RISC OS and Wifi

Unfortunately I’m not having a lot of luck with WiFi on RISC OS :(

RISC OS 5.30 on Raspberry Pi 3 and 4. Ok for a minute or so after the machine is on but then in the best case secnario “Couldn’t resolve host name” on Netsurf etc, worst case RISC OS just freezes over. Wifi icon on left of icon bar still shows green.

Anyone else experienced this and found a way to fix it? I wondered if there was a way to make WiFi “forget” all the connections so I can re-input the password and see if that makes a difference.

It could be my internet connection but I don’t think so, everything else in the house is working fine.

I’m minded to try the ROD TCP/IP stack to see if it makes a difference but thought I’d sound out on here first – as usual it will probably turn out to be something “simple” (I hope…)

thanks

Reattaching to the Wifi probably wont help. Check the network settings, particular the resolver ones. I had something like this when trying out WiFi set to use DHCP, where as the Ethernet was all set up manually to static addresses.

Thanks David, always had it on DHCP even under wired connection. Can you be more specific, how do you find the resolver settings?

When the Pi is the first thing to connect by wifi my mobile and internet radio set then connect momentarily to the network then disconnect themselves. Unchecking Interface Active to disable wifi on the Pi makes the phone and radio connect again and work fine.

OK so sadly I think I’ll have to abandon WiFi on RISC OS (again) but if I do find anything I’ll post here in case others are having same issues.

For the sake of completeness, maybe it is worth trying the ROD stack? Many people have reported a smoother ride with it, and it’ll give you a point of reference.

Have now installed ROD stack. And everything works. The ride is very smooth!

Thanks guys, not sure what’s wrong with the ROOL but it would be interesting to hear of other people’s experiences.

Lacking any time to play with RISC OS in the real world, I decided take my RISC OS Pi 4B to the trenches with me before New Year. This meant using WiFi instead Ethernet as I do normally, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience, although I didn’t have any DNS issues.

With the ROOL stack WiFi was slow and flaky. NetSurf downloads started at 8Kbs and slowly increased up to about 50KB/s, where as nomial speed was over 1MB/s (8Mb/s) measured from Linux, although wget from a TaskWindow could get around 250KB/s. The worst bit though was it was so unreliable, quite often not available after boot, and even when working a few seconds to minutes later it would stop. I managed to get it back by changing between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks which it presented separately even though they had the same SSID. Sometimes either would work, sometimes only the 2.4GHz. Luckily most of what I was doing was going through stuff I’d downloaded over the past few years and didn’t need much internet connectivity, or I would have had to give up.

I did have version 7.07 of the ROD stack with me, which I tried installing but hung the machine after every reboot. Luckily I had taken a copy of !Boot before installing it so was able to shift boot, the mouse didn’t work in the desktop, but luckily keyboard allowed me to rename from the F12 prompt. I don’t know what was causing that as soon as I was home I tried that !Boot again and it booted up OK, although Ethernet was connected this this time. I’ll have to see if I can keep it working until next time I’m on WiFi only, and see how well it works in comparison.

I have found that the ROD stack and ROOL WiFi manager work very well for me on my Pi 3B+ and 4B

I tried that !Boot again and it booted up OK, although Ethernet was connected this this time.

That suggests an experiment – connect the pi to an ethernet switch that doesn’t have any other connections. Then try with the pi not connected. A difference would indicate that the port needs to be capable of starting up for the stack to work.

Taking that further – could that also be the problem with intermittent wi-fi?

The intermittent WiFi was with the ROOL stack, the hanging was with the ROD stack.

How does this RO wifi compare with Linux RO wifi?