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What have I done?

Caluser2000

Caluser2000

Banned
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Jan 3, 2010
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New Zealand
Finally going to get my mits on an Acorn RiscPC 700. It's a machine I've always wanted and one popped up on our local auction site. Quite pleased really. It'll be nice to have something a little different other than x86 stuff to play with.
 
Very nice! I heard great things about these in their day. I was already buried under MIPS and PA-RISC, so I never got around to one of these myself.

Of course, you can still play with x86 on the Acorn. What has you new machine got in it?
 
Specs- 8MB,2MB VRAM, 850MB hard disk & CD ROM.Acorn 40MHz ARM710 CPU, RISC OS 3.6. Also has a Irlam 24i16 video capture card and an extra SCSI card. 2 slices with Acron mouse. Missed out on the 5x86 and Strong arm cards though.
 
It finally arrived. Runs quite well. Impressed with the audio samples I stumbled across on the hdd. Seems I must have set the monitor setting to auto, was 256@800x600, without doing too much research on the subject. Now I'm not getting a picture on my later multi-sync monitors. On the lookout for an older VGA item it put things to rights. Oh the joys of fiddling ;).
 
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For some reason I've just won an auction on another one. This time with RiscOS 4.x, 64 megs of ram, 20 gig hdd, cdrom, along with a 486 card, network adapter, some software bundles, dongles and some manuals. Unsure why I did it, but there you go. Just for something different perhaps? Who knows?

Any other old Acorn users here?

Oh and I did get the video back to what it was using *Configure Mode 21. Found this guide very usefull-http://www.snowstone.org.uk/riscos/documents/newold.html
 
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I wish I had a RiscOS machine. Unfortunately, the machines for sale are either far away or expensive. Or both.
 
The new one is now has the problem the first had. Not as simple to correct though I'm finding. It's interesting kit alright with an avid following still. Signed up to http://www.acornarcade.com/ Some very interesting characters there. Found TV to PC vga cable amongst my collection of cables out in the shed. Thought this may help but alas no. TV works a treat with the Linux and OS/2 box though. I'm sure I'll get it sorted. Interesting learning experiance, with the cl being needed at times as required.
 
Got the second machine sorted. I thought maybe the 4.36 roms had some sort if hickup. Removed them with a IC remover, shorted all the pins with a pair of tweasers (also aligned all the pins for easier fitment), refitted the 4.x roms, fired it up and BINGO!! presented with the logon prompt. Now presented with the desktop in all it's RiscOS goodness.

Yeah these machines seem to command a reasonable price compared to x86 kit of the same era which are given away. I got mine at what I considered was a fair price though. They don't come up for grabs often but I think I'm hooked. Want to score an 233 or higher processor board and some other goodies. Those cards go for as much as I paid for a complete machine here in New Zealand.
 
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Started the 600 up this morning and the no video single again. Mobo issue I'm sure.

Edit-No just me being unfamiliar with "new" kit. Desktops up again. Sorted it going in blind as it were. Held the Shift on startup , pressed "Y" to get to the command line, typed *con. sync 0, pressed return,*con. monitor. 3,pressed return, then ctl-break to reboot got it sorted. Not having the dot after monitor was the hickup. Risc OS 4.12 seems to have some slightly different commands compared to Risc OS 3. Some pointers from AA and a nice three page tutorial helped a lot.

Found this good brief history of Acorn- http://atterer.org/acorn

Interesting enough there are OS upgrades ,rom and softloaded, and cards still readily available, if you know where to look, for these machines. Not bad considering they came out in 1994-6 or thereabouts. Mind you that's getting a bit OT ;)
 

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At some point the previous owner removed the soldered on RTC/CMOS battery. These were prone to leaking when they got old, like the items on early x86 boards. The reason for the startup hickup if left for too long. A nice artical sorting the issue is at- http://www.bapfish.org.uk/acorn/cmos.html
 
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Been doing a bit of digging around on origins and makeup of the Risc OS. Turns out some of it's components are still written in BBC Basic(around 10% or thereabouts). The OS itself is probably considered archaic by todays standards but interesting none the less- http://www.wrocc.org.uk/riscos/versions.shtml

Just checked the rPC700s battery, quite a large affair, to see if there's any sign of corrosion but it's ok. The machine has been well looked after, like the rPC600. Bought a pre-loved 10/100 switch last week which had a 50-pin scsi cable in the box. I can use that with the rPC700s scsi card.
 
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Just for a change I've been having a play with the PC700 with Risc OS 3.6. Not touched it for a while. It's obviously not infalible, as I managed to hang the system ;) There's a wee reset switch on the back right looking from the front that soon sorts it out though. Seems I got it wrong in my first post a year ago(or it's just typo) with regards to the amount of ram on this system. It's reporting 18megs on start up.

With the OS being in ROM there's not the hard disk thrashing that you have with OS/2, Win 9x and Win NT 3.5x. Might do boot to desktop comparison at some stage, just out of interest, with one of the 486DX2/66s I've got. I'll and get the systems as close as possible ram an hdd size wise - the RiscPC accesses what I can gather is basicly bios extension area on the hdd on startup- and RAM wise. Obviously the results will be totally unscientific and bias toward the RiscPC ;) Pity I don't have a similar era Mac to throw in the mix. Hell may as well do another GUI install of a linux distro while I'm at it....

