Sorting Out a New-Old RiscPC

Introduction

So you've just bought a RiscPC (or something) on eBay in a fit of nostalgia? Or you want to revive that old computer from your cupboard? This page will give you a brief guide to getting it all going. I will assume that you've used RISC OS before a little bit, so if the whole thing is new to you, have a look at this brief online tutorial or, better yet, keep an eye out for a second hand User or Welcome Guide on eBay - it shouldn't set you back more than a pound or two.

Why?

If your newold computer gives error messages while booting, refuses to be configured or won't display a decent screen mode then you probably need to sort out the !Boot structure. Even if everything works OK now, you might want to simply start from fresh and, at the very least, installing the UniBoot !Boot structure will help you later when you come across third party programs (like NetSurf for instance) which require it. Actually, many programs will require much more than just the vanilla UniBoot distribution, so if you'd like to save yourself a lot of hassle down the line, I strongly recommend downloading my FancyBoot distribution instead of UniBoot. (Click here for a popup list of what's included.)

Hardware

This guide is written for someone with a RiscPC (or an A7000 for that matter), a hard disc and version 3.x of RISC OS. (To check your OS version, click middle button on the Acorn icon on the bottom right of your screen, then go through Info.) I'm also assuming you're using a different computer to connect to the internet. If you're not, make sure you download everything you need before you follow the instructions below.

Step by Step Guide

• 1) You may wish to start by restoring all the old configuration options on your computer to their factory defaults. For instructions on this click here for a popup. Otherwise, continue to step 2...
• 2) Now download either UniBoot or FancyBoot and ZipEE and burn them onto a CD to transfer across to your RiscPC. (If you can't use a CD to transfer the files, click here for a helpful popup ;-)
• 3) Copy zipee/ff8 from your CD onto your harddisc and set it's type to "Absolute". (See this popup picture for a reminder.) Now double-click on zipee/ff8 and a copy of the program ZipEE will be extracted to the "CSD", which is normally the root directory of your harddisc. Double click on !ZipEE and it will load itself onto the iconbar. Lastly, click middle button on the ZipEE iconbar icon and select "Force Unzip".
• 4) If you have an existing !Boot directory on your harddisc, rename it to something else, like Old!Boot. Now drag uniboot/zip (or fancyboot/zip) from your CD directory viewer onto the ZipEE icon on the iconbar. A little save box will pop up from ZipEE with a directory icon in it. Drag this icon to the root directory of your harddisc and wait until ZipEE has finished doing its thing.
• 5) Restart your computer. Hopefully everything should be working just dandy now, and you can double click on !Boot to re-configure your machine - including screen mode, fonts etc. You can also delete Old!Boot if you want to.

Troubleshooting / FAQs

Well, this page has been here a little while now, and has generated a few queries and stuff, so I thought I'd construct a FAQ-style troubleshooting section...

1) I'd like to re-format the harddrive on my newold machine, how can I do that?

Well, firstly, you probably don't need to :-) If you want to wipe the drive just delete everything on it. In fact, a better approach would probably be just to create a new directory called Old or something and then move (hold down Shift as you drag the files) all the old stuff in there until you're sure you don't want any of it. If you're certain you want to wipe the disc at a lower level, you can download HForm from the RISC OS Ltd support site. Note: you should Initialise the disc, not Format it, when you're prompted.

2) I get errors when performing disc operations, why might that be?

For some time there was a fairly significant bug in RISC OS which could lead to the computer hanging and/or file corruption. As you've probably got an old version of the OS, you might well be experiencing this :-( Happily the solution is quite straightforward:

• Press the F12 key. You should now be faced with a "command line" interface.
• Type Configure ADFSBuffers 0 and press Return twice.
• Now reset your machine and hopefully the problem will be fixed.

If the problem persists and you run out of other potential solutions you might need to use HForm (as discouraged in the answer to the question above!)

3) I can't make anything readable appear on my screen, so it makes following any of these instructions very hard!

Your machine might have been set up to display an image on a monitor which is dissimilar to the one you're using now. The simplest solution will probably be to follow the instructions above about resetting your CMOS. If that still doesn't help you can try the following:

• Turn the computer on and leave it for a while (say, a couple of minutes, to be sure) to reach the desktop by itself, then press F12 and carefully type:
• Configure MonitorType 4 and press Return
• Configure Mode 28 and press Return
• Finally, press Return again and then re-start the computer

If that still doesn't get you anywhere, there's a couple more things to try:

• Try experimenting with Configure Sync 0 or Configure Sync 1 and restart as above
• Finally, it might be that an error is occuring during start-up which you can't see. In this case pressing Escape several times during the two minute start-up gap described above, might help - then follow the instructions as above.

4) I've set up my hard disc with a new !Boot structure, but I've not got all the standard bits and bobs which came with the computer when it was new. Is there somewhere I can download them?

Yes, you can download disc images from the legacy Acorn FTP site. Make sure you download the correct archives for your OS version.

5) OK, I've got my new boot sequence up and running, but can I find out what the whole thing actually does?

Yes, visit Paul Vigay's page to learn all about it. Though, unless you have some specific reason (like curiosity, I suppose), there's not really any need to...

The End

That's it. What now for your newold computer? I suppose you could go over to the ANS filebase to find a bit of software, or visit drobe to see if anything interesting's been going on. If you've got any questions, then please email me at riscos@snowstone.org.uk and I'll see if I can help, or you could visit the Iconbar forums and ask there.

Last update: 27^th August 2007