RiscOS

[geocaching]

Hello all,

I am completely new here and a happy new owner of a Pandora 1 Ghz edition just received yesterday (26/03/2013) and bought from EvilDragon.

Note that I am not new in the world of "alternative" gaming handheld. I own 4 GPH handhelds: the black GP2X (no touch screen), the white GP2X (with touch screen), the Wiz and the Caanoo, all bought from EvelDragon, at the time of gp2x.de shop.

I am also the developper behind the game SimoniZ (http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/wiz.cgi?0,0,0,0,27,187), which I will port on Pandora... if I find back the sources

Voilà for a short presentation  

But I actually bought a Pandora primarily to have a very mobile RiscOS computer, on top of my RaspberryPI.

So, I am opening this thread to post questions & answers regarding running RiscOS on the Pandora, hoping that other people are using RiscOS on the pandora.

I am running the live system build by Raik (http://riscos.openpandora.org/) and it works pretty well. This morning, in the public transport, I have been reading the "Beginner's Guide to WIMP Programming" and typing the examples on the Pandora... I feel confident that with some practice, I can be decently efficient in typing code on the Pandora.

But, let's start with a first issue.

I notice that after some time and depending on the intensity of use, moving down the right nub (equivalent of pressing the middle button of a three buttons' mouse) became less responsive. Everything returns to normal when I reboot the unit.

I hope this is not a hardware issue, only a software one.

What do you think? Does anyone noticed this problem?

Thank you for your help.

François

 

[Binky]

The nubs auto-calibrate themselfs, so they will adapt to give more precise control, then forget everything on reboot, and start over.

Maybe try running the nub round in circles for a while after each boot?

Otherwise, you may have nubs that are easier to use uncalibrated than calibrated

 

[levi]

The Pandora nubs do tend to have a mind of their own at times. It's probably trying to recalibrate, but as the middle button tends to be heavily used in RISC OS that's tending to drag the center down. You probably need to do the nub dance a few times, which IIRC should be fairly safe to do on an empty bit of the pinboard.

 

[geocaching]

Hello

Could it be that the callibration quality depends on the OS that is running?

Regards

 

[Binky]

I think calibration is done on microcontrollers built into the nubs, and the main CPU has nothing to do with it.

The nubs just report values between (-32, -32) and (32, 32) over I2C

 

[geocaching]

Hello

Thank you for your answer. So, this nub's behaviour is due to a kind of memory effect. I probably have to make the nub dancing from time to time to prevent this issue to occur. Nothing to worry on the hardware side. Ouf!

Case closed

I have two other issues:

1) I cannot put the unit in "sleep mode" and, when I close the screen, it does not switch off. Is this due to a RiscOS limitation? Or do I have to configure sth?

2) I cannot change the brightness of the screen (e.g. with the dedicated keys). Again, is this a limitation under RiscOS, or something I did not configure?

Note that I do not have these issues with the build-in liux distro.

Thank you for your help

François

 

[Binky]

Don't understand RISC-OS or how it interfaces with hardware, but I do know that the magnetic sensor that detects lid closure appears to controlling hardware as just another keyboard key.

Otherwise, you'll have to wait for someone more knowledgeable to turn up

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi all !

RISC OS 5.22 is out

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[Raik]

The thread shold be named RISC OS...

A new Distro is on the way. Is 5.24 stable based. 5.26 is only for RPi noobs. The only changes in 5.26 are the licence files inside.

Download

I hope I have find all the problems. Have play around on my Classic and boot with my GHz.

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi all

@Raik : thanks a lot for your continuing support, that's really appreciated !

I'll give RISC OS 5.24 a go ASAP !

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi all

@Raik : RISC OS 5.24 boots just fine on my Rebirth Pandora, thank you very much

Would you have any news regarding the two TCP/IP related bounties opened at ROOL ? And did you have some time left to work on touchscreen support for the Pandora ?

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[levi]

Looks to me like the first stage is to update TLS, the certificate store and IPv6 to be actually secure for the first time in a while. That's at the fifth beta at the moment, and the main bugs seem to be the way most RISC OS devs don't read the docs, just hit the machine with different versions of the code until it works, which means they're coding to undefined behaviours a lot of the time. That doesn't matter when things don't update for years at a stretch, but when they come out with an updated API is all falls down.

The second stage is actually updating the stack to something less 1990s and to get some kind of wifi working. Not started yet.

Third and fourth stages have not been published yet as far as I can tell, and I can't make a stab at their contents without reading more.

 

[Raik]

Would you have any news regarding the two TCP/IP related bounties opened at ROOL ?

No, not really.

Looks to me like the first stage is to update TLS,...

A new version of AcornSSL is there. But is not the answer.

ROD (RISC OS Developments) as the new owner of RISC OS wil organize the development.
Any month before Andrew tells me "nobody work on it". But I not know the actually status. Maybe the development for the Pinebook brings any improvements.

There was a WiFi solution by STD. Have try to contact but no success.

And did you have some time left to work on touchscreen support for the Pandora ?

Have spend a lot of time from my rare spare time to find a solution. Have take a look to the ROM sources etc. but for me, without help, it is not possible to find a solution. SPI is not really implemented in HAL (RPi and mx6 are better). So I have no access to SPI.
Have send any questions to any other RISC OS developer with a lot of more knowledge. Hope that helps.

 

[Raik]

I was "out of the house" for a few days and spent some time with the Pandora again.
I've solve any problems with FFMPEG frontend (! MovieCentre) to make it work with my Pandora.

A "Recorded" (not really)...
http://riscos.openpandora.org/Diverses/Videohokupokus/Pandora/Pandora_Video.mp4
and the edited Video ...
http://riscos.openpandora.org/Diverses/Videohokupokus/Pandora/Tierpark_Pan.mp4
are the results.

The squirrel has a hard time feeding itself. Unfortunately I am not a good programmer and sparetime is rare.
Functioning (in narrow limits) does streaming including recording, with a corresponding bandwidth seen a stream and another can be recorded, cutting but creating the preview takes quite a bit. If the preview is created it is fast enough (in the video recording screen slows down)
Overlays and subtitles are rudimentary. Play use FFPlay ...

Not sure if I get really useful in future ... maybe for the Pyra.

 

[Raik]

Have uploaded a new "RISC OS Direct" based Image...

Details in the German part ;-)

 

[levi]

8GB? That seems a lot for RISC OS

 

[daveshah]

It was big enough to kill the poor old server

 

[Raik]

A lot of stuff and a bit of space to "play" with ;-)
The Image is 1,5GB gzip.
The "waterdrop" was the screenshot ;-)

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi all

@Raik : could you please update your Pandora port to 5.28 ?

RISC OS Open: News: RISC OS 5.28 now available

Cheers, Magic Sam

 

[Raik]

Hi,

I have it since it was availabe this weekend. Is there anyone besides me who is really interested?
Feedback is almost non-existent.
But is no problem.

All the best,

Raik