I've been looking at the ram specs and it seems the earlier PC600 had three revisions of mobo. On the first type you have to remove a resister to use 64 megs of ram reliably- http://www.apdl.co.uk/ram.htm
 
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Picked up another RiscPC. This time it is StrongARM 233 based unit. The chap I bought it was kind enough to upgrade it by overclocking to 275mhz, replaced the battery and installed a bigger harddrive. Got a spare psu, 2nd slice kit and a few other bits n bobs with it. Came with both Acorn branded ps/2 keyboard and Mk 2 mouse. The two other machines just came with the mouse.
 
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Tracked down another StrongArm based system with a socketed 586 addon processor card, something I've been after for a while. The seller wasn't particularly up front with all the faults with this one. On the bright side I can transfer the network card, ram, RiscOS 4.06 roms and processors to another machine if need be. This thing was shipped with neither the hdd or psu secured, front cover spring mount was broken(common fault and easy to fix) and cdrom was missing its front facia (again a simple fix by fitting one of the many spare cdroms I have laying about).

Current unfixed issues (which the seller mentioned)-
1. cmos not holding date/time: should be straight forward. Battery was ment to have been replaced a few years ago. Tested with multimeter and charging ok.

2. Internal speaker crackling continuously: suspect possible damage to a mobo component. Tested another speaker on the internal connector and same thing happening. Unplugging the inbuilt speaker and using the LCD monitor built-in speakers plugged into the rear speaker jack temporally overcomes this annoyance.

Will be contacting the chap I got the other StrongArm system from for advice on this one seems very good to deal with.
 
Tried to get the 586 card up and running. Pretty straight forward access PCx86.ARC http://acorn.riscos.com/riscos/releases/pccard/ , read the user quide and you should be away in 15 minutes. Or so I thought. Tried a couple of times on the machine the card came with but no joy. It kept complaining about a transfer error trying to run the emulation software. The configuration software ran fine though which I thought was strange.

Fitted the card and installed the software in the other StrongArm running RiscOS 3.7 and no problems at all. Installed IBM Dos 6.3 and in the process of throwing GeoWorks Ensemble 1.2 on it just for s!!!s and giggles.

Another nice Acorn Link http://www.classicacorn.freeuk.com/
 
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Removed the 586 card and fitted the 486sxl40 card just to see if that was ok. Absolutely fine and boots to the dos prompt as quick as the 586 card curiously enough.

Running a few games on it. The Incredible Machine has a weird screen issue, so did PCGeos btw. CDMan was fine. Would be a good to play with some virus just for the hell of it. If the "c drive" gets too corrupted just delete it and start over. It's easy enough to just copy the directory for backup purposes as well.

Interesting enough these machines natively read/write/format Atari diskettes. This could be useful if my collection ends up going that route.

One thing I found out is the last revision board had the video crippled somewhat for rf reg.reasons http://www.jrmiller.demon.co.uk/rpc/mods.html It did have the advantage of 16 bit sound, the fdd controller was able to access two fdd and lower profile simm sockets. Here's another artical removing the components-http://www.apdl.co.uk/riscworld/volume4/issue1/riscpc/index.htm
 
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Was offered another RiscPC 600 at a great price so snapped it up. Got a few spare Acorn branded keyboards with it. This has an ARM710 card in it. My intention is to eventually transfer all the good components from the shonky StrongArm machine to it.

Soon I'll be having a clean up and tossing all faulty x86 stuff to make room for RiscPC spares.

Yeah you could say I'm kinda hooked.
 
Got the PC600. It came with a Cumana panasonic interface cdrom and pcb. Though the cdrom was connected correctly and driver correctly installed it'd just hang on startup with device 21 error.

Just booted holding the rh shift key and deleting the driver got it back booting from the hdd ok.

I suspected the later model IDE cdrom may not be picked up cause it's got ROS 3.6 I decided "what the hell" and had a shot anyway. The standard "CD is faulty". It noticed when a cd is not in the drive. Out of curiosity loaded the panasonic drivers. Now no hang up on start up but still no cd access though.

Swapped cdroms, cables, checked HDD was set to Master. No joy. I remembered I'd received a 20 gig hdd, with RiscOS loaded on it, to replace the good StrongArms current drive. This was ment to be iffy with RiscPCs. Booted it up, set the desktop up, turned it off, then hooked up the cd and restarted the machine-instant access to the cdroms.

Id still like to sort the issue out with the install on the Conner CFS420A drive though. Looking at an old online hardware compatiblity list a few 4-8 speed iDE cd roms apparently worked fine. Ill keep a look out for something a little older.

Pretty cool the 20gig drive fired up fine though. Wasn't expecting it to.
 
Out of share stupidity I accepted an offer on a couple more x86 cards. This time a DX4/100 and another but faster 5x56 card. On the positive side they come with the original boxed software and I get a couple of copies of PC Dos 6.3. Fool and their money etc etc...

Seriously though, they don't come up often and getting one from overseas would've been price I've paid for two here.Thank goodness I did a few hours overtime this fortnight ;).

I'm getting some sealed Risc 3.6 manuals as well at no extra cost.
 
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