How to start when you know nothing?

Although I’m a very experienced RiscOS user (from 1986 or so) I have no clue how to handle this:

I’ve a RPi with an SD card that broke. I need a fresh one. I could buy one from ROOL, but as I have some cards left, I want to use one of those.

So I go to the Downloads:Raspberry Pi and download RISC OS Pi 5.24. I can’t find information about what to do with it. The Information page is blank.

So now I have a zip file on the desktop of my Mac and an SD card in the slot. The card is formatted as FAT16 (to do that on a Mac isn’t very difficult as long as you can find appropriate instructions).

I tried several things like dragging the zip to the SD and unzip it there (on my Mac).
Put the SD card with the unzipped file in a running Pi in the hope to unzip it there.
Download the file using a RiscOS machine and unzip it there…

But whatever I try, nothing works. I end up with a card that starts RiscOS, but until a certain moment. Then an * appears. When I type in ‘Desktop’ I have an unconfigured machine.

For a user who isn’t in the know, it is very hard to find out what should be done to get a running machine.

So I’m not only asking for some help to fix it. As I (or others) might need the information later again, I’m asking for a guide, written from the viewpoint of the people who do not know. Something like: do this, do that… And: when you see a rainbow screen or an *, this is how to solve it.

Oh, there might be a guide like this on this site. In that case I didn’t find it.

Hi,

It’s a bit old, but might this help? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Y51qf8-Yo

From memory, the only big change is to get the SD image from here (https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/raspberry-pi, big one, top of the page) rather than the Pi site.

There’s another one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkutK5udycQ but the guy speaks pretty rapidly with an (Indian?) accent. At least mine comes with captions. ;-)

I tried several things like dragging the zip to the SD and unzip it there (on my Mac).

Rule 1: Never unzip on anything but RISC OS. You lose all the filetype information!

Hi Rick,

I looked at your video, (very clear explanation), but for Windows. I have a Mac.

And I downloaded the file from the site you mentioned.

The guy with the Indian accent uses Windows as well.

There are (I hope) ways to do it with a Mac?

Rule 1: Never unzip on anything but RISC OS. You lose all the filetype information!

But if you know what filetype is needed, you can set the new type to the files. Are they all DOS (except the config)?

Rule 1: Never unzip on anything but RISC OS. You lose all the filetype information!

Which means you can put the zipped file on the SD card using a Mac, than put the card into a Pi running RiscOs and unzip it there?

there might be a guide like this on this site. In that case I didn’t find it.

This is one way It uses two storage devices, one, FAT, for firmware and ROM and the other, SCSI, for RISC OS itself.

SystemDisc creates a partitioned SD card, instructions included.

ROOL’s Raspberry PI SD image is here with instructions here and here

One can’t go terminally wrong with any of this, it’s only card, if it gets messed up just reformat the card and start again.

ROOL’s Raspberry PI SD image is here with instructions here and here

This one did the trick: a brand new RiscOS! Thank you David. I’ll write some notes for myself to keep the instructions at hand.

Started Packman: The list of packages has not been updated for 1349 days :-)