RiscOS Pico BBC Basic

[gertk]

Hi all,

Installed a Pi A+ in a defunct home computer with RiscOS pico booting straight into BBC Basic ARM.
Had to tweak the CONFIG.TXT a bit to get CVBS(video) output going but it works!

Now I would like to add the original keyboard (a 8x8 matrix) through the GPIO pins of the Pi, any hints or pointers how to get this going?

Furthermore I'm looking for some information on this version of BBC Basic (version V if I am correct) what kind of modes, colours/sound/peripheral things on the Pi are supported or accessible from within Basic.

[helpful]

Hello!

Pico supports all the old BBC Micro and Archimedes numbered screen modes, e.g. MODE 7 is teletext, or MODE 28 is 256 colour VGA. For better modes use a mode string like MODE "X1920 Y1080 C16M"

The GPIO module is built into Pico, documentation and examples can be downloaded from http://www.tankstage.co.uk/software.html

You'll probably get quicker (and more knowledgeable!) replies over on the RISC OS Open forum:

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/

You'll also find a lot of documentation there too.

Bryan.

[helpful]

BTW, I notice that you have posted a lot in the bare metal section, so I think you are going to like RISC OS and BBC BASIC with its integrated assembler and full access of the hardware

Also note that even if you install the full version of RISC OS you only have to press F12 to bring up the CLI and type BASIC and you'll be in the same environment as Pico, but you get a very nice desktop environment in which to do your development.

Bryan.

[gertk]

Thanks for the tips.

I like the idea of a 'bare metal' BBC Basic computer so I started with the RISC OS Pico variety.
The system boots into basic in under 4 seconds so that is about as fast as the late C64

I have put the Pi A+ inside the case of a Commodore C16 of which the TED and CPU were defunct...
So far I have connected the original C16 keyboard matrix to 16 GPIO pins of the Pi and started dabbling with the GPIO commands and first steps are working, I have enabled pull-up on the inputs and can reliably read out the matrix now.

Next step is to convert the code to some assembler and make it a autostarting module.

BTW, I have found out that *SCSI starts up the filesystem for accessing a USB stick but is it possible to access a second partition on the internal SD card ? Since the A+ only has a single USB port I attached a USB hub for now to use the USB keyboard and a USB stick for storage. If the internal keyboard starts working then it is not such a problem anymore. Still, would be nice to use some of those extra GB's on the sdcard.

[dfeugey]

With FAT32FS you can. But it's also possible to make your own RISC OS image, that'll use all the SD card space.
Nota: you can also keep a complete desktop environnent, but boot in Basic only. It's what I did with Boot2Basic (http://www.riscos.fr).
Desktop boots in less than one second anyway (with a very simple !Boot)
Bye, David

[sarossell]

Please excuse this post digging up a four year old issue. After several attempts to search for this "Boot2Basic" at the site and on the Internet in general, I have been unable to find anything.

I am very new to RISC OS, but am fascinated by it, especially BBC Basic. My hope is to be able to boot a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ directly to BASIC. I was able to boot a Raspberry Pi 2B using the RISC OS Pico image, but I cannot get anything like that to happen with the 3B+ (the Pico image refuses to boot on the 3B+). Of course, I can boot to the RISC OS desktop on the 3B+, but I’m hoping to boot directly into BASIC.

Thanks!

[helpful]

Pico always seems to be the last thing updated, so it's probably not compatible with the Pi 3B+ yet (looking at the date on the downloads page, it's over a year old). As Pico doesn't exactly need lots of processing power(!), you might as well use an old Pi to run it.

Or you can make full blown RISC OS boot into basic by following these steps (all from memory, untested, use at own risk, etc):

Press Ctrl-F12 to bring up a CLI window. Type "Modules" and find BASIC in the list. Note down what module number it is. Then enter:

Configure Language X - where X is the number of the BASIC module
Configure NoBoot
Opt 4 0
Unplug BootFX - not completely necessary, but gets rid of the splash screen

To reverse that and go back to a full boot:

Configure Language Y - where Y is the number of the Desktop module
Configure Boot
Opt 4 2
RMReinit BootFX

Good luck!

Bryan.

[sarossell]

Thanks for the details on the boot option. I'll look into it. I can run Pico on my old Raspi2, so that may do in a pinch, but I was hoping for the full power of the 3B+ in case my .bbc programs get power hungry. (Of course, now that I write that, it sounds kinda silly.) Well, we'll see.

[nytrex]

As Bryan says, the Pico does not seem to have been updated to work with the RPI 3B+ yet, so I suggest downloading the full RISC OS ROM and use that. You can create your bbc programs in the comfort on the Desktop.

[dfeugey]

Very sorry for the delay (no Internet).

> After several attempts to search for this "Boot2Basic" at the site and on the Internet in general, I have been unable to find anything.

Hum, try here: https://www.riscos.fr/english.html
Nota, Boot2Basic is for Windows.

Anyway, the configuration trick will work perfectly. For Boot2Basic, I boot in shell, with a !Boot file that boots the Basic interpreter. It's more flexible than just booting into Basic.

> the Pico does not seem to have been updated to work with the RPI 3B+ yet, so I suggest downloading the full RISC OS ROM and use that. You can create your bbc programs in the comfort on the Desktop.

Correct. Note too that it's very easy to boot in a single tasking program later... even with a full version of RISC OS.