RISC OS Build On Touchbook

After starting this thread I feel rather bad about disappearing. Well, life does get busy sometimes, but the main reason is that I’ve been having a lot of issues with my touchbook so trying RISC OS wouldn’t have been much fun at all.

Always Innovating are a decent lot though, and have agreed to exchange the unit for another as it appears to have serious battery problems. Then I’ll join Bryan in the testing. And yes, I already have a USB keyboard. Ohh, get me.

Haven’t spent much time on this in the past week. AI released a new TouchBook OS last week so I spent more time trying that out! It has a nice graphical boot menu screen, where you tap the OS you want to start. Currently the choice is the AI OS, Ubuntu, or Android. There’s a nice spare space for another option – it would be good to put a RISC OS cog in there :-)

Anyway, as I had created a new SD card for the new OS, I then tried putting the boot.scr and riscos rom file onto the first partition (the FAT formatted one with mlo, u-boot.bin, uImage, etc) to see if that would start RISC OS. It had no effect at all, it went through the normal boot :-(

There is an “Other OS” option on the advanced boot menu, but I don’t knwo what that does (yet).

Anyway, as I had created a new SD card for the new OS, I then tried putting the boot.scr and riscos rom file onto the first partition (the FAT formatted one with mlo, u-boot.bin, uImage, etc) to see if that would start RISC OS. It had no effect at all, it went through the normal boot :-(

Hmm – did you remove the mlo, u-boot.bin, and uImage or leave them there? I’m not sure exactly how their boot menu thing works – I have a feeling it’s using a custom version of u-boot (or some program running from within u-boot), so it’s possible they’ve changed something around that stops boot scripts from working.

If the boot menu is the one shown in this video, could you check what the “get a command line” option does? If we’re lucky it will be the u-boot command line instead of a Linux one.

Also, if you haven’t already, check out the last few posts in this thread – if you can get it to work with the touch book boot script, and with the ROM I uploaded using the “passive” driver, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to see RISC OS booting.

Of course if none of the above works then it’s probably a sign I should get in touch and ask what they’d prefer us to do :)

[Irrelevance deleted.]

Great work with the porting and debugging, BTW!

did you remove the mlo, u-boot.bin, and uImage or leave them there?

I left them there.

I’m not sure exactly how their boot menu thing works – I have a feeling it’s using a custom version of u-boot (or some program running from within u-boot), so it’s possible they’ve changed something around that stops boot scripts from working.

I was hoping the presense of the boot.scr would overide the normal boot, as the AI wiki describes that as a way of booting the system if you’ve got it in a mess.

If the boot menu is the one shown in this video,

Yes it is. Although the initial front screen does not have Chrome on it in the released version. That bottom right box is empty and looking ripe for a cog :-)

check what the “get a command line” option does? If we’re lucky it will be the u-boot command line instead of a Linux one.

If it’s a u-boot command line that would be very handy, as it would make switching to RISC OS on the same SD card fairly easy. I’ll give it a go later, as well as trying the passive ROM image.

Unfortunately, it’s not a u-boot command line. It’s a standard Linux shell (probably busybox) that also provides the environment for updating the OS.

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=830

:-(

What bad news… Have you also posted the failure to Bugzilla ?

Formatting it for RISC OS with !SCSIForm would be a good idea

Ah, that would be an Iyonix thing? Don’t have one! Is there a way to RISC OS format it under Ubuntu?

Bryan – did you manage this using acorn-fdisk or did you have to get access to a USB-equipped RISC OS machine and use SCSIForm?

Probably those who have a Touch Book have already found the links below… I’m posting them for newcomers or in case anyone without a Touch Book might be able to offer advice after reading them. (Once the port is running, it’ll all be in the wiki of course!)

• AI forum – Semi-permanent RS232/UART3/Serial attachment
• AI forum – Common things about swapping OS
• AI forum – Mer
• AI forum – Google Android (reference to build scripts committed by Grégoire Gentil)
• AI wiki – Installing Mer
• Mer/Documentation/Installation (cross referenced from a forum post)

It has a nice graphical boot menu screen, where you tap the OS you want to start. Currently the choice is the AI OS, Ubuntu, or Android. There’s a nice spare space for another option – it would be good to put a RISC OS cog in there :-)

RISC OS is in danger of being beaten to this spot by Ubuntu (UNR?) :-(

Yesterday I soldered a serial cable to my touch book and had a quick look into why RISC OS doesn’t work:

• The touch book doesn’t seem to have any copies of x-loader or u-boot in NAND, so they need to be on the SD card, and the SD card needs to be in the right format for the OMAP boot ROM.
• It looks like the touch book version of u-boot only displays the white-on-black AI logo; the full bootmenu is provided by some other component. I know that they run all the different linux distributions using one shared kernel, so it’s probable that it’s that kernel which displays the boot menu.
• RISC OS hangs while initialising the USB drivers. I’ll have to do some more investigation to find out which one and why.

