First RISC OS Distro for Pi?

Is this the first auto-booting RISC OS distro for the Raspberry Pi?

Rather alpha I’m afraid but it’s only 39Mbytes – a zipped SD card image which unpacks to a 2Gbyte SD card image which can be written by Win32DI onto an SD card.

Turn on the power and if you are using an SD card that RISCOS can recognise, the Raspberry Pi will boot up automatically into the desktop. With icon bar visible. Fixed display resolution 1920×1080 (with RISC OS using about 90% of it to display 1920×1080) for the moment. Total time from power on to working desktop is just 29 seconds.

Distro

Edit: now updated to 5 Aug 2012 ROM sources, 7 Aug 2012 firmware, 3 Aug HardDisc4 image [latest versions as at 7 Aug], separate RISC OS and FAT partitions, RISC OS boot structure in SDFS. Latest image dated 8 Aug 2012 download size 66.4Mbytes, image size &75A9E000 (1882.6 Mbytes) and using this CRC checker the (current) 7 Aug 2012 image file ‘RISCOS_Alpha_7Aug2012.img’ gives a CRC value of 56E3BA6A.

*md5sum RISCOS_Alpha_8Aug2012.img
421fa051d152d620c8a0505cee6362ef  RISCOS_Alpha_8Aug2012.img

13. Note new items in 8th Aug distro:
SChain – a stategy game.
a new set of icons that you can try (Run $.images.seticons).
a different screen backdrop.
Printers is now set up to print to PDF as default (forgot to do this).
Cat is updated to offer a filename search, save as Draw file.
A !Manuals directory has been added for StrongHelp and the Stronghelp reference manual is included.
PrivatEye (an image viewer) has been added.
The RISC OS non-commercial licence now opens on the desktop on start up.

Side-note: this distro is in no way endorsed by RISC OS Open. Use at your own risk! I’m sure we’ll be speaking to Chris in the near future to see if we can combine his good work with any official distro that comes out later this year. Cheers from team ROOL!

Is this the first auto-booting RISC OS distro for the Raspberry Pi?

Probably! I was trying to build an ‘auto booting’ ROM build during my ROUGOL demo last night (Nothing like leaving it to the last minute), unfortunatly I don’t think the clock got set right as instead of just recompiling the 2 altered files it started rebuilding the whole thing!

instead of just recompiling the 2 altered files

Am I missing something. I correct a truncated file name and then recompile – another 30 minutes before finding whether there’s another file name to correct.

Am I missing something.

Well on my Iyonix it only recompiles the changed files, but that is only ‘quick’ if you have completed a full ROM build previously. So when I was playing around with different screen outputs (Was trying to change the 1920×1080 hardcoded value to 1024×768 to work with the ROOL projector) it was pretty quick at generating a new ROM.

Obviously when the build process has failed due to an error (such as a missing file) it picks up where it left off, which if it hasn’t yet finished building all the files it can still take a while to complete. Also just doing the checks to see if anything does need rebuilding takes an amount of time.

Hi Chris, Just tried downloading the latest release (30th June) and getting CRC errors when attempting to unzip the file. Many thanks.

Hi Chris, Just tried downloading the latest release (30th June) and getting CRC errors

Fixed, many thanks.

I don’t know if this is the correct place to provide feedback for this, but for what it’s worth, trying to boot my Pi with this gets as far as “No keyboard present – autobooting” and an hourglass mouse cursor. (Which can be moved around with the mouse.)

But that’s it.

I can’t help with the hanging (looking for a boot device maybe?) but I can reassure you that the “No keyboard present” message can be ignored. It is looking for a PS2 keyboard!

Developers – can this confusing “error” message be removed?

I had experienced the same issue when tying to boot from a 16GB Crucial “xtreme” class 10 SD card and also an unbranded 4GB Class 6 card – although the Pi would recognise both cards, I do not think that RISC OS could see the ADFS drive properly. I found that leaving the machine for 5 – 10 minutes would eventually result in a timeout error message (sorry I can’t recall the exact message!). I was then able to switch to an ADFS-formatted USB stick and boot from that without any issues, or just run *desktop. Although the SD card symbol showed up on the iconbar, trying to open it produced I/O error messages.

In the end I was forced to use an old Kodak-branded 2GB Class 2 card from a digital camera – this one works perfectly with the current distro and the previous one. I have not tried the other cards with the latest ROM yet; am I correct in thinking that some improvements to SD card support have been made in the last day or two? Perhaps incorporating an updated ROM would improve compatibility with different SD cards?

am I correct in thinking that some improvements to SD card support have been made in the last day or two?

"Hopefully when the next autobuild rolls round you’ll all get to play with a wider range of SD cards and more reliably.".

But not if you build the ROM yourself from the sources?

Aren’t the source tar files also built daily by the autobuilder?

Aren’t the source tar files also built daily by the autobuilder?

