Raspberry Pi 3B+

Just wondering if the new Pi 3B+ will have broken RISC OS compatibility, now that it has a different LAN chip to triple ethernet speeds?

Or maybe the ROOL guys had a heads up? It would be a shame if 5.24 was automatically broken just prior to release.

I just saw that news and my first thought was “I bet 5.24 won’t work on it…”

ROOL usually does have a heads up, but whether it was enough time to declare the new drivers as stable is another matter.

Pity there’s no SATA but to be honest I didn’t expect it.

SMSC 7515 shouldn’t be a major problem, since EtherUSB already contains support for that family. So if things don’t work out of the box, it’ll probably only be minor changes that are needed.

Nice. I’ve got a couple on order locally, so as soon as I get them, I’ll report back.

Nice. I’ve got a couple on order locally, so as soon as I get them, I’ll report back.

Same here. Life is good when CPC Farnell are local.

Arrived this morning …

Arrived this morning …… but not persuaded the first one to do anything yet. Not even Pico.

I was just about to order, but will wait awhile until there is more information.

I’d suggest the latest development RISC OS ROM and the latest Pi firmware. Using old releases of things is only likely to increase the number of problems.

Be interesting to see how the Gb networking performs. I have a SMSC7500 adapter and don’t find it any better than the 100Mb adapters I have. You may find that sharefs becomes flakier. Gb networking seems to require more use of sharefswindow.

Model 3B+ just arrived today, courtesy of Royal Mail from PiSupply. Using

the latest development RISC OS ROM (5-Mar-2018) and the latest Pi firmware (13-Mar-2018).

The model 3B+ does start up under RISC OS, the revision being reported as A020D3. However it says ‘no network interfaces detected’ and the GPIO module reports itself as ‘dormant’ meaning that it has no information about how to talk to the GPIO pins on this SoC revision.

I extracted the latest Pi firmware from the Raspian SD card image and the latest RISC OS rom build (13-Mar-2018 zip and 05-Mar-2018 rom image):

Directory of LanMan98::NAS.$.(Pi).firmMar2018.2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch-lite
.config/txt Text            22:01:14 13-Mar-2018
.LICENCE/broadcom Text      18:28:20 09-Mar-2018
.ReadMe/txt Text            19:30:28 08-Oct-2016
.issue/txt Text             22:53:24 13-Mar-2018
.riscos/img Text            13:00:20 05-Mar-2018
.Licence_v1_1/pdf PDF       09:51:22 25-Oct-2012
.2018-03-13-raspbian-stretch-lite/img Text      22:53:34 13-Mar-2018
.cmdline/txt Text           22:53:22 13-Mar-2018
.bootcode/bin Data          20:53:58 13-Mar-2018
.start/elf Text             20:53:54 13-Mar-2018
.fixup/dat Text             20:53:58 13-Mar-2018

then used the following files from the RC15 disc image:

Directory of LanMan98::NAS.$.(Pi).firmMar2018.riscos-2017-04-13/15.RC15_firm
.config/txt Text      16:23:02 08-Jan-2017
.CMOS Text            17:56:48 08-Apr-2017

If you compile your own roms try modifying products.c

After line 67 add

 { 0x0424, 0x7515, N_SMSC75XX, ""   },

I’m guessing it’s 7515 from Jeffreys post. You can confirm that the vendor/product is 0424 7515 with

*usbdevices

to find the usb network device number and

usbdevinfo <n>

to get the information on the device.

Not perhaps as informative as it could be.

*usbdevices
No. Bus Dev Class Description
  1   1   1  9/ 0 Synopsys DWC OTG root hub
  2   1   2  9/ 0 SMSC USB 2.0 4-Port Hub
  3   1   3  9/ 0 SMSC USB 2.0 4-Port Hub
  4   1   4  0/ 0 Logitech USB Receiver
  5   1   5 FF/ 0 SMSC Product ID 7800
  6   1   6  0/ 0 Kingston DT R500
*usbdevinfo 5
USB release     : 0210
Device class    : FF
Device subclass : 00
Device protocol : FF
Max packet size : 40
Vendor ID       : 0424
Product ID      : 7800
Device ID       : 0300
# of configs    : 1
Manufacturer    : ''
Product         : ''
Serial number   : ''
Speed           : High
*

It’s the vendor & product ID which EtherUSB looks at, so try this:

 { 0x0424, 0x7800, N_SMSC75XX, ""   },

the latest Pi firmware (13-Mar-2018)

It looks like there were a few 3B+ related firmware changes on the 14th, so it’s probably best to use those.

