New Install on RPI 3 issues

I am about to give up on this.. Trying to installed RISC OS on my Raspberry PI 3 and having issues.. Doing searches is not getting any answers so I thought I would try here..

I have a Fresh 16GB Samsung EVO Class 10 Micro SD card.. Downloaded the RISC OS 15 image from this site and wrote the image to the card which was formatted with FAT32.. Insert the card in my Pi3 which has an optical mouse and US keyboard plugged in and Ethernet cable. I get a screen that says, Machine startup has not completed successfully: ‘Escape’

If I click cancel, I get a grey background desktop which most things don’t work.. If I click retry and just does it all over again.. I tried pressing the escape key a bunch of times before the boot screen but nothing changes..

I’ve tried re-downloading the disk image, cleaning my SD card and reformatting.. Nothing helps..

Does this not work on the Raspberry PI 3?

Do you have a network cable plugged in? If not it takes a while to boot. I assume you’re rushing and hitting the Esc key, no?

The image contains all the formating, so doesn’t matter what the card is formatted as, the image will rewrite the tables. I’m running fine on Pi 3.

Working absolutely fine here. What power supply have you got? Have you had the Pi working with any other operating system?

If you’ve got other keyboards or mice worth trying switching them, likewise PSU if you have any other available.

I also have had it running fine on a Pi3.

One more thing I would add/reiterate is to definitely check your keyboard – some of them can be quite power hungry when used with a Pi.

It also works on my Pi 3.

Another thing to consider is whether the SD card is supported by the Pi 3 itself and to possibly determine if the card is in good working order. I’m assuming this can be done by checking their website . In a similar vein to what the Pi Foundation recommends you could always purchase a card from the ROOL Store, as I did to rule out card compatibility issues. The link is on the right hand side of this page and at least you’ll know that you have a compatible card and RISC OS is ready to go.

Another thought. Have you tried running Raspbian on the card to check it works?

Downloaded the RISC OS 15 image from this site and wrote the image to the card which was formatted with FAT32.

What with? Win32Diskimage? !SystemDisc? You have to ensure that the boot sector gets loaded with the right stuff. I do not think that happens with a simple write to disk.

I have RISC OS running on an Rpi3 with a 54Gbyte free wimpslot. I got this by formatting the SD card with Hform and then using SystemDisc.

I had my Pi3 running with Jessie, Ubuntu, Windows 10 LoT and LibreELEC.. All ran fine.. I am using the 5v 2.5a power supply that came with my CanaKit.. I will try a different keyboard and mouse but they work fine with Jessie..

I used Win32DiskImager to write the image to the card.. tried it multiple times getting the same results.. Even tried using my Windows Surface Pro 3 to write the image to disk..

I will order the card from ROOL, but I’m in the US, so it will take awhile to get here.. :(

On your Windows box, insert your microSD card. Open a Run dialog (Win key + R) and type “diskpart” without quotes.

In diskpart type:

list disk

CAREFULLY make note of which drive is your microSD by the size. Seriously be careful. Select the wrong drive and your could wipe your harddrive. Assuming it’s drive 1…

select disk 1

then

clean all

This might take a little while, but it will write all 0 to the drive and clean it thoroughly. When done, exit diskpart. If Windows asks to format the drive, ignore it. Run Win32DiskImager and write the latest RiscOS image to it.

You didn’t answer my question about the network cable though. I mention it because I had a similar experience.

Sorry.. I do have a network cable plugged in.. Not hitting the escape key at all.. I did try to hit escape at the boot up screen but nothing changes..

I will try a different keyboard and mouse but they work fine with Jessie..

RISC OS isn’t Linux. I have a wireless keyboard + trackball unit that works fine with RISC OS but seems to be broken in every other Linux release that I try.

I will order the card from ROOL, but I’m in the US, so it will take awhile to get here.. :(

I’d try a different keyboard/mouse (or no keyboard/mouse) before wasting money on an SD card. If the error message is “Escape” then the computer almost certainly thinks you pressed the Escape key, changing your SD card isn’t likely to affect that.

It boots up just fine without ethernet cable plugged in.. If I plug it in, I get the error message again..

Tried a different keyboard and a wireless mouse.. Also tried using USB power from my desktop PC..

It boots up just fine without ethernet cable plugged in

I did not see that coming. RO’s DHCP is quirky, it could be something like that?

RISC OS isn’t Linux. I have a wireless keyboard + trackball unit that works fine with RISC OS but seems to be broken in every other Linux release that I try.

