System Disc from Piccolo Systems

Shameless plug time: after many, many hours of slaving away Ben has finally cracked the problem of creating bootable SD cards for RISC OS (of any size) that can be used in the Raspberry Pi and Beagleboard, et al. Oh, and it’s a RISC OS application, no less! :)

Take a look here for more information or pop any queries in this thread where I’m sure Ben will be overjoyed to answer. System Disc is currently available at the discounted price of £10. Get ‘em while they’re hot…

NetSurf on RISC OS failed to reach PayPal. This left me with one order incomplete, and no way that I could see to do anything about it.

I’ve completed a second order using Ubuntu.

The RISC OS Firefox is a little bit slow but it works.

How to create a working SDCard for a Beagleboard -xm with SystemDisc

The Missing Manual by David Pogue Fred

The RISC OS formatter doesn’t recognise my Belkin card reader so format using the BB -xm’s card slot. After formatting follow SystemDisc’s instructions to make a partition. Adding the ROM image & bootloaders needs to be done in the correct order;

MLO, U-BOOT/BIN, BOOT/SCR, UENV/TXT, RISCOS

worked for me, cribbed from the output of SDCreate. In order to get these files I had to transfer the new card to the card reader so I could copy from my original in the BB -xm.

Continue adding a boot sequence as described. Add it to the one that’s provided by SystemDisc as it contains an unmentioned file ‘Loader’ which is the partition (yes?). Once your BB -xm is running with the new card you won’t have access to the DOS partition from the icon bar for easy ROM updating. Running Loader opens the partition.

Neat software, naff instructions. Anyone would think they were supplied by a programmer.

The xM is very picky about the MicroSD card. I have many tested. Most do not work or do not work on every board. I have try xM Rev.B and C. There seems to be no rules. I have the same cards from the same manufacturer, it works with one and not with another. :-(

Thanks for the comments everyone. I’ve rearranged the documentation on the website so it’s hopefully easier to digest now. (The original was written late one night before the London Show, and it probably showed!)

However, I should say that I was deliberately trying to be terse about the details of bootloader files. Not only do they differ from platform to platform, but things like the filenames, or even how many files are used for a given platform, varies according to which version of the firmware you’re using. I remembered anecdotes about the order of installation of files mattering on Beagleboard in particular, but in my tests I was unable to reproduce the issue; rather than repeat this, cargo cult style, I decided it was better not to say anything. It might have been something to do with the fact that I was using bootloaders that I had built myself from the latest sources, but I can’t say for sure. I don’t think a private website is really the best place to gather such information on a moving target that’s outside my control, anyway.

It has been making me think that it would be useful for ROOL to start hosting the latest bootloader binaries (and corresponding sources, since they’re mostly GPL licensed) for the various platforms in one central location, with summaries of useful tweaks to configuration files held in wiki pages. Currently it does seem to be quite difficult to locate the right firmware in many cases.

It has been making me think that it would be useful for ROOL to start hosting the latest bootloader binaries (and corresponding sources, since they’re mostly GPL licensed) for the various platforms in one central location, with summaries of useful tweaks

An excellent idea. Oh! and it would be nice to see the OMAP4 ROM back again, once the licensing issue is sorted (or at least a message to say that it is missing and will be back soon).

t has been making me think that it would be useful for ROOL to start hosting the latest bootloader binaries (and corresponding sources, since they’re mostly GPL licensed)

I’d third that (it’s been seconded)
Presumably the binaries would be offered as known stable and latest.

Presumably the binaries would be offered as known stable and latest.

Actually I’d prefer ‘latest version known to work with RISC OS’ because there have been firmware changes that broke RISC OS and finding the right, earlier version of firmware is difficult. Probably also need to say (in such cases) ‘requires RISC OS 5.21 (35-Jun-2013) or later’.

Actually I’d prefer ‘latest version known to work with RISC OS’ because there have been firmware changes that broke RISC OS and finding the right, earlier version of firmware is difficult.

That’s what I regard as stable. I’m not concerned whether it’s stable in Linux land, it’s what it does here that counts.

The xM is very picky about the MicroSD card.

The problem I had I think is more to do with RISC OS & my card reader. RISC OS will read & write to the uSD card if it’s in an adapter but not otherwise. The formatter doesn’t seem to see the reader at all, adapter or no. No problem at all with various cards in the BB -xm slot, though all the cards I have here are SanDisk.

it would be useful for ROOL to start hosting the latest bootloader binaries

Yes, absolutely.

We need to be careful about versioning – if there are any interdependencies, then the whole lot of compatible files needs to be presented together.

Yesterday I tried 4 “problem card” (scan disc 32GB, 16GB Transcend, Samsung Hama 4GB and 2GB). I have written the files directly (in the order of SDCeate) to the “FAT partition”. This works with all cards. Replace the ROM in RISC OS via the loader directory worked fine.
SDCreate writes in the following order: MLO, u-boot.bin, boot.scr, uenv.txt, riscos, cmos (Do not forget to change the cmos. You need a new one on the card ore in the widget.).
To copy all the files at once was not successful every time.