Rpi but not sure how to install the image (under RISC OS)

I managed to get the RPi up and running using RISC OS to create an image. However, this produced a disc image without the hard disc image (hence no !Boot). Once I copied over a fresh (default) HD4 image to the SD card, the RPi ran after a fashion but was unreliable and slow.

I tried two using two macs to create the image, neither of which ran the MacOSX GUI tool (in both cases the OS/CPU combinations were not compatible with the tool). I could not get admin rights on an old PC running XP Home, so Win32DiskImager would not create an image (time to wipe the hard drive and put LinuxMint on it).

My netbook running Xubuntu decided that now was a good time to trash part of its SD card rendering itself unusable. I had a go at using BerryBoot: it started up and ran but then failed to find the internet and hence was unable to install any OS on the RPi.

Eventually I had to resort to using my Win 7 PC at work to get the image written.

Now that I have de-grumped a little, I have to say that I am quite impressed with the RISC OS RPi port. Thanks to all who made it possible.

I could not get admin rights on an old PC running XP Home, so Win32DiskImager would not create an image (time to wipe the hard drive and put LinuxMint on it).

Without wishing to dissuade you from ditching windows (how could ditching it be a bad idea?)

http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/

This has been around for so many years I can’t recall when I first used it, but it was pre-2000 on an NT system.

I’ve copied today’s Raspberry Pi image onto the RPi’s SDHC card. Now all I get is a square of graduated colours. I’ve had this problem before, and I had to update start.elf and/or bootcode.bin.

But I’ve just updated those, too, from github (latest versions seem to be from 3 days ago) and it still doesn’t boot.

Has some more incompatibility been introduced?

Why on earth can’t we have the relevant files in the BCM2835 ROM archive? If not the files, at least a file with pointers to locations of copies of correct versions of all the files?

I can’t see anywhere on the ROOL site to get said files, either directly or via links to external sites. Please forgive me if I’ve missed something.

First, my apologies for one thing: I renamed the image RICOS/IMG

However, when I corrected that, the boot process stalls. In the boot progress window I see:

RISC OS 128MB
ARM1176JZF-S Processor
Piccolo Systems SDFS
No keyboard present – autobooting
Boot:Choices.Boot.PreDesk.!!VHCIQ

OK, that last named file exists, and is stamped 2012 August 20. I presume it was there before; the previous image I was running was from last November.

Any ideas what’s going wrong now?

Apparently I don’t need the new start.elf or bootloader.bin, although I’ve only tried updating and reverting them together so I don’t know if one in particular causes the problem.

I’ve copied today’s Raspberry Pi image onto the RPi’s SDHC card.

This is confusing. The beta SD card image is dated 1 November 2012, as is the ROM image it contains [which is called ‘Official Beta release (ROM image)’].

Confusingly the beta SD card image is not mentioned on the ‘Software’ page when you follow the link to Essentials – ROM images, disc images, etc. and you need to download this from the Raspberry Pi web site here – it contains all you need to prepare an SD card identical to the ‘RISC OS Pi’ SD card sold by ROOL, if you know how to use a utility like Win32DiskImager.

This image is a 2Gbyte binary file: when written to an SD card it can be seen, under RISC OS and other operating systems, to contain such files as ‘start.elf’ as well as the release candidate 6 (rc6) ROM image (called ‘riscos.img’).

Alpha ROM images up to date to the latest CVS repository are also available for those who know what to do without help. If you look inside the directory !Boot.Loader you will see all these files, including the ROM image. However there is complexity here – use only 8.3 filenames in upper case (to avoid them being treated as extended filenames despite them not being so, for example). The latest ROMS require VHCIQ which is only present in RISC OS boot disc images after a certain date. Later ROMS might require other things only added to later disc images.

Any ideas what’s going wrong now?

The latest firmware is not compatible with our boot sequence – specifically the VCHIQ module. There is work underway to try to address this but the firmware people don’t make things easy for anyone who isn’t Linux…