SystemDisc Docs

I bought System Disc over a year ago. I think I downloaded its docs at the same time. However, since then I had a memory stick fail, and now I cannot find those docs anywhere. Piccolo’s website seems to have expired. Can anybody send me a copy? System disc just tells me that I have a valid system disc – it does not tell me how to reformat it.

There’s an explanation for the website, plus some possible contact details for Ben, over on this thread.

I put my micro-SD card into a USB stick, which RISC OS sees as SCSI::0. If I run SystemDisc and select SCSI::0 it just announces that the card is already a valid system disc, without giving me any further visible options, such as reformatting. Should I reformat the card to FAT32, say on Windows XP, and try again with SystemDisc?

If you want to start with a clean slate you could set the first 4k or so to zeros.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx count=8

OK, I reformatted the card to FAT32, then tried SystemDisc. It asked me to populate the 48Mb FAT
partition, which I did, with the seven files from
SDFS::RISCOSPi.$.Sources.RC15.riscos-2017-04-13/15/zip.
It announced that the card was now a valid system disc. Indeed, the Rpi3 ran RISC OS from it. BUT, RISC OS was still restricted to only 2 Gb. No change.

Obviously I am missing something. But what? Should I be formatting the card first with !HForm as ADFS or something? Remember, I only have !SystemDisc but no documentation to tell me how to use it (software authors, please put adequate documentation inside the application directory, not outside!).
Thanks.

The RISC OS size is whatever your last run of !HForm produced. So first run !HForm to format to full size, then run !SystemDisc to produce the FAT “partition”.

Have not a Manual here but the following is working.

Write the 2GB image to a bigger card or use temporally a smaller one. It is not possible to “blow up” the 2GB on a bigger card.
Make a backup to a other destination and move the Loader folder outside this backup (!Boot).
A good choice is wrote zeros to the card you will use to make it clean.
Format the card to Filecore with !HForm or use “Launche HForm” in !Systemdisc.
If the card is formatted use “Refresh” in !SystemDisc
Build your bootpartition.
Refill your card and the Loader folder inside !Boot with your saved files.
Note: Never drop a !Boot with a Loader-folder inside over the new created !Boot. It will destroy the bootpartition.
If you do this, it is possible to repair this with !SystemDisc but better is copy separatly ;-)

OK, I formatted the card to 58Gb with !Hform. Then I ran SystemDisc, and loaded the seven files from Loader into the boot partition. Now the SD card when run on Rpi3 appears to have nothing in !Boot except Loader. Where have all the “HardDisc” components gone?

When you say

Refill your card …

what do you mean? How do I do this, precisely? I have

SDFS::RISCOSPi.$.Sources.RC15.riscos-2017-04-13/15/zip

which contains three files:

SDFS::RISCOSPi.$.Sources.RC15.riscos-2017-04-13/15/zip.riscos-2017-04-13-RC15/img
RC14-15_changes/txt
ReadMe/txt

and I have !SystemDisc 1.01, all on an Rpi2 with RO5.23. I have a 64Gb micro-SD card, and USB 2 card holder. My intention is to produce a card with RC15, together with most of the stuff I have on my Rpi2, that will work on either Rpi2 or Rpi3. Are there any vital tools that I am lacking?
Maybe the choices I made with !Hform were incorrect? It is a singularly unfriendly piece of software.

Where have all the “HardDisc” components gone?

They’ve gone away because you formatted the disc.

SystemDisc will set up the Loader partition, but it won’t put anything else back in place, that’s left for you to sort out.

As you’ve spotted, the RC15 zip contains an SD card image, and it’s not easy to read the contents of that image directly under RISC OS. So if you’ve just got the img file then it will be hard to get the boot sequence and all of the other important files out of it. That’s why Raik suggests writing the image to a spare card (or writing it to the card you want to use, and then making a backup somewhere). That way, once you’ve run SystemDisc to set up the partitions on the target card, you can copy all the files over, allowing you to retain the partitions that SystemDisc created (writing the image file directly to the card would obviously clobber them).

Just be careful with the “Loader” file, like Raik says.

