And a new Raspberry Pi Zero

Looks like an interesting new machine…

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/new-raspberry-pi-zero-2-w-2/

No problems booting into RISC OS on the Pi Zero 2 with 6 month old firmware and RISCOS rom.

MOS Utilities   5.29 (28 Apr 2021)
FileSwitch      2.88 (30 Jan 2021)
C Library       6.09 (06 Feb 2021)
USBDriver       1.31 (14 Mar 2021)
FileCore        3.77 (14 Dec 2020)
Shared Sound    1.20 (18 Jun 2016)
SCSIFS          1.36 (19 Aug 2020)
LanManFS        2.66 (31 Aug 2020)
ShareFS         3.60 (07 Mar 2020) Access+
SharedUnixLibrary       1.16 (3 Apr 2020) (C) UnixLib Developers, 2001-2020
HAL-based system (BCM2835 VDU device) tested at Fri,29 Oct 2021.15:35:40
Filing system: SDFS:RISCOSpi.$.Bench
Graphics Resoloution: 1920x1080, 16M colours

Test                                                   Benchmark
Processor - Looped instructions (cache)                  2650010    1489%
Memory - Multiple register transfer                        22685   14003%
Rectangle Copy - Graphics acceleration test                 1768     730%
Icon Plotting - 16 colour sprite with mask                 33018    1650%
Draw Path - Stroke narrow line                              8150     522%
Draw Fill - Plot filled shape                              12844     880%
Draw Render - Render draw file                             14940    1649%
HD Read - Block load 8MB file                              23184     777%
HD Write - Block save 8MB file                             21942     721%
FS Read - Byte stream file in                               1127     544%
FS Write - Byte stream file out                              387     201%

Nice to see the memory benchmark “up to speed” – that was always a weakness of the first Zero models. The numbers look a lot like Pi 3. Which makes sense of course. Hopefully heat dissipation will work well.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/

“Obsolescence Statement
Raspberry Pi Zero W will remain in production until at least January 2026”

Nice to see the memory benchmark ?up to speed? ? that was always a weakness of the first Zero models. The numbers look a lot like Pi 3. Which makes sense of course. Hopefully heat dissipation will work well.

At a stable overclock of 1.3GHz with the Pi Zero 2 in a flirc case CPU temperature in use is about 42C.

There’s currently a patch waiting to be merged that fixes GPIO. The Elesar WiFi hat now works with the patch applied.

Just needs native WiFi support in RISC OS.

I believe we have some fixes for the Pi Zero 2 W incoming into our GitLab server over the coming days.

At a stable overclock of 1.3GHz with the Pi Zero 2 in a flirc case CPU temperature in use is about 42C.

Sounds good. RISC OS (i.e. single core and little load on GPU) or Linux?

I believe we have some fixes for the Pi Zero 2 W incoming into our GitLab server over the coming days.

Following the link you are asked to sign in. Can anyone sign up for access? Do you need approval?

I just look at the public access bits, for example looking at the (96) merge requests there is one 3 days ago:

Fix GPIO behaviour for Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

Following the link you are asked to sign in. Can anyone sign up for access? Do you need approval?

There is a link on the left called “explore the source code without logging in”.

There is a link on the left called “explore the source code without logging in”.

Thanks for the pointer Chris.

It has now been approved, so should be in the rom tomorrow (not sure whether this fixes the SD card activity LED).

Well the development rom zip is 4 Nov but the rom inside is 27 Oct. Puzzled.

Well the development rom zip is 4 Nov but the rom inside is 27 Oct.

A quick look on the RPi4 does show a 4 Nov ROM. HTH.

Yes, there’s a bug with the version of zip that’s being used to produce the zip files, which results in the native zip timestamps being wrong (but the RISC OS file attributes/timestamp are correct, so you’ll get different results depending on how you examine the zip).

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/9579?page=2#posts-71767

Yes, the rom is 4 Nov. I have updated the benchmarks to include Pi Zero 2W and have reseerved a space for the Pi ITX from R-Comp when it appears.

(not sure whether this fixes the SD card activity LED)

Testing the Pi Zero 2 W with the latest RO 5.29 ROM (04 November):

• Using June 2020 firmware – activity LED stuck “on” at all times.

• Using 30 September 2021 firmware – activity LED flashes when the SD card is accessed.

Download link for those who want the exact firmware. You will need bootcode.bin, fixup.dat and start.elf.

Interesting – the latest firmware (bootcode.bin, fixup.dat and start.elf) on the current distribution of Linux on the Raspberry Pi web site is May 2021 so they haven’t caught up yet!

The ROOL site doesn’t worry about firmware – the latest Pi firmware is 20 Dec 2020 so far as the downloads are concerned. The only thing that is updated (apart from even numbered builds) is the nightly rom which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending whether an occasional breaking change has crept in. Not having a link to the firmware keeps inexperienced users away and stops them bricking their machine.

Further checking has shown that the Pi Zero 2 W activity LED works with December 2020 firmware.

This leaves me in a bit of a quandary with the Pi firmware Wiki page – as things stand the wiki page is recommending the correct firmware, but owners of RISC OS 5.28 may be under the impression that they already have December 2020 firmware, when in fact they only have December 2020 Pi 4 firmware (fixup4.dat, start4.elf) and the firmware they have for other Pi models (bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, start.elf) is too old.

Perhaps I’m overthinking the issue…