RISC OS hangs while initialising the USB drivers. I’ll have to do some more investigation to find out which one and why.

Correction: RISC OS doesn’t hang. What was actually happening (or at least, what was happening today) was that the touchbook was losing power, because I was running it without the keyboard attached, and the top part battery charging circuit is a piece of crap.

Anyway, should anyone other than me have a TouchBook that vaguely works, here’s an SD card image containing a functional RISC OS ROM image. Video and USB both work. Note that although the TB keyboard will work, the touch pad won’t – it looks like RISC OS’s mouse driver is outdated compared to the NetBSD version and doesn’t handle all HID mouse types properly (including not checking for errors if the HID report isn’t acceptable, which is probably why the touchpad behaves so odd – press it hard and you’ll see what I mean)

For Iyonix (or beagle!) owners the above zipfile contains a simple BASIC program that can be used to write the disc image to an SD card. Other people should be able to use Win32DiskImager to write the image from Windows (although I can’t say I’ve tried that myself!)

Also at the bottom of the OMAPVideo page I’ve added an MDF entry for the Touch Book’s screen. Also note that the current version of OMAPVideo ignores all the mode timing values apart from the screen width and height when running on devices with fixed screens (Touch Book, Pandora), and instead uses fixed timings specified by the HAL. This means that you can use pretty much any screen mode you want on the Touch Book, with the obvious limitation that the current driver doesn’t do any display scaling and instead just aligns the image to the top-left of the panel; so anything over 1024×600 will be cropped.

If anyone tries the above image out, what should happen is the following:

• The white-on-black AI logo appears. If not, it means u-boot hasn’t loaded, which probably means the SD card isn’t inserted properly, or is corrupt, or you’ve used some tool which has messed up the disc image.
• A few seconds later, the AI logo should disappear and then the backlight should turn off briefly. This means RISC OS is starting up.
• When the backlight turns back on the screen will begin to ‘white-out’.
• With any luck, a few seconds later the RISC OS boot message will appear. If not, then the machine may have fallen foul of the same problem that occasionally stops video from working on other boards (I’ve seen it happen on my TouchBook, so I know it’s not just beagleboard-specific). So just reboot and give it another go or two.

To turn the machine off you’ll have to hold down the power button for a few seconds. And if it’s crashed then the best way to check if it’s off or not is to take the back off and look for the glow from any LEDs on the main board.

“Correction: RISC OS doesn’t hang. What was actually happening (or at least, what was happening today) was that the touchbook was losing power, because I was running it without the keyboard attached, and the top part battery charging circuit is a piece of crap.”

I’m sorry about that Jeffrey. I had a lot of problems with the Touchbook I had before that one, kicked up a fuss and they replaced it with the upgraded version. I didn’t notice those same issues after that, but then I used it plugged in all the time trying to get ruby-on-rails for Angstrom working. See my post here complaining about the original’s power management;

http://alwaysinnovating.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=951&p=6054#p6054

I’m sure I can get on to Always Innovating for you. They’re actually very helpful when they eventually answer e-mails and had no problem with replacing my last Touchbook.

I’m sure I can get on to Always Innovating for you. They’re actually very helpful when they eventually answer e-mails and had no problem with replacing my last Touchbook.

I don’t think there’s much point sending it back for repair/replacement until they begin production again. If they’ve run out of spares then they could end up holding onto it for months. And now that I’ve soldered a serial cable to it there’s no guarantee that they’d take it back anyway!

Note that although the TB keyboard will work, the touch pad won’t

After spending most of yesterday waiting for the TouchBook to charge so it would start working again, I managed to investigate what the problem is with this. It looks like it’s a fault in the keyboard’s USB controller – the HID report descriptor lists multiple report IDs, but the data packets that the controller sends out aren’t prefixed by the report ID, causing RISC OS to ignore/misinterpret it. So it’s either a bad USB device or there’s some part of the HID spec which I haven’t spotted which will explain this behaviour. Either way it should be easy enough to work around the issue by adding an extra quirk check to USBDriver.

While looking at the issue I also started off by updating the mouse driver to the latest NetBSD version (ish; the structure of the RISC OS driver seems to have diverged a bit from the NetBSD one, so I’ve just copied over the relevant bits). Apart from a couple of extra quirks to deal with bad devices, this update should add support for the ‘W’ axis (as used with scroll balls/tilting scroll wheels), and support for devices which report absolute positions instead of relative (although I still need to fix the code to generate relative movements for passing to RISC OS). Plus I don’t have any mice with W axes so I’ve got no way of checking if the horizontal scroll direction needs flipping or not.

