RC14: recommended upgrade procedure?

I’d like to update my Pi Model 1B to the latest RISC OS firmware: do I simply overwrite the existing ROM image with the RC14 ROM image, and add lines to Config.txt as required (and if so, what), or should I take the RC14 SD card image as the starting point and sync the directories in my current card?

The problem is it depends on where you’re starting from.
Some ROM images depend on a later start.elf and may also depend on the other new files within ‘Loader’
Also dependant on how old your current disc image is ($.!Boot in particular) it may need updating.
Updating everything within Loader and the rest of the contents of $.!Boot may be enough

My Loader files (apart from the ROM) are all dated 01 Feb 2015: I updated the non-RISC OS firmware recently. I’ve cloned my SD card thus have a fall-back in case of show-stopping issues, so I’ve gone for just updating the ROM. So far everything seems to be working normally….

I’d like to update my Pi Model 1B to the latest RISC OS firmware: do I simply overwrite the existing ROM image with the RC14 ROM image, and add lines to Config.txt as required (and if so, what), or should I take the RC14 SD card image as the starting point and sync the directories in my current card?

I’ve just switched to RC14 from RC12.

I found that I could just use my existing cards and copy over the the new FAT bit with appropriate additions to CONFIG/TXT (Disable_Overscan=1 in my case), and the new RO disc image after deleting the RC12 old one.

Then I imaged the disc to provide for back-up copies!

A bit more complicated than that, re-building my Boot, but the advantage of using the new disc image is that certain other things have been updated as well!

A few things are (already) out-of-date on the image provided, notably the Fat32Fs and StrongEd.

Fat32Fs to avoid potential capitalisation problems with the FAT partition (real or imagined), and StrongEd because Fred says so!

Hope this is of some help!

A few things are (already) out-of-date on the image provided, notably the Fat32Fs and StrongEd.

I have just made up a new 32GB card using RC14 as the basis, and have noticed quite a few things in the third party area (apps etc) two years or so out of date (certainly some of my stuff is). Is all the third party stuff available through eg Packman or Store, so it is assumed users will upgrade once they get going?

I have just made up a new 32GB card using RC14 as the basis, and have noticed quite a few things in the third party area (apps etc) two years or so out of date (certainly some of my stuff is). Is all the third party stuff available through eg Packman or Store, so it is assumed users will upgrade once they get going?

RC14 was more of an incremental release – we did as much as we could in the time available but the primary focus was Pi 2 support and various other fixes/tidy-ups. We’re intending to have a more complete go at it for RISC OS 5.22 (assuming we manage to address the RISC OS Pi release in that at all).

I’ve since reverted to my pre-RC14 ROM on residual compatibility worries – not that anything showed up in use. I did have a go at imaging a spare RISC OS-formatted 4GB SD card using !CloneDisc, first changing the RC14 discimage filetype to &FCD: it reported that the number of sectors differed from the target card, thus a corrupted result was likely, so I didn’t proceed. I also noticed that the image was reported as Filecore E, whereas the target card format was E+. Is that significant? Also, my previous experience with RISC OS disc images is that the target card is formatted to whatever is the disc image size, regardless of its actual capacity: does that mean that imaging the RC14 image onto, say, a 4GB card will result in a 1875MB* RISC OS formatted size?
[*1875MB is the size of the unzipped RC14 discimage]