Thanks. I was imagining that SystemDisc would read the image file and know what to put in the boot partition and what to put in the adfs partition.

.. you can copy all the files over,

But how? When the card is in the USB cardholder, only the boot partition is visible to RISC OS. If its not in the cardholder but powering the Rpi3 it is too late – the Rpi3 needs the adfs files to be already there to boot up, as well as !Boot.Loader. !SystemDisc does not appear to give me any means of loading the adfs files onto the card. Is my copy of !SystemDisc broken? How do I get the adfs files onto the card?

Your copy of Systemdisc is not broken as it is not used to copy things over to the ADFS formated part of your SDCard as that is not it’s function.

If you have used SystemDisc correctly you will have a FAT formatted partition and a ADFS format for the rest of the card on the new card you have.

You can gain access to the ADFS formated element by adjust mouse button selection on the drive icon as opposed to the normal select mouse button selection that opens up the FAT partition.

So boot up your Pi3 with the card that has RC15 on it i.e. the 2GB image file card in the Pi3.

Insert the card you have formatted to be your new higher capacity card in your reader.

If you have already copied the required RC15 boot loader files to this card then just adjust mouse click on the drive icon.

Now do a normal select mouse selection on the drive that is in the Pi3 and copy over the required files remebering NOT to copy over the Loader folder within !Boot. Best way to copy !Boot is to shift select on it’s icon and open it up and copy over the individual files.

But how? When the card is in the USB cardholder, only the boot partition is visible to RISC OS. If its not in the cardholder but powering the Rpi3 it is too late

You can either open a task window and use RMKill Fat32FS or, the easier way, adjust-click on the icon bar icon! I was amazed when I discovered that, but I guess it is documented somewhere, I’ve just not seen it.

Edit: Oops, arrived at the same time as Doug’s!

If you have a USB medium with both a FAT and a Filecore partition on it (like RC15), and after clicking the filer icon you only see the FAT part, it is often possible to directly open the filecore part via the cli:

*filer_opendir scsi::0.$

or on whatever drive number other than 0 your USB stick/card reader appears.

You need a second device e.g. a small card with a working RISC OS installation and the second bigger one in a card reader.
You can also made a complete backup of all the files at the card to a pendrive.
SystemDisc create only the needed structur (“partitions”) at a card or what ever to use the full space.
You need to copy all the files back to the card after SystemDisc ist ready.

Edit: Uups, I’m to slow ;-)

If you have a “SystemDisc” card in a USB cardreader, you con open the filecore partiton with a Adjust click.

The RC15 SD card image has about 300Mbytes of files in the filecore partition. Boot up your machine with the 2GB SD card image and set the RAM DIsc size to 400Mbytes. Copy all of the files to the RAM Disc but make sure you delete the image file RAM::RAMDisc0.$.!Boot.Loader. Now dismount the 2GB SD card and insert the 58GB SD card (which already has $.!Boot.Loader as created by SystemDisc and filled by you). Copy the files from RAM Disc to the larger card. Power off. Done.

Many thanks. I had not known about the Adjust-click trick.

I think I am making progress. I have used Win32DiskImager to put RC15 onto a spare 8Gb card. I find I can view its adfs partition on my RISC OS computer using adjust-click as recommended. But, a strange thing, I can see no $.!Boot.Choices.Boot directory in the adfs partition of the card. I have even repeated the Win32DiskImager procedure to make sure. Can my copy of riscos-2017-04-RC15.img be corrupt, or is this a strange artefact of SCSIFiler?

But, a strange thing, I can see no $.!Boot.Choices.Boot directory in the adfs partition of the card.

When first written the card does not have a !Boot.Choices.Boot folder, this gets populated when the card is first run, as the default !Boot can work for various versions of the OS, and so it pulls in the relevant files from the various Hook folders. The simple solution would be to boot from the 8GB SD card the first time, then use it to populate your bigger SD card afterwards.

Thanks Andrew. I should have realised something of the sort, seeing that there are various versions. I guess that most users also have their own variations on what ROOL provides. How to arrange matters to simplify upgrading is an interesting exercise :).

For completeness, the original tutorial is here.