Recent Posts

Topic: RPCEmu / 1280x768 Resolution

Apart from 1920×1200, all the modes I’m using are 16:9. I just like being able to choose where on a scale to pick the compromise between lots of detail and bigger icons, depending what I’m doing.

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

This isn’t a dystopian future, this is what Android does today.

Last time I checked, and it has been a while because I hate Android, it uses a Dalvik, a java-like virtual machine and then later “ART”. You need a compiler to compile Dalvik and ART so even if compilers become tools for OS and framework developers, someone will still need to know assembly, memory management and endianness.

Essentially, we are doomed to creating fart apps, and huge (>20MB!) apps that reproduce the functionality of an existing website.

Unfortunately that’s true and it’s hard to find a decent mentor to learn sensible programming as they’re outnumbered by bad programmers all publishing their own books/blogs. T.T

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

Haha, but who knows how to write the compilers?

Who said there would be compilers in the future? That will become an OS thing, and “normal” programming will be performed using an abstract high level language using predefined libraries, and that the machine tweaks for better efficiency when the software is first installed.

This isn’t a dystopian future, this is what Android does today.

Essentially, we are doomed to creating fart apps, and huge (>20MB!) apps that reproduce the functionality of an existing website.

Topic: RPCEmu / 1280x768 Resolution

I think the beauty of “AnyMode” was mainly in conjunction with ADFFS that, no matter what creative resolution a game requested, it “just worked”.

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

Haha, but who knows how to write the compilers?

The worshipful order of bootstrap levitators.

Topic: Announcements / Some Raspberry Pi 3 builds.

Thanks, Kevin. :)

Topic: Announcements / Some Raspberry Pi 3 builds.

Wget is here

http://www.riscos.info/packages/NetworkDetails.html#Wget

Topic: Announcements / Some Raspberry Pi 3 builds.

Unless I am missing something, the Raspberry P 3 build of Wget seems to have been moved.

Anybody know where to?

Topic: RPCEmu / 1280x768 Resolution

Why do you want to see the feature reinstated?

I’m not sure exactly what this is about, but I’ve got “disable_mode_changes” so I can have my own defined modes beyond 1920×1200 – a whole range of them right up to 3840×2160 (at 24Hz), all working beautifully (but with the GPU clocking ~20% faster than spec, iirc).

Topic: Community Support / RISC OS Pico GPIO Pi Zero W

However RISC OS Pico will not make it into a commercial embedded OS with these kind of problems :-)

To be honest, I don’t know of a single commercial embedded OS that comes with a ready made image (although I wouldn’t be surprised if they exist). Most require a little dev so you can build it for purpose without extraneous features.

Topic: Community Support / RISC OS Pico GPIO Pi Zero W

Meanwhile I made a GPIO library for the Pi Zero W which replaces the inoperative GPIO module SWIs e.g. SYS “GPIO_WriteData”, val1%, val2% becomes CALL gpio_write, val1%, val2% etc. Should someone else needs it I can provide it.

However RISC OS Pico will not make it into a commercial embedded OS with these kind of problems :-)

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

Another step along the road to the redundancy of humans has been taken ;).

Haha, but who knows how to write the compilers? Or are we doomed to use gcc, clang and vc++ long after developers die out and it’s no longer being updated?

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

Low-level programmers are getting rarer these days and they aren’t as valued

There was a time when processors were sufficiently simple that human beings could hold in their heads all that was needed to write efficient assembly language code. With multiple level cacheing, out-of-order execution and other bells and whistles, I suspect that nowadays only the AI baked into compilers is capable of the job. Another step along the road to the redundancy of humans has been taken ;).

Topic: Community Support / HP OfficeJet Pro 8610 Wifi

I think I’m being misunderstood. PCL is the Printer Command Language and there are many versions from PCL 1 through to PCL 6. “HP PCL Driver” is so unbelievably vague, which is probably why there is confusion to what I am saying. Not all PCLs are equal.

PCL 1 – 3 are mono and quite old. PCL 3+ is mono but PCL 3c+ is colour. According to here your printer needs a PCL3GUI driver. So PCL3GUI is the right fit.

Gutenprint has a PCL3GUI driver, so that should work. As Matthew stated, check all works well with USB first. Then move onto network printing after. Will save yourself a headache.

Topic: Code review / ARM on ARM discussion

Not much progress over the past week; I’ve hit a bit of a wall in terms of what can easily be done to the JIT (developing a useful code graph system is going to take a lot of time), and my other RISC OS work is starting to take priority. And in true tradition, working on the JIT has revealed a couple of nasty bugs in ArcEm, so I’m going to have to spend some time tracking down and fixing those.

