Bottisham Acorn User Group Web Pages
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Bottisham Acorn User Group now has RISC OS 4 Authorised Installers amongst it's members. We will upgrade any suitable machine to RISC OS 4 for a small charge. To help you, a list of frequently asked questions has been complied. |
RISC OS 4 upgrade - frequently asked questions:
Which machines can be upgraded?
Currently, the only RISC OS machines that can be upgraded are the following:- Acorn A7000
- Acorn A7000+
- Acorn Risc PC 600
- Acorn Risc PC 700
- Acorn StrongARM Risc PC
RISC OS 4 will not work on earlier machines, such as:
- Archimedes A305/A310/A440
- Archimedes 400/1 series
- Archimedes A540
- Acorn R140 workstation
- Acorn R200 series workstations
- Acorn A3000
- Acorn A3010
- Acorn A3020
- Acorn A4000
- Acorn A5000
Also, despite sharing a common architecture to the A7000, upgrading the Acorn NetStation is not supported.
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The price for performing the upgrade is £35.00. This includes a data transfer service of approx. 1GB of data. Further data will be charged at £5.00 per GB - this is amount of data moved NOT hard disc size.
NOTE: The upgrade price does not include the supply of RISC OS 4 itself - we can order this for you at additional cost if required.
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All current members of BAUG will receive a preferential rate for the upgrading of their computers to RISC OS 4, and unlimited data transfer.
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No. RISC OS 4 will function quite happily with the hard disc drive in the current format - in fact I have yet to reformat the hard drives in my machine and the system works fine.
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Only by reformating the hard drive do you gain the use of long filenames, large numbers of files per directory and much smaller Large File Allocation Unit (LFAU). When the hard drive has been reformatted, you will typically gain a 20% increase in the available space due to the smaller LFAU.
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When you format a hard disc drive, there are a limited number of 'address spaces' for files to be stored in. This means that a file is stored in a multiple of address spaces, which are all of a fixed size. Under RISC OS 3.x, a hard drive may well be formatted to work in multiples of 2Kb (i.e: an LFAU of 2048 bytes). This means that a single byte file will actually take up 2Kbytes of hard disc space. Obviously, this is very wasteful - with the increased number of 'address spaces' available with the new RISC OS 4 format, it may be possible to format the same disc drive to have an LFAU of only 256 bytes. This is where the increased space will come from.
(OK, so the above is not strictly technically correct, but the analogy works!)
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At present, the following types of hard disc drive and interface have formatting software available which work with the new format:
If you currently own another IDE card, such as a Yellowstone RapIDE card or a Simtec card, it is possible to reformat your hard disc using the internal ADFS IDE interface, and then re-install the hard disc onto the interface. This is possible thanks to the way in which long filename support has been implemented by RISC OS Ltd. You will, however, lose any of the partitioning capabilities.
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Firstly, we would recommend that you initially get used to the new system. As mentioned above you do not need to reformat your hard disc to make your machine work under RISC OS 4. It also makes it simpler to revert back to your existing version of RISC OS should that be required.
Back to FAQ.
To prepare your system for data transfer, first create a directory called 'ToTransfer' in the root directory of your Hard Drive. Then move all files that you require to be transferred into this directory. (To achieve this, hold down the shift key and drag the relevant files).
As specified by RISC OS Ltd., we are only responsible for the integrity of user data - any applications that require re-installation is YOUR responsibility.
If you have already paid for your machine to be upgraded, transfer of approx. 1GB of data is included in the price. If not, there is an initial charge of £10.00 for the first 1GB. Subsequent 1GB blocks are charged at £5.00 per GB.
To find out how much data that you require transferring, click Menu over the 'ToTransfer' directory on your hard disc, and choose 'Count'. Once the count has finished, take a note of the number of bytes given - this is actual file size, NOT disc space taken up by the files (see LFAU). Once you have this number, divide it by 1,073,741,824. This will then give you a number in true gigabytes (not the metric gigabytes normally used by hard drive manufacturers).
If you have multiple hard drives, add up all the file sizes to give the total which is to be transfered.
All the files will then be transfered to our back-up hard disc drive; your hard drive will then be reformatted; your data will then be restored onto your reformatted hard disc in the directory structure as it is inside the 'ToTransfer' directory.
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OK, I have a suitable machine, how much will all this cost?
But I am already a member of the Bottisham Acorn User Group.
I have heard that I will need to re-format my Hard Disc to use RISC OS 4. Is this true?
So why bother?
So what is this LFAU thing?
I have also heard that not all hard disc drives will work with the new format. Is this true?
Support for Hard Discs connected to a Cumana SCSI card will be supported in the near future. Contact Cannon Computing/Cumana for more information.
OK, so I would like to re-format my hard disc. Should I do it straight away?
Right, I'm happy with the system and I would like my data transfered. What do I do?
I got it for free at http://come.to
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