Software testing help wanted for Raspberry Pi

Hi all,

I’m new here. Please be gentle :) Not used RiscOS since I retired by A310 in 1993. I’ve now got a RPi.

I followed the instructions in the original post and all went well.

So far I’ve briefly tried ArcEm. It booted with the RiscOS 3.1 roms but was quite slow. The mouse wasn’t getting captured, but that maybe me not reading any docs.

I’ll try some more packages when I get time.

Cheers

Thunderbird.
Installed fine, very slow. Came up with a message about unable to initialise security component.
Couldn’t connect to my imap server (requires SSL)
Also couldn’t see the icons, everything badly layed out.

Tried to install decor, got a message “invalid source path”

Getting System.310.Modules.SharedULib as Files that conflict installing nettle. THink this is SharedUnixLibrary.
Latest nettle (beta) off the website works fine btw, telnet only.

WinEd – works fine.
Sunfish – Task Unknown on running
RiscTerm – Segfault
WinSnap – works fine.
ResEd – said Obey !Sprites not found on install, but seems ok otherwise
Firefox – Didn’t load (I think you need the alignment exceptions on) if it’s the same as I tried a week ago, then it is v slow and doesn’t support SSL :-(

And can I get a RiscOS RofL license?

hexen2 – Nothing appears to happen, but machine was unstable after.
Nettle – OK so far.
SDLRoids – Needed drenderer removed first. Seems OK.
Openssh – complains of missing sprites, and doesn’t work

Would it be best to keep the list to things that are Arm7 safe? Then it could be used by all the new machines and tested by them too.

perhaps have a second list for advanced users of programs know to work in Arm5 mode.

Hello Mark!

Not used RiscOS since I retired by A310 in 1993. I’ve now got a RPi.

I had an A3000 in ‘93, then an A5000, and finally a RiscPC around 2000. This was sort of put aside with the PC doing more of the sorts of things that I wanted (my eeePC is my television, and my communication device, and playback for lots of animé – all things RISC OS can’t really do yet). I have a Beagle xM which is slightly different to your RPi; but something I’m sure you’ll agree is that coming from the days of old (A310!), you have a machine with ridiculous amounts of memory and an unimaginably fast processor. When I compiled on my RiscPC, I wonder how I ever put up with my A3000. I bet your feelings will be even more jarring. It’s like click and its done!

So far I’ve briefly tried ArcEm.

I’m not certain what you mean here. Making an assumption, you’re running some sort of Linux on the RPi and you tried ArcEm on that, right?

I found (for Windows) that RedSquirrel worked more smoothly than ArcEm. Might be worth seeing if there’s a build of that you could use (it isn’t x86 only is it?).
However… if you have a spare microSD card you could try setting up RISC OS natively and not just off of emulation? It is a bit alpha and might randomly explode, but it is coming along impressively. If you’ve not had RISC OS fly on your board, try it, I think you’ll be bloody impressed.

Or maybe I misunderstood and you are running ArcEm under RISC OS on the RPi…which is kinda masochistic and would definitely get a Thumbs Up from me. (^_^)

Either way – WELCOME BACK!

And can I get a RiscOS RofL license?

RofL licence? Rolling On (the) Floor Laughing? You need a licence to be funny these days? <gulp!>

Seriously – I think specific licencing terms are usually handled in private. This is part of why some big tech companies are panicking like hell over the current Apple/Samsung spat – the court might look at licencing terms with other companies and this will become part of public record.
Anyway, look up. All the way up the top. Rightmost link, “Contact us”. That is the most logical way to ask about licencing RISC OS.

ResEd – said Obey !Sprites not found on install, but seems ok otherwise

No Sprites file, but the boot file contains an IconSprites line.
A long standing bug was fixed and errors about missing sprites files called by entries in !Boot or !Run are now being displayed. The error has always occured it is just that it wasn’t displayed to the user.

Openssh – complains of missing sprites, and doesn’t work

As above. In all cases the choice is either to create a sprites file to drop into the application directory or to comment out the calling line e.g.

Iconsprites <SSH$Dir>.!Sprites
becomes
|Iconsprites <SSH$Dir>.!Sprites

Package: Barrage
Version: 1.0.2-1

Seems to run fine, played around on it for a couple of minutes without a problem

Package:Black-Box
Version: 1.4.8-1

Looks to run okay. Player the first level for a minute or two

I’ve just pushed out some new packages (DrWimp, a few updates of others) to both the main riscos.info distro and my ‘specially selected’ one. If you click menu over PackMan and do ‘Update lists’ followed by ‘Upgrade all’ it should upgrade anything you’ve already installed (fingers crossed).

I’ll have a look at some of the issues above. Lots of things have bit-rotted since 2006 or so – as well as not being ARMv7 safe, the OS giving errors where it formerly didn’t makes it even more interesting! I’ve fixed the sprites issue for new packages that are autobuilt, but the manually-created ones will need manual tweaks. Help is always appreciated here! (If you look in the URL I gave in the first post, it has links to all the package zips which are easy to download and change – the ones on RiscPkg.org are the manual ones)

There’s an ArcEm package in the repository, but it uses SDL for rendering. Jeffrey said that the quicker native version doesn’t support 32 bit colour (or something?), so SDL is the best we’ve got for the moment.

