StrongARM Installation FAQ

This page is intended to serve as a public-accessible list of frequently asked questions relating to issues 
and problems with StrongARM installation, and the answers to said questions. Questions (with or 
without answers!) for inclusion in this FAQ should be submitted to webmaster@art.acorn.co.uk.

In addition to this page, you may also wish to look at the StrongARM Troubleshooting Guide.

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I see that my StrongARM ships with a set of floppies containing an installer and some goodies 
with which to create an updated boot sequence, Apps directory contents, and so forth; I also have 
a CD on which is stored a complete patched boot sequence. Should I use the floppies on a copy of 
my existing boot sequence, or move my existing boot sequence somewhere safe and just copy the 
boot sequence from the CD?
You should use the floppies to install the boot sequence; this will ensure that the boot sequence you 
finish up with is most closely matched to your hardware. The CD boot image is only for use "in 
emergencies".

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I have a heavily customised boot sequence, which runs extra desktop tools, filetype recognisers 
and aliasers, etc. How much work will I have to do to get all this working again once I've installed 
my StrongARM?
What happens during the StrongARM software installation is that your old boot sequence is copied in 
its entireity to a new directory on the hard drive where your boot sequence resides. A new boot 
sequence is then built on your hard drive. To enable the applications in your previous boot sequence to 
run (assuming that they work on StrongARM), you will only need to copy or move them to the 
appropriate places in the new boot sequence.

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How much free disc space is required to install the StrongARM software upgrade?
This depends on the size of your LFAU, and whether or not you are using a big (>512Mb) disc; as the 
boot sequence contains lots of small files, the hard disc space occupied by the new boot sequence and 
app set can vary quite significantly. Fortunately, the installer for the software upgrade calculates the 
amount of disc space which is needed for the upgrade on your particular system, and gives you the 
opportunity to free more space, if necessary, before proceeding with the installation.

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When I try installing the new boot sequence and apps from the floppies supplied, the installer 
crashes with "Bad rename". What's going wrong?
The most likely cause of this behaviour is that some of the applications which need to be updated are 
stored within compressed archives; as neither SparkFS nor ArcFS support the rename operation, the 
installer will fail when trying to rename an application from (say) $.Apps.new/arc.!Wibble to 
$.InactivRes.Apps.new/arc.!Wibble . Extract your applications before running the installer, and 
re-archive them afterwards.

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Do I need to use any carrier boards / change any links when upgrading a RISC OS 3.5 system to 
RISC OS 3.7? After all, the ROMs are bigger...
There is no need to use any carrier boards, or swap any links. The Risc PC motherboard is smart 
enough to auto-detect the new ROM size. The ROMs for RISC OS 3.6 and RISC OS 3.7 have the same 
capacity.

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I've been using the beta release soft-loadable FileCore distribution which was made available to 
Clan members a while ago, in order to use a hard drive of capacity >512Mb on my RISC OS 3.5 
machine. Will I have to reformat / repartition / do any other low-level maintenance on my drive 
to enable it to work with RISC OS 3.7?
No, not at all. The extended disc format provided by the soft-loadable release and the version of 
FileCore supplied in ROM in RISC OS 3.6 is exactly the same as the extended disc format in RISC OS 
3.7. RISC OS 3.7, like RISC OS 3.6, is backward-compatible with earlier versions of Acorn hard disc 
formats, so if you have a drive <512Mb on a RISC OS 3.5 machine then this will also work. You won't 
need to boot from floppy any more in order to use large IDE hard drives under ADFS, however if you 
are using an Acorn SCSI card you will still need to softload the version of SCSIFS included in the Clan 
release; for other interfaces, you should contact the relevant third-party interface manufacturer for 
details.

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I have a Risc PC fitted with the original Risc PC CD ROM drive from Cumana; the one with the 
separate interface card which attaches onto the IDE bus, and runs the !BootIDECD software 
(which is installed in !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk). Will this be affected by StrongARM in any 
way?
You will need to edit !BootIDECD.!Run before you copy !BootIDECD into your new !Boot application, 
to prevent loading of the ADFSPatch module. Load the !BootIDECD.!Run file into !Edit, and change 
the line which resembles:


    rmload <Obey$Dir>.ADFSPatch

to:


    rmensure utilitymodule 3.60 rmload <Obey$Dir>.ADFSPatch

You may also find you need to issue

*unplug CDFSSoftATAPI

If you have a CD ROM drive which does not use the !BootIDECD application, then you do not need to 
take any action (other than to copy any drivers into your new boot sequence).

