If you do have a problem with software, first read the 'Limitations' section on the Readme file supplied with your software to check that what you are trying to do is possible.

1. To enable this error reporting you need to select the Generate Debug information option using PCConfig’s advance configuration window.
2. The output from this will appear all over the screen, so it is best re-directed to a file. You do this by editing the !PC !Run file. The last line starts the !PC application with something like:
  Run <Diva$Dir>.!Runimage
Put a | char at the beginning of this line to comment it out and remove the comment from the beginning of the line above:

|Run <Diva$Dir>.!RunImage > <Diva$Dir>.TraceFile
3. Now rerun !PC to repeat the problem you had. Then close !PC, and examine the Tracefile inside the !PC application to see if it contains any useful error reports. The presence of messages there does not automatically mean that something is wrong; it will always contain status reports about the Windows driver mode, SCSI support etc

PC Card not found 

Sometimes you just get a completely blank screen on starting !PC. The first message means exactly what it says. It can be caused by a number of things. 

• Wrong !PC application for hardware. This sometimes also causes the second messageYou can check the version and expected hardware of the !runimage file by changing to the !PC directory on the command line and then typing 
!runimage ? 
This will report: 
16-bit ASIC (Elvis) 
for an expansion card or: 
Risc PC 486 Coprocessor Card
for a second processor card. 
• If the SIMM memory on an expansion card is missing, broken, not making proper connection, or wrongly configured.
• A genuine hardware fault.

Again this means exactly what it says. The PC card and the host communicate regularly. If the host gets no response when it expects one it waits about four seconds and then issues this messge. This is the equivalent of a ‘hang’ on a normal PC. It is usually due to a software incompatibilty on the PC card. In most cases a normal PC would also have crashed at this point. 

HIMEM gives 'cannot control A20Gate' error This will happen if you have the L1 cache option set incorrectly on a Mark I card. It should be 2. See Appendix A for details, and change the setting to be correct. 

No boot drives available 

DOS needs to boot from disk. For this it needs two hidden files in specific places on the drive. If these are not present you will get this error message. You will also get this if the DOS partition is not marked 'active'. 

Normally this happens because you have created a drive and then run !PC without installing DOS onto that drive. It can also happen if !PC has not recognised your hard drive (which may be bootable), so it is actually looking at the floppy drive and being unable to boot from that (because there is no disc in it). 

Cannot install DOS to hard drive 

You have created a drive_c partition, but when you try to install DOS is says there is no hard drive, or only gives you the option of installing to a floppy disc. 

This can happen for a number of reasons to do with the way !PCconfig operates. It is possible for !PCConfig to have edited the wrong config file, or for you to have forgotten to save the settings, or (if you dragged a drive name into the box and made no other changes) for the drive name not to have been recorded. 

To check that !PC is really looking for the DOS partition name you expect, look at the Config file inside !PC. At the bottom of the file should be a line (or two) like: 

HD0-File-Name adfs::4.$.drive_c

Wrong version of ARMDRV

If you have upgraded your !PC, but not your ARMDRV in the WINDOWS/SYSTEM directory then a message like:

Wrong version of ARMDRV. Found ARMDRV 1.80, requires ARMDRV 1.94

Failure to perform a Custom Install 

If you did an ‘express’ install, or selected VGA display drivers then you will get a set of drivers that won’t work. Install Windows again, following the instructions in Installing the Aleph One Windows driver on page 39.

This is usually due to some combination of 

• Editing the CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT files with a RISC OS editor so that the linefeeds are wrong.
• Not setting CDROMdiscs/ CDROMdrives to the correct value.
• Putting MSCDEX into the AUTOEXEC.BAT file so late that it is not executed.
• Not powering up the CDROM drive (check it works from RISCOS first).

Means some of the text following DEVICE=A1CD.SYS is incorrect. Currently you may only have the phrase /D:name after this. name is the name by which MSCDEX will know the device driver; it should be no more than 8 characters long. If you do not have /D:name the name will default to MSCD000. 

ERROR! Cannot find Aleph One BIOS services 

You are trying to run A1CD.SYS on a system which is not an Aleph One PC card, for example a normal DOS system or the Acorn PC emulator. 

ERROR! No CD-ROM drives working 

The !PC application has been unable to find any working CD-ROM drives. This may be because the drive is switched off, or the Acorn CD filing system and driver (CDFS) is not loaded, or you have not configured at least one CD-ROM drive as noted above. 

If you turn trace messages on then a reason for the failure should be produced (see Using trace information on page 67). 
 

Here is what the messages mean: 

SCSI_Reserve failed, device X  

!PC has been unable to ‘reserve’ the SCSI drive (‘X’ is the device ID), most often because it is in use by something else (usually RISCOS).You need to make the direct access drive the one with the highest SCSI ID (apart from the host) and then 

*Configure SCSIFSdiscs n

SCSI_Op (Read) failed, device X  

SCSI_Op (Write) failed, device X  

!PC has been unable to read or write to the drive using the SCSI_Op SWI. It will always use standard 10-byte SCSI Read or Write commands; you should check that the drive supports these. 

SCSI_Initialise 2 failed on device X  

The device did not respond to the SCSI_Initialise SWI. This >uses the SCSI Inquire command to read parameters about the drive. It usually indicates a basic problem with connections to the drive. 

Warning: SCSI device X is type %d (not direct-access)  

!PC checks the device type found using the Inquire command. If this is not type 0 (direct-access, usual for hard disks), it gives this warning but continues to attempt to use it. Using non-direct-access devices is not tested and not guaranteed to work. 

SCSI device X has bad sector size NNN  

For use with MS-DOS, SCSI disks should be formatted to a sector size of 512 bytes. Unfortunately, RISCOS uses 1024 byte sectors). The drive needs a low-level format to change this – this will need to be done on a PC or using special software under RISCOS.