Beginners FAQ:Installing RISC OS

Raspberry Pi

The instructions given below will work on models of Raspberry Pi up to and including the Pi 4B and Pi 400.
Please note that the Raspberry Pi 5 is not supported.

Choosing an SD card

Capacity:

• The RISC OS Pi image will fit on a 2GB SD card.
• SDHC cards up to 32GB should work with RISC OS.

Performance:

• A class 10 card (or one marked “V10”) should give acceptable performance. A class 4 card will work, but you may find that things run slowly.
• A card with an A1 app performance rating should run RISC OS faster than an ordinary class 10 card.
• A card marked “U3 A1” (or “A1 V30”) should be even faster, but you may only notice this with a Pi 4.

It may be worth checking the known good cards list as there have been problems with a few cards over the years.

Method 1: Raspberry Pi Imager

The easiest method is to use Raspberry Pi Imager (Windows/macOS/Linux) to install RISC OS version 5.28. This downloads the software and writes it to the SD card in a single process.

• Install Raspberry Pi Imager onto a Windows/macOS/Linux computer.
• Start Raspberry Pi Imager, click on “Choose OS”, select “Other general-purpose OS” and select “RISC OS Pi”.
• Click on “Choose SD card” and select the device to use. An SD card of at least 2GB is required (if you use a larger card, RISC OS will only be able to use the first 2GB).
• Click on “Write”. This will write the image to the SD card and then verify that the image was written properly. This process will take approximately 4 minutes.

Method 2: Preparing the media using a pre-built SD card image

First, download a suitable SD card image such as “RISC OS Pi” (available on the Downloads page – this will fit on a 2GB card).

Unpack the archive, then use a utility such as Win32DiskImager (Windows) or Etcher (Linux/macOS) to copy the image to the MicroSD card¹.

¹ RISC OS will only be able to use the space occupied by the .IMG file, so there is no advantage to using large-capacity cards.

Method 3: Preparing the media manually (RISC OS only)

Start with a blank formatted SD or SDHC card.

SystemDisc is a general-purpose tool for managing the system software on modern RISC OS systems. SystemDisc allows you, easily and quickly, to initialise new SD cards for booting your RISC OS system, entirely from within RISC OS. It creates a two-partition SD card which can use all of the available space on your SD card.

You will also need to download the stable RPi ROM and the HardDisc4 image.

Firmware files

SystemDisc will prompt you to copy the ‘firmware’ files into !Boot.Loader where they can be seen by the Pi as it starts up (before RISC OS is started).

• For the Raspberry Pi these are: BOOTCODE/BIN, CONFIG/TXT, FIXUP/DAT, FIXUP4/DAT, RISCOS/IMG, START/ELF and START4/ELF
  Most of these files are in the stable RPi ROM archive, and a suitable CONFIG/TXT can be found here.
• For the Beagleboard and Beagleboard xM they are: BOOT/SCR, MLO, RISCOS, U-BOOT/BIN. See Generic OMAP port setup information for more details.
• For the Pandaboard and Pandaboard ES they are: MLO, PREENV/TXT, RISCOS, U-BOOT/BIN, UENV/TXT. See Generic OMAP port setup information for more details.

HardDisc4

Unpack the HardDisc4 archive and copy !Boot onto the FileCore partition. Do not delete the !Boot application already present on the card: simply copy the new !Boot on top of it. Once this has been done, copy the other directories to the FileCore partition.

Remember to dismount the drive before unplugging the SD card.

First system boot

Insert the SD card into the SD slot of the Raspberry Pi and power on. RISC OS should now boot to the desktop.

On the Raspberry Pi, CMOS RAM settings are saved in a file called “CMOS”, but the file may not exist yet. From the RISC OS desktop, press F12 and enter:
*SaveCMOS !Boot.Loader.CMOS
Press RETURN again to return to the desktop.

The system is now ready for use. It is possible that the screen resolution will need changing to suit your needs, so please see the Beginners FAQ:Look and Feel

Troubleshooting

• If the boot-up gets stuck at a blank screen (or a “rainbow” screen with no text) the first likely candidate is the SD card. Check it is seated correctly, check that the contacts in the card slot aren’t damaged in any way, clean it all up, and try again. The next thing to check is that all of the firmware files are present and correct. If you’re still having problems, it may be that the SD card has become corrupt, and needs re-imaging. This is a good time to remind all users of the importance of backups…

• For other issues that can affect the Raspberry Pi build, see Raspberry Pi: RISC OS boot-up issues.

Pandaboard, Pandaboard ES, Beagleboard, Beagleboard XM

The basic approach is the same – create an SD card with the firmware and the RISC OS boot drive – but as there is no pre-built SD card image available for download, you will have to use the manual option. If you don’t have another RISC OS system to create the SD card, you can do it on the BeagleBoard/PandaBoard itself: see Generic OMAP port setup information.

Alternatively, BeagleBoard and PandaBoard owners can purchase an SD card with RISC OS preloaded – see the Merchandise page for details.