Software testing help wanted for Raspberry Pi

Is this all the time,

Using a vanilla boot structure (with Boot.Choices empty) and a new rom then after configuring the screen, there is a file Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk.Configure.Monitor but it is empty and stays empty. I had to find the old file (with a commented out first line and a second line setting the resolution) and use that to replace it. Thereafter I haven’t tried to change it again. Nor have I tried an older rom (complete with its cmos) and a vanilla boot.

Just updated to the latest image this morning, and just wanted to say wow. The desktop is so much smoother now, and from a personal point of view most of the transitions in Fade now work really nicely. Interestingly the horizontal effects that use rectangle moves don’t seem to have benefited as much as the vertical ones. Not a complaint, just an observation.

Actually, having just checked I see exactly the same horizontal/vertical differences on Virtual Acorn so I’ll shut up.

Just used the latest firmware (the 192 split) and I’ve got my Pi clocked at 1GHz ;-) No overvoltage or anything, which is lovely.
Some nice changes in the firmware, drystones are way slower than before, but it does seem snappier on netsurf and the like. Stable so far as well.

..snapier… oh yea.. the Task menu is “lighter” too ;-) LMAO

The new start up screen on boot is great. However it would look even better if (i) the screen went green at the first opportunity (as soon as it is under the control of RISC OS) and then the image instead of being ’screenload’ed into screen memory was loaded from the SD card into non-screen memory and then block copied to the screen. That way the image would appear in an instant rather than line by line.

Hmm, I loaded the latest Pi firmware on today and lost sound from the 3.5mm jack (can’t test the HDMI) the sound driver initialised as I heard the speakers pop and the mixer et al are all present just no output. Rolling back the firmware fixed it and I even reimaged the card and unpacked a fresh HardDisc4 but to no avail. I noticed that the recent checkins on The firmware mention alterations so the sound handling so possibly related.

BTW: Nice to be tinkering with RISC OS for the first time in 20 years :)

lost sound from the 3.5mm jack

you probably need to add a line ‘hdmi_drive=2’ in the config.txt file to send sound over the HDMI cable or ‘hdmi_drive=1’ not to. But I can’t get sound on the jack whichever I try with the latest firmware.

I think RISC OS may be chasing a moving target at the moment. Let’s hope it can catch up….

That setting seems to make no odds on either the working or failing firmware, I think the fact that I am running DVI means that theres no HDMI-ness for the GPU to interrogate so it gets ignored. Possibly.

As for a moving target it’s a developers nightmare – it’s like sending out a new motherboard everyday :-/

Dan: I’m running the firmware from a day ago and it’s working fine for me™. I also have HDMI→DVI as well…maybe I just dodged it ;-) [try the day before, seems you may have a day after me]

Chris xc8: It appears the latest firmware doesn’t allow overclocking! Running the Dry test I get the same results for 1GHz to no overclocking….I’m going to look into this.

Looks like you need force_turbo=1 set to overclock now.
But I’ve got 900 set and 1.24 million drystones which isn’t bad.
Be nice if we got a module for the Pi to do the overclocking, similar to what rcomp did for the armini.

I’ve just tried the latest firmware and I have the issue with sound as well. It’s not just that I can’t hear it, it’s not actually playing for me. For example, load Maestro and kick off a tune. No scrolling or anything.

I’ve just tried the latest SD card image (RISCOS_Alpha_18Sep2012.img) and my Pi boots but fails to run the boot sequence.

I see:

RISC OS 224MB
ARM1176JZF-S Processor
Piccolo Systems SDFS
No Keyboard present – autobooting
Error: The Disc drive is empty (Error number &11AD3)

I can do a *d. which takes me to the desktop and I can *. the SDFS drive and see !Boot etc.

Any Ideas?

I’ve just tried the latest SD card image (RISCOS_Alpha_18Sep2012.img) and my Pi boots but fails to run the boot sequence.

I see:
[…]
Error: The Disc drive is empty (Error number &11AD3)

Same here. I had been scratching my head and almost reaching the point where I was going to think about the possibility of considering that it might be a good idea to search for instructions, when a usefully timed post appeared on the Archive-on-Line mailing list.

Julian Fry commented that “The installation attempts to boot RISC OS from another device – in my case I used a USB stick with RISC OS 5 on it” and that without it you get what we both see. I had a ROOL ‘Native’ USB stick handy, so I plugged that in, and RISC OS then booted correctly on the Pi.

I think his assessment is wrong – a quick check reveals all the relevant system variables are pointing to it having booted from the SD card, so I don’t think it’s actually booting from the other device, per se, but that it’s simply expecting there to be a storage device present and failing if there isn’t. However, I don’t have a blank stick to test that theory. (I keep losing the damned things – I’m surprised I still have the native one!)

