Plusberry Pi

Not sure if anyone is aware of the Plusberry Pi Indiegogo project, shown here but as an early backer, I received my units a month of so ago. I believe it is still available to order, now being one of Indiegogo’s perpetual projects.

I’ve just built up the enthusiasm to build it up, and thought I’d have a bit of a stab at installing a RISC OS image in it. Stone me if it doesn’t just work! I did a NOOBS install, waiting for it to turn on and was presented with a FAT32 Hard Drive, as I was using an old Windows HDD!

A quick screenshot is shown below (window file names obliterated to protect the innocent!)

I’ll be honest, I’m a bit surprised it JUST worked!

For my next trick, I’m going to install a new SSD, format to Filecore and see what happens!

Okay, HForm recognised the SSD as 112GB (It’s a SanDisk 120GB, so that seems about right), formatted it, and we’re away!!! Now to try to boot from it… works! Took a while to discover the command *configure SCSIFSDrive 4, but once I did, it was away! Now, how do I “benchmark” it?! Currently, I’m suspecting it is quite a bit slower than SDFS…

Does it support all Pis? (mine is the original with no holes in the PCB)

What is the price for the unit (without Pi)? (The linked page was blank, presumably due to braindead use of javascript)

Does it support all Pis? (mine is the original with no holes in the PCB)

I believe so. The Pi doesn’t mount or need to be screwed in, it merely “clicks” into place between strategically positioned tabs and the port bracket. I’ve only tried it with a B+ but the bumpf says that it would accommodate an A/B/B+ – I’d note that there’s no mention of an A+ though, but that might be more to do with timing (perhaps the instructions were written after the B+ was released, but before the A+?). If you look at this gif, you can see that they actually demonstrate it with a no-holes Pi.

What is the price for the unit (without Pi)? (The linked page was blank, presumably due to braindead use of javascript)

I checked it without Javascript and yep! That’s the reason!

According to the page (with JS on!), it’s $65 US for a bare unit, (as in, no Pi or hard drive) and $10 for shipping. It’s available in glossy black or white. You can buy a range of upgrades, including a fully assembled 1TB unit for $255 plus $10 shipping. Probably not running RISC OS out of the box!

I’ve reverted back from SSD to ordinary 2.5" HDD as the unmeasured, perceived speed difference is, well, unnoticeable! After all, it’s nobbled by the speed of the USB it’s connected to.

There’s a YouTube video here which I guess you could download using Murnong and play back with KinoAmp.

You can also download a Youtube video (or other) via http://www.keepvid.com/.
Works with !Netsurf.

Okay, I’ve found ROMark and benchmarked it – here are the results:

Might help anyone interested…

Too late, already ordered. :) (For my existing Pi.)