Upgrading Pi ROM image

Is there some special technique (or even a blindingly simple one) to upgrading the Pi with the latest RC?

I’ve tried the obvious i.e. downloading the official beta release (ROM image), extracting ‘riscos’, renaming it RISCOS/IMG and sticking it in RISCOSPi.$.!Boot.Loader replacing the RISCOS/IMG file there
but alas that renders the Pi unusable as it won’t even boot next time.

Sorry if this has already been covered — please give me a link if so.

thanks.

You’re on the right track, but you also need to download the latest HardDisc4 image and update your !Boot with the new files. If in doubt, make a backup of your card first :)

At this stage you only need to do that once to get the 5.21 support files on there. After that, you can update the ROM by itself.

as it won’t even boot next time.

If it says ‘Support for 5.20 not present’ then you do, indeed, need to update the HardDisc4 with the latest image. If you just get a blank screen, then you’ll need to update the FAT partition on another machine to make sure the Pi can see the ROM image.

My recommendation is to rename the old rom image (rather than delete it) and then copy the new rom image into !Boot.Loader under RISC OS. Make sure it is there before re-booting.

Chris H: thanks, yes I just get a blank screen. What exactly is meant by “updating the FAT partition?” though, and how? (Is it a case of editing a file on a non-RISC machine / reformatting etc.)

Also does that mean every time the ROM image is updated we have to update the partition?

Many Thanks
Chris.

Hi, terse because I’m in a queue for the cash machine. :-)
The card is in two partitions. The FileCore part that only RISC OS will see and the FAT part that is necessary to boot the thing.
Put the card into a PC, it will see the FAT part and you can update the firmware there.
Otherwise from RISC OS it is mapped as $.!Boot.Loader. Never delete that!

As you can’t boot, you will need to sort this out on a PC. Okay, I’m up, bye.

That doesn’t work unfort Rick – I’ve tried it, i.e. on a PC rename RISCOS.IMG oldRISCOS.IMG, download and unzip the new rom image on a PC, rename it RISCOS.IMG and copy it to the SD card (as the PC sees it i.e. the FAT partition). Putting it back into the Pi and switching on gives a blank screen. Going back to the PC and restoring the old rom image (i.e. delete RISCOS.IMG and renaming) oldRISCOS.IMG to RISCOS.IMG cures the problem at least enables me to get running again. But no success in making my Pi run the all new rom image.

Is there another way round it? Do we have to update something else besides the rom image file or something?

thanks, and hope you got your cash :)

Chris.

Just to be clear, when I say “the rom image” I mean the one which currently has the filename ’riscos’* inside the BCM2835/5/19/zip archive which is located here:

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/other-zipfiles

under (ROM downloads – Raspberry Pi)
thanks

(*Question: why is it not named RISCOS/IMG in the first place)

Going back to the PC and restoring the old rom image (i.e. delete RISCOS.IMG and renaming) oldRISCOS.IMG to RISCOS.IMG cures the problem at least enables me to get running again.

What this says is that what you are doing (on the PC) is correct, it is just specifically your system not liking the image file.

You are trying to load 5.19 from March? What are you currently running? I recall some of the firmware changed along the way – something to do with VCHIQ – so it may be that the early boot stuff (those are the other files in the FAT part) does not match up with what RISC OS expects.

Indeed, the help page specifically says: “That is why a ‘standard’ SD card image is recommended for the Raspberry Pi, rather than a ‘home brew’ of the various components – it avoids a lot of difficulties in support.”.

Therefore… I think we need to know what you are currently running as well.

[this is one of the ‘quirks’ of the Pi, the low level firmware is liable to change as developments take place, the system has yet to mature in that respect]

But no success in making my Pi run the all new rom image.

…? You said above “inside the BCM2835/5/19/zip archive”, but the new one is 5.21, isn’t it?

(*Question: why is it not named RISCOS/IMG in the first place)

Because RISC OS doesn’t use extensions, and because it is only a convention (not a necessity) to give image files a .img extension.

Ok,

one of my Pis has the SD card I purchased from the ROOL shop.

The second is one from the R-Comp PiPlus support scheme.

Neither are “home brew”

however

they now both have identical files in the FAT partition (because I got my fingers burned when trying to upgrade the ROOL one so ended up copying the files from the PiPlus FAT partition onto the ROOL one to get it working again) – RISC OS 5.19 (11-Jan-13) according to the “About the Operating System”.

Yes, I am trying to load 5.19 from March (official beta release) from the downloads page, I haven’t tried the alpha 5.21 one (Development) although I’m willing to give it a go in case it works some magic! I’ll report back here.

I’m not that desperate to get the latest version because I could wait for the next update on the PiPlus support scheme, just interested to keep up with the developments, that’s all!

And thanks for the clarification regarding riscos vs. RISCOS/IMG naming convention. I was under the impression that it had to have a file extension for the low level stuff on the Pi to recognise it.

thanks for all your help :)

And thanks for the clarification regarding riscos vs. RISCOS/IMG naming convention. I was under the impression that it had to have a file extension for the low level stuff on the Pi to recognise it.

