RISC OS Direct on other hardware?

Is it possible/feasible/allowed/etc. to install the ROD distribution on other (non-Pi) hardware? I understand that the ROM would have to be swapped after installation to a stable or development ROM suitable for the target platform, but would there be any other pitfalls – technical and/or licencing? I have a spare Wandboard and an old Beagleboard that I would like to set up and it seems like a good starting point as a packaged bundle to get one or both up, running and useful for test purposes.

RPCemu easy start bundles has RISC OS Direct so it must be?
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http://www.marutan.net/rpcemu/easystart.html

Thanks, Kevin – I’ll try it out on my PC first before investigating further.

Hi Grahame, I advised Peter Howkins on his RPCemu port of RISC OS Direct and hence Peter also released the ‘start bundles’.

RISC OS Direct like RISC OS itself self is fully open source under the Apache license with the bulk of the included software released under there own respective open source or freeware licenses.

What you need to understand is RISC OS Direct is NOT a fork of the OS. it is the base ROOL 5.27 ROM which a custom theme set and preinstalled / set up boot disc image for the Pi … and thats it

So if you have the software, the graphics theme , the !boot setup and a stock 5.xx ROM that works for your chosen platform then you have a home cooked RISC OS Direct!

Cant guarantee all the software will work, the RPCemu version had to strip some stuff out due to computability issues.

The prime reason RISC OS Direct focuses on the Pi is its trying to capture a new younger userbase who have the cheap ARM machines and are looking for something other then Raspbian Linux which can be very slow on older Pi boards or hardware like the Pi Zero

A RPCemu version of Direct ready to go for Windows helps even more in reducing barriers to entry, this ‘unofficial fork’ is maintain by Peter with the blessing of ROD Ltd but its not part of the main project at present.

The thinking was any other hardware platforms were most likely going to be in the hands of seasoned RISC OS users who would already have setups and be happy with the ROOL stock build …. which I stress again should be 100% compatible with RISC OS Direct as they both share the same core kernel.

Tom – youtube.com/wifisheep

RISC OS Direct is running on the Titanium, from a USB SCSI memory stick. The disc image was copied from the RPi4.

An initial trifle was that Pinboard backdrop is called by an absolute SDFS pathname, that just needed reconfiguring, to clear a “insert RISCOSPI” boot error. Otherwise after almost five minutes of testing it seems OK.

Chose which system to boot into by configuring the relevant filing system before rebooting.

The Titanium is running with the latest ROM flashed.

@ Tom: Thanks for the further info. I realise it isn’t a fork. I have a Wandboard that I bought for a project that fell through a few years ago, and I was looking for a suitable setup to install on it that mostly ‘just works’ and gives me a chance to do some setting up and testing of secure IMAP mail access from RISC OS without upsetting/breaking my current live machine that is set up for secure POP. I assume that a ROM swap is required from a Pi to an iMX6 variant. I’ve been playing with the RPCEmu version and it looks good so far, but I’d like to try it native as well.

@ David: Did the Pi ROM work in the Ti, or did you swap it out?

Did the Pi ROM work in the Ti, or did you swap it out?

There is no such issue. The two ROMs are different and differently handled. On the Titanium the ROM is flashed into a chip, it is already there, no need to do anything. On copying the DIRECT image from the Pi SD card the Loader folder also gets copied to the SCSI pen but only as a folder, it is no longer a FAT32 partition. It can be deleted, it is not used at all on the Titanium.

On the Pi RO DIRECT just uses a standard Pi ROM, DIRECT is really about the disc image.

@ Grahame, Hi no you’ll need a new ROM for your native hardware so the ROOL 5.xx Wandboard ROM will be required. same for any other supported ‘none Pi’ hardware.

Naturally i’m delighted ‘seasoned’ RISC OS users want to use Direct… As mentioned it was never really the plan as its pushed for brand new users on the pi … but something to think about if there was demand for the other boards and hardware??

Tom – youtube.com/wifisheep

Is it possible/feasible/allowed/etc. to install the ROD distribution on other (non-Pi) hardware?

I don’t see why not. My current setup is a custom mess that started life as the Pi image copied out to an 8GiB card (thanks to SystemDisc). It contains ROM images and boot guff for both the Beagle and the Pi.

licencing

I don’t pay much attention to that.

It’s only me so if I have installed stuff on the Pi, the older Pi, the Beagle, and the emulator… I’m only really capable of using one at a time.

Those few times when I’m using two, it’s primarily developing on one and testing on another, like how I made my recent rubbish game play nice under emulation. My Pi, a PC, and heavy use of Samba/SMB. I probably ought to see if ShareFS works…

…does ShareFS work across a typical LAN? I seem to recall something used really weird IP addresses and didn’t play nice with a setup where everything is 192.168.1.×. Was that ShareFS or was it something else?

