Raspberry Pi 4

OK, I’ll handle it then.

Since I posted, I’ve been offered loan of a Pi 4, so I’m happy to take it on after all, and leave you free to do more important stuff. OK?

Sure – go ahead.

OK, thanks, Jeffrey. I’ll update you when something happens.

Trying to be careful not to tread on your toes, Dave, I did look at how this might be done. Because of the different distribution of GPIO pins within registers, I concluded that it would probably be necessary to treat the Pi 4 as a completely new machine. I have just acquired a Pi 4 for testing, so I look look forward to ‘when something happens’. ;-)

Trying to be careful not to tread on your toes, Dave

Don’t worry about it – not at this distance, anyway!

Because of the different distribution of GPIO pins within registers, I concluded that it would probably be necessary to treat the Pi 4 as a completely new machine. Because of the different distribution of GPIO pins within registers, I concluded that it would probably be necessary to treat the Pi 4 as a completely new machine.

It’s only the pullup/pulldown contrl that’s done differently – all the other registers seem to be in the same place. The bleedin’ nuisance is that the GPIOPullControl and GPIOPullDirection functions in s.GPIO are documented as being able to control a vector of bits, though whether they really can be called with anything other than a single bit is another matter.

It’s only the pullup/pulldown contrl that’s done differently – all the other registers seem to be in the same place.

My mistake. I read the Overview, para 5.1, which refers to 3 banks, and then went straight to the PU registers. That was all that I needed for the 8 pins of MCPIO.

The bleedin’ nuisance is that the GPIOPullControl and GPIOPullDirection functions in s.GPIO are documented as being able to control a vector of bits, though whether they really can be called with anything other than a single bit is another matter.

Yes, I thought that. If it really only deals with a single pin it could be simpler, couldn’t it? The MCPIO SWIs vector 8 bits, but it is necessary for PU to be done pin by pin internally.

David would you be willing to test an updated SE once I’ve applied any necessary fixes?

Yes, be pleased to help.

Just a quick update to say that StrongED 4.70a14 is working on the 8GB RPi4. Many thanks to David Pitt for reporting the issue and for testing 4.70a14 on real hardware.

@Fred: Is StrongED 4.70a14 available for download somewhere (on the official site, there’s a13 only) ? I had problems with the a13 version on my Pi3 and Pi4 I would like to test the latest version also if possible.

StrongED 4.70a14 can be found here

However I must stress that this is taken straight from my development version so that David could test my fixes for 8GB. There may be issues, unfinished bits, etc.

The best way to test it is to copy StrongED & StrED_cfg from the archive to a separate directory. Hold down Ctrl when you doubleclick StrongED to force the use of the local StrED_cfg. This way there should be no effect on your current StrongED setup.

David has already pointed out a minor issue: 4.70a14 beeps on startup. This is caused by a missing PrintCfg file. To fix it: open a text, press Print, click on Save in the Print dbox.

If your problem are not fixed by 4.70a14 then please report them to me as I can only fix problems I know about.

However I must stress that this is taken straight from my development version so that David could test my fixes for 8GB. There may be issues, unfinished bits, etc.

So far I have not seen any issues with SE4.70a14 on the Titanium or the 8GB RPi4 with both 4GB and 8GB ROMs. It is very good to have StrongED working so well in this vast expanse of RAM.

a minor issue: 4.70a14 beeps on startup. This is caused by a missing PrintCfg file. To fix it: open a text, press Print, click on Save in the Print dbox.

As a minor issue of a minor issue, I moved PrintCfg to Defaults.Global, the save put it in UserPrefs.Global with the consequence that the startup beep was still there on a CTRL start.

@Fred: Thanks for the link ! The crashes are connected to the language settings (German). When I switch the keyboard to UK (default) there are no crashes. The crashes occurred when I was trying e.g. to save a file or configure something. I didn’t test on RPi3, so it might be a general issue, not only on Pi4. The crashes are reporting some address like &00044378 and others.

