[ Aleph One home page | Company Information | Security Privacy and Terms of sale | Search ]

Front-end

Aleph One Support

Startup in full screen (single tasking mode) is almost a must with Windows 95 or 98. All Windows will take much longer to finnish loading if is run in multi tasking mode within a window on the RISC OS Desktop. If you are using DirectX display driver then you will have to start and stay in full screen / single tasking mode because the PC card will be frozen in mult tasking mode.

All windows software makes no real use of the middle menu button on the mouse so the option to Switching from PC Card to RISC OS makes use of it. If you find that you accidentally keep switching to RISC OS then changing the option to using the Alt-Brake keys on the keyboard. This will have no ill effects on the operation of the PC card or podule.

Warning selecting "Do not allow return to RISC OS" is potentially dangerous and we not recommend its use. You should always have one of the other three main settings set.

Front-end, PC card task configuration options.

This has additional options to "Show toolbar" when in multi tasking mode and options to change Multi tasking speeds.

All the settings shown are the default options.

The options with a star are changeable during runtime in multi tasking mode from the Icon Bar or on the toolbar.

• full screen

  When set, the !PC starts to boot the PC card and takes over the whole of the screen and will be in single tasking mode. None of the RISC OS desktop will be visible and any program running in RISC OS will be working very very slow. Single tasking mode / full screen gives maximum performance for the PC card.

  If you have opted to use a DirectX display driver then you must start in full screen / single tasking mode and any time you Switching from PC Card to RISC OS (multi tasking mode) the PC card will be frozen.

• in a window

  This allows the PC card to start up in a RISC OS window on the RISC OS desktop. This can only be achieved if using DOS or Windows is not using a DirectX display driver.

  For PCPro3 users the speed of operation of the PC card while in a window / multi tasking mode is originally controlled by the Multi-tasking speeds settings, but may be changed during run time from the toolbar.

• frozen

  This setting will just load !PC on to the icon bar. When the !PC is selected on the icon bar the PC card will start in a window on the desktop / multi tasking mode.

Switching from PC Card to RISC OS settings.

Warning selecting "Do not allow return to RISC OS" is potentially dangerous and I do not recommend its use. You should always have one of the three main settings set.

PCPro3 only

Multi-tasking speeds settings.

...in foreground refers to when the window with the PC running has the focus. This is shown by the fact that the title bar of the window is highlighted. Normally this means that at least keyboard actions are directed to the PC card
...in background refers to when the window with the PC running is not focused. The title bar of the window is grayed out or NOT highlighted. This normally means that the PC card has no input focus but it could still be printing or running some other software.

The numbers basically refer to the amount of time spent servicing the PC card while the window is in that state mentioned above. The higher the number the more time is devoted by the ARM to servicing the PC card and less time servicing other RISC OS software. The highest value is 20.

These settings can be changed during runtime so that if you wish to allow the ARM to devote more time to the PC card while in the foreground or background. Very useful to speed up the PC processing for say printing while still in multi tasking mode.

 Last Updated: 2005.11.07

[ Aleph One home page | Company Information | Security Privacy and Terms of sale | Search ]