Naturally i’m delighted ‘seasoned’ RISC OS users want to use Direct…

If it has something to offer (even us grey hairs!) then it would be silly not to consider it, right?

but something to think about if there was demand for the other boards and hardware??

I’m not sure that would necessarily be a good idea. At the moment it is “Direct” and it’s for a Pi. Nice and simple. Switching around the boot firmware shouldn’t prove to be that difficult, and there’s a pretty good chance that those who have RISC OS running on other boards may well have done this sort of thing before.

[extra bonus, the Pi’s startup is not like anything else so it’s perfectly possible to make a dual boot image to support two different machines]

@ Tom, David: As I’ve not set up a machine before using the Pi-style Loader folder/partition configuration, will it be able to boot up with a copy of the Wandboard ROM in place of the Pi ROM in the Loader folder? Will it need any firmware files in the same way that the Pi & Beagle do?

@ Rick: Obviously the ROM is a standard dev ROM, so the licencing was more about the HD image and its included software, so I was thinking more along the lines of how the NutPi software was tied to the Pi hardware.

By the way, ShareFS works fine on a modern network, although it doesn’t appear to work (assuming it’s set up correctly) on RPCEmu with RODirect that I tested this afternoon. Networking and internet were fine, but not ShareFS – I couldn’t see my other machine on the network, so I turned Access off.

ShareFS works fine on a modern network, although it doesn’t appear to work on RPCEmu

That is (unfortunately) a limitation of RPCEmu.
Access should probably be disabled on the RPCEmu ROdirect bundle.

Wandboard: Boot on a different way. The ROM is placed in a “unvisible” area of the first sd card. There is a file in the package to create but if you have a running system it will be unchanged. There is not a problem to use RODirect. Have do it. Write a card and copy the RISC OS part to your harddisc by using the second cart slot or configure the second card as your bootdrive to test. Loader in !Boot you can remove. As I remember there was one path to change in !Boot.Choices.Boot if the FileCore part has a different name … look at the errormessage on start.

Beagle, Panda & Co (also Pi4): Change the bootfiles in !Boot.Loader.

Thanks Raik, that was just the information I was looking for. :-)

Grahame – whilst I don’t want to come across too “ogre-ish”, I’d gently point out that there’s a big overlap between the people who develop (and earn a living through developing) the wandboard RISC OS port, and those who put in time (free-of-charge) for Direct.

If you were to join the iMX6 (Wandboard) support scheme, you’d not only get our Wandboard disc + image (very similar to RISC OS direct), but also full support, updates, bonus items (various items get given away/made available to our users… ARMbook users just got PineBrowse [JS/HTML5/CSS browser], for example) and so on. Crikey, I’d even be prepared to make up a Direct version for you if you preferred that to the ARMX6 branding. You’d also be supporting Direct that you use on the various devices by helping fund the people who give their time to make it happen.

I’m already in the support scheme with my ARMX6, but I didn’t want to make a copy of the card from that machine, partly for the hassle in taking it out of use to open it up, and also for honesty reasons. I’m only going to be using my Wandboard for occasional testing, such as trying out MessengerPro in an IMAP configuration to see what the pitfalls are before committing to a change on the ARMX6 for example. I’m also in the Beagleboard support scheme from an earlier BB-Xm purchase, but I probably won’t go back to using that board now. I’ve had a quick go with the RODev bundle in RPCEmu, but the lack of ShareFS is an issue for me. Starting up with a RODev install as a clean machine, unsullied by other installed software, tweaks and quirks would make it a useful temporary testbed for the odd occasions that it would be needed for.

OK, drop me an email, Graham, and I’ll see what I can come up with :)

Will do, thanks.

ShareFs works fine for me with RPCEmu on Win 10, using the easy start build linked above, you just need a different network set up from the default. I’ve just follow the guide at https://www.marutan.net/rpcemu/manual/net-win.html as far as creating the bridged connection, and I can now see my PI via RPCEmu.

ARMbook users just got PineBrowse [JS/HTML5/CSS browser], for example

I did not see that on my ARMbook :)

I did not see that on my ARMbook

You have to go to the downloads site for your ARMbook as outlined in your guide.

You have to go to the downloads site for your ARMbook as outlined in your guide.

Thanks! Not very fast, but it doesn’t crash.

It is a little slow to get to the iconbar as the storage media is SDCard but once there it is not to shabby in the speed stakes.

I cannot get !PineBrowse to run on my Armbook. It always says abort on data transfer at &46AE7ED4. I remove the !SharedLibs application from !Boot.Resources, and I remove the SharedULib module from !System, temporarily, before trying it. Still no joy.

I cannot help as I don’t have PineBrowse, however, what do the following commands say?

*Where &46AE7ED4
*ShowRegs
*MemoryI PC -20 +40

I cannot help as I don’t have PineBrowse, however, what do the following commands say?

*Where &46AE7ED4
*ShowRegs
*MemoryI PC -20 +40
</pre>

and

*SOMAddress pc