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I have been a user of Artworks since it came out in 1992. It is one application that I would hate to live without and is the main reason why I purchased VRPC. I am currently using Artworks version 1.7c 21-Oct-96

I have had a few minor problems with this application that required a reboot of my iMAC so when the toolbar started playing up this time I kept some notes.

To start with the next tool that I wanted did not start up when I clicked on its icon. I played a bit with the Mac's option key, shift and control as I have found this previously to clear things up. The option key would toggle between select and my previous selection but nothing further. At this stage my menu was still working so I saved my work and then the toolbar worked again for a minute or two until everything became stuck, even the mouse pointer. The control, shift and command keys had no effect this time so I did an option return which shrank the window to the iMAC desktop. The black iMAC pointer was immediately available but it stayed black over the RISC OS window. Control Shift F12 brought up the closedown dialogue box in the RISC OS window but I could find no way of activating it. The iMAC close icon on the RISC OS window did not respond nor did the VRPC file icon on the iMAC title bar. I could find no response from any of the icons throughout the iMAC desktop. The apple logo in the top left-hand corner of the iMAC title bar did not respond.

The only way that I could find to reboot the iMAC was to press the on-off button for 4 seconds. After switching on again with the button I was confronted with the same stuck window. F12 gave me the dashboard. What can I do with that? F12 again closes the dashboard. No other apps respond. Apple icon does not respond.

I already had !DeskEdit running and Control F12 brought up a task window. That looks like progress!

exit > file not found
shutdown > fresh prompt but no longer accepts keyboard input.

The black pointer moves over the entire screen but reacts with nothing.

OK. This time I shut down by pressing the on-off button for 4 seconds then switched off the power completely at the wall. After power on I achieved a normal reboot - Phew! I subsequently completed the diagram on which I had been working, successfully saved it as PrintOut/pdf and had it converted to svg in the clouds.

Artworks 1.7c is now 15 years old. So if it's an app you can't live without it would probably make sense to upgrade to Artworks2. Development of Artworks is now being handled by Martin Wuertner. You can get all the details from http://www.mw-software.com/

If you don't want to upgrade then the only suggestion I can make is to use Artworks when VirtualRPC is running in full screen mode, rather than in the desktop. If you want to use the RISC OS menus whilst VirtualRPC is running in a window then you will need to hold down CTRL before clicking on MENU (see the Mouse section of the VirtualAcorn User Guide).

If you 'play' with the option, shift and control keys it's quite easy to accidentally issue a keyboard shortcut to MacOS X, which could explain the majority of the problems.

Another possibility is that Artworks v1.x is known to have problems if there's more than 128MB RAM Free available (on any platform).

So if VirtualRPC on your Mac is configured for (say) 256MB RAM, this *may* be adding to or possibly even causing your problems. So how about re-configuring VirtualRPC to 128MB or even 64MB RAM to see if it makes any difference.

If that's too much hassle, another option is to set up a temporary RAM disc which is sufficiently large to reduce the amount of remaining RAM in Free to less than (say) 100MB. Then start up Artworks and see how you get on.

We've used variants of Artworks 2.x (presently up to v2.93) with VirtualRPC-AdjustSA for PCs, and configured with 256MB RAM, without problem. Highly recommended. HTH.

Alex Hamilton
pp T.O.M.S.

Further to our post on 14 Jan, I've just remembered there was a patch in 2001 to allow Artworks v1.7 to handle large amounts of RAM with RISC OS 4.

Please see: http://www.mw-software.com/software/awm ... tml#kpatch under 'ArtWorks kernel patch 0.23'.

Note that, if you're running Artworks v1.7c, you may already have the 2001 patch, but worth a try? HTH.

Alex Hamilton
pp T.O.M.S.

Thanks Alex, I will give it a try