I also noticed when I open a Basic file by shift and click on it, SEd doesn’t seem to get the right mode as I can’t also run a file from the menue on top like before or was that feature removed ? I also can’t change the modes from the menue.

I also noticed when I open a Basic file by shift and click on it, SEd doesn’t seem to get the right mode as I can’t also run a file from the menue on top like before or was that feature removed ? I also can’t change the modes from the menue.

That is working here.

Is the BASIC Mode present? The SE4.70a14 zip comes with only three Modes installed, BaseMode, Dump and TaskWindow. I copied in the others from a13.

HTH.

@David: Thanks for that hint. My mistake not looking there and also checking the webpage for downloading other modes…

From a post by Raik
https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/14571?page=14#posts-102448

And a Pi Hub Hat

I thought the post deserved more attention. To my mind, the key to this is the GPIO power for the Hub hat: thus by-passing the USB-C hardware fault on Release 1.1 versions of the Pi 4.

Togther with a GPIO power source and cooling fan

it makes the Pi 4 very usable with RISCOS (and at full speed: 2147 MHz)

Just add a simple USB-C to Micro USB data only cable connection from the Pi to the Hub Hat and it gives 4 USB 2.0 sockets.

The combination does need a tall GPIO extender to keep the Hub hat clear of the fan.

The crashes are connected to the language settings (German).

The German resources for StrongED haven’t been updated for 4.70 yet so can’t be used, only the English resources. I did spend some time on updating the German resources yesterday so they’re much closer to English ones now.

I moved PrintCfg to Defaults.Global

Yes, that’s where a default PrintCfg should have been placed but obviously I hadn’t done that yet.

The last post on the ‘list of mods’ page is 4 months ago. It would be nice to get a progress report on the work being done to get the USB ports on the Pi 4 working.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is more radically different from its predecessors than any previous new generation of the Raspberry Pi. As such, it has unfortunately not been possible to get the RISC OS port fully functional before launch.

That did say ‘launch’ and not ‘lunch’ didn’t it!

Sorry for the general post but – what is the current situation with regard to setting up RISC OS with a Pi4 4GB, and a blank SD card, and Linux / MacOS / Windows laptop with SD reader? I left my Pi3 up in Auckland (New Zealand) which is in lockdown, so it is challenging to go back and get it! (1st world problems; 2020 problems!)

Installing RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi 4

This might also help: Build your own RISC OS on Pi 4 but some steps may now be slightly redundant. A wireless HAT is no longer required as the network port works now.

The last post on the ‘list of mods’ page is 4 months ago. It would be nice to get a progress report on the work being done to get the USB ports on the Pi 4 working.

Yes, still no indication of progress….

Looks like the XHCIDriver work for the Pi 4 is now underway

Excellent news!

I tried booting RC16 a couple of days ago on my RPi4 8GB. It didn’t boot. I couldn’t read the SD card in a running RO installation either. I mean I wrote the image using dd but that’s what I’ve been using for many years for my various data copying needs. Is there something particularly special about the RC image?

RC16 on RPI4 .. Missing RPI4-specific firmware files, too-old ROM and expecting EtherUSB instead of EtherGENET could be the cause. Look in !Boot.Loader whether the files start4.elf and fixup4.dat are there. If not, have a look in this Raspberrypi4 thread, page 10, and go to www.svrsig.org/software/Update.htm. From there, download Update 12. forthe extra firmware the RPI4 needs. Add all the files therein to !Boot.Loader. Also get the latest riscos rom for raspberry from the riscosopen downloads page. Upon restarting, it may happen that the RPI4 tries to start internet but it cannot find EtherUSB; press Cancel, then in Desktop goto Configure, then Network and activate EtherGENET.

Am I to infer from what you said that I misunderstood what the download page meant regarding the RC image and RPi4? Should I just be trying a nightly ROM, new firmware and HD4 as the basis?