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Hi All,

I'm a man on the brink - on the brink of parting with my hard earned cash and purchasing a copy of VA5000 for my laptop. Having grown up with Acorn computers, I only migrated over to a PC once I went to uni. Now, 6 years later, after coming across an Archimedes emulator on a PC magazine cover disc, I find myself embroiled back in the world of RISC OS.

Consquently, I downloaded and installed the VA5000 demo, and was simply amazed at the results - in all intents and purposes I had an A5000 infront of me, something at one time I had only dreamed of (having been the lowly owner of an A3000). VA5000 is excellent !

Once up and running, I headed over to Ian Bell's website and download Elite (and who wouldn't !?!) *Cached off and with the Elite icon on the icon bar, I tentatively clicked away and was very impressed (and a little excited !) to see the Elite front screen displayed. Needless to say, Commander Jameson is back and venturing out into the Santaari galaxy, revisiting his stomping-ground of yesteryear (its been very difficult not to play at every opportunity - I pity my poor girlfriend !)

BUT, and here's the catch. My VA5000 demo will expire within the next few weeks. So, I have 2 choices. Either achieve an Elite ranking within that time, or part with my hard earned cash and buy the full version of VA5000. So, what do I do ?

Having only very recently become (re)obsessed like this, I don't know the current availability of software for RISC OS. Is Acorn Advance still available ? Are other games such as Chuck Rock and Gods freely available for download off the internet ? How compatible is VA5000 with all the software thats out there ? Basically I just need another reason (just 1) to go ahead and buy VA5000. Someone, please ?!!!

Cheers,

Andr??

Like you, I am also thinking of buying VA. But, I downloaded the demo, and elite seems to run very fast. Is it supposed to be like this? It makes it extremely difficult to control the ship..

SPecs:

2.5 Ghz Pentium 4
512mb ddr ram
uhmm... 64mb radeon 7500

Etc....


Thanks!

I've evaluating the demo copy of VA too and although it looks very nice it's limited I can't seem to load any files from my PC desktop into the Virtual Acorn one.

I've downloaded the ArcELITE from Ian Bell's website but I just can't get it to load into VA at all.... how is it done? I've got both the !SparkFS archive and the .adf file but I can't transfer either into VA.... can someone help me please? I've got the same problem with the BBC emulator too

Thanks

I'm running VA5000 on my laptop (1.8Ghz/256MB DDR/Mobliltiy Radeon 16MB DDR...) and although Elite runs substantially faster than I remember on my old A3000, its not so bad that I can't play the game.

Saying that though, Elite has always been a game where mastering the controls has proved a challenge in itself. It may be a stupid question, but are you using a mouse with 3 buttons ? If you 'middle' click on the Elite icon on the icon bar, you can lower the mouse sensitivity. Also, when playing the game, you'll be able to slow your spacecraft down by decreasing its thrust. Obvious, I know, but I thought I'd mention it nevertheless.

If thats of no help at all, it may just be that your system is of such a high spec that Elite runs exceptionally fast. I'm afraid I don't know of a fix for that.

Slightly off-topic, I've taken the plunge and ordered the full version of VA5000. I believe its a slightly more up to date build. If thats the case, I'll report back with any effects it has on Elite once I receive it.

??

I would have thought that va5000 would run things at the same speed as an a5000...
I have played arcelite before - and it was never this fast...
Ah well, thanks for the replies!

In order to get (Arc)Elite to run on VA5000(Demo) you need to copy the dowloaded !SparkFS archive (b5052410.arc) to the 'HardDisc4' directory inside the 'VirtualA5000 Demo' directory in Windows. These should be:

C:\Program Files\VirtualAcorn\VirtualA5000 Demo\HardDisc4\

Once copied to this location (if thats where you installed VA5000 Demo), you should, on running VA5000, see that the b5052410.arc archive now resides in the URL of HardDisc4 (Just single click the HardDisc4 icon on the RISC OS icon bar).

Double click the archive, and you now should be able to see the !Elite files and run the game. At this point you can either run the game from here or copy the files into another directory to save running !ArcFS.

Don't forget to enter the task/command line (pressing F12 when the RISCOS desktop is displayed) and enter *Cache off. Press return/enter to return to the RISC OS desktop. Now double click either Gisburne or Jameson. An Elite icon should appear on your icon bar, from where you'll be able to launch the game - fingers crossed ! Select yes when asked if you're using a high-res monitor.

As for running RISC OS software/disk images (.adf files) from dos floppies, you need to load !Configure from the Apps icon on your icon bar. Go to Floppies, and click on the 'up' arrow/triangle to increase the number of floppy disk drives present. With one added, click ok. Now restart VA5000, and you should see a floppy added to you icon bar (with me so far ?!?!)

Now, with VA5000 in a Windows window (Alt-Enter from full screen). You will see a little floppy drive icon/button in the top left hand corner. Click on that and it should show you the contents of the floppy that you're wanting to access. Alternatively browse your disk till you find the file. Select it, and then click on Open. Return to your RISC OS desktop, and click on the Floppy drive icon. This should automatically display the contents of the RISC OS floppy disk image that you've been trying to open and allow you to run the program natively. Phew !!

Try that. Should work

??

Can see the prose and cons of that. Check out the VirtualAcorn FAQs:

http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/faq.htm

Scroll down to 'How fast does VirtualAcorn Run'. Might provide some light on the subject.

??

You can get a version of arcElite that does the cache off thing automatically, and supposedly slows it down if you have a high res monitor, but I haven't noticed much difference.

Where'd I be able to get that from then ?

Ta,

??

I can't remember, but I think Ian Bell's site has it (search google for Ian Bell), and Acorn Arcade have it I think.

Hey thanks very much it works a treat!

Since I posted that I found out how to load the ADF file into the virtual floppy drive but thanks for the info on how to load the !Spark file in the virtual HD! I still couldn't get the game to work though until you mentioned the *cache off so thanks again! It's working nicely now but does anyone know how to turn the sound on?

Well I've got a 700mhz AMD Duron with 512mb Ram etc and although it slows my PC a bit when Virtual Acorn is running I've got to say that Arc ELITE runs at exactly the same speed as it did on my old A3000.

Which is to say pretty fast! I've played 3 versions of Elite: the first version I played was for my old Electron which ran VERY slow especially when there was a lot of action/debris onscreen it almost ground to a halt! The 2nd version was for my Master 128 which was much faster and didn't slow down. The last version I played was for my A3000 and that ran the fastest of the lot. Playing each new version was quite difficult adjusting to the difference in speed but I have to say that, as I said before, it runs at exactly the same speed as it used to on my A3000. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the reply.
Maybe I'll just have to get used to it....

I had the same problem with sound when I first installed the demo. VA5000 doesn't automatically enable sound - something to do with the the extra processing requirements.

However, all you have to do to turn audio on is to go to Tools/Options/Audio (windowed VA5000) and then click the 'enable sound' check box.

There's also a slider bar to increase the quality of the audio. I've found between 20-25Hz is the best. Too high and the sound starts to get distorted.

Hope that helps.

??

Thanks for the pointer. I'll keep my eyes open for it.

??