RISC OS on IGEPv2

I’ve had it pointed out, that IGEPv2 is on sale sans WiFi and Bluetooth for 105 EUR:

That’s interesting. I’m interested in turning them off from a power-saving point of view, but I read on the ISEE FAQ that’s possible anyway, so I don’t mind having them “on-board”. I was hoping that sometime in the distant future, I’d be able to get the Wi-Fi working from within RISC OS, but it’s a closed-source firmware apparently, so perhaps it’ll never happen. That said, it might be possible to figure out enough from the linux sources available from ISEE themselves to get something going. Time will tell!

I picked up a multimeter today, so next time I look at power management I should be able to get some reliable readings for how much power the board is using in different situations. The multimeter also came with a thermocouple, so I used it to measure the temperature of the TWL4030 - with the fixed audio it runs at a fairly acceptable 40 degrees, but with the broken audio it went right up to 90!

When I get my board back from ISEE, I’ll check out its current consumption too – then we can make some comparisons. I might have a thermocouple somewhere as well. There have been a few reports on the ISEE forums about the temperature of the OMAP itself, but I don’t think anyone’s mentioned the power/audio chip there.

I’m thinking of getting an OMAP board to run RISC OS 5 to help me update my software to support the new hardware and help the ROOL effort where I can. I am however undecided as to whether I should get the BeagleBoard or IGEPv2? The IGEPv2 seems to be the better specified of the two and is easier to obtain than the US BeagleBoard, but how does the RISC OS experience differ between the two?

As far as I’m aware, not many of “us” have IGEPv2 boards, and very little experimentation has been done with them so far. Initial tests would suggest that the BB ROM just works, but on closer inspection, there might be things that need tweaking. If you want better support from people who know what they’re doing here (not really me!), I’d recommend a BB. If you like the idea of trying something a bit different, dare to IGEP!

One thing to consider is that unlike the BeagleBoard, the IGEP doesn’t come with an RTC battery holder – if you want one you’ll have to solder it to the board yourself. Probably not something for a novice electrician to attempt, considering the size and spacing of the components on the board! Of course if your board is always going to be connected to the internet then the lack of RTC battery isn’t such a big issue, since you can use NetTime instead.

The only other thing I’ll say is that RISC OS doesn’t yet have a driver for the IGEP’s onboard NIC. So if you’re interested in helping ROOL, and planning on buying an IGEP board, then writing a driver for the NIC is something worth considering :)

Hi guys,quick question. I just got my IGEP and I did everything you guys set. But it simply boots up in some basic desktop (which is linux I presume). So I’m going to describe my steps please tell me what I forgot or did wrong. format micro sd card in fat: toss on boot script, rename bootscript boot.ini.toss on RISCOS (the rom for OMAP)

Thanks in advace!

I also got an IGEP recently. I had difficulties getting it to boot into RISC OS. Eventually I found out that it’s extremely fussy about the specific way that the SD card is formatted. I found that formatting it using a Mac didn’t result in a bootable SD card, formatting on a windows XP machine sorted it out (I didn’t have a RISC OS machine to hand to try out) It might be worth experimenting with formatting on different machines if you have them available.

You should also be sure to type *speaker off as soon as it boots up as the downloadable ROM doesn’t currently contain the audio fixes.

please tell me what I forgot or did wrong. format micro sd card in fat: toss on boot script, rename bootscript boot.ini.toss on RISCOS (the rom for OMAP)

Sounds about right. I used a Windows HP format utility for the SD card (called the beautifully thought-out ‘SP27213.exe’). If you can’t find it on the Interweb, I can email you a copy. The other thing that I’m ashamed to admit got me at first, was that I didn’t have Explorer set to show file extensions, so the file I thought was called ‘boot.ini’ was in fact called ‘boot.ini.ini’! Okay everyone, you can laugh at me now!

Good luck, Thomas.

The only other thing I’ll say is that RISC OS doesn’t yet have a driver for the IGEP’s onboard NIC. So if you’re interested in helping ROOL, and planning on buying an IGEP board, then writing a driver for the NIC is something worth considering :)

That’s definitely near the top of my list of IGEP things to attempt when I get my board back!

Ok I did the same “stupid” thing as you W P blatchley. The double ini’s. ;). Now I can get to the supervisor prompt. (how do I get to the desktop after this?). After I have used the command *speaker off after a couple of minutes the screen starts to flicker and everything dies. Since I can boot it up in Poky linux and it can run for a very long time, I think the screen problem is related to Risc OS and not the hardware

Bah, despite ROOL increasing the login timeout it still manages to kick me off before I’m ready to post my reply :(

Summary:

W.P. Blatchley has run into similar video problems as yourself – see page one of the thread. I’ve uploaded a new ROM image here which contains the audio fix, Portable module, and potential video fix (enabling PLL auto re-lock) – have a go with that and see what happens. There’s also an updated passive video ROM which you can (hopefully) use if the proper one still fails to work. The new video driver I’m writing, which I’m hoping will at least shed some light on the IGEP problems (if they still occur) is still at least a few days away from being releasable, so if you still have problems you may just have to sit tight for a while.

