Wi-Fi in 5.30

RISC OS 5.30 is here! One of the features listed in the release announcement is “Out of the box WiFi support for those models which have the chip on board”. Great! Now, how do we use it? :)

I would have expected to see something under Configure/Network/Internet/Interfaces, but it only shows the wired “Ethernet over USB”. I took a look in *Modules and I didn’t see anything Wi-Fi related in there, although i confess that I only eyeballed it and didn’t do a proper search.

There are some files in the new !Boot.Resources.Firmware directory, but I don’t think I’m supposed to touch them.

The Welcome to RISC OS Pi document has a prominent link to “Getting connected online”, but it 404s.

Am I missing something obvious here? :)

The Welcome to RISC OS Pi document has a prominent link to “Getting connected online”, but it 404s.

The Getting connected page loads OK here, from both the top menu bar and from the smaller link on the front page.

I would have expected to see something under Configure/Network/Internet/Interfaces

And I see BCM43 WiFi there (on a Pi 4B at least).

Hmm. The connect/html file is not present in Documents.Welcome on my SD card. I created it from an image that was here ~1 hour ago but has now vanished.

I downloaded it from the Raspberry Pi Imager. Maybe after breakfast I’ll scrape the text from the HTML and put it on the wiki. Later: scraped to here after many attempts at getting Textile to do alt text on centred images, phew!

It seems that things are in flux at the moment, so I’ll just leave it all alone for a day or two and let it all stabilise :)

The WiFi is working here with a vanilla, SystemDisc created, OS5.30. Not Imager that is. No issues at all.

(The specific firmware referred to in the ReadMe seems not to be required, firmware date 17Apr24 suffices.)

I would have posted from the Pi4 but Iris fails to stay logged in to the forum, but then neither does Safari on the Mac!!!

My System will not login with a connection refused even though it shows that there is an active connection.
It works great on the ROD wifi stack with wifi.

Pi4 WiFi and Iris.

I created [my SD card] from an image that was here ~1 hour ago but has now vanished.

The image has returned, and has changed (it has a different MD5 checksum). I’ll give it a go later.

Edit: I’ve done a diff between the two images, and the only difference is the addition of connect/html.

I have had a further go this time using the updated, 2024-04-28 09:08:08, Pi Image

Worked here.

The instructions are now present in the Welcome, Getting connected online link.

Is this the RODev WiFi integrated into RISC OS, or something completely different?

On my 4té2, WiFi worked out of the box, with a 99% signal. It’s a great achievement.

But…

Displaying a directory with 24 JPEGs on my NAS (through PhotoFiler) took 76 seconds.
Displaying the same directory with a wired connection took 2 seconds.
Taking the decision to disable WiFi took 1 second.

I’ve tried installing the WiFi components on a Pi 400 with RISC OS 5.30 using the standalone archive, but I’m not currently able to connect to a network. After clicking Connect in the WiFi manager, I just get a “Timed out while connecting” error.

Pi 400 with RISC OS 5.30 using the standalone archive, but I’m not currently able to connect to a network. After clicking Connect in the WiFi manager, I just get a “Timed out while connecting” error.

My Pi400 rev 0 does the same! The card was working just fine in the RPi4.

It tried the ROOL WIFi on my PI3 machine.
Several access points are listed but not the one on my rooter.
When I tried these access points I got depending on the access port “Timed out while connecting”, “Illegal argument” or a machine freeze.

I’m pleased to say that wifi works on my 3B+. I already had the latest beta 5.31, and I’ve added the newer firmware files and the “On board WiFi drivers” from the Pi download page.

The only oddity I can see is that the “Reconnect whenever in range” button is greyed out when it’s connected. I don’t understand why it should ever be greyed out.

But if that’s all that’s wrong – it’s good! Progress!

Since the upgrade to 5.30 and having had Wifi running for a few moments (now reverted to wired), I get this when rebooting:

Booting stops until I click Cancel. It must be something in PreDesk, I think, but I’ve no idea what. Someone?

