Any updates about RiscOS on the Raspberry Pi?

I am getting an error message ‘Machine start-up has not completed successfully Root: add net default gateway 192.168.1.2 : File exists’ but clicking ‘cancel’ and I can click the ‘ShareFS’ icon and see remote shared discs so the network is working. Also I can see ‘www.google.co.uk’ in WebsterXL. I use EtherUSB 0.09, DHCP.

In $.!Boot.Resources.Configure.!INetSetup.AutoSense I have:

A BASIC file ‘EtherK’ (generated by setting up !Boot) PLUS an obey file ‘SetUp’ containing:
Set InetSetup$Driver$USB EtherUSB:ej0:EtherUSB:0.07:EtherUSB

Hope this helps.

The absence of the bottom part of the screen can be bodged around by adding 100 to the height passed across to the GPU (mbyres and virtual res in s.Top in the HAL). I’ll try to track down what’s going on …

While this is pinned down, can we please have a ‘ROM with this bodge’ for download.

In another topic (which I can’t find) someone said ‘it looks like SDFS will be ready before USB (for the Raspberry Pi)’. Now we have USB can we have a !Boot structure in resourceFS with the volatile/writeable bits in RAMFS implementing a ‘standard’ DHCP network. Or [preferably] a RAMFS image containing the whole !Boot structure which is loaded into RAMFS at the same time as the ROM image which is then set up (by default, there being no cmos) to boot from RAMFS (so it doesn’t consume memory twice)? That way we can have a (still quite small) SD card image for the Raspberry Pi that boots you up (quickly) into a fully functioning GUI desktop. If the RAMFS image is of a known format and in a known place within the image, then we can tweak it without having to rebuild the ROM image. This (ramfs image) is the solution Linux uses and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Advanced users can then get themselves a pen drive, format it using HDForm, copy the RAMFS contents onto it and then download a ROM image that has the default setting of SCSIFS for boot and SCSIDrive 0 (for pendrive) and zero for RAMFS.

I still feel the SDFS solution has all sorts of bear traps in it (as being seen at the moment by the CMOS writing code).

With the latest ROM I am getting an error ‘HAL_NVMemoryType called from FC03C114’ half way up the screen from time to time including during desktop start up and after the desktop screen appears. Is this supposed to happen please?

This works for me to get a nice display on a small (pink) Alba TV from Argos clearance bargains (£40) with “Picture Zoom” set to “Panoramic” in the TV’s menu

sdtv_mode=2

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=5
overscan_left=7
overscan_right=1
overscan_top=26
overscan_bottom=10
framebuffer_ignore_alpha=1


Have you really been lurking here for 5 years (perhaps waiting for the Raspberry Pi and Argos clearance bargain)?

Chris> I don’t have commit access, hence I described the change. THe HAL_NVMemoryType message (and others) is not an error. It’s debug that I switched off when I released my initial port, but that has been re-enabled since. You’ll probably see others from time to time. Just ignore them for now, please.

Just ignore them for now, please.

Understood, thanks.

The absence of the bottom part of the screen can be bodged around by adding 100 to the height passed across to the GPU (mbyres and virtual res in s.Top in the HAL).

I’ve now tried the above (after resurrecting my Iyonix!) and set the height to 1200 (to match my monitor) and can confirm that I can now see the Iconbar! Which makes quite a bit of difference.

I built a from the downloaded tarball, but found that USB didn’t work for me then, though it works in the ROM image I downloaded. Perhaps something’s been broken/is unreliable.

It looks like several file names are being truncated in the tarball… In the case of the USB module the dwc_notifier c and h files had been truncated to dwc_notifi, causing the build to fail.

I can’t get EtherUSB to play at the moment, but I perhaps don’t know how to drive it. I can probably learn something from the ARMini, unless someone’s got advice?

