Help!

Have you got a problem? Here's your chance to ask the advice of the people who have all the answers: the developers of RISC OS itself

We will reply personally to queries we intend to publish; you won't have to wait until the next issue for the answer.

[This page contains a couple of sample questions and answers that were published during volume 1 of Foundation RISC User.]

Click to jump to the following topics:

Finding lost fonts

Q: After installing RISC OS 4, I merged my standard set of old fonts with Configure, and everything worked. Recently, however, I've downloaded some fonts from the Internet and copied them into !Fonts, but they don't seem to work with my programs. At first I assumed the fonts were broken, but I can't believe that they are all broken!
P. Tilutson

A: Inside !Fonts you will find a file called Messages, which is generated by the font merging tool in Configure. This is a catalogue of all the fonts which the font manager will refer to for speed, instead of manually probing each directory inside !Fonts. If you copy new fonts inside !Fonts after using the merge tool, then the Messages file will be out of sync with the real contents of !Fonts, as you have seen.

There are several alternative solutions:

  1. Delete the Messages file inside !Fonts
    This will cause the font manager to use the old (slower) method of probing each folder inside !Fonts for fonts.
  2. Create an empty !Fonts and use Configure to merge it in
    As part of the install process, !Fonts is re-catalogued, so even installing an empty !Fonts should solve your problem. Note that a similar principle applies for tuning !System with a blank !System.
  3. Delete the new fonts from !Fonts and merge them in properly
    Create a new, empty !Fonts and then add the downloaded fonts into it. Merge this new !Fonts using Configure to add the fonts "RISC OS 4 style"!

Remember that you will need to double-click on !Fonts or reset your machine after using these techniques.
Andrew Rawnsley

Inaccessible PhotoCDs

Q: Trying to access pictures on a Kodak CD for the first time, I am only able to access the first nine of the 24 pictures. Clicking on the CD, the correct directory display appears and, if I have PhotoFiler on the icon bar, all 24 files are given their thumbnails correctly. Files 001_1/JPG to 009_9/JPG can be accessed, but attempts to gain access to 010_10/JPG to 024_24/JPG gives error code 7678 and reports that there is no disc in the CD drive.

I have a 'standard' Risc PC with 42Mb RAM, StrongARM and an early RISC OS 4.something, which I understand I could have replaced but agreed that this seemed unneccesary as it has performed OK for me. Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.
David Summers

A: This sounds like the "muti-session CD" problem. The ROM-based IDE (ATAPI) CD driver doesn't support multi-session discs properly, and most (all?) PhotoCDs are multi-session.

The solution is to use the old ATAPI CD driver, which can be found on the Foundation CDs or on the RISCOS Ltd Web site. Simply press <F12> and enter:

Then put the replacement module in the !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk directory. Reset the machine, and multi-session CDs should then be readable.

If the problem is with a SCSI CD, then:

...and use the CD driver supplied with your SCSI card (or whatever you used prior to installing RISC OS 4).
Andrew Rawnsley

(David subsequently reported that his problem was now cured.)