-
- CTRL Double-Click Select - Open a directory or application. Don't run any !Boot files.
-
- CTRL Double-Click Adjust - As above, plus directory viewer closes
-
- Drag to icon bar - Load the file into the application you dragged it to, or run the
- file if you drag it to a vacant part of the icon bar.
-
- Shift Drag to an open !Edit window - Insert name of object(s) dragged
-
- You can also select a number of objects which are adjacent in a directory viewer
- by starting a drag near the first (make sure that the first object is NOT selected
- by this) and then dragging the box to enclose all the objects you want selected.
- On releasing the mouse button all these obects will be selected.
-
- Finally, don't forget the menu option to 'Select All'.
-
- It can often be quicker to drag a box round more objects than you want (or Select
- All) and then remove the ones you don't want by clicking Adjust.
-
-
- Postcards From The Edge, Part 2
- -------------------------------
-
- Another item (although not an Acorn product) showcased at Acorn World was RiscBSD,
- a UNIX lookalike for the Risc PC. RiscBSD is based on the NetBSD2 source tree;
- NetBSD2 is a lookalike of BSD 4.4 Lite.
-
- The source tree is, I'm assured, a pleasantly clean one; all the CPU-specific code
- is in separate directories, so it's merely (!) a case of porting the specific stuff
- to an ARM directory, fixing the MakeFiles and then (hopefully) typing "make". Of
- course, life is never that easy!
-
- The system on display at Acorn World was a very, very alpha kernel. So far,
- everything is built via cross-compilation using gcc under Linux; the RiscBSD team
- hope to have native compilation very soon. Actual coding had been on-going for six
- weeks prior to Acorn World, so considering that every core member also has either
- a job or a degree to do, they have done a fine job so far.
-
- The multicoloured square was built to show off the process system; one process
- was moving the square, another was changing its colour, and there were two more
- changing the orientation and colour of the bars in it to reflect CPU state.
-
- In addition to RiscBSD, there is also the ArcBSD initiative, which aims to
- provide (again) BSD
- 4.4 Lite, but sourced from the FreeBSD tree. ArcBSD is being written with the
- explicit brief that it must be executable on all 32 bit Acorn machines with
- sufficient RAM and hard disc space to make support of BSD viable.
-
- Further details on the progress of these projects can be found on the
- comp.sys.acorn newsgroup; details of mailing list contacts for further
- information are usually included in these postings.