www.virtualacorn.co.uk/forum

I just got a copy of VRPC. Very impressed!! Congratrs all round & all the best with future developments.

I thought I'd clog up the forum with a new topic, and to get the ball rolling a few suggestions/observations of my own:

VRPC stops accepting unlock code when NIC card disabled why?

It would be great if VRPC could read RiscOS HDD - would save alot of time transferring files.

While digging arround in Models\Arm7 RISC OS 4 (jit)\develop.cfg:

[PhysicalBus]
width = 29

[JITArm7]

[FPA10] -Hmmm1)

[Vidc20]

[Iomd]
vram = 2Mb -Hmmm2)
poweronreset = 0

[Rom]
filename = "Romsets\Riscos4" -Hmmm3)
base = 0
range = 16Mb

Time to have a fiddle with model.cfg I think:-

Hmmm1) - Fired up VRPC - no complaints - no new FPU reported either. Oh well, a near future enhancement?
Any (jit)FPU would be far better than the woefully coded softFPU in RiscOS

Hmmm2) - More Vram would be great. 4-8-16 meg anyone?
Again no complaints or extra vram. ARM7500's can-ish, so tried to change to processor line - very unhappy emulator. Not an Os issue, I believe.
At least I know it's an accurate emulation.

Hmmm3)- I've had RO 3.5 from my RPC600 on Red Squirrel running v.well. For compatibility reasons 'have tried to get VRPC to boot with 3.5. No luck. Tried ROM image as one file & RS's four. Fiddled with .cfg's & cmos files. Anyone had any sucess?

More speed!! The change between my RPC600 & VRPC is so marked I'm getting greedy. Are further optomizations in the pipeline?
WinUAE is 'faster'. I know it's been around much longer & has more people working on it, but RPC architecture being less complex should have fewer overheads for an emulator.

No doubt I'll get thouroghly flamed for the last comment, but hopefully there will be some lively debate as a result.....

> VRPC stops accepting unlock code when NIC card disabled why?

Because the protection code is partly tied to your NIC card

> Hmmm1) - Fired up VRPC - no complaints - no new FPU reported either. > Oh well, a near future enhancement?
> Any (jit)FPU would be far better than the woefully coded softFPU in RiscOS

There is an experimental FPU but it isn't much faster than the FPE and it isn't yet accurate enough.

> Hmmm2) - More Vram would be great. 4-8-16 meg anyone?

This requires modifications to RISC OS to support

> I've had RO 3.5 from my RPC600 on Red Squirrel running v.well. For compatibility reasons 'have tried to get VRPC to boot with 3.5. No luck. Tried ROM image as one file & RS's four. Fiddled with .cfg's & cmos files. Anyone had any sucess?

VRPC only supports RO4 natively although Select can be softloaded with a suitable license

> More speed!! The change between my RPC600 & VRPC is so marked I'm getting greedy. Are further optomizations in the pipeline?
WinUAE is 'faster'. I know it's been around much longer & has more people working on it, but RPC architecture being less complex should have fewer overheads for an emulator.

Faster in what respect? There are lots of elements to an emulator and depending on the platform, some features will be slower or faster.

Graeme
[/quote]

Thanks for the relpy.

Good to know further solid development in the pipline.

The point about speed:
Greedy I know when VRPC is already so good, but an obvious if flawed illustration would be Quake I on my PC under UAE 320*200 about 90-160 fps depending on circumstances/mode. Under VRPC 320*200 about 25-30 fps with every hack going inc the 'tweaked' version of SoftFPU from the net.
Please don't take this as a whinge, but just further interest in future developments...
Once again thanks.

Not much discussion....

Very happy to see the latest patches for V-RPC. Thanks. 'Especially keen on the patch to allow more 'v-ram'. 'Glad to see continuing development.

More thoughts?
I remember ages ago when Aleph1 '586ish cards were all the rage somebody-or-other came out with a clever bit of software to allow the intergration of Pc apps with the RiscOS desktop. ie Native Windoze apps would run within RiscOS without the obvious need for a seperate runnig Windoze desktop/enviroment.
V-RPC could be said to be similar. RiscOS with a '586 & Windoze in there somewhere. As my Pc has a fair number of its own progs it would be useful? if they could be run from within V-RPC.

Does anyone know what that software was?
Has anyone sucessfully tried it?

A possible future upgrade?

I hope so...

The software was called WinRisc and was published (or written)
by an outfit called ArmedForces. It worked for Win 3.1
progs and let them run inside a RISC OS window very very
slowly. It wouldn't work on VirtualAcorn.