Soft loader for Pi & Panda?

Can we have a Softloader for OMAP & Pi builds please? Like the Iyonix.
It would save me and I’m sure others quite a lot of time. Having to get the SD card out from inside a PandaRO or RaspberryRo case can be a pain.

I have tried the Iyonix softloader on our demo PandaRO but the softload prompt never appears or any error message. I did change the ROM image inside softloader for a differently dated Panda build!

Fat32fs has supported SDFS for some time now. You can mount the FAT partition using this.

If you’re already running 5.21 the prompt won’t show. Just change the !Run file to look for a higher version.

You can also now create a two-partition SD card image, with the FAT partition accessible from the DOS image file $.!Boot.Loader, to suit an SD card of any size, with almost all of the card available to RISC OS. SDFS is quite fast too, better than fat32fs. To do this use ‘SystemDisc’ from Piccolo Systems.

Sorry if I’ve not explained it well. I’m well aware how to access both the FAT & SDFS partitions. But how do you recover from trying a ROM that is so bugged or corrupt to the point that the machine does not get to a state where you can access the FAT partition to change back to a working ROM¹ without removing the SD card and fixing it using another computer.
I was prompted to make the posting after reading that last nights Panda build ‘crashes just after “init mod Blendtable”.’ I didn’t want to risk trying it, in case I was left having to open up the case to remove the SD card to revert the ROM.

If you’re already running 5.21 the prompt won’t show. Just change the !Run file to look for a higher version.

I’ll give that a try on Monday

¹ I always keep a known working ROM image on the card in a suitably named subdirectory

But how do you recover from trying a ROM that is so bugged or corrupt to the point that the machine does not get to a state where you can access the FAT partition to change back to a working ROM1 without removing the SD card and fixing it using another computer.

I think you have answered your own question. If something goes really wrong and you cannot get RISC OS operational, you’ll need to fiddle with the card in another machine. Been there, done that, when playing with video to get something useful from the HDMI→VGA adaptor (you can’t really edit config files “blind”).

Referring to what you said at the top – one is tempted to suggest that if removing the media card is “a pain”, perhaps you should stick to the stable releases? Sometimes the latest builds don’t go exactly as planned. That’s the price you pay for living on the edge. ;-)

As for OMAP, which board? My Beagle xM loads a different version of RISC OS depending on whether or not the User Button is pressed (gave up farting around with Linux). Is there a mechanism like that you could use? Alternatively, can you get into uboot with a serial connection? If you can, perhaps you can interrupt the startup to load a different image? [this is for OMAP, I don’t think the Pi’s boot loader does stuff like that?]

There is another way without having to remove the card. It’s possible to network boot the RISC OS rom on a Beagleboard Xm and Pandaboard.
See Network Booting for instructions.

I just tried softloading a rom on a Pandaboard. It froze the machine. I think it’s due to the same problem of ctrl-break not working on the Pandaboard.

I think you have answered your own question. If something goes really wrong and you cannot get RISC OS operational, you’ll need to fiddle with the card in another machine.

Yes but as it is a pain to have to open up MiniITX cases and remove the SD card, I’d like to use a softload on builds that I don’t know to work. I’ll try Chris G’s suggestion on Monday. Also thanks Chris G for the network booting suggestion I’ll have to look into that.

Yes but as it is a pain to have to open up MiniITX cases and remove the SD card, I’d like to use a softload on builds that I don’t know to work.

That makes sense. Thus, if you don’t have a tftp option (Pi?), there are two possibilities:

1. Download the image but do not install it. Wait, instead, to see if there is noise on the forum. This, incidentally, is my approach to Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday (I wait to see if TheRegister reports “OMG it killed everything”, or not).
2. Have a machine, unboxed, that you can get access to easily. One would hope that one device is much the same as another device of its type, so if the image works on your test box, you then can roll it out to the others that are not so easy to fiddle with. This is perhaps the more realistic option for you.

An other posiblity is to hook up a serial terminal. Then you can interrupt the bootscript before loading the rom and give an other bootline that loads your backup rom.

If you’re already running 5.21 the prompt won’t show. Just change the !Run file to look for a higher version.

O.k. Yes that worked to get the softloader to run, but after the line starting foundpage 260096 … the screen goes black and the keyboard is unreponsive. reading the other text printeds before it I can see it does a lot of memory organising so I’m not surprised it is Iyonix specific.

I’ve just had a quick look at booting over the network and as I don’t have an tftp server I’d have to go with the wget option. Has anyone created the necessary scripts? I’m not sure I’d know were to start.

But I’d prefer if the softloader could be modified, I’d then be a very thankful chap!

I’ve just had a quick look at booting over the network and as I don’t have an tftp server I’d have to

If you have a smart phone you can install one on that. I think RISC OS 6 also has one.

But I’d prefer if the softloader could be modified, I’d then be a very thankful chap!

The softloader isn’t system specific. I’ve used it on a RISC PC and Beagleboard Xm. I think it locks up on the Pandaboard because ctrl-break doesn’t work

The softloader isn’t system specific.

Not quite; there’s some page table poking and cache maintenance code which is CPU/architecture specific. So although it may work on some ARMv6/ARMv7 systems, it certainly isn’t designed to work on them.

Also softloading on the Pi is a bit tricky as (last time I checked) I don’t think there’s any way of shutting down the VCHIQ connection with the GPU once it’s set up.

If you have a smart phone you can install one on that. I think RISC OS 6 also has one.

Well I don’t have a smart phone, but I do have RISC OS 6.16. I’ll have to look into that if a modified softloader doesn’t happen.

Well I don’t have a smart phone, but I do have RISC OS 6.16. I’ll have to look into that if a modified softloader doesn’t happen.

There doesn’t seem to be a freely available tftp server that runs on RISC OS. I found a Python module that implements a simple tftp server. You can download it from here. I’ve included instructions for set up and example Obey file to run it.

I recommend connecting a serial terminal – that way you can (exactly as said above) interrupt the boot (by pressing any key on the serial terminal in the first few seconds of the boot, while it shows a countdown timer on the serial screen and before RISC OS is loaded) before it tries to load the corrupt rom and simply invoke an alternative, known working rom as:

fatload mmc 0:1 0x4030C000 cmos
fatload mmc 0:1 0x81000000 riscosok
go 0x81000000

That’s the method I used whilst developing on the Beagleboard.