Introduction
It's hard to believe that it's over two years since I purchased my A9home. It was from the first batch for developers. I remember travelling to a Wakefield show with the assumption that a new RISC OS computer capable of running RISCOS Ltd's branch of RISC OS would be available. The Advantage Six stand had plenty of bits under covers. They did not take them off until after their theatre presentation.
The presentation was, as expected, rather packed. Everyone was eager to see this new machine. I doubt people were disappointed either. At the same time I don't think it was what punters had expected. I know I certainly had no idea that the new RISC OS powered computer would be such a petit affair.
Driving away from the event at the end of day I was happy with my purchase. Well, not totally. At that point the only items I had were the flight case (a vanity box minus the mirror and make-up tray), the keyboard and mouse. The A9home home arrived about a week later.
I was quite impressed by the little machine. My ageing RiscPC most definitely dwarfed the little blighter. Being one of the first batch out, my unit did suffer major hard disc-related problems and I eventually sent it back due to it file system faults. The next A9home I received contained Flash ROM update 1, which thankfully, for me at least, fixed the issues that were causing the hard disc errors. In December that year I sold my StrongARM (APDL Turbo) RiscPC. I was more than surprised to get £180 for it, and I moved over to the A9home full-time.So has it been plain sailing?
Yes, but no but yes but... Let me explain. For the most part I have been very happy with it. Flash ROM update 2 was released in March last year and included RISC OS 4.42. This delivered EDID support, allowing monitors to be automatically detected and configured, and the executable compatibility tool, which tries to prevent the system from running dodgy programs and crashing.
I believe the compatibility tool was an own goal: no mention of this utility was made prior to the Flash ROM release and it surprised many users because it blocked some legitimate programs from running. It can be tamed from a configuration control panel. The EDID support, whilst not perfect, was a new addition to RISC OS and this can be used with RISC OS 6 and Viewfinder hardware that supports it.
USB
I have found the USB sub-system to be very easy to use although compatibility with some devices is, as always, dependent on having the right driver available. For example, USB devices that are of class 8 and sub-class 04 are not currently supported by MassFS.
Right now I have a USB keyboard with an integrated touch pad connected rather than a full-size one with a separate mouse. Before that I used a full-size Lenovo keyboard and integrated USB hub with a USB mouse plugged into it. This combination required a USB driver update from Ad6.
One area I have commented on in a previous article was the need to manually fiddle in the
OtherDevs text file to add support for USB memory sticks that are not automatically recognised. Kees Meijer has developed USB-util, a user friendly utility for detecting and automatically updating the OtherDevs file as well as provide other useful features such as formatting and the backing up of memory sticks. It's well worth a try if you do not already have it and it's available from the downloads section on my A9home compatibility website.Staying with USB, an area which has started to get on my nerves is the physical position and placement of the USB ports. Sometimes plugging in and pulling out devices can be quite a fiddly task. With the rear ports located right next to the power input, I have also found it common to end up yanking out the power while swapping USB cables - this is not something I would recommend.
System stability
Again, on the whole, I have found the system to be stable. It is with regret I am not able to say robust. My only remaining niggle is the reccurring file system errors. However with the help of Disc Knight, these do not usually cause me too many headaches - although they have given me sparked the odd tantrum and rant at Ad6.
The file system faults usually manifest themselves as dreaded and unexpected 'Disc not understood - has it been formatted?' errors on boot-up. A repair job by DK is required to restore your files. The problem is that these faults are not encountered by all A9home users - only an unlucky few.
It is therefore my view that this is more likely to be caused by some software I am running. I am currently in the process of eliminating each program I use until I found a suspect. If I discover anything conclusive, I will let you all know.
Printing
The !Printers application was not supplied on my A9home. I was advised by RISCOS Ltd's Paul Middleton to use the 32bit Castle !Printers software, which I have done. Strictly speaking, I use !Printers+ with some of the 32bit modules from the Castle release.
I have successfully printed from both USB and the network via RemotePrintFS. But what about an official 32bit !Printers+ release from RISCOS Ltd? Now they have finished and release RISC OS 6 for 26bit machines, is this going to happen? I have sent an email to Paul Middleton regarding this matter but I have not had a response as of this time.
Documentation
Another area that has yet to be tackled successfully is documentation and manuals. I could understand when there was a lack of documentation when I purchased my own system as an early user. However when normal users are purchasing the machine, I would at least expect there to be some basic documentation included.