I have a similar experience. My setup is one USB to powered hub containg mouse and keyboard. Second USB has 2G stick that is RISCOS formatted and just contains data.
Without the stick I get the “Disc drive empty error.”
[CTRL][Break] no longer resets either.
Insert USB stick, Shutdown from taskmanager and restart.
New message along the lines of “Drive has no more space.” It had 1Mb free.
Deleted some files to free up approx 20Mb.
Same results.
Deleted another 50Mb.
Now booting up ok and even get the “Candy stripe”
“log” file in “Data” type, size 277k found on USB drive I’m sure wasn’t there earlier.
[Shift] Click, gives “This file is already open.”
Also 6 × 8Mb sprite files have turned up on USB stick. “sc1” to “sc6”
All titled “screendump” and contain the same boot screen with the last line “No keyboard present – autobooting”
“sc8” at 51k and “sc9” at 103k contain one full and one half candy stripe.
Hope this sheds some light on the matter.

Update. Reboot and “log” file now 672k
Delete sprite files and reboot.
Sprite files back and “log” is now 74k

On further inspection, “SDFS::RISCOS.$.!Boot.Utils.BootRun” seems to be a potential problem.
Contains “screensave scsi::0.$.sc1”

In “SDFS::RISCOS.$.!Boot.Utils.BootRun”
“REM” out the 8 lines starting “screensave” and the one starting “spool”, using “|”
Save and reboot. Mine starts up fine with no USB stick present.

Cool that fixed it.

Contains “screensave scsi::0.$.sc1”

Entirely my fault, sorry.

Rather than drag another thread off topic, I thought I’d try and steer this one back on! :)
From Anouncements.short book on Pi

Hi Stephen,

What did you have trouble with with the packaged software? The repository is rather large and it’s difficult to test everything, so feedback of things that don’t work is appreciated.

Starting at the beggining of the list:

AlephOne. Realise it needs some extra files to work, so will try that at a later date.

AlienBlaster. Black window pops up for a couple of seconds, then goes. “stderr” file appears in its directory.

Anagramarama. Fine.

On a side note, my natural instinct is to double click on each application. Obviously this does nothing except cause mild frustration!

ArcEm. Error window pops up. “!UnixHome application has not been seen”. Found !UnixHome and tried again. No error this time. I know it needs more to work, so leaving it there for now.

ArtToSpr. OK

Barrage. First time I clicked on packman, catastrophic failure, grey screen and filer errors. Needed to reboot. [Ctrl][Break] worked. Don’t ask me what I did, I’m not sure myself! I had been installing and trying the above one after the other without rebooting.
Now re-typing this on PC!
Tried again after reboot. Window pops up and seems to work. Using 1920×1080 on 24" telly. Thinks window could be bigger, so change resolution to 800×600. Much better to play. Done playing. Try to change back to full HD. Warning beep and black screen. Keyboard not working. Power off to reset.

BC. No description in list.

Black-Box. OK

Blobwars. Nothing appears to happen. Opened Apps.Support where !UnixHome is. Working now.

AlienBlaster. Seems to work after seeing !UnixHome.

Pingus. Yes, I know it’s not alphabetical, but it was already installed and didn’t work the first time either. Again, after seeing !UnixHome it appears to run. This is not obvious, even after resorting to reading the README and !Help files. Not something I would expect new users to have to do.

Update. Tried uninstalling and re-installing Pingus game just to see if there was any indication of certain requirements. How flamin’ long!
Some indication of size might be an idea.

Broken. Skipped! :)

Bugsquish. Still trying to double click! Grr! Anyway, back to testing. Euw, but works!

BumpRace. 60% installed on green bar. Error window, “File ‘<Obey$Dir>.!Sprites’ not found” $.Apps.Games window open at the time. Clicked “Cancel” and installation seems to carry on. Game seems to run OK.

Bzip2. Sticky [SHIFT] key really getting annoying now! Briefly scanned help file and skipped.

Cache. Skipped

CaretChase. I now have a carrot on the icon bar!

Ceferino. OK

CircusLinux. Quite bizarre! But works.

ClaimASWI. Skipped.

Cogs. OK

Common-Licences. Skipped

Hmm. Bugsquish, CircusLinux and Bumprace seem to have dumped files in the root of SDFS. Not pretty!

Conversions-Free. Damned if I know where that’s gone!

CorsixTH. “An error has occured on CorsixTH:
/SDFS::RISCOS.$/Apps/Games/!CorsixTH/Lua/app.lua:74: Unable to load config file. Please ensure that CorsixTH has permission to read/write /SDFS::RISCOS.$/Apps/Games/!CorsixTH/config.txt, or use the —config-file=filename command line option to specify a writeable file”
There is more, but I’ve given up typing!
Re. PackMan. On the detailed description for this, the text does seem to over-fill the window it is displayed in and there are no scroll options to view it all.

