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I have been a RISC OS user since I got an Archimedes and am in the process of replacing my Iyonix with VA on an XP SP3 and am very pleased with it so far. However, I do have a couple of problems.

While the "Run" configuration works and my selected programs appear on the icon bar, the display always starts in 800 x 600 instead of 1920 x 1200 even though the "Monitor" configuration is correct. This occurs regardless of Monitor type selection.

Alarm is also odd in that the alarms are correctly saved, which I believe is a separate file, but the user defined time/date format is not.

I would appreciate your suggestions.

Alan.

I can't comment on the Alarm thing but I've replicated your screen mode symptoms.

If you are configuring a screen mode of 1920x1200 pixels in /16M/ colours, that requires 9000k screen memory.

But if you are selecting either the ARM710 or StrongARM core at start-up, there is a maximum of 8MB 'VRAM' available.

As a consequence, the screen mode will revert to 800x600 pixels at start-up, regardless of the Monitor configuration.

After start-up, you should then be able to select a display resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, but with a /maximum/ of 32K colours. If you try to select 16M colours, I think you'll find the display resolution will reduce accordingly.

I can think of two possible solutions (there may be more):

a) Configure the Monitor to 1920x1200 pixels but in /32K/ colours. RISC OS should then start up in that mode.

b) Or, if you want to try selecting the ARM7500 core option at start-up, that will give you a maximum of 16MB 'VRAM', and then you can configure the Monitor to 1920x1200 pixels in /16M/ colours. This is exactly what we routinely use here.

The only drawback to option b) (that I know of) is that any StrongARM /only/ software titles will not run. But they are extremely rare. Any software which is 'StrongARM-compatible' should still work fine with the ARM7500 core emulation.

HTH.

Thanks for your suggestions.

I had configured 32K colours with a StrongARM core but your suggestion of ARM7500 mode has helped in that I can now use 16M, which I prefer.

Unfortunately, I still have the same problem with the 800 x 600 startup

Oh dear, that's a shame. It's beginning to look like one for Aaron...

However, can I suggest you do a few checks to see what is the maximum display resolution and/or colour depth you can configure the Monitor for it to start up as advertised, e.g. 1680x1050 pixels in 32k colours.

Then (if and) when you get that, have a look at the Task Manager and see what Screen memory that lesser combination requires.

This may give Aaron a clue.

Thanks again.

I hope Aaron enjoyed his holiday because it always starts up in 800x600 32K even when configured to 480x352 16.

Woops

I wish I could delete this thread, though it may help others not to make the same mistakes.

As none of the configurations would save, I came to the conclusion that any problems were caused by me

I have now reinstalled VA as it became obvious that something I had copied from my Iyonix was causing the problems. In an effort to get things back to how I had it, I copied every directory that I could get off the Iyonix straight into HardDisk4. Now that I know how the problem occurred, I shall copy programs, choices and Toolbox modules individually and see the effect before doing more.

Thanks for your help.

Yes....copying a !Boot sequence from one sort of RISC OS machine to another is always going to cause problems (lots of problems). However at least you have found the problems and corrected them.

Now repeat the following 20 times...

"Ohwa Tana Siam"

Well, most of them.

The alarm problem is outstanding (and was on the newly reinstalled VA) in that the display configuration is not saved yet it remembers the fact that DST is switched off. "Automatically update alarm database" is ticked.

A niggle which can be lived with.