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Hi to everyone.

My first post !! With some questions on the above subject.

I have recently purchased a new PC box. I am receiving a new PC machine (an HP workstation) in the next 2 weeks.

I am planning to purchase the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA to be installed in the new machine so that I can run my old programs and transfer them from my 11 year old RiscPC StrongArm machine with RISC-OS 3.7.

Before doing that I would like to make sure that the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA will work on the HP Workstation especially as the workstation is a 64-bit Vista environment.

Here are the specification of the workstation:

HP Workstation xw8600:
OS: Windows Vista 64-Bit Ultimate.
CPUs: Two (2) CPUs each Intel Xeon Quad X5482 3.2Mhz 12MB/1600 (8 CPU cores).
Memory: 16 GB DDR2-800 ECC.
Drives: 1x 160GB WD SATA 10K rpm, 2x 1000GB SATA, HP DVD+/-RW SuperMulti SATA, HP Floppy Disk Drive.
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Quadro FX4600 768 MB PCIe.
Sound: Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeGamer.
Monitor: HP LP3065 30 inch LCD monitor (2560 x 1600 resolution).
Power: 1050 watt 80+ energy efficient chassis.
Cooling: 2x High Performance Heatsink Thermal Kit.
Language: English UK localization.

Q1. Will all functions and features of the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA work with the HP xw8600 workstation as per the above specifications?

Q2. Will the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA make use/benefit of multi-CPUs?

Q3. Has the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA application been compiled with a 64-bit code? Is a 64-bit version planned?

Q3. The press release on 6/2/2007, stated: ???we have extended our product support to include all versions of Vista??? . However, you later state that VirtualRPC can only read ADFS format floppies on Vista (32-bit) only. The transfer of my applications and programs from the old RiscPC machine will be using floppy discs and therefore need to make sure that the VirtualRPCAdjustSA application will read the ADFS floppy disks in the 64-bit environment.

Q4. It is stated that the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA can support ARM7 core, ARM7500 core and StrongARM core. Does thtis mean that I can switch between these cores at run time to test my programmes with different processor cores?

Q5. What version of RISC-OS will come with the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA? Will this be both RISC-OS 4.39 and 6.10, or only 6.10?

Q6. The current limitation of memory of the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA is 256Mb. Is this a limitation of the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA application itself or the RISC-OS operating system? If this is a VirtualRPC-AdjustSA application limit, are there any plans to remove this limit?

Q7. Can I soft-load the ROM images of the RISC-OS 3.7 from my old RiscPC into VirtualRPC-AdjustSA environment to test applications with the old RISC-OS under RISC-OS 3.7? or will the application only allow the installation of one (1) RISC-OS?

Q8. Do I need to have a 3-button mouse (i.e. an Acorn type mouse) connected to my machine or can a 2-button mouse wheel/button mouse work and make use of the old RISC-PC applications?

Q9. What is the maximum screen resolution available for RISC-OS under VirtualRPC-AdjustSA? Can I use the high screen resolutions under RISC-OS applications (i.e. 1600 x 1200 and above) which are available under my PC environment? I understand that RISC-OS 6 under VirtualPC can support up-to 8Mb of VRAM is would translate to 1600x1200 @ 32 bpp, is this correct?

Q10. How does the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA speed and responsiveness (with my above specification of an HP xw8600 workstation) compare with the Iyonix PC?

Q11. Can you have more than one (1) instance of VirtualRPC-AdjustSA running at the same time in the same machine under Windows Vista?

Q12. Is there a list of software applications (not hardware) known not to work with the VirtualRPC-AdjustSA?

Q13. Does the application come with the RISC-OS 6 "Window Manager" programmers reference manual?

Q14. Does VirtualRPC-AdjustSA provide methods to access to the Windows API? This would allow writing programmes which are VirtualPC specific


That's it for now.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

mohsen

Blimey - that's a lot of questions Anyway here we go.

1. VirtualRPC products will run on any X86 compatable CPU (as far as I am aware).

2. The main VRPC will run on one CPU. Although VRPC is multi-threaded the "emulation" runs in ine thread.

3. It's 32bit

3a. Directr floppy driver does not work on 64bit Windows. This is because (unless you know a way round that I don't) Windows won't let you install the driver as it's not "signed".

4. In order to swicth between cores you need to shut down and re-start VRPC.

5. VRPC-Adjust comes with RISC OS Adjust (4.39).

6. 256Mb is a limit in RISC OS.

7. We don't support softloading old ROM images (i.e. It might work, but we won't be able to offer any support due to licencing issues).

8. A wheel mouse is fine

9. 1600 x 1200 is easily achieved - on some machines it can go higher.

10. I haven't tried the CPU you have, so I can't answer this. However on most modern Intel chips VRPC is generally quicker than any real hardware.

11. Yes, you can run more than one copy (subject to memory on mboard and graphics card). I suggest installing several copies on the same harddisc if you want to do this.

12. No, if it works on a "real" machine and does not require specific hardware (podules etc) then it should run on VRPC. Generally speaking a VRPC can run *more* software then a real SA RiscPC.

13. No - that's available from RISCOS ltd.

14. You can use the supplied CallWin32 plugin to access the Windows API .

Hope that helps.

Thanks Aaron for your prompt answers.



That's fine as long as I can run more than one instance of VirtualRPC-AdjustSA, Vista64 will take care of CPU allocation. No problem with memory (16 GB fast-ram is plenty).






That's sad, because my only way to transfer files is a floppy. The CD-ROM that came with RiscPC 11 years ago was read-only

There is away around it but I do not want to go that way. It is by installing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which is FREE download from Microsoft website.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 supports virtualizing the following operating systems:
Windows Vista (All 32-bit editions)
Windows XP (All 32-bit only)
Windows Server 2008 (Virtual PC 2007 SP1 onwards)
Windows 2000 Professional and Server
Windows 98 Second Edition
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
Windows NT 4.0 Server
Certain editions of IBM OS/2

The problem is that I will be running double emulation (an emulation on top of an emulation).
One way around it is to install VirtualRPC-AdjustSA under the 64-bit envirnment as usual and also install another VirtualRPC-AdjustSA under the Microsoft Virtual PC to run under 32-bit environment and hope the floppy disc access works. This is yet to be tried.
However this would mean that I am installing VirtualRPC-AdjustSA twice under two (2) systems and this may imply that I would need to activate the application twice or pay twice
Is this true?

Why can't the driver be resistered through Microsoft as a valid (signed) driver? Is that expensive?

Another possibility workaround:
Press F8 whenever your computer starts, then select ???Disable Forced Driver Signing??? option to continue booting Vista system. This option will disable driver signing, but not permanently, and simply in effect during that boot up session until you shutdown or restart. So you gonna have to do it on every reboot. To avoid hitting F8 function key every boot up which you may forget at times, you can put computer into Sleep or Hibernate mode instead. This solves the inconvenient issue of having to perform additional step to boot up Vista too.



Does this mean that upgrade to RISC-OS 6 will not be provided by VirtualAcorn?


Will try it and will let you know the results.

have you tried the application VistaBootPRO to disable driver signature check on Vista and XP 64 versions.

It is free download at : http://www.vistabootpro.org/

I don't have a 64bit Vista - however if you know of a way round the driver signing issue then that would seem to solve it. We haven't had our driver "signed" as there are a number of hurdles to jump through - and as a small business it's just not been cost effective.

If you want to run RISC OS 6 then you will need to contact RISCOS Ltd (http://www.riscos.com). We don't currently supply a VirtualRPC that includes RISC OS 6 as standard.