A9home compatibility list open for all

By Chris Williams. Published: 17th Oct 2005, 13:32:42 | Permalink | Printable

No, you can't list RISC OS 2 for being incompatible

The unofficial software compatibility list for the A9home has moved to a new address, and has new features. The page lists software that is known to work and not work on the 32bit RISC OS 4.40 ARM9 powered computer, or work with 26bit environment emulator Aemulor. The website is maintained by Paul Stewart, an A9home beta user, who has also opened the site up to the public so that anyone can add to and edit entries on the list.

AdvantageSix have distanced themselves from the compatibility list, because their machine is still available only as part of a beta testing scheme and they don't want to see software developers blamed for crashes caused by their hardware. The page shows a healthy mix of green-lit software against some denied applications, however. Some software also requires the 32bit SharedCLibrary from Castle: Currently, Castle freely distributes the module only for pre-RISC OS 4.40 machines, so A9home users must acquire a 32bit build of the Castle module from Iyonix users or some other source. John-Mark Bell recently summarised the issue, here.

Update at 15:13 17/10/2005
Originally, it was reported that the site appeared malformed in Oregano and NetSurf. Paul has swiftly tweaked the page design so that it now looks ok in Oregano 1 and 2. It also looks ok in recent NetSurf builds, too.

Links

Paul Stewart's A9home compatibility list

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Discussion

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Novel; it displayed fine in NetSurf last night...

jmb on 17/10/05 1:45PM
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It displays fine in Oregano3 too...

On a more related note, anyone tried Oregano2 (Demo or full) on the A9 yet? Or for that matter Oregano 3

Leo on 17/10/05 2:19PM
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I'll download O2 Demo tonight and try it

sa110 on 17/10/05 2:57PM
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The page also works fine in Firefox and Internet Explorer. I'm sure it worked fine on Netsurf and O1 last night when I tried it. However the Netsurf version I was using last night is about a month old. The latest version downloaded today, does not display it correct.

sa110 on 17/10/05 2:59PM
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Display problem fixed (I hope). Seems I had deleted a close table tag whilst starting another.

sa110 on 17/10/05 3:10PM
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To sa110 : Have a look at the on line banking pig using Oregano 2, note the colour of the pig, when I use a risc pc the pig is blue, using NetSurf, Fresco or FireFox on a pc it is orange

runningman on 17/10/05 5:42PM
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In reply to Leo:

Oregano2 is working (after using the 32Bit Clib from my Castle Acorn C/C++ CD )

BTW I have just added a few working apps

EasyKees on 17/10/05 6:11PM
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A working 32bit Clib can be found on the C/C++ suite It is located on the CD in the following dir: EndUser.!System.500.Modules.Clib

Only useful if you : A) Own an A9Home B) Have a legal copy of the C/C++ suite

(I'm a lucky guy

)

EasyKees on 17/10/05 6:19PM
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By the way. Any comments on improving the page are welcome.

sa110 on 17/10/05 6:32PM
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The site is unavailable using firefox on a P4 winxp machine. I get the error:

Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0400'

Expected statement

/a9home/compatibility.asp, line 5

Option Explicit ^

Cheers Bob

nijinsky on 17/10/05 10:09PM
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In reply to nijinsky: I have logged and call on the support desk of my hosting company. I do not beleive it is an error in the code as it as been working perfectly fine with the same line since last night.

The error you have received is one from when I have been looking at the current error earlier.

sa110 on 17/10/05 10:44PM
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for nijinsky:

You have a strange PC

Firefox on PC-winXP OK IE on PC-winXP OK

Firefox beta5 on A9Home OK Oregano2 on A9home OK Netsurf on A9Home OK

Oregano1 on Virtual Acorn OK Oregano2 on Virtual Acorn OK Fresco on Virtual Acorn OK

All browser on my RPC's OK (including Phoenix/Browse)

In other words : I have 5 PC's and a lot of browsers but they all seemed to work with the site.

EasyKees on 17/10/05 10:50PM
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In reply to EasyKees: Very strange. Non of my own browsers are working with my site atm. All give the following error:

Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0224'

Cannot load TypeLib

/a9home/compatibility.asp, line 2

Cannot load Type Library specified in the METADATA tag.

But was working fine earlier!

sa110 on 17/10/05 10:57PM
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Dont't ask me why it is working here.

I have just add a new item

-unclassified. -version 1.0 date: 01/01/2005 app-name:!Notworking

Comments: This is a test i will replace it with a good one

Excuse me for this kind of spam I'll replace the 'bad entry' with a normal one ....

EasyKees on 17/10/05 11:06PM
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I have just changed my 'test-item' in a working one.

app=name; !Notworking doesn't exist anymore It has been replaced with OvnPro 2.75 details.

But the site does work !!!!!

EasyKees on 17/10/05 11:18PM
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In reply to EasyKees "But the site does work !!!!!"

Are you sure?

It doesn't work with Netsurf: Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0224' Cannot load TypeLib /a9home/compatibility.asp, line 2 Cannot load Type Library specified in the METADATA tag.

It doesn't work with O2 either.

scl4c0rn on 17/10/05 11:33PM
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In reply to scl4Orn:

I know my English is not 100% ( or 40%) But the A9Home compatibility site [link]

Is working !!! I'm looking at it right now ( on my A9Home) And I have tried all my other PC's - they give no errors!

