Loader partition

Is it possible to have the Loader partition outside !Boot. I tried moving it but that just resulted in the Riscos partition not being seen.

Are you sure you moved it?

I have moved it while upgrading !Boot as I keep a copy of the old setup in case I need to revert. Moving worked for me, copying wouldn’t for obvious reasons. ;-)

BTW, I think somebody said a while back that it was there so advanced users can get to it easily, but hidden enough that less advanced users may not find it (and do horrible things like delete it – “oi, what’s this huge file doing in here?”).

Yeah I moved it. Did you move it back to !Boot before using it? I’ll see if that works

Nope that didn’t work. At least I’ve found some good ways to get a broken directory.

Turns out to be a problem with Beagleboard I can move Loader around on Pi without problems

The trick is to never move Loader, move everything else out of !Boot to a backup folder, then copy in the new !Boot.

Yes, that’s what I was doing but foolishly thought there must be an easier way. I can move Loader out of !Boot with the PI and it boots up ok.

It’s about time we got proper partitions. Deleting everything except Loader is a lot slower than reformating the card.

Deleting everything except Loader is a lot slower than reformating the card.

That’s why you move it to a backup folder, instead of deleting. Personally, I always keep the last !Boot, last Firmware and last ROM so I can switch things around when I start seeing issues.

I wanted an empty disc. Preparing it on the pi did the trick.

Is anyone booting a BeagleBoard rev c4 just using SDFS?

At the moment I’m using an SD card just for loading riscos and booting riscos from a memory stick. Up until now I only wrote the riscos rom to the SD card from the Beagleboard and that would occasionally fail when rebooting – loading the same rom to the sd card on another machine would boot ok. But I’ve been trying to boot riscos from the SD card using the Pi RC14 disc image. Replacing the pi boot loading files for the Beagle ones boots up to the desktop ok but doing anything results in a broken directory in the riscos partition.

Does anyone else have problems with SDFS on a beagleboard or is it just my problem.

I use a Beagleboard C4 with SDFS only. Use you the right cmos? Or have you change the cmos in the widget (not sure what your using).
I have a sdcard image for C4 and Pandora. Is 4GB RC14 based ;-)
If you need, I can post a link. Also for a right cmos.

Edit: Sorry, I misunderstand anything.
I change the bootfiles via DosFS with disabled Fat32FS. Via the Loader or fat32fs was not working correct, I mean.

The cmos is a file on the sd card – in the bootloader partition. I know it is working because it sets up the desktop as I configured it. There’s no problems modifying the riscos partition when I put the disc in another computer. I’ve used this technique on other computers without problems.

I’d be interested in trying out your sdcard image but 4GB would take years to download.

Not sure if I am understanding correctly. When I first got the ARMini, it loaded the bootloader files from microSD card and then booted RISC OS from a memory stick, which was rather slow.

Subsequently, once SystemDisc was available, using a 32GB class 10 microSD card, I made up a bootloader partition of (I think) 64 MB, with the rest given over to the RISC OS partition, which I then populated with software. I did all this on the BB system. Once the setup of the new card was complete, I simply replaced the original microSD card with the new one, changed the boot file system to SDFS, and have been using it ever since (although it is not used much these days).

I do not think I ever had any problems booting from SDFS, although when I was using the BB a lot, I added a usb connected SSD as the main file store medium.

This Image is compressed and 550MB.
If you use Linux, you can use somthing like this
sudo gunzip -c /path/Pan_C14plus.gz | dd of=/dev/mmcblk0
Change the devices and path for your own !!!
With WIN you can use USBit without deflate.

Thanks Raik. I got your rom image working but it turned out to be a couple of faulty sd cards. Once I got your image working on another card I wiped it and put my files in the loader and riscos partition and every thing worked ok.

Phew! Normal service has been resumed.