In any case I expect I’ll submit the JIT sources to arcem’s CVS sometime this week, so that other people can at least get an idea of how (not) to do things.

Topic: RPCEmu / 1280x768 Resolution

I don’t know if the latest ROMs with EDID will work with RPCEmu

The ROMs will work, but you won’t be able to get EDID from the “monitor” because the VIDC hardware doesn’t support reading EDID.

Recent Pi builds now support Mode timings (a very useful improvement!) unfortunately support for modes with no timings was removed. I hope it is reinstated soon.

If you want, you can switch back to the old behaviour by adding the string “disable_mode_changes” to cmdline/txt in the Loader partition (create the file if it doesn’t exist) and then rebooting.

Why do you want to see the feature reinstated? If we can get a better idea of how/why people were using AnyMode then that will help with planning future work, so that we can eventually arrive at a “best of both” solution.

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

If your processor is running at a gigahertz, imagine how many instructions that 20ms would equal.

but now we live in a generation were use of ultra-high level languages are okay, nobody codes a lot of what they need, they just pinch libraries and use only 5% of it.

Low-level programmers are getting rarer these days and they aren’t as valued so not only is it possible, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were millions of instruction in simple routines. I’ve seen more than my fair share.

Realistically though, I’d imagine any slow down is more to do with waiting for a resource or for another routine to return whatever and less likely that they is billions of instructions to process in one simple routine.

Topic: Community Support / HP OfficeJet Pro 8610 Wifi

The RISC OS HP PCL printer driver does not support Colour. I’d expect trying to print using one of the HP PCL drivers would give a dithered output.

Topic: RPCEmu / 1280x768 Resolution

I believe ‘AnyMode’ has only ever worked on a Pi ¹ which previously didn’t support mode timings. AIUI AnyMode provides no timings and relied on the GPU doing its own EDID. Recent Pi builds now support Mode timings (a very useful improvement!) unfortunately support for modes with no timings was removed. I hope it is reinstated soon.

¹ It can also be used with RPCEmu only I’ve just read!

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

so the OS is convinced it needs to jump and those routines might be slow

I rather suspect that any slowness of the routines would be vastly outweighed by the time it takes for a physical head seek. Drives use figures like 20ms seek… If your processor is running at a gigahertz, imagine how many instructions that 20ms would equal.
On the other hand, flash memory has delays in erasing blocks, which could be what is up with my USB key – a lacklustre flash chip that erases slowly…

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

Shouldn’t be an issue for flash memory, no mechanics to move…

I don’t know much about flash, so take this with pinch of salt, but it emulates something like a disk, so the OS is convinced it needs to jump and those routines might be slow. In reality, nothing it where it seems in flash, and your flash chip has a little microcontroller crunching numbers trying to figure out where it should store the data without accidentally destroying nearby wafers.

Topic: RPCEmu / 1280x768 Resolution

Have you installed the AnyMode module in Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDesk? From memory, once you’ve done that, you can simply open a Task Window and they type Wimpmode x1280 y768 C32k. I don’t know if the latest ROMs with EDID will work with RPCEmu. I can’t access a copy of RPCEmu at the moment, but there may also be an MDF somewhere in Boot.Resources.Configure.Monitors that will allow it as standard.

Topic: Community Support / Creating RPi SD image

How about claiming a bounty?

I don’t know if that’s really me. It makes a lot of sense to synchronise with NetBSD and I agree with their choice but it’s not how I’d want to develop it. Always wanted to build one from scratch.

Titanium already has a XHCI driver take a look at the source

Wow, you’re right. I’d have thought they’d be happy with EHCI. That’s quite impressive. Now I have to find another project. :’(

Topic: RPCEmu / 1280x768 Resolution

I’m sure this has been covered previously but cannot find any references or useful information.

Can anyone advise me how to get a resolution of 1280×768 in RPCEmu? Currently working with 1024×768 which leaves big black borders on the sides of the display…

Topic: Aldershot / Boot time

I’ve never seen a USB drive that cant write 3GB in an hour.

The Philips flash key managed to have glitches in a BBC SD broadcast. Given it’s about 3GB for a two hour film, in inclined to suspect the Flash stick is just crappy. I have a whizzy fast SD card, I’ll try that later.

Shame, I’ve just discovered that when the receiver dumps the transport stream to file, they mean that literally. I can switch on subtitles! ;-)

I think that’s more because of fragmentation, so it needs to jump to next free space without overwriting other files.

Shouldn’t be an issue for flash memory, no mechanics to move…