RISC OS?


Hello all,

Not posting much these days I'm afraid... Sorry about that .

@Raik : I'm still very much interested in RiscOS on the Pyra, so thanks a lot for your time and effort, really appreciated :)

My Pyra is unfortunately collecting dust, so please let me know if I can help you out in any way with tests and stuff and I'll do my best.

Cheers,

Magic Sam
 
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My Pyra is unfortunately collecting dust, so please let me know if I can help you out in any way with tests and stuff and I'll do my best.
Thanks for your offer. I will come back to it.
At this time it is a bit fiddly to use RISC OS. It works only on "self powered devices". There is no power output on hdmi and usb.
The GPIO-Expander-Chip that gives the power are not work correct in RISC OS. Many usb and hdmi devices need the power.
Second problem, autostart is not working well. the bootprocess ends im supervisor mode. U need a serial connection and a terminal to start te grafical environment.
The (unpowered) pyra keyboard driver is the problem here. It has to be kill via terminal and than the you have to kick the autostart manually.
I will refurbish riscos.openpandore.org and add an Pyra-part. I hope an usable Image comming soon.
 
Refurbish is not the right word ;)

Any Benchmarks (reference OMAP4 Panda) with any improvements and without serial Debug ...

Processor - Looped instructions (cache)________202%
Memory - Multiple register transfer____________294%
Rectangle Copy - Graphics acceleration test____67%
Icon Plotting - 16 colour sprite with mask_______416%
Draw Path - Stroke narrow line_______________181%
Draw Fill - Plot filled shape__________________397%

Step by step but very slowly...
 
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HDMI Monitor and external Keyboard is working now.
A changed Image you will find next few days on riscos.openpandora.org.

pyra_neu_monitor.jpg
 
Btw, is the battery icon real? allready working to show the batttery state?

Good question. Try the Image and you will find something like this. ;-)

pyra_20240122.jpg


bm1.jpg
BM2.jpg


I boot from eMMC. You see my iconset. Is a bit different to the Alpha but the BattMon is the same.
Is a "Desktop-Pyra" only. LCD and Keyboard support not working at this time.
The sparkfun BattSitter use the same chipset and I use the BattSitter in my PiTab project. The changes in my code to use it on the Pyra are minimal. The charger loads up to 100%... was never working for me on Debian.
 
I tried your preAlpha and it looks very good!
I am not familiar with RiscOS, but it looks promising. Booting time and overall access speed are great, it's similar to a BeOS/Haiku system!
Does the system only boot sporadically? Only a few times the system booted up, most time the monitor stood black...
However, I'm looking forward to your future releases!
 
Thanks for your feedback.
For me normally it boots without problems. Today I had probems with an USB Stick plugged and boot fails.
Any times it needs Linuxboot or remove Akku. I'm not sure what the reason is. Write to / read from CMOS is one of the things that bring an unknown state sporadically.
 
Short update. PyraKey now works as it should.
Briefly described:
The left NUB is used for mouse movement, the right one for the scroll wheel (only the window over which the mouse pointer is positioned scrolls).
The mouse buttons are as follows:
Select := left NUB pressed
Adjust := right NUB pressed
Menu := Menu button (with Pyra symbol)

LCD: Backlight is working ;-)
 
All the best for 2026 to everyone here.

Unfortunately, the RISC OS port is still stalled. It works well over HDMI, but the Pyra display is a beast and so far does not want to work under RISC OS.
For those who still want to try RISC OS on the Pyra...
I have adapted Timothy Baldwin's old Linux port and RISC OS Direct for RPi5 (based also on the Linux port) from RISC OS Developments for the Pyra.

Pyra_Direct.png


I use my own setup (complete different) from eMMC, but I have tried Direct from both eMMC and a fresh "enlarged" SD. The resize is described in the Wiki.
The port needs under 1GB disc space and is not an emulator. RISC OS is created as an executable, so it works "full speed".

You can download my direct stuff from

Pyra_Direct

After this you have to install the dependencies, use the Terminal.

sudo apt-get install bash bubblewrap gcc g++ make libattr1-dev libseccomp-dev libsdl2-dev xattr

Note: The dependencies are for Debian/Ubuntu. The port generally works also with other Linux distributions. I have try on Manjaro. The packages have different names but the port is working.

and unpack with

tar --xattrs -xvf Downloads/pyra_direct.tar.gz

to your home directory. It takes a while. Please not use the archive manager because the extended attributes are needed.

In home folder, find RISC_OS and inside you'll see
"run_RISC_OS". Double click it to run. The first start takes a bit longer.
Sound is not supported yet (also not for the Pi5) but the collection is a good start point to play around with RISC OS.

At the Desktop you find a Pyra folder (not on my screenshot ;-)). Inside three tools.
Normally RISC OS use a 3-button mouse. Left (left Nub) is the same at all, Right (right Nub) is "Adjust" and has special functions e.g. collect files for filer operations or if you open or close a folder.
The middle mouse button (both Nubs together) is "Menu" and gives you the user-menus where the mousepointer is placed.
The !Keymapper tool map the right Nub to "Menu" and "Adjust to both.
The other two Obeys are for network use and contains the IP of the internet gateway. Change it (press SHIFT and double click) to yours and start (double click after save) to use the network access of the Pyra (WIFI or LTE) if it is active in Linux.

To uninstall, simply delete the RISC_OS folder from your Home folder.

Have fun ;-)
 
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