I have made a few changes to the site eg. I clicked on 'add new record' and it does work ( i have verified it)

EasyKees on 17/10/05 11:45PM
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[link]

EasyKees on 17/10/05 11:50PM
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In reply to EasyKees:

It doesn't work with Firefox either... Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0224' Cannot load ...

scl4c0rn on 17/10/05 11:54PM
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* About to connect() to www.phawfaux.co.uk port 80 * Connected to www.phawfaux.co.uk (194ld.154ld.164ld.66ld) port 80 > HEAD /a9home/compatibility.asp HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: curl/7.11.0-CVS (arm-aof-riscos) libcurl/7.11.0-CVS OpenSSL/0.9.7c zlib/1.1.4 Host: www.phawfaux.co.uk Pragma: no-cache Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, */*

< HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error < Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 22:58:28 GMT Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 22:58:28 GMT < Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 < Content-Length: 363 Content-Length: 363 < Content-Type: text/html Content-Type: text/html < Cache-control: private Cache-control: private

* Connection #0 left intact * Closing connection #0

scl4c0rn on 18/10/05 12:02AM
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[link] works on my RiscPC using Fresco & NetSurf

runningman on 18/10/05 1:47AM
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Just tried it this morning from work on IE. Site loads okay. Really weired or what!

sa110 on 18/10/05 7:43AM
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Worked fine yesterday (FFbeta4+Iyonix RO509). Today I get the following:

Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0224' Cannot load TypeLib /a9home/compatibility.asp. line 2 Cannot load Type Library specified in the METADATA tag.

Cheers

George

bucksboy on 18/10/05 7:55AM
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It's working fine for me now using Safari 2 Looks like there's something strange going on with the server unless it's been updated in the last 25mins

Fonz on 18/10/05 8:25AM
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It would also be nice if the spelling of Aemulor could be corrected.

Cheers,

/Neil/

spellinn on 18/10/05 8:39AM
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In reply to spellinn:

Done.

sa110 on 18/10/05 8:56AM
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The page was working OK half an hour ago and is showing an error now. Pity about the server problems as it would be good to see a discussion about the programs that have been made to work by eg commenting out lines on the !Run file.

jc on 18/10/05 10:16AM
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In reply to JC: I spoke to my hosting company last night. They claimed there were no issues with their servers. I am awaiting a response from them to the support call I logged into their fault management system last night. Hopefully the issue (which appears quite random atm) will be resolved soon.

sa110 on 18/10/05 10:24AM
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jc: I'd rather you kept your dirty thoughts about removing lines from !Run files to csa, thanks

I think the issue has been covered ad nauseum in the google groups link in the article ([link])

Hertzsprung on 18/10/05 10:42AM
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In reply to Hertzpsrung:

But that does work for some applications and is an option to explore if you don't happen to have the 32bit SCL. Therefore surely it is perfectly valid to list it as a work around.

sa110 on 18/10/05 11:32AM
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EasyKees:

If Oregano 2 is working, then Oregano 3 should work fine as well. Of course if someone wants to send me an A9Home to test it on, then I'll happily receive one

As for the 32bit CLib, aren't developers allowed to supply a copy of the EndUser directory with their programs? (My copy of the CD doesn't have the EndUser directory (too early) and the local copy I have doesn't contain a ReadMe file)

Leo on 18/10/05 11:34AM
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First attempt RiscPC WITH FRESCO: Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0224' Cannot load TypeLib /a9home/compatibility.asp, line 2 Cannot load Type Library specified in the METADATA tag.

Tried again in a new window 10 seconds later at it worked fine!

CJE on 18/10/05 11:54AM
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In reply to Leo: currently only a version of Castles SCL suitable for 26bit machines is supplied in the redistributables, the only 32bit version is in the Iyonix ROM which isn't supposed to be redistributable. I wasn't even aware it would work if copied to the A9, but as some apps are noted as requiring Castles SCL but marked green for running, this seems to be the case.

STD and A9 owners should be pressing Castle to officially release it for softload without further delay, so developers can stop wasting time on this issue and get on and tackle some of the any other compatibility problems the A9 might show up.

druck on 18/10/05 12:05AM
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sa110> It can also give the illusion of working but lead to essentially unpredictable failures whilst the application is running, or only when a particular action is performed. If you're aware of that caveat, fine, but there's a risk that such faults will be attributed to the wrong bit of software, or even the hardware.

Only the software developer, or someone with the time and inclination to pick apart the binary, really knows whether the application requires the extra functionality of the Castle CLib module, or is - perhaps accidentally - dependent upon it oweing to (possible) divergence between the ROL and Castle modules.

adrianl on 18/10/05 12:10AM
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In reply to adrianl: I've been following the discussion on CSA Programming and therefore fully agree with you. But if you don't have Aemulor or the 32bit SCL. It is at least worth a try. In some cases it works, some it doesn't. I guess you take your chances when commenting out the rmensure line.

sa110 on 18/10/05 12:16AM
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druck:

Hmm, in my End User directory I have version 5.46 of the SCL module inside the !System.500.Modules directory. I assumed it was this version of the CLib module people were referring to, rather than pulling the module from the Iyonix ROM image.

I agree that the situation regarding running the latest Castle SCL onnon Iyonix 32bit machines needs to be sorted out.

Leo on 18/10/05 1:48PM
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Compatibility site is now stable. Apparently there was an issue with one of their hosing servers which has now been resolved. However if anyone is still having trouble accessing the site, let me know.

sa110 on 20/10/05 10:40AM
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