Pinebook Pro

[acorndave]

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

[JonAbbott]

Ironically I emailed RComp in early April to purchase Pinebook Pro, so I could test ADFFS with it, but they never came back to me.

As mentioned in your quote, ADFFS does rely on the video output supporting the mode the game wants. Implementing a software upscaler is on the wish list, but not a high priority as there has always been a workaround such as a 75Hz mode file or the Pi's hardware upscaler.

Under RISC OS 5, ADFFS implements its own video driver so it's also possible there's a issue with how it interacts with the Pinebook implementation of GraphicsV. I'll see if RComp have uploaded their source code to the ROOL repository.

I'll bump the software upscaler up the priority list.

[acorndave]

Great thanks Jon, that sounds positive. Thanks

[acorndave]

Just a query. Since I'm not a big gamer all I actually use ADFFS for is it's filing system bits. ie opening an ADF or possibly a JFD file to access the contents which could then be copied out or run by oher progs. So would it be possible to just rip the 'ADFS Emulated Floppy' bits out of the main prog sort of thing.

It may be I'm talking complete nonsense and that the whole app is too complicated to just pick apart in which case sorry for being a nuisance.

[JonAbbott]

would it be possible to just rip the 'ADFS Emulated Floppy' bits out of the main prog sort of thing.

That's all that will be active if that's all you're using.

[acorndave]

Yes all I want is to perhaps have the ADFFS icon on the Icon Bar so I know it's loaded and can then Menu over and select Quit to close it,

And then basically to have the ability to access the Image Files (ADF or JFD). Basically just use the Filing System bits. Unfortunately I have no clue how to go about doing this. Is this something that could be easily done at all please ?

[JonAbbott]

Just make sure !ADFFS is seen during boot - it will autoload when you launch a floppy image. ie Open Configure, select Boot, select Look at and drag !ADFFS into it.

[acorndave]

I've given it a go. Basically when I tried to load a floppy image it just locked the P-Pro up. No response to keyboard and mouse. Had to just power off. Not to worry was just a thought anyway. I have actually managed to get what I want by basically running the individual modules inside of an old ADFFS (v2.09) ADFFSFiler, ADFS, ZLIB and ADFFS in that order. Bit unorthodox maybe but it seems to work. Thanks

[JonAbbott]

I think the last official release prior to the GraphicsV driver being added was v2.20.

You might be able to use the most recent release and just replace ADFFS550 from v2.20 or earlier, I think that might work and give you the benefit of auto-launching ADFFS when a floppy image is launched.

That said, your solution works just as well and I can't remember when the ADFFS550 build was added!

I'll have to work out some tests you can perform to try and locate why the GraphicsV driver hard-locks. What is the RISC OS version you're running?

[acorndave]

Actually after some more playing is seems V2.09 loads straight off. I had tried other versions off jaspp site and found issues, so I think I just assumed V2.09 was the same hence why I tried running the individual modules. I have disc copies / backups of old machines and found V2.09 on an old Iyonix backup.

However out of curiosity I tried your suggestion. I checked the versions on the ADFFS page V2.19 and V2.20 do not have ADFFS550 within. The next one on there is V2.59 (there are no downloads available between V2.20 and V2.59). So I replaced ADFFS550 within the latest version with the one from V2.59. It didn't lock the machine this time but displayed error message 'Bad dynamic area options' with just a 'cancel' button, which obviously stopped it from running but did not upset the machine at all.

The Pinebook Pro is running RISC OS 5.29 which came with it and presumably is a suitably modified version to enable it to work. Anyway I think I'm sorted for what I need, so thanks. Having said that I'm more than happy to do further testing if you come up with anything. Obviously it would be nice to use the latest version and may be of help to others. Thanks for looking at this. Much appreciated.