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I have installed RISC OS 3.7, and now my hard disc is misbehaving; I keep getting Disc Error 21 
and other drive errors randomly, even if I take my StrongARM out and revert to using my 
original CPU. What's happening? 
The problem is likely to be down to an interaction between the devices on the IDE bus. As IDE is a 
Master-Slave system, problems with one device or its drivers are not guaranteed to manifest themselves 
as errors associated only with that device; rogue errors can appear to originate from a device which 
actually has nothing wrong with it. The most common cause of these problems is down to the 
!BootIDECD application (supplied with the original Cumana IDE CD ROM drives) having a 
disagreement with the CDFSSoftATAPI module in the RISC OS 3.7 ROM; if you issue:

*unplug CDFSSoftATAPI

in addition to following the steps in the previous question, the problem should go away. If you are not 
using one of these drives, try testing each drive (remember to reconfigure the existing slave as a 
master) individually in the machine; some I/O timings on older drives are sufficiently slow that they 
may have problems keeping up with a Risc PC (especially one with StrongARM fitted).

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I don't have an IDE drive in my Risc PC (or I just prefer to have my boot sequence resident on a 
SCSI drive). Your Troubleshooting Guide and manual specify that the new boot sequence should 
be built on an IDE drive; will this cause me a problem?
Hopefully not. We have done some non-exhaustive testing using the installer to install a boot sequence 
to a SCSI drive, and the installation system appeared to work satisfactorily; however it's a matter of 
whether the firmware in your disc interface card is compatible with StrongARM. Check for 
compatibility on our lists first, and if there are no details on your specific card, consult the card's 
supplier.

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My ATAPI CD ROM drive was working under RISC OS 3.60 with the standard 
CDFSSoftATAPI driver, even though it isn't one of the Sony units you supply; now I've upgraded 
to RISC OS 3.70, it can hang the system on startup. Any ideas?
We have only QA'd the CDFSSoftATAPI module for use with the Sony units we fit to Risc PC CD 
systems as standard; the fact that it worked with your ATAPI drive is down to the drive manufacturer 
being closely conformant with the formal ATAPI spec. We have found empirically that the problem on 
startup can be a matter of timing; if some short delay can be inserted into the boot sequence so that the 
CD ROM does not have to start up immediately, the drive will often continue to work properly. Such a 
fix can be achieved by saving a copy of the CDFSSoftATAPI module to disc, *UNPLUGging it from the 
RISC OS 3.70 ROM, and softloading the saved image at some convienent point during the boot 
sequence.

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I have some applications which I need to run on my system, but they need upgrading in order to 
use them with StrongARM and the upgrades aren't available yet. In the meantime, can I install 
RISC OS 3.7 and carry on using my ARM610 / ARM710?
Yes, this is perfectly feasible; RISC OS 3.7 contains all the ARM610 / ARM710 support code present in 
RISC OS 3.60, in addition to the support code required for StrongARM. Although RISC OS 3.70 has 
not been tested with the rigour demanded by our QA department, internal users have been running it in 
conjunction with ARM710 for several months without significant problems.

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I've just installed my copy of RISC OS 3.7 and StrongARM as per instructions, rebooted with 
Delete held down to reconfigure the CMOS, and now I keep getting "Abort on data transfer" 
errors when I switch on. What's going on? 
If you have taken all your expansion cards out (or as many as your disc configuration will allow - see 
note on SCSI installation above) and you are sure that any software being downloaded from flash 
ROM or similar on any expansion or network cards which remains fitted is correct, shut the system 
down and extract any remaining cards. Switch on with one of the shift keys held down (this will enable 
a boot without attempting to run any disc-based boot sequence), and observe whether the system boots; 
if it does, the problem is likely to lie with software loaded during the boot sequence. If the problem 
persists and you have two DRAM SIMMs, try booting wih only one fitted; some SIMMs may be out of 
spec but close enough to the tolerance specified in Application Note 259 that they would work with a 
processor other than a StrongARM. If this fails, remove your VRAM and try again. If all else fails, 
contact the StrongARM Support Hotline team on 01223 577878. 


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Copyright 1996 Acorn Computer Group plc. Page last updated 08 November 1996 by DW
If you have any comments on this site, please contact webmaster@art.acorn.co.uk. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