All these changes should hopefully be in CVS in the next day or two, along with the -xM work.

“I don’t think there’s much point sending it back for repair/replacement until they begin production again. If they’ve run out of spares then they could end up holding onto it for months.”

No harm in asking, but I suppose it will be at least a fortnight gone, even if they do have the parts.

“And now that I’ve soldered a serial cable to it there’s no guarantee that they’d take it back anyway!”

They positively encourage people to bugger around with the boards so I wouldn’t have thoughts that’s a problem as long as they know it from the start.

They seem to have gone to ground over the last few weeks though. There was a burst of replies from a team member some little time ago, then nothing. I suspect they’ve been caught up with supply problems regarding their newest and ‘craziest’ invention.

I suspect they’ve been caught up with supply problems regarding their newest and ‘craziest’ invention.

"Sorry, you don't have rights to access this page - But you soon will"

I’ve tried the image on mine and it seems that unless I’ve got the charger plugged in constantly, the screen starts flashing. This might be a sign that the battery is a bit low, as it hasn’t been charged for a while. Normally, the longevity is quite good.

Using a memory key that I set up for the Beagle (with the new MDF), a spare USB mouse and a USB Ethernet interface, I can access my RiscPC over Access+. I might try something more challenging this weekend.

Have you all seen the Always Innovating site of late? With the new products? Its truly odd.

"new era begins" but what about those just wanting finished hardware for the first model ?

Always Innovating "All-in-one" Smart Book video (3:24) – which doesn’t want to play for me ATM!

AI have published a fix for the battery issue some units develop.

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/wiki/index.php/Tablet_battery_charging_fix

As a long time user of RISC OS, and a short time follower of this forum, I was wondering where ROBOT was up to. The questions I have are mainly around how useful such a device would be to me:

Does the Touchscreen work or would I have to attach an external mouse (I’m sure I read somewhere that the touchpad doesn’t work)? Can I use it as a standalone tablet (even with external mouse)? I assume wifi is a massive no-go at this point?

My other question is about the new smartbook. I suspect that RO won’t run on the MID part, so does anyone have any idea about it running at all on the smartbook? Is it even vaguely possible at this point?

And is it only me that can see (off-topic) that taking the MID board and planting it in a Psion 5MX case would be the best thing ever?!

Does the Touchscreen work or would I have to attach an external mouse (I’m sure I read somewhere that the touchpad doesn’t work)?

The touchscreen doesn’t work yet, but the touchpad now does. Except it’s only got two buttons, which will currently map to Select and Adjust. So using a mouse is advised, unless you think you can live without the Menu button!

Can I use it as a standalone tablet (even with external mouse)? I assume wifi is a massive no-go at this point?

Yes and yes.

My other question is about the new smartbook. I suspect that RO won’t run on the MID part, so does anyone have any idea about it running at all on the smartbook? Is it even vaguely possible at this point?

It’s only the MID which contains a CPU - the smartbook/tablet just acts as a bigger screen and extended battery. I haven’t looked at any docs/code yet to work out exactly how everything fits together in the new device, but I suspect that some changes to RISC OS will be needed to get it running on either of them.

And is it only me that can see (off-topic) that taking the MID board and planting it in a Psion 5MX case would be the best thing ever?!

The Pandora has a higher-res screen, and won’t require any hardware hackery :). Shame that the keyboad won’t be as good as the Psion’s though.

Also I’ll warn you that after having trouble with the battery charging on my touchbook, I effectively managed to brick the device – the top part battery charge was so low that it wouldn’t boot into Linux anymore, even with the keyboard and/or AC adaptor connected. The only way to fix it seemed to be to charge the tablet battery using the bottom-part charging circuit. Since RISC OS doesn’t do anything to enable the top part battery charging circuit, and the hardware design seems to cause it to favour draining the top part battery over using any other power supply, I wouldn’t recommend using RISC OS for long periods of time without dropping into Linux to recharge the top part battery every so often.

A couple of weeks ago I did look at the docs for the battery charger, and it looks fairly straightforward, but I haven’t yet found the time to try writing the driver.

The touchscreen doesn’t work yet, but the touchpad now does. Except it’s only got two buttons, which will currently map to Select and Adjust. So using a mouse is advised, unless you think you can live without the Menu button!

Virtual Acorn (where you have the same problem for two-button mice on PCs) maps the the keyboard “Menu” button (usually beside the right Ctrl key) to the middle mouse button on RISC OS. Maybe that could be an idea here, too?

As I understand, the RISC OS mouse driver merely send any mouse clicks to the KeyV (like keyboard driver does for key presses), so it seems it would “just” be a matter of making the keyboard driver perform the same mapping for the “Menu” key, alternatively remap it in another module, if that’s possible.