Any updates about RiscOS on the Raspberry Pi?

Main issue for me is that there are big black borders around the screen that cover most of the IconBar

Looking closer I can see that the pointer can reach the top and (presumably) bottom of the screen, however it can only get within 40 or so pixels of the left, and about 20 pixels from the right edge. Also the last visible line turns ‘black’ about a third of the way across.

So I’ll just put that down to this being a pre-alpha build and that fiddling the config.txt isn’t going to magically fix it (I did try forcing the output to 1080P, instead of 1920×1200,with no effect). Guess its time to get the OS compiling and start prodding the video drivers.

Okay, having fun now, although it’s nothing “developmental” – I’m just not that clever!

Having used my Beagleboard USB drive, and a few choice star-commands, I have managed to boot mine up into a proper desktop, with apps that run and everything! And can even save stuff, even if I can’t see the majority of the iconbar… a picture can be had here if you’re so inclined…

The “framebuffer_ignore_alpha=1” worked for me also.
Same issue with the Icon bar not on the display.
Also add hdmi_mode=20 for 1080i display.

I still get a blank screen, with just the cursor. Whether or not I include the ‘config.txt’ file.

If I include the line ‘hdmi_mode=19’ then the screen is completely blank (no cursor). About 7 lines above the ‘bottom of the screen’ the cursor disappears (keep pressing RETURN and then up arrow 7 times and it reappears).

If I type ‘DESKTOP’ then the screen changes: it is then almost blank with just a fine white line where the top of the icon bar would be (at about the right place). I have tried two different monitors with the same result (the fine white line was not visible on one monitor).

What am I doing wrong please?!

Chris: I assume you’re using the bin/elf files from github and have the latest riscos kernel.img … Did you get any output on your serial console?

The thing that “fixed” it for me was the “framebuffer_ignore_alpha=1”. Changing hdmi_mode to 20 does switch it to 1080i, but there’s no change in the display (a bit crisper perhaps) in that I’m still only seeing the very top of the bottom icon bar.

It looks like the USB isn’t powered up, I attached a Dell keyboard/optical mouse and there’s no response, but I noticed that the caps lock light doesn’t work, nor is the red LED in the base of the mouse lit.

Does anyone know if it is possible to debug RISC OS via JTAG? (assuming you have the DDE, which I don’t!).

The iconbar issue is a known problem, so it’s not a problem with your setups.

Chris, what are you using to power your board? If you have a multimeter, check the voltage between TP1 (underneath the Raspberry Pi logo) and the case of the USB connector. If the voltage is below 4.8V then you’ll probably have problems and need a beefier power supply.

RISC OS doesn’t support JTAG. Even if it did, the JTAG on the BCM2835 is only usable by Broadcom as the interface to the SoC isn’t publically documented.

Voltage 5.01V for first 5 seconds then drops to 4.87V and stays there. If nothing plugged in to USB socket then 4.93V. No text on screen though either way.

As Andym has, I have used a USB disk setup I previously used on a Beagleboard (2G memory stick).
Type
SCSI
!boot
and away it went.
Networking works, so !NetTime would set the clock.
A few apps tried and all seem fine.
Even ran a quick build of an old omap3 source setup that was on the stick and it worked with AE’s off (as beagleboard).
some debug messages appear on the desktop (all seem to be NVMemoryxxx).
If you drag a window around, the pointer leaves bits of itself spread over the window your dragging.

P.S Access seems to work as well !!

W.R.T. JTAG debugging, this guy seems to have made some headway with OpenOCD:

https://github.com/dwelch67/raspberrypi/tree/master/armjtag

Chris: I assume you’re using the bin/elf files from github and have the latest riscos kernel.img … Did you get any output on your serial console?

Yes, yes. Yes here it is:

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If I include the line ‘hdmi_mode=19’ or ‘hdmi_mode=20’ then the screen is completely blank but if I include the line ‘hdmi_mode=16’ then it behaves exactly as with no such line. That is cursor visible on screen but no text. After ‘DESKTOP’ only a single pixel wide white bar (barely visible) where the top of the icon bar would be and the rest of the screen completely black.

[Still the same with the 6th June 2012 ROM]

Looks like your serial settings aren’t right. 115200, 8N1 with no flow control worked for me (yesterday’s build).

With today’s ROM, I no longer get the grey desktop with mouse pointer, this is what I see:

board present - autobooting
isor

I assume I’m missing some amount of the left side of the screen, “isor” is possibly “Supervisor”?

However, my USB mouse is getting powered up now, that is the LED on the bottom is lit where as it wasn’t with yesterday’s build.

