www.virtualacorn.co.uk/forum

Hi All,

I now have VRPC-Adjust (v1.7.0) installed on my new 2GHz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini (running Mac OS X Leopard), replacing my six year old Iyonix. First impressions are really good - it's faster than the Iyonix as well as being compatible with older software (have just being playing with some of the old games on the Krisalis Collection Gold CD...

Just one or two generally minor issues. Does anyone have any thoughts on any of these...?

1. Networking oddity - Trying to use some command line utilities such as ping and traceroute fail with an 'Operation not permitted' error. Looks like it's anything using ICMP. I have seen this working on VRPC-SE on Windows, so suspect this is an issue with the Mac implementation. Has anyone else seen this? I'm using the standard VRPC Internet module v6.11.

Sunfish (the freeware NFS client) also fails to work, possibly for the same reason although most other networking apps seem fine.

2. Keyboard mapping - I'm probably unique in trying to use VRPC with a genuine original Risc PC keyboard. I was previously using it with an Iyonix, plugged into a PS2 - USB convertor and have now plugged that into the Mac. I've solved most of the key mapping problems (e.g. @ and " transposed) in Mac OS by setting up a new keyboard layout file, but this doesn't have any effect on VRPC. Any ideas?

3. Lack of mouse scroll wheel support - even Mac OS now supports this dispite the single button heritage.... Is there any way of getting this to work in VRPC?

4. Attempting to delete Mac OS locked files through HostFS results in an "Internal Error" being reported. Not really a big issue - I think it happened originally as a result of my copying in some files in Mac OS.

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Mark

Righto, dealing with these in turn:

1. Some lower level commands (e.g. *Ping) aren't supported in the VRPC for Mac Network plugin.

2. Download the keydriver from the VRPC for Mac downloads section of our website.

3. Scroll wheel isn't currently supported.

4. I've never tried that - is the error fatal? Or does RISC OS just carry on as normal?

Hi Aaron,

On point 4, no it's not fatal - it just reports 'Internal Error' in the filer action window for each locked file that it attempts to delete.

Getting rid of them within Mac OS was a pain as well - moving the files to the trash bin worked fine, but that only way I could then remove them from the trash bin was to do so using rm -f as root in a terminal window.

Thanks for the tip on point 2 - will do that.

Are there any plans for addressing points 1 and 3? Those issues aside, it's pretty much a perfect replacement for my old Iyonix.

Finding a version of !ARMSi in the Speed Tests folder that I'd modified a good few years ago took me back a bit. I notice that it doesn't like 16 million colour modes and I actually had a version that had some further tweeks in it, on which I've now fixed the 16 million colour mode problem.

I'll send you a copy - feel free to make it available on the website / future versions of VRPC.

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Mark

It turns out that the keydriver (iMacKB) was actually contributing to the key mapping problems, since I'm not using a Mac layout keyboard.

Removing it addresses the issue of @ and " being switched, but the \ and # keys are still the wrong way round. It does, however, give me something that I can modify to address that particular problem.

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Mark

Glad to hear you went ahead with the Mac Mini / VRPC Mark. I think it's the best route to go to keep using RISC OS, now they've announced the end of the Iyonix.



Whilst Aaron has said this is not supported at the moment, I have it working fine here for a slightly different reason. I started with VRPC on an iBook and since that only has a touch pad and single button (which I'm not even keen on in OS X) I decided to buy a bluetooth multi-button mouse which has a scroll wheel. This gives me the three buttons I need for RISC OS and I much prefer it in OS X (which does support multi-button mice anyway).

As the mouse is a Microsoft 5000, I also obtained the SteerMouse software to allow all the buttons to be used in OS X. The nice thing about this software is that you can have different set ups for different applications, so I have a slightly different set up for VRPC to normal OS X, and I can use all four buttons and the scroll wheel in VRPC. It works really well.

As the mouse is bluetooth, I can use it with my iBook or Mac Mini.

However, the software should work with whatever mouse you have, so in your case all you need is to download a copy and try it. It's free for the first month to try out, and only $20 if you wish to keep using it.

Roy

Hi Roy,

Interesting. I assume you configured the scroll wheel to emulate Page Up / Page Down for Virtual Acorn?

That only works where a window has input focus of course (so doesn't work on Filer windows for example). However, it is actually quite effective for most things, although page at a time scrolling can be slightly too large a step for some things.

I'll have a play with it for a while, but looks like a good fall-back solution at least.

Incidentally I have finally fixed the key mapping problems. Are you using a Mac or a PC layout keyboard?

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Mark

Yes, that's correct Mark. It's not true scrolling I agree, but it works well enough for me.



I've left mine as standard, so a Mac keyboard. My iBook keyboard is slightly different in layout to the Mac Mini keyboard anyway, but as it happens I use a wireless keyboard for my desktops with a KVM switch between two machines, so that is none standard. I've got used to the slight differences and couldn't be bothered to swap them all around.

Roy