Current State of Pi 3
13 posts, 8 voices
Glen Walker (2585)
469 posts
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I have been happily running RISC OS off and on for a bit using a Pi Zero attached to a carrier board that had USB and Ethernet on it. Recently though I did something strange to the carrier board and managed to fry it (releasing all the magic smoke). I believe the Zero is fine, but am now thinking of building my own case and ditching the carrier board. I have a B+ that is spare but was thinking of going to a Pi 3 because its the latest board available—however the last time I used a Pi 3 it was a bit flaky (this was 6-12 months ago?). So all that pre-amble aside, how stable is the Pi3 these days? Or should I go for a 2B? |
Clive Semmens (2335)
3276 posts
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My Pi3 is running RISCOS (RC15) perfectly beautifully. Continuous up-time many months now, not sure exactly how long without a bit of digging. No crashes running any of the software I use. Driving a Philips 4K telly as a monitor at 24 Hz. |
Jeffrey Lee (213)
6048 posts
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If you’re worried about software compatibility, a Pi 2 won’t be any better than a Pi 3, because the “V1.2” Pi 2 (which has been available for about a year now) uses the same SoC as the Pi 3. |
Andrew McCarthy (460)
126 posts
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My Pi3 works flawlessly with the NutPi suite of programs that I use and RC15. |
George T. Greenfield (154)
749 posts
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With RC15 it should be fine. I upgraded from an old-model Pi2 several months ago and “compatibility issues” were a complete non-event: there weren’t any. Aemulor worked as before, as did 26-bit apps like Rhapsody. The only issue related to Eureka, which loaded ok but wouldn’t save from a dialogue box. As for speed, real-world tests show a 50-100% increase, though jpeg rendering is not much improved compared to a ‘2’. It certainly feels quicker! And as pointed out above, the ‘2’ now has the same cpu anyway, so you may as well go the whole hog. |
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Glen Walker (2585)
469 posts
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Cool thanks! Hadn’t appreciated it had changed SoC on the Pi2…I see no point in going with that now and will go with the 3 which is cheaper anyway! |
Chris Mahoney (1684)
2165 posts
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With this, perhaps? (click on Uptime) :) |
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Clive Semmens (2335)
3276 posts
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Possibly, but it wasn’t the method I had in mind. I rebooted it after my hard drive failed. I don’t remember why, but I know that’s when I did it, and I said something about it at the time. That may actually only be a few weeks, not months, ago – but the Pi had been running continuously for months before that. Hard drive failure is the only time it’s been down since I got the driving of the monitor sorted after installing RC15. Don’t have a hard drive on the Pi any longer – just the SD card (with 1.75GB free) and a 7GB USB stick – 7GB? Don’t ask. That’s what RISCOS says. |
Patrick M (2888)
115 posts
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I’m still using a Pi 2 (original version from before they changed the cpu) and I’m also still using the RC14 version of RISC OS. I have a Pi 3 that I got for christmas last year lying around unused. I think I’ll get another SD card and try the newest RISC OS on the pi 3. I’m looking to get some BASIC programs going wild |
Rick Murray (539)
13851 posts
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Some things were rather upset by the lack of an SWP instruction! https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/4/topics/6662 Every processor behavioural change will affect some bit of software or other. Here’s something important to me that broke on the Pi2 (original ARMv7 CPU): https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/9455
Because RISC OS counts in old-fashioned proper gigabytes (base 2) while storage continues the long-time lie of using base 10 gigabytes, and the nice filer free-space display discards fractional units (which is a bit silly when we’re talking GIGAbytes, as 4.9GB != 4GB!). A base 10 8GB is 8,000,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 / 1024 = 7.45 Now the Free command won’t tell you the size of your media. It’ll report the free and used. For me, that is 2,883,266K free and 4,878,653K used. Add them together to get the media size, which is 7,761,919K. The BASE 2 size is 7,761,919 / 1024 / 1024 = 7.40 (losing a little bit for the formatting). So 7.4GB (real) is 8GB (denary). FWIW, I got one of the original ARMv7 models from CJE after my attempt to get one from The PiHut failed hard. I specifically wanted an ARMv7 as I was interested more in a system with more memory and more USB ports than Latest Greatest. I will upgrade, probably about the time the Pi3 is discontinued. ;-) |
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Clive Semmens (2335)
3276 posts
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I know that! I said don’t ask! 8~) |
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George T. Greenfield (154)
749 posts
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Indeed. The linked posts mentioned a number of different apps – one of which, Otter, certainly works perfectly now on the Pi3 – and as they mostly pre-dated the release of RC15 I wonder how current the problems mentioned still are? From the OP’s point of view, it may be helpful to concentrate on what works, so here’s a list of things that function normally on my Pi3. I haven’t exhaustively checked every aspect of every programme, but the items listed appear to behave exactly as they did on the ARMv7 Pi2. I have omitted the plings for the sake of ease of typing. Versions are mostly latest, or as stated; I’ll be glad to provide version details of anything listed if requested. 3dBall Eureka (26-bit) will load and display a file, but won’t save out. I haven’t tried SWPPatch so don’t know if this would fix it. |
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Clive Semmens (2335)
3276 posts
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Crikey. I don’t know what half those are, but I can add the following, that I have working on my Pi3 (RC15): CreateSEC Plus the apps I wrote myself: XP1Dr2SVG, XP1FontEd, XP1MBoldn, XP1PathEd and XP1ReDraw. |