On the subject of changing where things go, at the moment you can move things around but on a fairly coarse level. The procedure is mentioned in the PackMan manual (menu over the app in the Filer and click Help).

If you get a conflict with SharedULib, you probably didn’t delete the one that comes on the distro and then install it via the package manager as I explained in the first post. If you did do this and it’s still giving an error, do let me know.

OpenSSH is now ostensibly fixed (and upgraded to v6.0), please test. One awkward thing is that PackMan is currently treating the old ‘openssh’ and new ‘Openssh’ as two different packages and complaining that their files conflict. I’ve asked Alan to look at this, but meanwhile you’ll have to uninstall ‘openssh’ and then install ‘Openssh’ – should just be a few clicks.

There’s an ArcEm package in the repository, but it uses SDL for rendering.

X11, actually.

Jeffrey said that the quicker native version doesn’t support 32 bit colour (or something?)

Correct. 32 bit support is easy to add, but I’m assuming we’ll have the proper Pi video driver available in time for the RO image release.

Thanks Theo, missed that deleting SharedULib.
New openssh works :-D
Nettle installs fine and I can ssh using it.
That’s a BIG sloppy kiss for the nettle and openssh people!
Mplayer doesn’t work, not a real shocker given the sound isn’t working yet – here’s hoping it makes it into the next image!

you have a machine with ridiculous amounts of memory and an unimaginably fast processor.

Just a bit. I upgraded my A310 to 2MB and added a Watford HD controller + 40MB disk. The RPi is a monster compared to that :)

ArcEm under RISC OS on the RPi

Yes, that’s what I was trying. System emulation is a very fascinating area for me. It seemed like a fun thing to try.

Right, I’m now logged in via the RPi and RiscOS.

I’ve tried Fuse the ZX Spectrum emulator. It fine. I don’t have any spectrum swto try

One thing I was wondering, for commercial software it would probably be necessary to have a username/password support and probably SSL support.
Is that possible or worthwhile?
Would the URL: https://malcolm:password@costapacket.com/ripoff/pkgs/pi?uid=4333244

Work?

Was just thinking it would be nice to use it for all applications.

I upgraded my A310 to 2MB and added a Watford HD controller + 40MB disk.

Ah, wow. I remember a 4Mb upgrade to my A3000 and an HCCS 60Mb harddisc podule as well. Bought it from Alsystems, nearly died at the price. Stuff was so expensive back then. I remember reading the green/black edged pages from Watford and thinking “cool but I’ll never afford that”.

Yes, that’s what I was trying.

(^_^) Well, you must go the whole hog – run ArcEm and on that, run !65Host.

Ah, wow. I remember a 4Mb upgrade to my A3000

I performed the upgrade myself and it included bending and soldering (I used to be a hardware engineer) on each RAM chip. It took ages. I had the chips to do 4MB, but I never got around to doing the second lot.

I’ve been playing with gcc (c & c++) and that seems to work nicely for small programs at least.

Stronghelp and art2spr seem OK.

CircusLinux seems to run far too fast.

Would it be possible to get the latest StrongEd and Netsurf on the list?

Penguin command appears fine.

Magicmush installation threw an error (can’t remember the error), then caused a hard crash. Packman shows it as not installed, when I try and remove a package (e.g. openssh) it brings up a window showing conflicts with magicmush installation files, then causes a hard crash.

I’ve managed to delete the files left over from the aborted magicmush install, and all seems well again.
Nothing critical just files in Packages to delete, and the !Magicmush in $.Apps.Games.

• RiscTerm: blacklisted pending recompile (helpfile says ‘use Nettle unless you have a specific reason otherwise’)
• MagicMush: blacklisted. Alan says there’s a bug in PackMan that cause crashes and hopes to have it fixed soon.
• GCC 2.95 remnants: blacklisted as they’re ancient
• Sunfish: built a package with Chris Gransden’s ARMv7 !RunImage, you can now upgrade to it
• ResEd: I’m tempted to blacklist as it’s a ROOL thing, not ARMv7, and better handled by ROOL themselves. But not sure yet.

• NetSurf: I’d love to, but there doesn’t appear to be a packaged version of 2.9, only of the test builds. I don’t really want to include test builds on a ‘production’ disc image. Ah, the test build packages also appear to be missing too.
• StrongED: I’ll include a packaged version if someone’s willing to do one! PackIt is handy for building packages. The existing StrongED package zips are here (ideally an upgrade would use the same splitting of files between packages by just dropping new files over the top)

Getting existing things on the disc build managed is a little tricky, given the current lack of ability to install app X at random directory location Y while keeping it managed. That’s still on the to-do list, but meanwhile it would mandate the locations apps are installed to.

Commercial software: I believe the forthcoming ‘app emporium’ will cover that. There’s scope for collaboration between the two repositories.

Theo,

I’m looking after the StrongED packages. They haven’t been updated yet because they are waiting for a version that Fred says is suitable for packaging. Once that appears, I will update the packages at riscpkg.org so you will be able to update your index.
Unfortunately, even if a new version appeared tomorrow I wouldn’t be able to package it for at least a week, so it would miss your deadline.

If you or anyone else decides they can’t wait and must package StrongED before I can, remember you need to contact Fred to get permission to distribute it.

FTPc is another busted one.
I managed to get a working version though, so it will work with a bit of effort by the looks of it.
Great about sunfish, no need to use the alignment program ;-)