I think I just copied the EtherUSB module to !System.360.Modules.Network, ran it and then turned on TCPIP support in the network config module. I vaguely remember having to prod it once or twice before it started working, but I’ll need to go back and check the exact steps.

I’m having a few problems with EtherUSB myself. I run the module (sometimes it takes two goes before it works). I can then see the USB0 interface greyed out in the Interfaces page in the network configuration, but I can’t actually configure an IP address or seemingly make it do anything useful, because the usual boxes for IP address/netmask or DHCP etc aren’t there. It’s been a while since I’ve had RiscOS running and I’ll admit to being a bit rusty, but it doesn’t tie up with what I remember at all. On the same front, can someone remind me how I can get the EtherUSB module to load itself as part of the boot sequence?

Also, as a first time poster here, I’d like to thank everyone who is working on this, you’re doing a great job. I’m happy to get getting back into RiscOS after a few years away from the platform and the RaspberryPi is an ideal way to do so for those of us that have had to get rid of their extensive computer collections at home!

I can then see the USB0 interface greyed out in the Interfaces page in the network configuration, but I can’t actually configure an IP address or seemingly make it do anything useful,

That was the issue I originally had, then I fiddled something and rebooted and it was no longer greyed out. I’ll be trying that again later today to narrow down the exact steps (And will then probably put a wiki page together with it all on).

On the same front, can someone remind me how I can get the EtherUSB module to load itself as part of the boot sequence?

Once I got it enabled via the Network configuration page the boot sequence seemed to load it automatically after that point

For the greyed-out-network thing, see the RISC OS FAQ I’m not sure what the specific values are for EtherUSB, though.

Don’t forget to add an obey file to predesk to set up the MAC address – those SMSC USB/LAN chips need this doing.

It is documented in the EtherUSB readme (and also applies to BeagleBoard xM and PandaBoard…).

I’m not sure what the specific values are for EtherUSB, though.

In $.!Boot.Resources.Configure.!INetSetup.AutoSense you should have:

A BASIC file ‘EtherK’ (generated by setting up !Boot to configure the network after placing the ‘EtherUSB’ module where it tells you to) PLUS an obey file ‘SetUp’ containing:
Set InetSetup$Driver$USB EtherUSB:ej0:EtherUSB:0.07:EtherUSB

Hope this helps.

The ROM on the Pi announces itself as ‘5th Jun 2012’ despite containing later modules and having been built on 12 Jun. I thought the builder now gave the build date and not the MOS Utilities date?

I noticed no build today – is someone superstituous?

I have been away from the Acorn scene some years now, and I am very happy to see new life with the Raspberry PI. Lets hope the port will be ready in summer for a larger user base. Please continue your work on porting for the RPI. I have run the Acorn User Group Austria and still have a web page called the Acorn User Group Austria museum – which is no more true when we get the RPI port. http://members.aon.at/auga/armlink.htm
I have some experience with ARM programming and hardware and would be proud to help with beta testing new ROM images or just a new module. I got some experience with the linux environment and think its far more complicated than the user environment you have on RISC OS. There is a good chance to see many people use RISC OS on their RPI if just the port arrives in the right time.

I’ll be trying that again later today to narrow down the exact steps (And will then probably put a wiki page together with it all on).

I’ve now put together notes for converting a RPi from booting Linux to booting RISCOS, installing the HardDisc4 image and setting up the network. Assuming no one beats me to it I’ll refine that over the next day or so and create a Wiki page for it (As I’ll be talking through this at ROUGOL next Monday I at least have a deadline to make sure it gets done!)

