[Virtualacorn-list] Odd problems with VARPC on a Mac, version 2

[Tim Powys-Lybbe]

Now that quite few more have joined this mailing list, here's an update
of my original list of 7th Sept.  About half are new items.

I have been using VARPC on a new Mac for about seven weeks now, probably
leading to the virtual retirement of my Iyonix.  We shall see on the
latter score.  But there have been one or two problems and any views on
any of them wold be much appreciated:

  1. I cannot lock any files.  Is this a Mac feature or is it a VARPC
     one?

     The consensus is that this is a VARPC feature as it has been found
     on both Mac and PC versions.  So the answer is to find an
     alternative strategy.  The Mac's Timeline facility may, in fact, be
     as good as any strategy.
  
  2. I run VARPC in a window, primarily so that I can have other
     applications going on the other monitor (a bonus from the Iyonix
     days with the excellent Geminus application).  But this inhibits
     the icon bar coming to the top when you move the mouse to the
     bottom of the display.

     A way to allow the icon bar to come to the top is to have a
     slightly smaller display with a clear gap below the VARPC window.
     Then putting the mouse pointer in this gap brings the iconbar to
     the top.
  
  3. Occasionally while doing posts on Messenger using StrongEd, text
     entry stops and while the mouse works, I cannot recover text
     entering by restarting Messenger and/or StrongEd.  The only answer
     is to completely reboot VARPC.

     Subsequently I have found this applies to any editor.  Both with
     OvationPro and TechWriter, I can get the occasional complete
     keyboard lockups though the mouse continues to work, allowing me to
     close down gracefully.

     I have tried the following:
       (a) Moved to the internal messenger editor - same problem.
       (b) Removed these applications from Boot-up:
             Scaler, AltClick and DPlngScan. All to no effect.

  4. Even worse, sometimes when doing some editing the total VA machine
     freezes and requires a quit from Mac and a Restart.
  
  5. I can exchange files easily between RISC OS and Mac using FTPc.  I
     can also do it by using Mount from VARPC's Preferences facility.
     But the latter leads to this error:

       "Internal error: abort on data transfer at &0391E544"

     and I lose all RISC OS filer access and have to reboot. Returning
     after the reboot I tried the !where program and got:

        "No writable memory at this address".

     I think the problem is associated with directories that have more
     than some magic number of files, at any rate well above 77.  Any
     suggestions?  FTPc will open the same directories with no trouble.
  
  6. Early on I had a problem with Hermes which froze VARPC but a change
     to POPstar has solved that one.  Alan Wrigley was reasonably
     baffled and doubted it was a Hermes problem.  Subsequently I have
     re-tried Hermes but the problem remained. 

  7. The Mac's Might Mouse has a tiny scroll wheel that works on Mac
     windows.  I see that others are clamouring for this facility.

  8. VA has a limitation on directory size that it can read.  If there
     are a large number of files in a directory and I try to access that
     directory, then VA locks up and usually requires a re-boot.  The
     way round this has been to move the files around via ShareFS from
     the Iyonix.  I have not found what the file count limit is but it
     seems to be of the order of a thousand.

  9. I have an A2 printer (Canon BJC5500); this works OK from a native
     RISC OS machine.  But there are no facilities to drive it from
     Virtual Acorn on a Mac, principally because the Mac does not have a
     driver for this printer.  (There is a GIMP driver but the
     colours priner are defective.)  Does anyone know of a way to drive
     printers directly from Virtual Acorn?  The printer is served by a
     network server.

  10. A curious problem has arisen with POPstar on Virtual Acorn.  It
     only appears for e-mails to be downloaded that are above the size
     limit I have set.  Further it only occurs for such files that are
     waiting when I fire up VA; if they appear after start-up and
     the first fetch there is no problem.  What happens is that I get
     from POPstar a warning message that an over-large e-mail is on the
     server; I tell it to download the e-mail and then I simply cannot
     find same.  I have turned full error-reporting on for POPstar and
     it shows that a DELE command is in fact issued by POPstar.  This is
     a feature of running under VA and I have no idea why it happens.

     A possible work-around is to use AntiSpam as the fetcher but I
     can't get that to work either though assistance is promised.

     If I cannot get reliable fetching via any program on Virtual Acorn
     I may have to move to Messenger Pro on the Mac, which I have
     working fine on one mailing list and a couple of newsgroups.

Any comments or suggestion on any or these?

-- 
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim at powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/