Recent Posts

Topic: Porting RISC OS / Utilite – a nice Cortex-A9 box

Because me suspending RO work would be madness! ;)

Topic: Porting RISC OS / Utilite – a nice Cortex-A9 box

all the time in the world!

And how do we know you’re not considering funding some unpaid leave by temporarily suspending the RO work in order to win $10,000 for the Quake III VideoCore IV competition? ;-)

Topic: Porting RISC OS / Utilite – a nice Cortex-A9 box

“a simple job clearly”: I think it’s ironical :)

Indeed!

If only I had all the time in the world!

Topic: Porting RISC OS / Utilite – a nice Cortex-A9 box

“a simple job clearly”: I think it’s ironical :)

Indeed!

Topic: Porting RISC OS / Utilite – a nice Cortex-A9 box

Some technical info about the Utilite is available (probably mentioned previously):

• "Technical Reference Manual" (ahem, nothing about the processor)
• Some Linux patch or something for controlling devices
• Linux kernel
• U-Boot branch Freescale i.MX6
• Official software forum
• Project owner is Igor Grinberg

There seems to be a little more publicly available info for the Qseven conga-QMX6 COM (module-store.com, uk.mouser.com, avnet-embedded.eu), including revisions 0.1 and 0.2 of the User’s Guide:

• http://www.grupoitech.com.br/detalhes_produto.php?id=559&pag=wireless&idioma=en
• ftp://ftp.matrixelectronica.eu/CONGATEC/conga-QMX6
• ftp://ftp.matrixelectronica.eu/CONGATEC/SEMINARIO_2013/Documentacion/

However, there’s also the Hardware Development Guide for i.MX 6Quad, 6Dual, DualLite, 6Solo Families of Applications Processors (via the i.MX Community and search).

Is any of that any good to someone with the time, skills and inclination?

Topic: Community Support / AcornMode

It is a repackaged/rcomp approved ArcEm with all the ROMS etc. all in place.
If you can’t get ArcEm working, then it can be downloaded from RComp – but you need an active support scheme from RCOMP.
It’s not that much for the support scheme.
Contact rcomp for more info about the scheme.

Topic: Announcements / RISC OS System Programming Book

I don’t have a problem with the PRMs – been using the hard copy version for years and of course have the Pi version on my Pi. Will this tell me anything they don’t, Pi specific stuff or anything? £16.89 isn’t a trivial amount for me (I’m a pensioner) but it’s not beyond the pale if it’ll be useful.
My particular interest at the moment is keyboard handlers, about which there’s precious little in the PRMs. I’m used to !IKHG, but its products don’t work on RiscOS 5.2 as far as I can see. I’ve been looking online for anything and so far found nothing useful.

Topic: General / AnyMode v0.04b released - for the RPi

Chris, that’s because I keep a low profile, am being swamped with projects and work at the mo, but have dropped you an email.

Andrew – glad you like this. I have made progress but stalled in the past month as have been focused on another project. However it is related, so am hoping to get something out around Easter.

Topic: General / Elite game has evolved

If there’s a quiet moment in discussions…..any hope for Zarch?

I’m still holding a torch for Fervour by Clares. I’d love to see that running. It doesn’t currently run under Aemulor or ArcEm. There were rumours about it running on SA RiscPCs but I was never successful.

Topic: Community Support / Some iconsprites missing

@Willi
Thanks for help. I have copied into the 5 directories in !ThemeDefs.Themes many files that were not present from today’s Beta HardDisc4. The file icons are no longer white squares (with ? for small icons).

I noticed that several files, but not the ones called SpritesXX, present in the Themes five subdirectories in Beta HardDisc4 are absent from the stable disc image version. Folk new to RISC OS might well go for the stable version and miss these icons (e.g. SCSIFiler, SDFSFiler, CoSprite). Perhaps ROOL should look into this.

Topic: General / Elite game has evolved

I’m currently talking to the guy with the source code…

If there’s a quiet moment in discussions…..any hope for Zarch?

First thing I did when I got my shiny new A3000 home was fire up the Lander demo and fly all around (sort of) while listening to a new tape, Erasure’s Wild! album! although with songs like The Piano Song and Crown of Thorns, maybe the title is ironic? ;-) [I still preferred The Innocents (previous album), mind you]

Topic: Community Support / RTC on Pandaboard

@Willi
Yes, the CMOS widget is fitted. I have just opened up the case to make sure. The widget is in the JTAG socket near the RTC gadget with battery. I will try your suggestions. I notice that Choices.Boot.Tasks.Timesetup has only some commented out lines after I configure to set time manually; but, when configured for nettime, there are several lines relating to nettime, like the time server. The permanently commented out lines that seem relevant are
Format:6
Locality:UTC+00:00_UK_’GMT’
ServerSelector:0

Topic: Community Support / AcornMode

Isn’t it just a repackaged ArcEm? The ArcEm website has the latest version, which was released a year and four months ago.