I’ve now put together notes for converting a RPi from booting Linux to booting RISCOS,

Is that without using any other RISC OS or Linux computer? I’m not sure whether the Pi with its Linux GUI can (i) download the necessary files; (ii) put the RISC OS image onto the SD card; (iii) put the other files onto a FAT-formatted pen drive of no more than 2Gbytes [which RISC OS can then read]. One neat way of doing all this is to put the two necessary files [riscos and HardDisc4/util] on a pen drive, copy the file ‘riscos’ onto the SDCard [under Linux on the Pi or by other means], add a text file ‘config.txt’ to the SD card with the necessary lines (including one that says the image is in a file ‘riscos’ not ‘kernel.img’] and then you can do everything under RISC OS. Information about config.txt is here

See here for how to get started with just an external FAT formatted pen drive containing the files ‘RunMe’, ‘EtherUsb’ and ‘HardDisc4/util’. The Pi should start up with a RAM disc containing the boot structure with full networking (some parameters in the ‘RunMe’ file may need tweaking so that they match the type of network you have, e.g. DHCP or static).

I suppose I should try it on the Pi to confirm it works!

Is that without using any other RISC OS or Linux computer?

no, I thought it would be easier to have an ‘already’ setup computer to download the required files to a pen drive (After all, you would need one to read the instructions on!). It doesn’t matter if you use Windows, Linux or RISC OS to do that stage.

I was thinking of doing a variant that used just the RPi to do all the work, however you would still have needed another computer to have setup the SD card to boot Linux on the RPi.

See here for how to get started with just an external FAT formatted

Hmm, so far I’ve just detailed a manual way of getting the RPi up and running.. Hadn’t consider using an automated way. Although that would make my ROUGOL demo very short!
Although I do have a section on setting up a USB HDD as HardDisc4, so you wouldn’t need to boot from RamFS

It works on the Pi. (Haven’t tweaked config.txt to read ‘riscos’ rather than ‘kernel.img’ as I haven’t worked out the right syntax yet.)

The only problem with my way is if you set it up for a DHCP network (rather than a static IP address), it waits for the DHCP server indefinitely with no on-screen message to say what it is doing until it finds it. It would be easy to prompt for the static IP address or ‘no network’.

Once started up then the utilities to format another pen drive (or the same one) under RISC OS as a bootable drive and the contents (in the RAM disc) are all there for a simple copy. Then it would just boot up next time.

Hi All, first post here. I’ll get the hang of it one day…

(Haven’t tweaked config.txt to read ‘riscos’ rather than ‘kernel.img’ as I haven’t worked out the right syntax yet.)

This is the config.txt file I’m currently using

Start
Select the kernel to run
kernel=linux.img
kernel=riscos.img

kernel=riscos.img

Ah! I had tried

kernel=“riscos”

all the others should start with a hash

Is the RasPiWrite Script any use?

Is the RasPiWrite Script any use?

Possibly. I was thinking of putting together a script that can be run on the RPi to ‘update’ it to RISCOS. Running it on the RPi itself would allow me to read the correct MAC address in too.

So someone could use the RasPiWrite script to get their RPi up and running linux (Probably needed so they can check the video/audio/networking is all fine) and then can run a ‘getRISCOS’ script to do the next stage.

and then can run a ‘getRISCOS’ script to do the next stage.

Or just copy the files ‘riscos’ [as ‘kernel.img’] and ‘config.txt’ onto the primary (FAT) partition of the SD card on any computer with an SD card reader – Iyonix, IBM PC, MAC etc.

Or just copy the files ‘riscos’ [as ‘kernel.img’] and ‘config.txt’ onto the primary (FAT) partition of the SD card on any computer with an SD card reader

Well yes works as well. However I was thinking of the script going and downloading the latest risc os image, automatically creating the config.txt file, and then extracting the MAC Address from the RPi so it can be correctly set in RISC OS (important if you have more than one device using EtherUSB). It can also go fetch the latest start.elf etc.

There’s lots of ways it could be done, I’ve already got the manual steps which I will put somewhere (as people like to know what is going on) and then maybe supply a script that does most of it for them (Potentially ending up copying some variant of the RunMe script you have already created for the BeagleBoard onto a USB flash device) and then rebooting.

Once the RPi has SD support then the process is liable to change anyway.