If you look at the file ‘config.txt’ you will find that it explicitly states what name the operating system image will have:

Dir. SDFS::RISCOS.$.!Boot.Loader Option 02 (Run) 
CSD  SDFS:"Unset"
Lib. SDFS:"Unset"
URD  SDFS:"Unset"
BOOTCODE/BIN     WR/     DOS       21:04:18 31-Oct-2012   17 kbytes
CONFIG/TXT       WR/     Text      00:00:00 01-Jan-2013   72  bytes
FIXUP/DAT        WR/     DOS       21:04:18 31-Oct-2012    5 kbytes
LICENCE/BROADCOM WR/     DOS       12:15:42 27-Sep-2012 1447  bytes
RISCOS/IMG       WR/     DOS       10:59:34 07-Mar-2013 2376 kbytes
START/ELF        WR/     DOS       21:04:18 31-Oct-2012 2297 kbytes

The contents of ‘CONFIG/TXT’ are:

fake_vsync_isr=1
gpu_mem=64
init_emmc_clock=100000000
kernel=RISCOS.IMG

I find it easier to update the ROM image under RISC OS. Download the rom image zip file under RISC OS, open the zip file with !SparkFS. Open SDFS::RISCOS.$.!Boot.Loader so that you can see the old rom image, rename it, copy the new rom image (called ‘riscos’) and then copy that inside Loader to ‘RISCOS/IMG’ (note the capitals). You should now have the files ‘oldrom’, ‘riscos’ and ‘RISCOS/IMG’ in there. Switch off (do not use CTRL-SHIFT-f12 as this will anticipate the older ROM image still being on the SD card and try to write to it to store the cmos settings) and then on again. Don’t use fat32fs to access the FAT partition containing the riscos rom image (bitter experience and a problem I don’t understand).

Thanks Chris, yes the penny had just dropped that the name of the rom image is given in the line which begins ‘kernel=…’ in CONFIG/TXT file.

Now, I said in my previous post I’d try the alpha rom image 5.21…I did but no luck – same result, blank screen when I switch on the Pi :(

That leaves me wondering whether some of those other files in !Boot.Loader need updating? FIXUP/DAT or START/ELF maybe? I can’t find any reference to them here on the ROOL site.

Incidentally, the only PC I have here is one which I don’t have admin access to (it’s a works one). The SD card image from the Pi website is probably not an option as I suspect any software which needs to be installed for writing SD Card images will need admin access :(

Anyway as I say I am sure there will be an update out soon on the PiPlus support scheme so maybe I’ll wait till then.

thanks.

There is a 5.21 beta development ROM (release candidate RC11) for the raspberry Pi now on the downloads page. If you want to move from 5.19 to 5.21 then you will need to update your HardDisc4 image. The method described below assumes that you have a Raspberry Pi computer with the RC6, RC7 or RC8 disc image on the SD card as your boot disc.

If you download the new HardDisc4 image and decompress it (which will create a directory ‘HardDisc4’) then you can use the following obey files to update your image without having to lose all the extras in the SD card image (the Raspberry Pi disc image has much more than the standard HardDisc4 stuff) and things you have since added (you may need to add again any items you added using the boot configuration plug-in by using the ‘Add to Apps’, ‘Look at’ and ‘Run’ windows:

Run this file to add the new files – you need to change the first line to specify where the new files are located by setting the ‘LIB’ directory to it.

Run this file to update the files whose contents have changed, then edit the file !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk.Configure.Monitor so that the first character is ‘|’ not ‘L’ and to express your preferred screen resolution in the line below. Again you need to change the first line of the obey file ‘ChangedFiles’ to make the library directory the location where you unzipped the HardDisc4 image to.

Run this file to get rid of the files no longer needed.

I have tested this on an RC8 SD card image on the Pi and it works. One thing that is different under 5.21 is that the splash screen is shown with a blank text window for some time (nearly 10 seconds) before you see the RISC OS ROM booting up.

The items that have changed in HardDisc4 since circa 5.18 to bring things up to 5.2x (frozen between 2nd June 2013 and 9th July 2013) are described here (some of these changes had already been made before the RC6, RC7 and RC8 disc images, which are all the same, were released).

In case anyone is interested, the method I used was to take a standard RC8 Pi SD card image, remove all the files in the filecore partition (except !Boot.Loader) and copy on the October 2012 HardDisc4 image, boot it into RISC OS 5.19 and then do a disc catalogue (using !Cat). I then did the same with the 2 June 2013 HardDisc4 image but this time put the 5.21 ROM into !Boot.Loader before booting it for the first time and doing a disc catalogue. I then compared (in an Excel spreadsheet which generated the necessary delete/copy commands) the file names and contents (by taking a CRC of each file and ignoring the file and directory datestamps) to identify files to delete, files to change and files to add.