PandaboardPanda CMOS settings not being retained

I’ve now got a PandaBoard. Nippy isn’t it!
If I change any configurations they are not retained over a power off.
ReRunning !Configure (without powering down) shows them back at the original setting
I notice that the file CMOS in Loader does not have its date changed!
I’ve tried a ROM build of about a month ago and one I downloaded on Tuesday.
I’ve also tried both the ‘Stable’ disc Image and a beta from Tuesday.
I’ve got a CJE RTC Module and that is keeping time o.k.

Am I doing something wrong?

Try the following: Take your settings and SaveCMOS. Pick the CMOS from !Boot.Choices and copy to !Loader. Before I use the widget, it works.

Am I doing something wrong?

No, you’re not, ROOL were.

Here is the revision in which the SDCMOS module, which provided CMOS functionality for BeagleBoards and PandaBoards without the aid of additional hardware, was removed from the ROM builds for those machines. June 2013.

Here is the revision in which the bug which prompted the aforementioned removal was fixed. July 2013.

And here is the revision in which the drastic action of completely disabling CMOS support for all users without the CMOS add-on – such as yourself – was finally reverted. April 2014.

Nine months we’ve been without CMOS support. Nine months. Eight of them completely unnecessarily.

Worse, a stable release happened in that time period, which means the CMOS bug afflicts all of us who installed RISC OS 5.20 as well. Indeed, before this thread was started, I was planning to question why SDCMOS wasn’t included myself at some stage. At least it’s been fixed now.

ROOL and soft-CMOS have not had a happy history together, as anyone who remembers the screed I wrote on the subject back when the SD functionality was last pointlessly disabled for an extended period of time can attest.

I think I would like to write a news article on this so I’ll be in touch. I found it extremely difficult to understand the hierarchy of what was supposed to happen with CMOS settings on a machine with/without the widget; with/without the fatload cmos command and with/without the SDCMOS module unplugged and how to tell which environment the machine thought it was in. (The CMOS settings could be saved within the ROM itself (so its datestamp would change) in a file ‘cmos’ on the SD card (so its datestamp would change) or on the widget (so no datestamps would change)).