Pandaboard Support

I’m debating getting a Pandaboard ES, especially after reading the recent benchmark results!

I just have two questions;
1. Is the onboard LAN working with EtherUSB?
2. Is the onboard sound working?

1. Yes, this is send from a Pandaboard ES
2. Yes, system beep works

Thank you!

If you’re coming to Wakefield Rob you’ll see one in action as I am bringing mine.

in response to your questions:

1) Like Wouter this is being sent from a PandaBoard
2) The sound out put is much better than a BeagleBoard

However do not expect the same level of stability that you get with a BeagleBoard yet!

2) The sound out put is much better than a BeagleBoard

In terms of volume, or quality, or what? After Willi spotted that the sound setup configure plugin wasn’t allowing you to use the full volume range available on the BB/PB I made some changes to the OMAP3 HAL and sound setup plugin to allow the extra volume range to be used. This has made a big difference to the volume output, with the maximum volume now being louder than an Iyonix. However I have noticed that there is some clipping/distortion if you set the volume too high.

Note that you’ll need a recent hard disc image (Jan 22 or newer), otherwise the sound setup plugin will probably crash when you try to open it.

If you’re coming to Wakefield Rob you’ll see one in action as I am bringing mine.

Curses! I’m destined to miss the Wakefield show every year :(
Before I came back to RISC OS a few years ago, I stupidly decided to get married on the 26th April, there is NOOO way the mrs would let me sneak off to Wakefield!

However do not expect the same level of stability that you get with a BeagleBoard yet!

How unstable is RISC OS on the Pandaboard?

How unstable is RISC OS on the Pandaboard?

It’s no less stable then RISC OS is normally. So not very! :-)

It does seem a bit easier for misbehaving programs to bring the system down. Having to run a lot of programs with alignment exceptions turned off and there being no full protection for page zero probably doesn’t help.

I use a little program called Protector by Andreas Feldner.
It offers three choices – no zero page protection.
Write zero page & Read/Write.
Modifed version seems to work ok with my Iyonix.

I have found some bugs in my pandaboard rev A3: at 1920×180 or 1920×1200 or a resolution higher than 1280×1024 there are some green lines over the images i dont know why this is caused, can be a bad video driver. Another bug is that opening progams like netsurf or copying files to hard disk make some sound noise like “poc poc”.

Another question: Does RISC OS support a monitor with DVI Input on the Panda ES via a HDMI to DVI cable?

@Matteo
Your problem with the green lines could be a stability issue at your board or maybe your monitor cable is’nt shilded well enough.
Does the sound during copy comes out the speakers or from the pandaboard directly?

The lines you seeing are a known problem – you can see an example here (warning big jpeg!):

http://www.usablerange.co.uk/RISCOS/screen5.jpg

As I understand it this is being looked at.

RISC OS supports the DVI output on the PandaBoard ES not the HDMI output so it is similar to the BeagleBoard.

The sound noise come directly from the speakers. I hope the issue with green lines will be adjusted soon: : )

My Pandaboard ES arrived today!
I’ve only had a quick play with it, seems quite happy running at 1.2Ghz!

I think I’ll invest in a heat sink or two before running it at 1.5Ghz. (Just to be safe!)

I’ve ordered a panda board today & was wondering if there’s somewhere to look on how to get started, such as installing RISCOS?
rgds

You can read:
http://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Generic%20OMAP%20port%20setup%20information
You need the OMAP 4 ROM and HardDisc4 (self-extracting) from:
https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/other-zipfiles
and the bootloader files from:
http://www.cgransden.co.uk/pandaboot.zip

Unlike the Raspberry Pi, there isn’t a recommended SD card image available to download, not even from here (which does seem now to be a little dated). However R-Comp do a ‘PandaLand’ scheme which can provide a pre-prepared SD card with some very useful software, all included, at a price that is reasonable (£69.99).

PandaLand provides PandaBoard owners with software and operating
systems components in line with our ARMini computer package, providing
custom software (several hundred Mbs of software are included) and
facilitating easy use of RISC OS with PandaBoard.

Included in the price are a licensed copy of RISC OS suitable for
Panda operation, preloaded onto a “ready-to-go” SD card (at full clock
speed/performance – can make up to 60% improvement). Just slot it
into your board, and off you go. As with ARMini/Beagle, we’ll be
providing regular, tested/approved updates. A CMOS RAM widget is also
included, allowing Panda to have the same CMOS capabilities as any
other RISC OS computer.

The other option is to download the Raspberry Pi SD card image (which offers a dual-partition card) and copy the relevant files into the FAT partition that are required to start up a Pandaboard. You will then need (under RISC OS) to replace the HardDisc4 files and directories with a plain vanilla HardDisc4 downloaded from the ROOL site.

Use a fast SD card – 95Mb/s – as you will get about 21Mbyte/s read and write from it.

Another request to get the SD-Card DIY how-to written then…

Quite simply if you don’t want to DIY then there are commercial solutions out there where you can buy a pre-built SD-Card and off you go.

Of course the advantage of DIY is that you are likely to be using a more recent ROM and you can start to really push the envelope of the hardware.

One thing to note is that the OMAP4 ROM available from here is quite out of date for a number of reasons.

One thing to note is that the OMAP4 ROM available from here is quite out of date for a number of reasons.

I presume you mean from the PandaLand scheme. Yes, it’s from a year ago. It did get some testing and is supported by RComp. But we’re all waiting for RISC OS 5.20 which is likely to be the next properly supported version. Of course it is easy to download and try the latest ROM but keep the older one in case you want to revert to it if something gets broken in the daily build.

It is difficult to work out when a significant improvement makes it into the daily ROM build as there is so much detail to wade through. The ‘fix’ I am keen to see for the Pandaboard is the CTRL-SHIFT-f12 shutdown/restart hang.

No, as I said, the version downloadable from ROOL is missing some of the latest features.

Also I have just read that wiki page – yikes! how out of date is that!!!?

See how you get on and feel free to ask when you run into problems in the Community Support part of these forums.

No, as I said, the version downloadable from ROOL is missing some of the latest features.

Now that threw me – I hadn’t understood that ‘some of the leatest features’ hadn’t made it into the CVS repository. I was just following the ‘latest additions’ list waiting for something that was important to appear when I would download a daily build. Can you be more specific about what has been ‘fixed’ but has not yet made it into the CVS please?

No, as I said, the version downloadable from ROOL is missing some of the latest features.

Now updated to version 5.2x [both ROM and HardDisc4] – the OMAP4 ROM downloadable from ROOL now therefore must have all these latest (but unspecified!) features. Unless, of course, they are still untested and unsubmitted hacks?

Thanks for this info.

But where is the stable release 5.20?

Sorry, the wrong place.

I presume that the stable 5.20 version is currently a release candidate undergoing testing. There is at least one problem with it (sound plays too fast) and so it will be being tweaked and will only be released when it is working correctly. Development builds will be 5.21 even though 5.20 is not yet available.