Yes but there seems to be some sort of problem with today’s sources. However I am now building them on a Virtual Risc PC rather than an Iyonix and it is possible that that has introduced the problem. Still looking into it…

Developers – can this confusing “error” message be removed?

The message is nothing to do with PS2 keyboards. It means that the keyboard scanning code used to detect CMOS resets failed to detect a keyboard. This goes through a different code path than the keyboard drivers do during normal OS operations – for example, if your CMOS was corrupted such that USBDriver was unplugged, you would be unable to reset CMOS otherwise. The fact that you’re seeing this on the Pi at the moment merely indicates that the HAL is unfinished.

I am now building them on a Virtual Risc PC rather than an Iyonix and it is possible that that has introduced the problem.

That does seem to have created a problem (perhaps to do with !Perl and then something that stopped the DWC building properly?) so back to the Iyonix…

Chris, I love the distro idea and play with it religiously every day or so! You’ve cost me a small fortune in SD cards, but I really appreciate the effort you’ve put into this. Would it be possible to have a ROM-only version available for download, as I always want to modify the !Boot sequence for my own benefit, but know the next image will wipe it? I’m just appreciative of the work you’ve put in to make the Icon Bar reveal itself!

Would it be possible to have a ROM-only version available for download

Once you have the 3 July image, then it is easy to update it to the latest rom available for download – the rom image is in the FAT partition of the SD card called ‘riscos.img’. However the rom available for download is currently (i) set to ADFS as the default filing system [and so will not boot into SDFS automatically, you will have to issue the ‘*SDFS’ and ‘*Run !Boot’ commands yourself] and (ii) has most of the iconbar invisible while the video drivers are being worked on to offer a choice of screen resolutions. It is simpler (if you want to try the current rom) to just edit the ‘config.txt’ file (in the FAT partition) to say ‘kernel=riscosPi.img’ rather than ‘kernel=riscos.img’ as both are actually there.

The rom is updated daily and is available from this ROOL site. I have to confess that in making the icon bar visible, I was simply standing on the shoulders of giants and making the necessary change to the source when compiling my own rom.

Just to let you know that today’s build fixed the problem I was having. Thanks!

Proof → http://dg.gs/b/1Q

I just got my Pi and this distro works fine (subject to display glitches).

I did play with the partition table. I created an entry in the 4th position type AD and (roughly) matching the size of the ADFS partition.

It still booted fine. A linux machine and an XP machine both saw the extra partition existed.

Hi all. We’ve moved the RPi build from ‘pre-alpha’ to ‘alpha’ status. It’s still a work-in-progress and we have no real idea just how stable it is but we’re happier now to have the braver (or more foolish!) users in the community give it a go and see what happens. If you’re interested in helping, please try Chris’s distro, which is now endorsed by ROOL as a prototype for the official distro.

Alpha testing of the RISC OS distribution image has now started. Please be aware that there are a few things which are known to be’incomplete’ (and so do not require reporting) – these are described below.

The disc image currently includes the following applications but I am working through the list of useful things to have and will be including them if we have the licensing rights and/or they look useful to a new user:

	!Boot	-	the startup instructions, which can be reconfigured so that subsequent startups contain your personal desktop settings. This is based on the ‘standard’ RISC OS 5 boot structure with a few extra modules required by some applications.
From the icon ‘Apps’:
	!CloseUp	3.16 (14-Jan-2012)	a magnifying glass allowing you to examine the screen closely
	!Maestro	1.89 (27-Nov-2002)	edit and play music (much better once sound is working)
	!Omni	2.16 (14-Dec-2011)	a network protocol host
	!SciCalc	0.61 (14-Jan-2012)	a desktop scientific calculator
	!Squash	0.49 (13-Dec-1994)	compresses and decompresses a file
	!Alarm	2.86 (17-Jun-2012)	displays a clock on the iconbar and allows alarms to be set
	!Chars	-	displays the full character set of the current text font and allows character/symbol input
	!Draw	1.20 (14-Jan-2012)	an editor for graphics allowing lines, shapes, pictures and text
	!Edit	1.66 (14-Jan-2012)	an editor for plain text files and BASIC programmes. It has good search and replace facilities.
	!Help	3.19 (11-Feb-2012)	a context-sensitive help provider obtaining information from any application about what each option does
	!Paint	2.10 (14-Jan-2012)	an editor for bit map graphics (sprite files, jpegs etc.)
	!Printers	1.76 (14-Jan-2012)	transfers documents onto paper using your printer
From the directory ‘Diversions’:
	!Blocks	-	a Tetris-like game
	!Flasher	1.07 (2-Apr-2003)	helps locate the text cursor by flashing it
	!MemNow	0.06 (14-Jan-2012)	displays the amount of free memory
	!Patience	-	a card game
	!Puzzle	1.07 (14-Jan-2012)	a slide-block puzzle
	!SignalBox	42.9 (27-Jul-2007)	a simulation of a mechanical signalbox
From the directory ‘Third Party’:
	!Cat	0.01 (4-Jul-2012)	shows a ‘tree’ view of a disc or directory
	!SparkFS	1.42 (4-Apr-2010)	a decompression utility to expand zip files
From the directory ‘Utilities’
	!ChangeFSI	1.31 (14-Jan-2012)	changes the colour space of a picture
	!MakeDraw	2.30 (29-Jun-2012)	a programme to generate vector graphics
	!MultiTask	6.00 (28-Oct-2006)	allows BASIC programmes to be examined and run easily
	!Netsurf	2.9 (27-Feb-2012)	an open source web browser
	!ShowScrap	-	shows temporary files used by applications
	!StrongHelp	2.86 (11-Sep-2011)	a useful help utility
	!T1ToFont	1.29 (27-Nov-2002)	converts type 1 fonts for use on RISC OS
From the directory ‘Utilities.Caution’:
	!HForm	2.61 (22-Apr-2012)	a utility to format the hard disc

