The Qube RiscOS Server is here!
 

Here's a little something some of us have been quietly working on for a bit and it's just about in good enough shape to have it's first public outing...
...very much a work in progress.


So what's it about? Well, read the front page rant...
...basically some of us Acorn, um, nuts..? are getting a little cheesed-off with the crappy scene this fantastic platform is saddled with - quite apart from the daily disappearance of RiscOS software and resources into the ether for no better reason than thoughtless neglect...

...This is the beginning of our small effort to put things right. :D

Things to keep in mind:
-It's a work in progress, so be kind.
-It's currently hosted on my lovely Super-upgraded Cobalt Qube.
(well, if it's retro you've got to do it properly)
-My broadband isn't that board at the mo' so don't go grabbing huge files just for the sake of it.
-My wife's hitting the 'net pretty hard this evening listening to crappy tunes on PooTube
-RadioMUD's really going to hit my bandwidth.
-Did I mention the bandwidth..?
-Memberships are available for the whole extra caffeine / full-fat experience on request.
(Members will be expected to upload interesting 32bit Acorn stuff)

-(Kind) comments welcome.

Looking good my friend :great
I'll PM you tomorrow about uploading some stuff (a tad late for me now) :)

Why thank you kind sir...
...I'll keep an eye out for your PM.

Timely indeed. Been looking at the A3020 recently, if only to take me back to my school days. Zarch and messing around with it during IT lessons in about 92-ish.

Will have a good old look through the site :D

VERY nice :D

Started with a BBC micro, and progressed to an A3010 (which now I regret getting rid of)
Used pretty much every RiscOS machine at secondary school '92-'98. No Risc PC's but they did have a Monster of an A540 in Home Economics of all places (16 MB, ROS 3.11 etc)

Two thumbs up! Very nice! Once I get my A3000 up and running going to have to d/l some games :D

Hey Charlie,

The adf files on your server... are these the same file format as amiga adf's? Does that mean I can download them to my amiga, write them to floppy using a tool like EasyADF and then use the floppies on my Archimedes?

Thanks,

Mark

Congratulations on this project, and may it grow nicely!
I never ever seen an Acorn machine in my life and always been intrigued by them. Didn't even try an emu. Maybe it's time!

NO But If you google for "Ominflop", you can use your PC's floppy drive to write the real disks from the adf files.

TC :D

Thanks for the kind comments chaps.

Oh, and like TC says...

Maybe I should but some links to some of the free emulators on the site.

Would that work with us poor mac pro owners who dont have access to floppy drives except for the usb kind > :D

I'd be happy to be told otherwise but to my knowledge omniflop (and indeed the Acorn emulators that directly support floppies) require 'proper' floppy drives to work. And a M$ OS on which to run, sorry.

There may be a way round it - I'm speculating here, not tried it.
As TC says RiscOS .adf's are NOT the same as AmigaOS .adf's - the two systems have utterly different formats - but with access to a real Amiga it should be possible to use that to write an Acorn .adf to floppy...
...with a great deal of luck a standard Amiga .adf -> floppy proggie may work. More likely you'd need something that at least allows for writing alternate formats...
...the RiscOS .adf is just a straight sector by sector dump.

Another (proven) option would be the following:
-Format a DOS floppy (720k) in either your MAC or Archie.
(Mac's read DOS 720k ok?)
-Download the .adf (ziped) to your MAC & hope the compressed file will fit into 720k.
-Put DOS floppy into the Arc's drive & uncompress the archive to a Ram disc.
(!SparkFS or !ZipEE should do)
-Reformat the floppy to ADFS (800k)
-Write the .adf image to said floppy.
(there's a few utils to do this, or the command-line if your prefer)
-Job done!
The above will also work with newer RiscOS computers that support 1600k floppies, use a 1.4mb DOS floppy.
Oh, and Arcs will read native Mac floppies, with some additional software.

or

If you've got a HDD check out the HD-Install folder. MarkYoungIW's done a lot of work sorting versions that will work just by dragging to your HDD - archived with !PackDir.

Failing all of that

All Arcs can be networked, that would allow direct drag 'n drop from MAC to arc...
...indeed with the right emulator on the MAC that can treat the .adf as a floppy. Then you can drag the contents directly across the network.

Charlie great site you have there. Congratulations.

It seems that with your effort of putting everything on a nice place i'll explore RiscOS more deeply in the future.

And yes some emus links would give it a great final touch of everything Acorn.

Hi Charlie,

The Qube RiscOS server is a great idea! Good luck with it!

I would appreciate a membership, as I have some interesting files to upload.

@mfletcher:
Restoring Archimedes ADF (in this case, ADF actually being an abbreviation of ADFS) images back to floppy disk was the suject of my first post on EAB:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=458437#post458437

prowler

No probs prowler, see PM. :)

Thanks, Charlie. :bowdown

@prowler: :)

@thread:
For those who don't own a real Arc. :shocked
I've changed the home page rant to include links for IMO the two best free emulators.

@Fellow Admins:
Don't let me hog the limelight here! ;)

@Wife:
Please stop hogging the bandwidth listening to music on PooTube! :laughing

I'm one of the poor souls, so thanks a bunch Charlie :great

Hehe ;)

Hi Charlie,

That includes me too, unfortunately. :(

But I make up for that with two or three very good emulators and the ROMs that make them go. :)

prowler

very good sir !!