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Anyone managed this yet?

The demo version certainly runs fine on VirtualA5000 V1.4

I was hoping this was going to be more positive in a forum - I have Sibelius 7 and the latest VA with floppy access. It installs just fine, but I get repeatedly that the copy of Sibelius 7 is corrupted ... don't panic - re-install and try again. Sure enough, you can, but it's still corrupted.

Gave up panicing ages ago, but running Sibelius 7 would be very nice.

Not having tried it I don't know but it may well require installation on a filecore type disk (e.g. ADFS).

It should be possible to create an IDE disk on VA as follows:

Edit the model.cfg file and add the following BEFORE any [CDRom] entry

[IdeDisc]
Shape = "96 16 63 512"
Filename = "HardDisc4.hdf"

This shape will create a 50Mb ide disk (96*16*63*512) ~= 50Mb

Run VA and check the ide disc appears in the console.
Use !Configure to configure 1 IDE disk (not St506 or SCSI disk)
:4 should appear on the icon bar
Use !Hform to format it. Choose the defaults where appropriate
Which make of hard disc (1 to 6) ? 6 (other)
Sectors per track ?63
Heads ?16
Cylinders ?96
Drive parameter init flag ?1
Parking cylinder ?95
A, B, C or D? a
Format or just initialise the drive (F/I) ? i
Soak test the hard disc for defects (Long/Short/None) ? n
Are you SURE you want to do this to drive ADFS:4 (Y/N)? y
Large file allocation unit ?512

Then you should have an ADFS hard disk on which you can install Sibelius.
Let us know if it works.

Graeme

Graeme,

thanks for the idea. I assume that you meant [CDDrive] rather than [CDRom] - anyway the instructions for creating the disc worked perfectly. Unfortunately though, Sibelius then had the same problem as before.

I wonder if the filing system used for booting has to be a filecore one... and how simple that would be to fix up.

Thanks...

Alastair

It could well be the problem. As for moving !boot onto a different disk, I can't say I've tried. Aaron may know more as he's put it together but at a glance it looks disk independent.

configure filesystem adfs
dir adfs::4.$
opt 4 2
drive 4
(copy !boot to the adfs disk via the desktop)
(reboot)

Btw if you want to make a bigger IDE disk image so everything fits, up the first figure on the Shape line (it's the number of cylinders). Future versions will support the a more user friendly Size = xxxMb option.

Graeme

Brilliant - between us we seem to have cracked it. Moving the !Boot application to the filecore (simulated IDE disc) allows the installation to work well. Minor things to tidy up afterwards if you don't put everything across - like the addapp points to the wrong place so not everything gets populated in resourcefs, but fixing that is within my scope I think. Having the !Boot on the "IDE" drive seems to speed up booting, but having all other files available more neatly through a PC is attractive so I don't think that I'll move everything to IDE.

I imagine that the application itself doesn't need to be on a filecore based system, but I've not tried that.

One thought for you, particularly if this form of protection is at all common, there might be some sense for the distribution of providing a small IDE partition with the boot environment on it - both for speed as an advantage and to get over the software issues. It could always have a certain amount of free space available too. Trouble is that gives you two hard disc filers on the desktop. Anyway, all goes to show what a great simulation of the original Virtual Acorn is - thanks a million.

Alastair

...so does that mean that Sib6 & 7 can run on VA?

Yes, provided you follow Graeme's instructions and are
prepared to do a bit of fiddling. It needs to be run from
a "real" filecore filing system. So it can't be installed
directly to HostFS, but can be installed to an ADFS
disc image.

Aaron, it's not quite as simple as that. I'm pretty sure that Sibelius can be on ANY filing system, but !Boot has to be on a filecore filing system (e.g. the simulated IDE drive, so ADFS...) in order for Sibelius to run.

The instructions above will take you there eventually, but it might be better to have a "full" instruction set available if Graeme has time as there was a slight error in what he suggested first-off and moving the !Boot edifice to ADFS without moving the applications makes for a slightly tedious bit of re-editing.

If Graeme hasn't time I could probably retrace my steps and come up with a recipe book for it, but he would probably do a better job than me.

The good news though is that Sibelius 7 works perfectly now.
The bad news is that people will get to hear my arrangements again...

Oh the other thing - remember to un-install it from your real Acorn first. You do need to have VA 1.4 in order to install from the floppy.

Hi Guys

I have Sibelius 6 from about 1993.

I now have VirtualRPC SE )

I haven't been able to even attempt to install Sibelius owing to a tragedy that befell my StrongARM RPC in 1997 - the mother board broke.

The cost of replacing that mobo was similar to buying quite a good Intel PC at that time. So I did.

Because the Acorn died before I could de-install Sibelius, I cannot reinstall it, not nohow!

I might however be tempted to buy it again if anyone can assure me that it works on the VirtualRPC SE.

Can it? Does it?

Julian

Hi,
Just to tell you that the Data Store will replace your Sibelius disc (? for small fee) provided you still have the original.
Datastore Bromley
Jan

Having installed the ADFS h/d upgrade, I have now lost my power saving - whether I boot off ADFS or HostFS. I am using a laptop and it is OK to select power saving in the configure plugin, but on reboot this then gives a SWI Unknown error!

Your copy may well have already come with an ADFS h/d image
file pre-installed. Re-install the main app/boot sequence from your
CD.

Thanks. That works. In fact all that was wrong was that there were a few configuration lines missing in the Model.cfg file entitled [HostServices]. Adding this to my own setup brought back my old stuff, with the power management.

However, one thing which I liked after the upgrade was a menu at shutdown time which asked whether I wanted to reset or return to Windows. Where has this gone? I guess it is some Risc OS code fragments.