I also need to revert to BCM Video 0.48, I think? Will return to this on Monday.

Some progress but not enough! The internet starts up without error at boot but there is no traffic. A green 1Gb light is on on the ethernet switch and that is about all.

Firmware

bootcode.bin  09Feb18
fixup.dat     14Mar18
start.elf     14Mar18

*usbDevices
No. Bus Dev Class Description
  1   1   1  9/ 0 Synopsys DWC OTG root hub
  2   1   2  9/ 0 SMSC USB 2.0 4-Port Hub
  3   1   3  9/ 0 SMSC USB 2.0 4-Port Hub
  4   1   4  9/ 0 Genesys Logic USB2.0 Hub
  5   1   5  9/ 0 Genesys Logic USB2.0 Hub
  6   1   6  0/ 0 Generic External
  7   1   7  0/ 0 MOSART Semi. 2.4G Keyboard Mouse
  8   1   8 FF/ 0 SMSC Product ID 7800

*usbdevinfo 8
USB release     : 0210
Device class    : FF
Device subclass : 00
Device protocol : FF
Max packet size : 40
Vendor ID       : 0424
Product ID      : 7800
Device ID       : 0300
# of configs    : 1
Manufacturer    : ''
Product         : ''
Serial number   : ''
Speed           : High
*

Added to products.c

  { 0x0424, 0x7800, N_SMSC75XX, ""   },

A ROM was built from the current beta source.

Unfortunately NetSurf comes up with this, Couldn't resolve host name

No other networking is working either.

Now what’s this about 10baseT!

*EJinfo
EtherUSB driver for USB network adapters, version 0.40, by James Peacock
DCI version 4.07, prefix 'ej', maximum 16 units
Supported backends:
  SMSC75xx      - SMSC 75xx
  SMSC95xx      - SMSC 95xx
  MCS7830       - MosChip MCS7830
  Pegasus       - Pegasus USB Ethernet Adapter
  AX88772       - ASIX AX88772
  AX88172       - ASIX AX88172
  CDC           - USB Communications Class Ethernet [Not functional yet]

ej0: SMSC75xx, USB bus 1, device 8, Devices:$.USB8, up

Interface driver     : ej
Interface unit       : 0
Interface location   : USB bus 1, device 8, Devices:$.USB8
Interface EUI48      : B8:27:EB:7B:E2:64
Interface backend    : SMSC75xx
Interface media      : 10baseT full duplex
Interface polarity   : Correct
Controller mode      : Multicast
Packets sent         : 97
Packets received     : 0
Bytes sent           : 4448
Bytes received       : 0
Send errors          : 0
Receive errors       : 0
Undelivered packets  : 0
Send queue overflows : 0

Standard clients:

Type 8035 (AddrLvl 01, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc378618/300035a4)
Type 0806 (AddrLvl 01, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc378618/300035a4)
Type 0800 (AddrLvl 02, ErrLvl 00) handler=(fc378618/300035a4)

Damn, BCM Video 0.49 just bit.

As a first impression the RPi3B+ is noticeably faster than the RPi3, and disc accesses seem improved. Very nice, I thought.

Test                                                   Benchmark
Processor - Looped instructions (cache)                  2870169    1613%
Memory - Multiple register transfer                        38512   23772%
Rectangle Copy - Graphics acceleration test                 1563     645%
Icon Plotting - 16 colour sprite with mask                 34789    1739%
Draw Path - Stroke narrow line                              8461     542%
DRAW Fill - Plot filled shape                              13566     929%
HD Read - Block load 1MB file                              27105     908%
HD Write - Block save 1MB file                             35790    1176%
FS Read - Byte stream file in                                475     229%
FS Write - Byte stream file out                              483     251%

Life is good when CPC Farnell are local.

