RISC OS 5.30 - I'd like to test but can't

Hi!

I’d be happy to do some testing of the upcoming RISC OS release but unfortunately I can’t since there is no ROM image useable on the mini.m and that is currently the only matching hardware I have (I sold my older Raspberries at a good price when their prices went through the roof).

The Wandboard/iMX6 image does boot but it seems that some different USB drivers are needed and testing with neither mouse nor keyboard is kind of demanding.

I learned a while ago that the sources at ROOL can create the ROM for mini.m so I did look at the build system … and after quite some time simply gave up to try to create the image for the mini.m.
At the time being I have been given to understand that it would be no problem for ROOL to offer an image for the mini.m on the ROOL download page but that never did happen. If the same applies to the other iMX6 systems from RCI I haven’t the faintest.

Please do consider offering ROM images for the RCI systems (if possible) since there are quite a few around so that some more users can support your testing can do so without the need to hassle with the build system.

Thanks!

Hasn’t anyone got a old Pi in a draw you can use? Anything from the original 256MB B will run RISC OS (I hope, it worked last time I tried with a 4GB full size SD card).

Do we know the hardware differences between the Wandboard and the Mini.M? It sounds like there are some to explain why the Wandboard image didn’t work.

As far as I can tell the Mini.M is a rebranded Cubox-i from SolidRun. Schematics for the Wandboard and for the Cubox-i . Both are based on system-on-modules, which I haven’t dug further into.

At first glance the USB setup looks similar: there are two USB ports on the module. One of them goes to an OTG mini-USB port on the Wandboard – maybe this isn’t enabled in RISC OS? On the Cubox both ports go to USB-A ports. The Wandboard has its USB-A with USB 3, but I’m not sure that is actually offered by the iMX6 module (other versions of the module may support it). It is possible that RISC OS isn’t enabling the Wandboard OTG port, leaving only one port on the mini.m working.

Digging a bit more, I see there are some “CuBox” conditional build flags in the iMX6 HAL and other places (primary commit ) So if you’re able to build a ROM, defining that somewhere might make one compatible with the mini.m. I don’t know exactly where would be the best place to define that flag.

Doing it that way is a bit unorthodox, because I’m not sure the RISC OS build system knows there are two different iMX6 builds lurking in one tree. I think it would need a new ‘Product’ with almost everything the same but this build flag enabled.

@David:
I guess there are enough users with Pis around to test that hardware… in addition if I’d rather test that on a system I use since that saves a lot of time since part of the testing would simply be normal usage with the odd thing I do use on RISC OS.

@Theo:
As far as I understood R-Comp the sources needed for mini.m are on ROOL git; as far as I understood ROOL at the time (please do not ask when) building a ROM matching mini.m is possible.
I did take a look at the build system but did not manage to find what to change to get a rom with some different thingys for USB since that part seems to need to be tewaked.