Pi screenmodes

Sorry if this seems a silly question as I’ve not been keeping up although I’m vaguely aware some work was done on video before xmas, but, on my PI, with RO 5.21 it always started in a high res mode, and the Display Manager listed ‘Raspberry Pi Built In’ (as I recall), and offered a selection of screen modes.
Now, having moved to 5.23 it always boots in 640×480 and no alternative modes are available in Display Manager. After every boot I have to go to the Screen plugin and choose an MDF to set the mode, but it is never remembered.
If it’s significant I run mostly headless via VNC so a monitor is rarely connected when the PI boots, although even connected I still end up with 640×480.
So the question is, is this expected behaviour, and is there an easy way to make it behave like it did on 5.21 booting high res and offering the pi built in modes?

It sounds like it’s not saving CMOS settings. Type this at the CLI:

SaveCMOS $.!Boot.Loader.CMOS

Also open up !Boot.Loader.CONFIG/TXT and add these lines if they’re not already present:

ramfsfile=CMOS
ramfsaddr=0x508000

Reboot and hopefully it’ll retain the settings.

Aha! I guess I lost the cmos somewhere along the way, I had neither a CMOS file or those lines in config/txt
It now boots back to the mode i’d selected. That’ll do. Thank you!

Earlier versions stored the CMOS in the ROM file (and had a chance of corrupting it and leaving the system unbootable). A few months ago the behaviour was changed – one of these things that was documented at the time, but easy to miss if you come along “late”!

I’ve obviously done something stupid, as I’ve got the same problem. I updated my SD card to the latest OS and firmware and then merged the latest !Boot within RISC OS. Now I can’t save CMOS settings. I’ve taken the steps above, but on a reboot all settings are still lost. Config.txt has the necessary lines in it. When I use the Configure app to set monitor resolution etc, a new CMOS file is created in the root directory of my SD card, not in !Boot.Loader, which can’t be right. Any idea what I’ve done wrong?

My best guess, for where you’re at now, just copy the CMOS file you have into !Boot.Loader then use the screen configure plugin and reboot.

Thanks Will. Tried that, with no success. I’m wondering if I somehow managed to move or corrupt the Boot.Loader file, so that the OS can’t find it anymore.

Anyway, I’ve rolled back to RO5.21 for the time being, and will probably wait until RC15 to try again :)

I’m wondering if I somehow managed to move or corrupt the Boot.Loader file, so that the OS can’t find it anymore.

I’ve been caught out by a similar problem and found that SystemDisc can detect and remedy such problems very easily. It told me I had a duplicate in the wrong place and that was what I was using and instructed me to delete etcetera. HTH.