CppUnit. Skipped

Crazeespod. OK

CryptRandom. Dunno where that’s gone either!

BumpRace. 60% installed on green bar. Error window, “File ‘<Obey$Dir>.!Sprites’ not found” $.Apps.Games window open at the time.

It’s an error in the !Run file that is calling a Sprites file that doesn’t exist (The IconSprites line).
It can be commented out with a | at the start of the line, the line can be deleted, or you could create a Sprites file at that location to give the App a sprite for its icon.

The was a long standing bug that suppressed the message so a fair bit of old software may have that !Run file error and not have been noticed until now.

Still going!

Ctorrent. Skipped.
DRLink. Skipped
DRenderer. Had an issue a while ago, but that is sorted and already installed.
DSDiff. Skipped
Dcraw. Skipped
Decor. The file to run is missing. I don’t think accented characters are a good idea to use in filename either.
DeskLib stuff skipped.
DiffUtils. ?. In .Apps.Text but has no apparent effect.
DigitalCD. Hardware – using USB>IDE external harddrive board. Setup reads ADFS CDs OK. Software – no apparent interaction with audio CD except for treble clef on the CD icon on the icon bar.

*Edit
Now I’ve made up an audio lead, plugged CD drive output direct to speakers and found the right controls for CD drive, it works ok. Not sure why it starts with the last track though.

DirSync. Skipped
DosBox. Seems to work, but more involved testing required I suppose.
DrWimp etc. Skipped for now.
Edgar. Seems to work.

How flamin’ long!
Some indication of size might be an idea.

I do apologise, there is a size given once I’ve chosen to install. Me bad! :(
Would like to see it on the main list though.
Anyway, on with the testing.
FLAC and FileUtils install, but no further action.

Fillets-Ng installed. Needs the files from the next item installed for it to work.
Fillets-Ng-Data. Installing that, takes nearly two hours and then removes most, (but not all,) of the previous Fillets-Ng installation.
Retry to install Fillets-Ng. Now I have conflicting files. Select the back-up and install option.
Game finally runs. Quite interesting, went to 256 colour 800×600 mode to fill more of the screen and try to improve video intro sequence. Still a bit jerky and sound ropey. Once into the game it seems ok. (Spent an hour or two playing!)
Ended game. Try to return to 1920×1080 16M and get beep and black screen again. Caps Lock on keyboard still works. [Ctrl][Break] and everything seems to lock up again. Resort to power down to reset.
Don’t think this is a Packman issue as I’ve since managed to do it after only using Netsurf. Will try to find a simple sequence to cause same effect so others may investigate.

Skipped a few and tried to install GCC4. This now wants to remove Fillets-Ng! Not followed up.
Back up a couple. Flobopuyo. Also wants to remove Fillets-Ng, as do the three packages above it.

Thanks for those, and keep them coming. I’ll have a look at things when I get a moment, but for the time being I’ll just add things to the blacklist so we just don’t present things that are unhappy at the moment. What are the Sources (iconbar menu) that PackMan is using? I think you may be using one that’s out of date (my fault, there are various temporary ones I’ve been using for development that need tidying up).

Some packages don’t appear to do anything, either because they’ve installed a system component (which will install in !Boot and only get loaded when something wants to use it – often such things are installed when you install an app that depends on them) or an app which provides a command line program (where double clicking it does nothing because that’s not a useful action for a command line program).

Hi Theo. Been busy testing again. Might have found an issue that may be more than !PackMan.
OK, I’ve just reflashed with 24th Sep Distro.
Followed steps for !Packman test request as before.

Sources
“http://www.riscos.info/packages/raspberrypi”
“http://cl.cam.ac.uk/~atm26/ephemeral/rpipackages/pkg/autobuilt”
as requested.

Update to latest ROM/Firmware bits – ok. Menu button on TaskManager.Info gives date 1st Oct, so your links to ROMimage are ok.

No HD4 update.

Install !Barrage from Apps.Admin.!PackMan. Other Apps may have the same effect.
Reboot.
SDFS.Apps.Games.!Barrage
Move window to lower left. (Can’t see whole window if you don’t.)
Change resolution to 800×600. (Have a game, but not neccessary.)
Quit game.
Change resolution back to 1920×1080.
I get “Wave synth beep” sound and black screen!
NOT GOOD!

Just in case video redirected to composite out, I’ve plugged that to SCART input and nothing.

Would appreciate others trying and confirming this if you have the time and can spare an SD card.

The double click I was refering to as a natural action applies to the list in !PackMan.
Double click on an item and expect it to install. – Fail!
I’m getting back into the swing of select then the menu button now!