Any updates about RiscOS on the Raspberry Pi?

What if the refresh rate were lowered? Can the Pi’s framebuffer handle higher modes in that case?

2560×1600 @ 37.262 Hz on CVT-RB timings is 165 MHz.

(Granted, some monitors aren’t capable of handling lower than 60 Hz. That said, I should try to get my Pi to push 3840×2400 @ 17.053 Hz on CVT-RB timings. I have a monitor that can take all sorts of ridiculously timed modes (and that exact mode has been shoved into it by modern x86 machines).)

The Pi graphics isn’t a VIDC-style controller where you can set up whatever timings you like, at the risk of roasting the RAM chips or interfering with incoming aircraft. You say ’I’d like resolution A x B please’ to the GPU and it says yes or no. You don’t get to mess about with timings. So if the GPU firmware doesn’t do it, end of story.

(That’s my understanding anyway, I’m not completely familiar with the VCHIQ interface)

Upshot is that the interface between the ARM and the GPU has been open-sourced! So there’s a chance the drivers could be ported to RISC OS.

Sounds like good news, but apparently it’s not all rosy.

Isn’t that only the expectations for Linux not being met?

We never had such high expectations, so it’s still a big thing for us.

OK. You’re probably right and I’m out of touch.

Here are some updates about RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi… :)

It is great news that the release version is available. Many thanks.

But I am puzzled. I have downloaded a Zip file, which contains a BZ2 file of almost identical length.

Do I have to find a program to decompress the BZ2 file to get at the disc image or should the Zip file have just contained the disc image as with previous releases?

Or am I just missing something obvious?

7zip decompressed it, but it does seem to be redundant.

I have it running, it looks very nice, but I have found a few issues:

1. The white Pi at the beginning is letterboxed (lapdock)
2. TCP/IP is not configured by default.
3. certain system changes (including screen resolution, mouse and time) do not survive a reboot.
4. Netsurf scans for fonts on first run, could this not have been done prior to imaging?

Nice to launch the same day as Windows 8.

Nice to launch the same day as Windows 8.

Remind me – alternate versions of Windows are rubbish and satisfactory – I have lost count is 8 the good one or the bad one?

Or am I just missing something obvious?

The source archives are compressed twice as well. The image to be written to the SD card is 1876Mbytes in size.

You are thinking of Star Trek movies, with Windows it’s every 3rd release (95, 2000, and 7 being good) And Windows 8 is a real stinker.

Remind me – alternate versions of Windows are rubbish and satisfactory – I have lost count is 8 the good one or the bad one?

Windows 8 is supposed to be crucial for Microsoft’s future, 7 on the other hand is said to be pretty good. ;-P

@ROOL and everybody involved with getting RO on the Pi: fantastic job!

You are thinking of Star Trek movies, with Windows it’s every 3rd release (95, 2000, and 7 being good) And Windows 8 is a real stinker.

Unless someone can point me at a non-bloated stable incarnation that has been released I think we are waiting for the first good. Therefore the interval between is open to speculation.

1. The white Pi at the beginning is letterboxed (lapdock)

I get that too with full HD TV. First time I’ve seen the logo properly though. Used to get a flash of the bottom bit of it, then text “Init stuff etc..”

2. TCP/IP is not configured by default.

I would like to see it on as default, but how might this affect a model A board? (Or one without network.) Just unplugged mine, not much apparently.
For anyone new to RISCOS browsing this, try middle mouse button on raspberry, left click on Configure.. This should bring up a window with a few icons. Left click on Network, then Internet, then check box lower left for Enable TCP….
Then click Close, followed by Save and then Reset now.

4. Netsurf scans for fonts on first run, could this not have been done prior to imaging?

My first recollections of Debian on the Pi used to have an initialisation thingy on first boot. I wondered why that was the case then.

As for windows, I got in trouble at work for making this appear on start up. (Change to BMP, I would have done, but updates causing PC to hang at the moment!)

Wow – the boot time is incredibly short! Great stuff :-)

However, in my case that’s partly because I’m getting ‘The disc drive is empty’ from SDFS. Never mind – hopefully I’ll be able to (get some help to) sort it at tomorrow’s show or at our next user group meeting. Perhaps it’s a dodgy card or something.

1. The white Pi at the beginning is letterboxed (lapdock)

Yes. The initial mode that RISC OS starts up in gets re-sized by the GPU in the RPi to fit the native resolution of your monitor. RISC OS has no idea what that is so different monitor aspect ratios will end up with differently-stretched logos.

Anyway, it’s a deliberately low fidelity image to serve a simple purpose (let you know the ROM is booting and your card isn’t completely bricked).

2. TCP/IP is not configured by default.

Correct. That’s so people with no network don’t end up sat with the boot sequence seemingly crashed. They might not realise DHCP will time-out after 30 seconds. They may also find that very annoying.

It’s all spelled-out right there in the first page of the welcome pages. It’s also trivial for you to enable networking.

3. certain system changes (including screen resolution, mouse and time) do not survive a reboot.

We’re going to look into that after the show – this all worked fine in our testing.

4. Netsurf scans for fonts on first run, could this not have been done prior to imaging?

Correct. Netsurf puts this stuff in Wimp Scrap, rather than choices and we have to ship the default image with nothing in Wimp scrap because that is the correct way to ship a brand-new RISC OS disc image (for a number of reasons).