For getting to the desktop, *desktop should be all you need – although you’ll probably want to sort yourself out a boot sequence/disc image as well, for which we could probably do with a brief guide on the wiki – but in summary:

1. Format USB device using !SCSIForm
2. Extract HardDisk4 archive from the ROOL download pages
3. Connect USB device to OMAP board
4. Use ’*SCSI’ and ’*!Boot’ to run the sequence and get to the desktop

Obviously the above is a bit harder if you don’t have an Iyonix to run !SCSIForm from (or RiscPC, if the Castle USB podule works with the mass storage driver – I’m not sure if it does). Which is why we need a wiki page to go through all the steps for using the new self-extracting archives to do everything from the OMAP board itself ;)

Hi Jeffrey the rom with the audio fix,Portable module,.... works like a charm. I left it running for more then ten minutes and I had no problem whatsoever. Boot,I will try this evening!

Glad to hear Jeffrey’s latest ROM image works without the display cutting out. I found that with some light to medium pressure from my finger on the OMAP/memory POP in the centre of the board, the display would come back on again. This prompted me to send my board back to ISEE for investigation. I think that as the OMAP warms up, a contact fails somewhere. (It doesn’t get very hot, but there’s definitely a noticeable rise in temp.; people on the ISEE forums report somewhere around 40 – 50 degrees C.) I’d be interested to hear if you find the same thing if you revert to the previous ROM image, Thomas.

Anyway, if you’re trying to format a USB stick and get a boot sequence on it all from the OMAP board (i.e. if, like me, you don’t have an Iyonix), you’ll find it a damn sight easier if the display doesn’t keep cutting out!

W.P. Blatchley has run into similar video problems as yourself

Call me Will, or wpb, or anything shorter than ‘W. P. Blatchley’!

Thanks, I think I will be getting the IGEPv2 then (once my new monitor has arrived as I don’t have DVI at the moment). The onboard NIC did interest me over the BeagleBoard too. I’m not sure how good I would be at writing a NIC driver, but I would probably have a go, once I have fixed all my own problems :-)

ISEE has shipped my board back to me. They said there was an unsoldered ball on the OMAP (Hey, their words not mine!) so it looks like the display problems I was seeing probably were heat-related, and nothing to do with RISC OS. Perhaps Thomas, you have a board manufactured around the same time as mine? (My order number was 41, if anything can be read into that.) Anyway, my inconvenience has paid dividends – I’m getting a 720MHz version back, so that’s good news for me!

My board was a 72Omhz to begin with,I hope nothing is wrong with it that would be annoying

I’ve hit a another heatbump it seems, after twenty minutes or so after trying to get the disable alignment exceptions working, the screen started flickering again. I pushed a bit on the omap but it didn’t do anything. It seems kind of random. But always when you try to use applications after a while the screen just turns on and off.

Hi guys I tried to disable the alignment exceptionsin BASIC but everytime I type: SWI “OS_EnterOS” . I get the reply mistake. What am I doing wrong here? And since I’m asking silly questions: What should be the filetype of the HardDisc4.util? I tried util and UTL but filecore didn’t recognise it :(

Sorry you’re having more trouble with the video. I’ll be testing my new board soon – so I’ll report back here with my own findings.

With the alignment exceptions, are you trying to type each line individually at the BASIC ‘>’ prompt? You should enter the code on this page as a program. So, drop into BASIC (’*basic’) and then type ‘AUTO’ <return>. That should give you a line number (‘10’) at which you can start entering the lines of the program. When you’re done, hit <escape> and then save the program for future use! (Type ‘SAVE “filename”’). Then run it with ‘RUN’ <return>. Sorry if you know all this already!

As for your filetype question, what is ‘HardDisc4.util’? Where did you get this file?

Thomas, the BASIC keyword to call SWIs is SYS. So type

SYS”OS_EnterOS”

You should enter the code on this page as a program.

Or paste the code into a text file, prepend with AUTO and then *EXEC the file from BASIC.

WPB & Trevor are correct – you need to enter the program with line numbers and then run it. I’ve updated the wiki page so this is a bit clearer.

The HardDisc4.util file needs to have its filetype changed to ‘Utility’ (it’s one of ROOL’s new self-extracting archives; see here for a bit more info)

Ok guys I found a much easier way to get a !BOOT structure without an Iyonix:

1) Get two FAT formatted USB sticks

2) Download the HardDisc4.util file from the ROOL download section and put it on both USB sticks.

3)Boot your IGEP2 board with one stick inserted .

4)On the desktop open your stick and set the filetype of HardDisc4.util to &FFC.

5) Double click HardDisc4.util. It will start expanding, this will take a while.

6) Once finished open the new HardDisc4 map then Utilities,then USBmass,then !SCSIForm

7) The program will start and you will begin to format the USBstick (I realise you could probably do this for the second stick aswell,but this is how it worked for me.)

8)After this is finished restart your IGEP2 with both sticks inserted.

9)Copy the HardDisc4.util from the FAT formated stick to the filecore formated stick and install your boot structure.

A couple of remarks:

I turned of my heating and put on an extra sweater and the IGEPv2 doesn’t seem to have any video related problems anymore. It is definitly a heating problem.

Now I can’t use my boot structure yet because my screen keeps telling me Input is not suported,how do I solve this again? I am such a n00b :(.

At the bottom of this page there’s an MDF file containing modes which work well on the beagleboard. It’s a good place to start from, although it was written for older OMAP’s which had more restrictions on the sync & porch timings than the current models.