And I once had a mouse that worked in Windows, Mac OS and Linux but would immediately crash RISC OS with “FileCore in use” as soon as I moved the pointer. Fortunately it’s fixed with modern ROMs :)

It boots up just fine without ethernet cable plugged in

Actually something similar did happen to me! My switch uplink was disconnected so my RO box couldn’t contact my DHCP daemon over the network and it froze on boot. I figured it out and fixed the uplink, but maybe your DHCP server/router is unreachable?

If it boot all the way to the desktop without a network cable then you should check the network setting in the boot configuration to make sure that they are set correctly
they should be set in Internet configuration interfaces and should be set to etherUSB right click on configure on the right then make sure the via DHCP radio button is selected, then hit set, close and save it will ask to reset later or reset now make sure you have reinsert the RJ45 cable and reset.

Downloaded the RISC OS 15 image from this site and wrote the image to the card which was formatted with FAT32.

This does not make sense. The RISC OS RC15 image is not formatted with FAT32. What software did you use to write the ‘.img’ file to the SD card? Win32DiskImager would be OK for example.

If you get to the grey desktop, double-click !Boot, Network and Internet (to bring up the ‘Internet configuration’ window) and untick ‘enable tcp/ip protocol’ and select ‘Save’ and ‘Reset now’. You now have a functioning desktop with no internet. Now go back and tinker with the network settings (default is DHCP) and try again. Try a static IP address (much faster start up).

This does not make sense

“I used Win32DiskImager to write the image to the card”

Try without Internet and without any USB peripheral (mouse, keyboard, other). It can take a long time, but it should boot. Nota: did you try with another card? Samsung Evo should work perfectly, but one of mine can’t be written correctly from my PC.

Hi,
I’m facing a problem with my RiscOS install on the RP3.
Internet Connection is really slow, when downloading with setsurf I just get about 8kb/s whereas my normal speed is about 10Mb/s on Windows/Linux PC.
The RP3 is connected with cable via ethernet, DHCP on.
Second problem is that disc operations while copying files are very slow as well.
Starting netsurf for example takes about 30 seconds.
What can I do to improve this?
Any advices are welcome.

Internet Connection is really slow, when downloading with setsurf I just get about 8kb/s whereas my normal speed is about 10Mb/s on Windows/Linux PC.

Try saving to a RAM disc to see if it’s faster. Run !Boot on the root of your SD to load configuration and use Discs to setup a RAM disc. I get the feeling your SD card is the problem, but lets check.

Hi James,
thanks for your help, I tried it that way and surprisingly right after I drag the downloaded icon to ram: download speed increases drastically.
So problem seem to be the SD-card. I’ve prepared the card using my windows pc installing the .img with discimage32.
Is there anything I could have done wrong that way?
I’ll try another SD-card later on.

Is there anything I could have done wrong that way?

No, not really. Not all SD cards are created equal. To be fair they weren’t designed to run an operating system from. Because this is the case, performance can vary wildly.

I save files to a USB drive to cut down on writes to the SD card.

Not all SD cards are created equal

This is true. When Microsoft wrote Windows Phone 7, manufacturers asked for the ability to put SD cards into the phones. Microsoft complied, but because of the nature of WP7, they had to do a RAID-like setup so it would actually be useful. Problem was, not all SD cards worked. You could have 2 cards of the same make and model and one would work and one wouldn’t. Microsoft could tell why.

I save files to a USB drive to cut down on writes to the SD card.

I actually have my hd4 on USB-to-SD. Pi SD interface is slow, it’s much faster over USB.

I actually have my hd4 on USB-to-SD. Pi SD interface is slow, it’s much faster over USB.

In my experience, the Pi SD interface is much faster than USB. IIRC, SDFS can transfer data faster than 100 MB/s, you won’t see such speed over USB 2.0 (physically limited to 60 MB/s, but in practice much slower).

IIRC, SDFS can transfer data faster than 100 MB/s, you won’t see such speed over USB 2.0 (physically limited to 60 MB/s, but in practice much slower).

SDFS is great, but Pi interface is not. USB is faster for RPi. You may be able to increase SD speeds by overclocking and thereby speeding up SD datalines. You’re looking at about 30MB/s for a high quality microSD on a standard clocked RPi. You may also find Pi Zero SD is faster than a Pi 3 because Pi0 is overclocked out the box.

Problem solved.
I wrote the image to a second SD-card and everything is fine and running fast.
Thanks for your help, now my Risc OS is enjoyable.
(I started 20 years back with a A3010)