Topic: General / Elite game has evolved

More than happy to 32bit it, if we can get the source and permission to release. I have Jeffrey’s source for the draw fix, which needs merging in.

Topic: Code review / Proposed GraphicsV enhancements

Speaking of weighting, the ColourDistance function near the bottom of the page below looks like an interesting approximation of Luv and might be worth investigating:

http://www.compuphase.com/cmetric.htm

Topic: General / Elite game has evolved

I was disassembling the Elite code last night to see what needs adding to ADFFS to get it running on the Pi.

That sounds like doing things the hard way! :) I’m currently talking to the guy with the source code…

The main problem is the fact it’s a Wimp app, it also needs to interact with the Desktop, Modules and be made 32bit compliant. I think it’s also 26bit APCS, so another complication.

IIRC, it was made StrongARM compatible but yes, it needs 32 bitting.

Even if I do get it running, someone still needs to grant permission to release it, so don’t get your hopes up!

I’d advise you to save your efforts. We may still obtain permission to work on the source directly, in which case, perhaps you might be a good volunteer for getting it working. :D

Topic: General / Elite game has evolved

I was disassembling the Elite code last night to see what needs adding to ADFFS to get it running on the Pi.

The main problem is the fact it’s a Wimp app, it also needs to interact with the Desktop, Modules and be made 32bit compliant. I think it’s also 26bit APCS, so another complication.

I have the 32bit compliance covered, know how to handle Modules and APCS, leaving the Wimp issue which I have some ideas about. Even if I do get it running, someone still needs to grant permission to release it, so don’t get your hopes up!

Topic: Porting RISC OS / Utilite – a nice Cortex-A9 box

There is a review of the machine on Phoronic

Topic: RPCEmu / Permission Faults

Does RPCEmu support subpages? These were only ever used by RO4 to lock down some of the pages below &4000, so may not have been tested. RedSquirrel for example doesn’t support them, but runs RO4 quite happily.

If / when the permission fault issue is fixed, you may want to check all four subpages raise abort correctly within an L2PT entry.

How’s the refactoring coming along?

Topic: Community Support / AcornMode

Hi all, is this available for download (or purchase) somewhere please ? I have my own copy on my SD card from the R-Comp R-Pi support scheme but someone is asking where they can get hold of a copy.
Documentation inside the app isn’t clear and latest news at http://arcem.sf.net seems to be over 2 yrs old :(

thanks :)
Chris

Topic: General / AnyMode v0.04b released - for the RPi

Steve, when you have a minute can you drop me a line: editor (at) dragdrop (dot) co (dot) uk. I wanted to email you but can’t find your email address anywhere on your site or in the documentation.
thanks!
Chris.

Topic: General / Elite game has evolved

Doesn’t work for me :-(
But it works well under AcornMode

Topic: Bugs / Undefined instruction at &201CFBA0

Death Tone?

Topic: Community Support / Some iconsprites missing

Just downloaded 2nd March self extracting HardDisc image, extracted a hard disc setup, and looked in !ThemeDefs.Themes.Sovereign and the following sprite files are in there:

Banner, CoSprite,SCSIFiler, SDFSFiler,Sprites,Sprites11,Sprites22, Tools.

So perhaps when you updated to the latest !Boot, as you stated you did, then there was an issue with the merging that didn’t copy all the files?

Topic: Bugs / Undefined instruction at &201CFBA0

I may now be able to diagnose and close this myself!

I replaced the externally powered USB hub I had connected to the back of my ARMiniX to a different externally powered hub. Since then the problem hasn’t re-occurred. Now free of the problem for over a week. This followed on from my finding that the previous hub was able to send enough 5V line current back up the USB connection to power the ARMiniX when its own mains supply was disconnected!

The moral seems to be that some usb hubs behave in ‘unfortunate’ ways. Choose them with care. I only found this because the same hub also produced 485Hz tones and modulation on a USB audio device. I changed hub and the 485Hz went, and so did the undefined instruction problem at bootup.

Jim