Just looked at the ZeroPain log, and I’m getting lots of entries from the DHCP module.

@Paul: Which WiFi are you trying to run? ROOL or ROD?
I suspect you may have updated to 5.30 when you were using the ROD IP6 stack, as I saw that screen at boot when I tried that.

I also see that I’m only getting a link-local IPv6 address. On the wired connection, I used to get a globally routable one.

@Martin: Yes, I use the ROD stack. Should I erm… remove it (if I knew how) and put the ROOL one instead (if I knew how)?

Some diagnostics from the RPi400 which fails to connect to WiFi and the RPi4B which is OK.

Different Interface controller??

RPi400

*WBWInfo
WLanBW interface statistics

wbw0: BCM43456, motherboard, up

Interface driver    : wbw
Interface unit      : 0
Interface location  : Motherboard
Interface EUI48     : DC:A6:32:DB:3A:06
Interface controller: BCM43456
Running time        : 0d, 0h 3m 51s
Interface media     : 802.11 channel 0, 0.0GHz, half duplex
Packets sent        : 8
Packets received    : 51
Bytes sent          : 368
Bytes received      : 5151
Send errors         : 0
Receive errors      : 0
Undelivered packets : 51

Standard clients:

Type 8035 (AddrLvl 01, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc3a2164/300035cc)
Type 0806 (AddrLvl 01, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc3a2164/300035cc)
Type 0800 (AddrLvl 02, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc3a2164/300035cc)
*WBWTest
wbw0 selftest passed
*

RPi4B

*WBWInfo
WLanBW interface statistics

wbw0: BCM43455, motherboard, up

Interface driver    : wbw
Interface unit      : 0
Interface location  : Motherboard
Interface EUI48     : DC:A6:32:B1:56:A5
Interface controller: BCM43455
Running time        : 0d, 0h 1m 37s
Interface media     : 802.11 channel 36, 5.0GHz, half duplex
Packets sent        : 13
Packets received    : 60
Bytes sent          : 755
Bytes received      : 7778
Send errors         : 0
Receive errors      : 0
Undelivered packets : 41

Standard clients:

Type 8035 (AddrLvl 01, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc3a2164/300035cc)
Type 0806 (AddrLvl 01, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc3a2164/300035cc)
Type 0800 (AddrLvl 02, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc3a2164/300035cc)
*
*

Firmware for both controllers appears to be present in Resources.Firmware

Yes, I use the ROD stack. Should I erm… remove it (if I knew how) and put the ROOL one instead (if I knew how)?

So just rerun the ROD stack installer and choose the uninstall option from the menu.

If you are updating your boot sequence at anytime then I would suggest uninstalling the ROD stack and also Pinboard 2 as well before doing so and then reinstalling afterwards as things can get really messed up.

As always backup is your friend and saviour :-)

I use the ROD stack. Should I erm… remove it (if I knew how) and put the ROOL one instead (if I knew how)?

The ROD Installer also has the uninstaller.

However someone has reported that the ROOL WiFi can co-exist with the ROD stack.

ROD’s InetSetup 0.60a has been overwritten with ROOL’s 0.63 version at !Boot.Resources.Configure.!InetSetup.

The ROD version is in their installer at ROD_TCPIP_704a/zip.!Install.Boot.Resources.Configure.!InetSetup.

Am I missing something obvious here? :)

I think the answer to that is “yes”! I tried the SD card in my other Pi (Pi 4) and the interface and network showed up as expected, and I was able to successfully connect. I then moved the card back to the original Pi 3 and it all vanished again.

I bought this Pi a number of years ago, specifically for RISC OS use, and I suspect that I bought a non-Wi-Fi model as I believe it was an optional extra at one point. Does anyone know how to double-check whether it’s a Wi-Fi-capable one or not?

Edit: Nope, that was a red herring. I’ve found the box, and it’s a Pi 3 Model B, part number 896-8660. According to the spec sheet it has “802.11 b/g/n Wireless LAN and Bluetooth 4.1” (listed under “Processor” for some reason).