Oh dear, my email itself seems to have caused some problems, apologies. 
Certainly no bad manners intended, and of course I had no idea that any mailing 
list would have problems with it. Would a note on expected format on 
www.riscos.info/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rpcemu reduce the chances of other 
v.rare-mailgroup-submitters making a similar mistake perhaps?? [For info, it 
was written in TextEdit on a Mac which I forget doesn't save in plain text 
format as standard, then pasted into this web-based email from a Windows PC 
that composes messages by default as rich text]. Something learned anyway and 
sorry for any inconvenience caused. I have tried to change my email settings so 
hopefully the below arrives successfully this time. I look forward to your 
thoughts on my queries,
Kind Regards,
Al
------
 
Hi,

Having installed v0.8.8 for Mac OS last night (using FrancisD’s 
rpcemu-spoon-0.8.8-fjd2-bin.zip), I encountered a number of problems booting 
into RISC OS that I hadn't experienced with my build of v0.8.3 (that I’d built 
a year or so ago using instructions at 
http://www.riscos.info/index.php/RPCEmu_Mac_Guide). I hope I've now worked past 
most of them but..

Q1) I think they all related to inconsistent RAM allocation and I wonder if 
there still may be a problem here? I've now checked that the following all 
match up:
rpc.cfg mem_size = 128;
RPCemu Preferences menu selection = 128MB;
RISC OS !Boot - Discs - RAM disc enabled, 128.0 MB.
However, on start-up there is no RAM disc on the icon bar and looking in Task 
display, RAM disc size shows 0K. Is that correct?
Although I can't now compare with v0.8.3 (please see Q4.ii below), I believe 
something may have changed as a program that I regularly run as the first thing 
after start-up contains the line "RMKill RAMFS" and this now fails with "Module 
RAMFS not found".

Q2) Command+F12 no longer seems to open the Command line under the icon bar? 
The shortcut to open a Task window still works but is there an alternative now 
for this other route to the command line?

Q3) Roughly every 2 out of 3 times I open RPCemu, the boot sequence stops very 
early with an hourglass after the first 3 lines of text (that show the 
processor and "Acorn ADFS"). I can't find a rpclog file saved anywhere to send 
you though? If I wait long enough, an error does appear as follows: "Error: 
Unable to create files in "ADFS::IDEDisc4.$.!BOOT.Resources.!Scrap.ScrapDirs", 
error returned is "Disc error 23 at :4/0000000007FE0000" (Error number &6)". I 
have since verified the hd4 'drive' is "ok", and I can't see any permission 
restrictions on the folder referred to. Moving the pointer out of the window 
quickly enough as it boots MAY assist to bypass the error but that seems a bit 
random. Any ideas?

Q4) I found RPCemu spoon edition v0.8.3 very reliable after a year of regular 
use (bar some problems with my own self-written but previously-stable 
(under-RISC-OS-3.11) BASIC programs) but:
 (i) I am getting regular instruction fetch errors now under v0.8.8 with no 
particular pattern as yet (e.g. upon opening a dir that next time opens fine) 
such as "Application may have gone wrong. Click continue to try to resume or 
Quit to stop Application." Describe = "Internal error: abort on instruction 
fetch at &00012AB0"; and
 (ii) now I can't seem to open v0.8.3 any more. Hopefully I won't need to but 
is this to be expected? I was never able to open v0.8.3 from the rpcemu unix 
executable, but it was ALWAYS successful running from Terminal. Now from 
Terminal it fails with a "Bus error" followed by "Rpcemu quit unexpectedly". I 
have saved the Apple problem report details should it be worth forwarding? The 
RPCemu unix executable does run to display the desktop but on clicking on 
IDEDisc4 or the RAM disc, it gives the error "Disc not understood - has it been 
formatted?" [and creates a new blank hd4.hdf file in a different folder]. I 
think this was the problem a year ago and why I always used Terminal thereafter.

Q5) A command "Set Alarm$Options ..." for configuring the !Alarm application 
which worked fine under RPCemu v0.8.3 seems to have stopped working?


Can you help / advise with these please?
  
Specification and other info should it be helpful: 

- I’m running Mac OS 10.6.4 on an Intel iMac 9.1.
- RISC OS 4.02 ROM’s.
- To set up v0.8.8 I created a new folder with the unzipped 0.8.8-fjd2, along 
with copies of hd4.hdf, roms folder, hostfs folder, rpc.cfg and cmos.ram, and 
set this folder to be the data directory.
- With both v0.8.3 and v0.8.8 I get a duplicate HostFS on the icon bar, but 
both open fine and point to the same folder.
- I found a very strange issue when testing v0.8.8 last night whereby a RISC OS 
text file which one of my BASIC programs spools (one line of text) to, 
contained over 800Mb of random data, but amongst which were references to a 
load of filenames I have on Mac OS. Hopefully this is a one-off but I’m 
intrigued how this could have happened? 

- Contents of rpc.cfg file:-
network_type = off
mouse_following = 1
cdrom_type = 0
cdrom_enabled = 1
blit_optimisation = 0
refresh_rate = 60
stretch_mode = 0
sound_enabled = 1
vram_size = 2
cpu_type = ARM610
mem_size = 128
ipaddress = 172.31.0.1
  

The build of version 0.8.8 is considerably faster than v0.8.3 incidentally! 
Thank you for everyone's ongoing work and time on this project.

Thanks & Regards,
Al Webb


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