But I am puzzled. I have downloaded a Zip file, which contains a BZ2 file of almost identical length

We have been doing .img.bz2 files as our image format during testing. For some reason, the RPi people have chosen to zip that up when uploading it (without untarbz2-ing it first). I will speak to them and ask them to sort that out.

Perhaps it’s a dodgy card or something.

Or a dodgy Pi! With an earlier distro of Chris’s over the summer, SDFS worked fine. I’ve now reimaged the card (same result) and subsequently Peter Howkins and I swapped cards. Mine’s fine there; his exhibits the same result as mine here! Looks like I need to get it replaced.

(Obviously the points I’m highlighting mostly aren’t a bother to me, but things I think that may present a lower impression to a new user.)

Yes. The initial mode that RISC OS starts up in gets re-sized by the GPU in the RPi to fit the native resolution of your monitor. RISC OS has no idea what that is so different monitor aspect ratios will end up with differently-stretched logos.

Except that I have a widescreen (atrix) and it is squashed vertically, and the normal splash looks fine.

Correct. That’s so people with no network don’t end up sat with the boot seq uence seemingly crashed. They might not realise DHCP will time-out after 30 seconds.

Fair enough. Hopefully that aspect of RISC OS will change anyway. (Could it retain the lease it had previously, and wait to try to renew it when it is multitasking properly?).

we have to ship the default image with nothing in Wimp scrap because that is the correct way to ship a brand-new RISC OS disc image

Presentationally, if you are launching netsurf by default, I would be tempted to copy that one file into choices instead of being strictly correct.

Two more things.

The pinboard layout is no good if you run at a lower resolution.

The system comes up with too little RAM, I had to swap the start.elf

Also I notice it is still a version 5.19, when does it become 5.20?

The desktop looks great.

4. Netsurf scans for fonts on first run, could this not have been done prior to imaging?

Having started a complete factory reset on a Windows 7 PC this morning and it’s still downloading updates etc 7 hours later, it puts the time thing into perspective. Font scan was done quicker than it took for the kettle to boil for my morning coffee!
And I missed the TCP/IP instructions on the first page, sorry!

Except that I have a widescreen (atrix) and it is squashed vertically, and the normal splash looks fine.

And it actually defaults to 1920×1080, with the VideoCore letterboxing as needed to fit on the user’s screen. So it’s squashed even on a 4:3 screen.

And it actually defaults to 1920×1080, with the VideoCore letterboxing as needed to fit on the user’s screen. So it’s squashed even on a 4:3 screen.

It looks like the system thinks it’s using a 4:3 to display a wide screen, but actually the 4:3 display is stretched over the wide screen.

The loading screen is also 1920, and displays in the correct aspect.

Morning all. Had my first use of RiscOS in a long time yesterday, thought I’d share my experience with you.

First impressions of RiscOS on the Pi – very impressed. Thanks to all who’ve worked to bring this great operating system onto a budget computer which is selling out worldwide! Hopefully this will lead to a new generation of RiscOS programmers and software development.

It’s been 10 years since I last seriously used RiscOS, so it was a nice adventure to try out the desktop again.

However, I have hit a few glitches/teathing problems – particularly around the screen. I’m not sure if this is the right part of the forum to post these – but I wonder if anyone knows a solution to the following issues:

Biggest problems so far – the screen size

- I’m using a 720p 32" Sony TV, and have two big problems: (1) the image displayed is always larger than the TV panel size – so I’m missing half the iconbar off the bottom, and a similar amount from all sides and top of the screen. (2) Whatever I do, RiscOS always starts up in 1920×1080 scaled down to 720p – I’ve used configure to change the screen mode, change monitor, etc. but this doesn’t survive after reset.

Other minor glitches:

- After booting the Pi into RiscOS I only have about 128Mb shown in task manager, where’s the other 396Mb? (I have a 512Mb Pi)

- I notice the RiscOS image is only 2Gb, so after copying the image onto a 16Gb SD card and copying across some of my old RiscPC content I’m already nearly full :-( Is there any way to use more of the 16Gb, or is this a filing system limit? (partition maybe?)

- Noticed that networking didn’t work out of the box (internet wasn’t enabled in configure) – took a while to spot this, but easily sorted (although maybe a help-text file or similar would be an idea for next release, to point this out for new users).

- Meastro plays music slowly

- Using configure to change ‘try’ a new screen size works, but seems to dump you in 640×480 if you reject the choice, and not return you to the original mode.

Thanks again to everyone involved with RiscOS! And to Jeffrey Lee for updating QTM – it’s great to see QTM v1.41 worked perfectly first time on my Pi!

Steve

but this doesn’t survive after reset.

This is a bug. I found a work around until the fix is issued properly,

Before rebooting I write protected this file

!Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk.Configure.Monitor

where’s the other 396Mb?

You need a different start.elf (I’m guessing the new one that provides correct support isn’t fully tested yet.)

Is there any way to use more of the 16Gb, or is this a filing system limit?

Apparently a version of FAT32FS is coming that will allow it to be accessed if partitioned and formatted (with FAT32). The 2GB is because of a clever (and probably quite horrid) trick of overlapping the fat boot partition and the ADFS partition, so that the DOS partition can appear as an image file. This would need to be redone if the image were a different size. (This should become redundant when RISC OS has proper partition support, or at least FAT32FS has, and there is a means of partitioning the drive correctly.)

ADFS can support 256GB patitions (currently 2GB maximum filesize, though this should be able to be upgraded to 4GB.)

And another one. No sound. (was working fine)