RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi

PS I forgot about "Adrian Lees is rumoured to have taken some time off his day job […]".

Good – I didn’t get to Wakefield. So now I have a Raspberry Pi and just waiting for someone to provide some advice on how to get RISC OS working on it. The novelty of the Linux distro. has already worn off…

The advice is: unless you manage to create a HAL and do the port yourself, you’re just going to have to wait. :( Only Adrian has the sources to the port that was demoed at the London Show last October and Wakefield last week. He’s done a good job to get it this far but without working USB and a couple of other rough edges smoothing off, there seems little point in distributing it.

I agree that distribution as a working image is not possible yet. However there may be some things which others can help with? But without an SD card filing system and some way of attaching a mouse (perhaps a serial mouse to the UART) then it’s not much use without USB.

One idea I have is can RISC OS be provided so that it presents a choice to the user ‘which Linux distro do you want to start?’ [not by renaming the files on the SD card!] If it boots up nice and quickly and gave a nice user interface (with of course a choice of RISC OS as well) it could just be so handy people would want it.

However there may be some things which others can help with?

That question is best addressed to Adrian.

One idea I have is can RISC OS be provided so that it presents a choice to the user ‘which Linux distro do you want to start?’ [not by renaming the files on the SD card!] If it boots up nice and quickly and gave a nice user interface (with of course a choice of RISC OS as well) it could just be so handy people would want it.

That’s something we’re looking at doing.

Well, as for the original question, I do believe it’s just been answered.

PS: Sorry about how I kinda DDoSed your site just then. Apparently we can’t cope with a retweet by the Raspberry Pi Foundation…

Brilliant!

Looking at the uploads to the CVS credited to Adrian Lees, they look to me like the RISC OS end of the code used for the work-around of handling mouse/keyboard via a windows laptop rather than directly via USB.

If there is a RISC OS image for the Raspberry Pi (even with use of a laptop for mouse/keyboard) available by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll demonstrate it at the Bristol RISC OS User group meeting tomorrow evening. But if not I’ll just show Linux on the Pi.

Chris,

Would you be interested in trying out ROLF on your new device for me?

Since it’s not strictly ROOL related, perhaps you could drop me an e-mail at simon willcocks at gmx de, with dots and symbols, or come to #riscos?

Yes. I’ll email you.

If there is a RISC OS image for the Raspberry Pi

IMHO it’d be useful to see such an image hosted as an official RPi download, even in its current unfinished state (provided the Foundation are happy to do so, perhaps peppering the text with ample disclaimers).

I shall not be making ROM images publicly available for a while, and I would argue very strongly against RISC OS Open doing that. I think they agree with me that at this stage it’s not in the interests of the RISC OS platform/community to allow newcomers to try ROM images.

I am feeding back my porting efforts at this stage so that other RISC OS developers may get involved. After all, I do have a day job, designing newer chips than the one used on the RaspberryPi ;)

Chris, to use a current ROM image (were you to approach either myself or RISC OS Open for one) you would still need to make the ‘mini UART’ signals available in such a form that you could then connect a USB→RS232 convertor. I suspect that’s the biggest stumbling block? I myself am only familiar with how to do this on the alpha board.

Hi Adrian,
We’re all enormously thankful for the work you are doing to get RISC OS running on the Raspberry Pi. And I certainly appreciate that it would be counter productive to release RISC OS for the Pi if it’s not going to mean newcomers have a good first experience. There is enormous interest in what you are doing and consequently we’re all a bit desperate for news on how it’s going. Great that you are cautiously allowing a few other key developers to become involved. I think we were hoping getting RISC OS running on the Pi would not be to big a job for someone ‘in the know’. Sounds like it’s actually quite intricate and involved.
Regards, Martin.

it’s not in the interests of the RISC OS platform/community to allow newcomers to try ROM images.

That’s a good point regarding newcomers as users. But there’s also the possibility of newcomers (or returners) as developers. Hosting an image on the Foundation’s site is different to hosting one here on the ROOL site, so perhaps this can be revisited in the future. And do we have any idea what the Foundation’s trustees think about this? Thanks again.

When the a ROM for users is produced, please can it have a better looking icon set / theme?

Kids today are (unfortunately) more likely to be impressed by a buggy system that looks lovely than a perfect system that looks 20 years old.

Chris, to use a current ROM image (were you to approach either myself or RISC OS Open for one) you would still need to make the ‘mini UART’ signals available in such a form that you could then connect a USB→RS232 convertor. I suspect that’s the biggest stumbling block? I myself am only familiar with how to do this on the alpha board.

Adrian, Much appreciate your efforts. I can’t work out whether it is feasible on the production Pi to use signals from the GPIO header to connect to a USB/RS232C convertor. If not then clearly we have to wait for the USB drivers to be written for RISC OS to work at all (I don’t know how much work that is and although a programmer don’t have the skills to help but there may be other who can).

Trevor> Until there’s working writable storage (and SD card now looks likely to be ready sooner than USB) the RO-RPi port is just a 5 min novelty even to a RISC OS enthusiast. Developers currently need to build a ROM image since this is the only way to introduce new/modified software. The source required to build and develop a ROM image should very soon be available for others to download.

just a 5 min novelty even to a RISC OS enthusiast

I think I understand, and guess you’re right.

The source required to build and develop a ROM image should very soon be available for others to download.

Great! Thanks for the info.

There is one useful function it could perform at a show or in a shop, a rolling display.

Obviously it would need to be able to read an SD drive to make it useful for anything other than one screen size with one presentation.

whats wrong with remote booting, loading software from a tomcat server?? we have a working network port risc os can be booted from a dhcp server hosted on windows server.
Has anyone tried this?? looks like i will have to dig out the server software and play, i will let you know how it pans out.

Doesn’t it require RISC OS to be in ROM and working networking?

Has anyone tried this??

Is Network Booting on Beagleboard xM the same thing?

yes it needs risc os in rom or booted from an sd card i will give it a go later with my panda & beagle xm to see if it works.

just a 5 min novelty

Yes you are of course right. I was going to stretch the 5 mins a bit by adding an application of mine to the boot structure (in resources) that will (with a tweak or two) happily start up and run for an hour with no user intervention. Written in BASIC it would probably not have any issues (it runs fine on XM).

I could add a message ‘USB and Network (for mouse, keyboard and storage) coming soon!’.