Pinebook Pro
Posted: Wed May 17, 2023 8:44 pm
I've been around the Acorn and RISC OS scene since the days of owning an Electron back in the day.
Up until a good few years ago I had an Iyonix, which was my first foray into RISC OS 5. Back then I got old things working with the likes of Aemulor and also ADFFS. I sold my Iyonix many years ago now and since then I have been using RISC OS4 on VA RPC and I've used ADFFS to load virtual floppies of key discs for some old programs which wouldn't run without Disc 1 being first loaded into the floppy drive. Since machines no longer have such things ADFFS has been invaluable. I have also used it to mount ADFS images in a similar way for use with 6502em and similar.
Just recently I have been tempted back to the modern world of RO5, by a very nice Pinebook Pro, one of the few available with a proper UK keyboard.
I am very happy with it, however I find that 6502em and ADFFS no longer run. 6502em gives an error message that it can't select a 256 colour mode and ADFFS just totally blanks the screen. I have queried 6502em separately with Steve Harrison and he suggested I make enquiries with Rcomp. I know there are various avilable tweaks for the Pi to use ADFFS (in particular disable_mode-changes) so queried whether such a thing was possible with the Pinebook Pro. The reply was:
I think your problems stem from the fact that both programs likely expect
to be able to change screenmode, where PBpro screen resolution is fixed
(dictated by panel).
The CPU of a Pi is quite different in terms of how it works compared with
RK3399 on Pinebook. There is no equivalent of the Pi's startup options.
This is because on Pi, the graphics is effectively driving the ARM, rather
than the other way round. It has pros/cons!
So just wondered if it is at all possible to get ADFFS to work on the Pinebook Pro? If not it's not the end of the world. I have managed to work around it by downloading ArchiEmu (which is the more uptodate version of A310Emu by Jan De Boer). Configured it for RISC OS 3 with a Hard Drive Option and copied ADFFS (and also 6502em) into it. I can then run everything that I want to in that environment
Up until a good few years ago I had an Iyonix, which was my first foray into RISC OS 5. Back then I got old things working with the likes of Aemulor and also ADFFS. I sold my Iyonix many years ago now and since then I have been using RISC OS4 on VA RPC and I've used ADFFS to load virtual floppies of key discs for some old programs which wouldn't run without Disc 1 being first loaded into the floppy drive. Since machines no longer have such things ADFFS has been invaluable. I have also used it to mount ADFS images in a similar way for use with 6502em and similar.
Just recently I have been tempted back to the modern world of RO5, by a very nice Pinebook Pro, one of the few available with a proper UK keyboard.
I am very happy with it, however I find that 6502em and ADFFS no longer run. 6502em gives an error message that it can't select a 256 colour mode and ADFFS just totally blanks the screen. I have queried 6502em separately with Steve Harrison and he suggested I make enquiries with Rcomp. I know there are various avilable tweaks for the Pi to use ADFFS (in particular disable_mode-changes) so queried whether such a thing was possible with the Pinebook Pro. The reply was:
I think your problems stem from the fact that both programs likely expect
to be able to change screenmode, where PBpro screen resolution is fixed
(dictated by panel).
The CPU of a Pi is quite different in terms of how it works compared with
RK3399 on Pinebook. There is no equivalent of the Pi's startup options.
This is because on Pi, the graphics is effectively driving the ARM, rather
than the other way round. It has pros/cons!
So just wondered if it is at all possible to get ADFFS to work on the Pinebook Pro? If not it's not the end of the world. I have managed to work around it by downloading ArchiEmu (which is the more uptodate version of A310Emu by Jan De Boer). Configured it for RISC OS 3 with a Hard Drive Option and copied ADFFS (and also 6502em) into it. I can then run everything that I want to in that environment