Start up screens

On my Iyonix I have in PreDesk a little module that claims the start-up banner service call, thus stopping it from appearing. It does not seem to work on the Raspberry Pi. Can anybody explain why?

It is clear that Microsoft put a lot of thought into their startup screens and startup sounds. Like the icecream-van in the next street, the familiar tingle-tong tells you that it is time to make a cup of coffee. Linux by contrast has no truck with softy PR soothing, but spews out masses of unreadable information to say “Hi dude, are you geek enough for me?”. The Raspberry Pi RISC OS startup screen is baroque, with twiddly barbers’ poles. If its educational use is to be promoted then it needs to be user-configurable. Maybe this is possible now? I would not dare to tell anybody what kids think is cool these days, but I suspect that the present screen is not it. Any thoughts?

I would not dare to tell anybody what kids think is cool these days, but I suspect that the present screen is not it. Any thoughts?

Whatever is decided as “cool enough” will be “so yesterday” by tomorrow…
(^_^)

It does not seem to work on the Raspberry Pi. Can anybody explain why?

Because your module is not in ROM, and a ROM module has got in before you. The BootFX module is responsible for the pre-boot splash, if you configure the default language (with *CONFIGURE) to be something other than the desktop module it wont run. The default startup banner will then win, or your module can do its magic.
The end of the boot sequence does *DESKTOP anyway, so changing the language shouldn’t harm.

The Raspberry Pi RISC OS startup screen is baroque, with twiddly barbers’ poles.

Your comments highlight that banner taste is a very personal thing. I prefer the BBC-micro-esque startup text, but that’s a little daunting to new users (and Linux goes to the far extreme with pages and pages of text), for the Raspberry Pi the banner is a good compromise.

Thanks, that is clear now. My remarks about initial appearance were with half an eye on the potential use of RISC OS for educational packages – something that might be used in the classroom with appropriate software preloaded or net-booted.

The end of the boot sequence does *DESKTOP anyway, so changing the language shouldn’t harm.

Surely it should only do this if the configured language is DESKTOP. Otherwise it should do ‘BASIC’ or whatever?