Instructions are also provided to show the user how to download other free applications and where to obtain some of the ‘key’ commercial applications.

Known issues with current alpha build:
Mouse pointer – whilst a hardware mouse pointer protocol is being developed, the mouse pointer appears not quite to reach the edge of the screen and will leave a trail behind itself whilst dragging things around the desktop.

Screen resolution – at present RISC OS will only operate in 1920×1080 at 16M colours and is downscaled by the GPU to match the monitor being used. If the monitor has a very different native resolution, the image may appear downgraded. Internal settings for display resolution are currently ignored.

Audio – sound support is not yet included. Applications that expect a working sound system will either work silently or degrade less gracefully.

Most configuration options may be set in the desktop and implemented on the next start up. Many of these have already been set up to suit the majority of Pi users – for example DHCP networking. A very few options need to be set ‘externally’ (in earlier models CMOS RAM was provided) – presently these are set to sensible defaults when RISC OS starts up. Mostly these will be appropriate (for example the filing system where !Boot is to be found is set to SDFS) but the ability to ‘UNPLUG’ selected modules in ROM is not yet available.

When shutting down RISC OS the option to ‘restart’ is currently ignored. A software reset is being worked on.

There is no hardware real time clock. RISC OS will set the time correctly once it finds a time server on the internet but the initial stages of the boot will be carried out with the date and time set to 1970. A more sensible initial date is being worked on – possibly restoring the last shutdown time (so that certification software is not confused) and/or asking the user to input or confirm the time and date if no network time server is found.

On a more arcane front, the distribution image on the SD card contains a RISC OS partition plus a FAT partition. On a Windows or Linux machine the FAT partition will be recognised but the RISC OS partition will be seen as empty space at the start of the card. This is not a problem unless you try to re-partition or format the card in which case the RISC OS data could be wiped without warning.

None of these issues (which should be solved in the next few weeks!) should affect testing as it is important that we find any other issues that might be found troublesome by users.

Extra information for developers
--------------------------------
Changes to the standard disc structure from 8 July version:
!Boot.Choices populated
!Boot.RO510Hook.Boot.Tasks.Help added
!Boot.Resources.!System.310.Modules.Iconv added for Netsurf
!Boot.Resources.!System.310.Modules.SharedULib added for Netsurf
!Boot.Resources.!System.310.Modules.Tinct added for Netsurf
!Boot.Resources.!System.310.Modules.Network.URI added for Netsurf
!Boot.Resources.!Unicode updated for Netsurf
Diversions.!SignalBox added
ThirdParty.!Cat added
ThirdParty.images added
ThirdParty.Netsurf added
ThirdParty.Index/htm added
Utilities.!MakeDraw added
Utilities.!MultiTask added
Utilities.!Netsurf added
Utilities.!StrongHelp added
Utilities.Examples added

Congratulations and many thanks for all of the hard work to all of those who have contributed to this first Alpha (vs pre-alpha) release. I haven’t had a chance to look at the distro in recent weeks, but I’m really psyched to be able to use my RPi to run RISC OS at home again after a 20+ absence!

System.310.Modules.Tinct added for Netsurf

You should take this out and configure NetSurf to ‘Use OS’ for its graphics instead. Tinct is not ARMv6+ compatible, which has caused hapless users no end of grief. Also, if you haven’t already, I’d advise that the copy of NetSurf distributed has first had its choices saved to disc – apparently it gives meaningless SSL errors if they’re not.

You should take this out and configure NetSurf to ‘Use OS’ for its graphics instead.

I have left it in (as Netsurf will not start without it present) but configured Netsurf to ‘use OS’ and saved the choices.

The distro (9 Jul 2012) now uses the pre built ROM and the file ‘config.txt’ has been altered to show the full iconbar. Resolution is therefore still fixed at 1920×1080 but will now correspond to native resolution on a 1920×1080 display.