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risc pc and adffs
Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2025
by caver99
I have a strongarm 200 risc pc with os 4.39 and apart from a very few apps cant get anything to run.
i have found the ADFFS and when i run this i get the icon on the task bar, copy over a game say SWIV.jfd and set the file type as floppy.
right click the adffs and select boot floppy, the screen pops up and asked if i want to boot and hold ctrl, i hold ctrl and click yes then i get the same error which it crashes and wont boot to press space or mouse button.
i have the latest ADFFS and tried many of the games and not got a single one to work.
any idea what im doing wrong here.
i can re-fit my arm610 and original 3.50 roms if needed.
Re: risc pc and adffs
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2025
by richw
I don't think RISC OS 4.39 (a variant of Select/Adjust, isn't it?) is supported by ADFFS. Try with RISC OS 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 or 4.0.
Re: risc pc and adffs
Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2025
by JonAbbott
caver99 wrote: Tue Nov 18, 2025
right click the adffs and select boot floppy, the screen pops up and asked if i want to boot and hold ctrl, i hold ctrl and click yes
You don’t need to hold CTRL. The option to quit the desktop and emulate a hard boot is there for memory limited original Archimedes.
RISC OS 4 and 6 fundamentally change some things that can’t be reversed, so I don’t really support them. That said, many games should probably work.
The combination of RO4 and a StrongARM might be a problem though as RO4 changes its behaviour when running on StrongARM. I don’t think I’ve ever tested that combination due to the complications and the fact I’m never going to officially support RO4/6.
I did spend quite a lot of time testing RO3.71 with StrongARM a few builds back and fixed a lot of issues, but support is still patchy. The main development focus is on Pi’s running RO5.
Re: risc pc and adffs
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2026
by caver99
so the really only supported system now is risc os 5, is risk os 3.71 still supported?
Re: risc pc and adffs
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2026
by JonAbbott
All RISC OS versions are covered, I've just not tested every game with every combination of OS and CPU under ADFFS. As mentioned above, I don't actively support RISC OS 4/6 because they fundamentally break a lot of games in a way that can't be fixed without modifying the OS.
My advise would be to try whatever game(s) you want to run and report any issues. Please bare in mind that if the game is Wimp based and not natively StrongARM compatible, ADFFS won't currently get it running.
You could also use an emulator such as
ArcEm under RISC OS. A StrongARM should just about be able to emulate an 8Mhz ARM2.
Re: risc pc and adffs
Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2026
by caver99
ok will do, thanks for the reply