Delete me: Software information: RaspberryPi: RC12a SD image (Rev #3)

This SD card image contains RISC OS and some associated software.

RISC OS is not a flavour of Linux. It’s not a type of Unix. It’s certainly got nothing to do with Windows! RISC OS is its own thing – a very specialised ARM-based operating system. So if you’ve not used it before, you will find it doesn’t behave quite the same way as anything else. We think it’s better!

We hope you enjoy your experience with RISC OS.

sha1sum: 4d4fdd38ef90ee50db8f5e061922c9c11e70fc6d

Note: RC12a is basically the same as RC12 but with some changes in order to support the Raspberry Pi model B+.

This download link is for the entire SD card image required to run RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi. There is also a link on the Raspberry Pi foundation web site here.

It contains all the elements required to run RISC OS, including the firmware to initialise the Raspberry Pi as well as the HardDisc4 boot files, in an SD card image which can be written to a blank SD card using a tool such as Win32DiskImager.

Once written to the SD card all you have to do is turn on the Raspberry Pi and it will start up in RISC OS with a lot of preloaded software. The rom image is held inside $.!Boot.Loader where you will see the other firmware files as well:

Directory of SDFS::RISCOSpi.$.!Boot.Loader
.BOOTCODE/BIN     WR/     DOS       21:29:00 04-Jun-2014   17 kbytes
.CONFIG/TXT       WR/     Text      14:25:06 31-Jan-2014   76  bytes
.FIXUP/DAT        WR/     DOS       21:29:00 04-Jun-2014    6 kbytes
.LICENCE/BROADCOM WR/     DOS       14:47:06 10-May-2012 1447  bytes
.RISCOS/IMG       WR/     DOS       23:25:48 04-Jun-2014    5 Mbytes
.START/ELF        WR/     DOS       21:29:00 04-Jun-2014 2494 kbytes

The RISC OS rom image will be written to (hence updating the datestamp of the file) each time you shut down [by a module SDCMOS, this makes sure any ‘cmos’ settings are kept up to date] – the rom image is RISC OS 5.21 (4-Jun-2014).

These files appear to the Raspberry Pi as the only files in the FAT partition on the SD card as it starts up.

Within RISC OS you will see a complete hard disc of files which means that you can start right away:

When it first starts up you will be shown the Welcome Guide which explains things such as how to download more RISC OS software using either the !Store or the !PackMan utility. Each of these shows you a list of RISC OS software, with a detailed explanation of what each bit of software does and lets you choose which items to download.