However, life is not good when you realise you have to try and use CPC’s god-awful web ordering system. (What address line corresponds to what? Why does the order information page show “For the attention of” for addresses, but the address system not allow me to specify the value? Why does it show “Company name” in some places and “Company name / your name” in others? Why does the billing address sometimes display the address incorrectly? Aargh!)

Anyway, I now have a 3B+ on order, so assuming it gets delivered to the right place I should be able to look into any remaining issues sometime next week.

not good when you realise you have to try and use CPC’s god-awful web ordering system.

Strange! I have always found it simple and straight forward.

The model 3B+ does start up under RISC OS. However, with no network.

I have now got to that stage. But, I have a mouse pointer which drifts across the screen until I unplug it and plug it back in again.

I’d suggest using the latest development RISC OS ROM and the latest Pi firmware.

Progress! (using the 13-Mar-18 ROM)

This was posted from my nice shiny, new, Pi 3B+
… using an external USB network adapter. (SMC EZ connect USB)

and my 60 GB USB mSATA drive works OK, as do Sharefs (both ways) and !Webjames

and the mouse pointer is no longer wandering across the screen. (not yet worked out why).

*Edit:" Further testing shows the EZconnect external network adapter to be decidedly flakey with Sharefs, but still usable with Netsurf.

Just got home from work and fired up the new pi.
I used the riscos last nightly build and the latest start/elf, boot code/bin ect
As David has already noted the internal ethernet just hangs the system at boot up. So I plugged in a usb/ethernet adaptor from my pi zero (an AX88772?) and then it fired up perfectly.

Not done much testing but netsurf works ok, along with my usual progs (pipedream, draw, edit) and my own software all seem to work a bit, to a lot quicker.
Even loading data from my local Nas storage seems faster, which is a bit surprising, maybe I should of used the ethernet adaptor from my pi zero on my other pi’s before.

the internal ethernet just hangs the system at boot up

I’m pretty sure that problem has been around for a while, the network card driver hangs if the NIC it’s expecting doesn’t exist. You can reproduce the issue with a Pi-Zero. Fairly easy to fix by using the SD in an older model and *Unplug the Module.

I’ve not looked at the specs yet, but the USB controller in the other Pi’s is well known for its deficiencies which led to devs jumping through hoops to resolve sticky keys. Who thought shoving a GB NIC on it was a good idea? Will it even be able to handle that amount of data throughout without knock on effects? If it’s flooded with GB data, will we see a repeat of sticky keys?

will we see a repeat of sticky keys?

What do you mean repeat? I still get sticky keys. Sometimes *USBReset fixes it, sometimes not…

Will it even be able to handle that amount of data throughout without knock on effects?

In theory, a gigabit network should be capable of about 120 megabytes per second flat out. But wait – WTF? It’s bolted to USB2 which is only capable of around 35 megabytes per second flat out. Half that if you’re reading from or writing to USB attached media… At least it’ll be faster than the 100mbit Ethernet which manages around 12½ megabytes per second flat out (and doesn’t utterly saturate the USB).

So, the question is, how fast have people managed to transfer data to/from a Pi? My best is quite a lot less, around 300KBytes/sec using a Vonets WiFi adapter (I’d max out my ADSL if it got up to ~440 kilobytes per second). Nothing here is directly connected to anything, it’s all WiFi.
And the last time I tried to use Omni to talk to my XP box? It managed bytes per second. Seriously, it took over a minute to read the directory. So I gave up, copied the files to a zip file, fired up Savant server, pulled the zip in a few seconds with NetSurf. Dunno what Omni/LanMan was sulking over…

I’m sure most of you have a better speed to boast – so what was it? ;-)

NetSurf downloading from a Windows machine on my local network caps out at somewhere around 1.5-1.6 MB/s. The same file using Wget appeared to be running at a better speed (it pulled down 224 MB in about a minute before proceeding to hang the entire machine…)

In theory, a gigabit network should be capable of about 120 megabytes per second flat out

You’re dividing by 8 – I think you need to consider the bits in the packet headers as well as the data content. As a rule I find 10 to be a bit more accurate and remarkably easy to do division with :)
With other factors it tends to drop a bit more so 90MB/s is probably decent

And the last time I tried to use Omni to talk to my XP box? It managed bytes per second

Ah, now that is where support for SMB2 scores better than SMB1