I’ll try hooking up to the serial port to see if anything is different.

I assume I’m missing some amount of the left side of the screen, “isor” is possibly “Supervisor”?

Sounds about right (And above that its should read ‘No keyboard present – autobooting’). If you have a USB keyboard plugged in you should be able to type ‘desktop’ to progress further.

I do have a keyboard connected … and typing ‘desktop’ did indeed bring up the desktop. Again, I can only see the top 4-5 pixels of the icon bar, but now the mouse pointer moves. If I hit F12 and start typing, it opens a task window (supervisor?) under the desktop and if I keep typing things, I can see it reporting various error messages, but I can’t really see much. With some messing around, I have been able to crash it a couple of times (it freezes up and the USB seems to power down).

I need to figure out the screen resolution. Unfortunately, as a Mac user, my monitor has a Apple DisplayPort connector and doesn’t do HDMI, so I’m stuck using an LCD TV (don’t know what it’s resolution is), with hdmi_mode=20 for 1080i. Not sure how to change the resolution, *TV maybe?

I see the desktop hasn’t improved over the last 20 years!

I can only see the top 4-5 pixels of the icon bar

That’s pretty much what everyone else is seeing, and is a known issue.

You can still move the mouse into the ‘black area’ covering the icon bar and click on the icons, however you have to guess where they are (CDROM and USB devices on the left, Task Manager and Display on the right).

What I did next was connect a USB HDD, format it to ADFS and install the HardDisc image. then you can load monitor MDF files to allow different screen resolutions to be selected (although not sure if that actually works or not!)

Leo: Are you also seeing the left/right sides of the screen being cropped?

I don’t have a Raspberry Pi but if you want to see more text you could type on the command line H.. (= help on everything)
You could also try things like wimpmode 12 or wimpmode 31 to see if something happens.

Good luck.

I see the desktop hasn’t improved over the last 20 years!

What improvements would you like to see?

Are you also seeing the left/right sides of the screen being cropped?

Not on my display, however the mouse pointer can’t reach the very left and right edges.

I see the desktop hasn’t improved over the last 20 years!

Maybe because we got it right the first time?

Pfft – who needs rounded corners and smoked-glass effect icons anyway? [note, MS are dumping the Aero theme for the Win8/Metro mess]

Seriously, as Dave asks – what would you like to see? Which is better, functionality and speed, or cute icons?

I dumped ye olde Prince of Persia look as soon as I got hold of the steel theme. Mid-90’s design has nothing to do with functionality or speed! It just looks like a toy OS and a rather dated one at that. AIU the RISC OS 5 default desktop has been chaged to a more modern look now?

I’d be curious to see how hard it would be to graft something like Open webOS onto Open RISC OS. Then I can build apps in JavaScript AND Assembler!

The thing I find amazing (still after 20 years) is that RISC OS starts instantly! Now you have a serious competitor to iOS and Android in the tablet space!

First thing I did after I’d got networking and ShareFS running was to copy my slightly modified Steel theme from my BeagleBoard onto my RPi boot disk. Taking it into work next week to show off to a bunch of people who have no interest in anything beyond Windows, who are sick of me evangelising verbally, but without any physical evidence. I think I’ve piqued their interest, so I had to make it look nice. Shame about the Iconbar issue.

The old yellow and paper-textured furniture does look dated – did I see a thread somewhere asking for the Steel theme to be hardcoded as the default? I think that’d be great, at least on the RPi ROM to make it seem a bit more modern for new/returning users.

Even though it doesn’t work completely yet, RISC OS (in conjunction with the option of debian every so often) is currently making the RPi the best £26-odd I’ve spent on hardware in years! Whatever the RO desktop looks like!

Andym:

Learn this argument, modify as appropriate. :-)

Think the iconbar sucks? Just think how refreshing it is to have software installed and available without it insisting on opening a window of some sort. Look, you can drag files to app icons (how the hell did MS screw up that?). TinyDirs? Drives and partitionsinstead of A: and B: and C: (etc) where you can go where you want as you want without wading through the Explorer view or the clumsy “open…” dialogue. Chuck in for good measure drag-saves between applications (okay, OLE does this too, but at least our metaphor is consistent).

RISC OS delivers what is necessary without wasting time looking pretty. Sure, it is a little dated looking, but it boots in seconds. And I don’t mean a specially created proof of concept build, but the real proper full OS. Now restart your Android phone and tell me how long it takes.

By the way, did I mention the core is a 4 mega byte image? Yes, really, that’s all…

Fair enough! Andy, I’d be interested in updating the theme if you wouldn’t mind providing some details. Although I have a long way to go with the display, networking and ShareFS!