ROOL Forum: Recent posts

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 21:12:13 +0000

RISC OS on Linux: drivers for plug-in Wi-Fi, Ethernet and mobile broadband adapters

New in Configure > Updates (Check for updates, then Install):

• Adapters you plug in or fit now have drivers. Until now only each machine’s own Wi-Fi and network worked. Added: USB Wi-Fi adapters (Realtek, MediaTek/Ralink, Atheros chips, which is most of them), USB Ethernet adapters, phone and mobile broadband sticks, and PCI Express Wi-Fi and Ethernet cards (Intel, Realtek, MediaTek, Qualcomm Atheros, including the Windows Dev Kit 2023’s own Wi-Fi). Plug it in, then set it up as usual in Configure > Linux network.
• Which connection is used: a cable with a link first; a USB Wi-Fi adapter before built-in Wi-Fi.
• Huawei mobile broadband sticks that first show up as a CD drive are switched to network mode (Raik’s report).
• Compute Modules whose USB sockets didn’t work (no keyboard or mouse, USB drives ignored, black screen when started from USB; Chris’s CM5 Lite): fixed by the update. If you can’t run the update for lack of a keyboard, it can be done by hand from another computer: instructions and files
• Photodesk: Image > Rotate on a large picture no longer fails (George’s report).

This update is bigger and slower than usual. The adapters’ firmware comes from Debian’s own firmware packages, a download of a hundred megabytes or more, and Updates goes through its steps twice. Let it finish, then restart.

Please treat it as a test release. If the machine doesn’t start afterwards, put an empty file called ROLLBACK on the card’s FAT partition and it goes back to the previous version.

Reports welcome, working or not: the adapter’s make and model, and kernel-log.txt from the card’s LOGS folder (it says which driver was loaded, in lines starting rol-modd).

Not addressed yet: the slow Wi-Fi George and Raik have seen, and OvationPro from HardDisc4. For the first, a speed test on the same machine with a cable in would tell me a lot. For the second, I need the wording of the error messages, as they don’t reach the logs.

Versions: riscos-kernel-pi 6.6.78-13, riscos-kernel-generic and riscos-kernel-wdk2023 7.2.0-6, riscos-support 1.0.0055-1, riscos-harddisc 1.0.0054-1.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 20:37:36 +0000

AbiWord 3.0.8-riscos8, Gnumeric 1.12.62-riscos22 and !GTKLibs 3.24.52-21

Two program updates, thanks to Doug Webb, who sent the EasiWriter and Fireworkz files that showed both problems, and a new !GTKLibs. The programs use the shared GTK in !GTKLibs as RC18’s do; the other programs are unchanged.

AbiWord 3.0.8-riscos8
- Opens Word files from RISC OS word processors. EasiWriter (and others) save Word 6 as a plain file, without the container Word itself uses. AbiWord didn’t recognise it and opened it as plain text, which is the junk some of you saw. It now reads them as Word documents, with their text, styles and fonts. The fix is in wv, the Word reader inside AbiWord.

Gnumeric 1.12.62-riscos22
- Reads .xls files over 4 KB correctly. On RISC OS, Gnumeric misread the fonts, number formats, text and formulas of any Excel file bigger than 4 KB. A Fireworkz .xls, for example, opened with every font 2.45 pt and the columns a quarter of their width, so the numbers were there but you couldn’t see them. Fixed.

!GTKLibs 3.24.52-21
- Floating point after a Wimp poll: programs built with GTK in Thumb-2 code (a web browser was) could stop with “Illegal Instruction” at their first floating point after a poll. GTK now makes sure the floating-point state is ready before handing back. riscos-gtk’s own programs weren’t affected.

Installing
- With PackMan: all three are in PackMan: update GTKLibs, AbiWord and Gnumeric there (PackMan brings anything else they need). Restart after updating GTKLibs.
- By hand: copy `Resources.!GTKLibs` from the GTKLibs zip into `!Boot.Resources` (Shift-double-click `!Boot`, open `Resources`), replacing the old one; you need PackMan’s SharedLibs there too. Restart. Then replace your `!AbiWord` and `!Gnumeric` with the ones in their zips.

Downloads
- !GTKLibs 3.24.52-21: https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-gtk/releases/downloa…
- AbiWord 3.0.8-riscos8: https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-gtk/releases/downloa…
- Gnumeric 1.12.62-riscos22: https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-gtk/releases/downloa…

Source and checksums: https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-gtk/releases/tag/abi… and https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-gtk/releases/tag/gtk…

You need: RISC OS 5 on ARMv7 or later (Pi 2 or later), in a 16 or 32 bpp mode; SharedUnixLibrary 1.16, ARMEABISupport, Iconv and SharedLibs from PackMan; !GTKLibs 3.24.52-21 (above).

Tested: Doug’s EasiWriter and Fireworkz files, on RISC OS 5.31 on Linux. Reports from real machines are welcome, especially other Word and Excel files from RISC OS programs.

Reports: here or https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-gtk/issues, with the program’s Log (`<Wimp$ScrapDir>..Log`) and, if you can, the file that won’t open.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 15:27:34 +0000

bizarrely, it seems to be disc-related.

That maybe the key, as IXFS is trying to in general force non-case sensitive onto a case sensitive filesytem it’s sitting ontop of, where as FileCore is non-case sensitive.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 15:04:13 +0000

OvationPro I?ve only run the demo which works fine on IXFS on my Pi4, so logs would be handy.

Andy, I’ve just emailed the logs from my latest OPro tests (one successful, one failure): bizarrely, it seems to be disc-related.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 12:07:31 +0000

test76.3 is compiled as ARMv3M code tuned for the StrongARM, to see if this fixes it

Yep that fixes it!

Works on both 4.39 and 6.20.

I have tried scanning, importing the Impression Manual circa 370 page PDF, exporting Draw and Pictures as well as creating PDF’s.

On the creating PDF’s if I use a 2Mb JPEG that expands to circa 24MB it says not enough memory. Resizing it down to around 11MB in expanded form, as stated in DPLingScan, it will create the PDF.

To load the 370 page PDF takes about 8-10s for text to appear.

Resizing the view takes about 2s to get the magnified view.

So thank you Andrew for all the effort on this as it is a useful addition to those using older machines.

Plus I also updated OmniClient and LanMan98 to the latest versions from ROOL and ROD and now can access Windows systems using the latest secure protocols.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 11:15:42 +0000

OvationPro I’ve only run the demo

The full Ovation Pro is free on the PlingStore.

It is a bit hidden in the download.

!Store.Downloads.op278g/zip.DavidPilling32.OvationPro.!OvnPro

Also required is AWViewer.

HTH.

(RO-o-L is going very nicely here on the RPi5.)

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 10:42:19 +0000

Folio 0.0.1-test76.3 is up, for the RiscPC version only:
https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-folio/releases/download/v0.0.1-test76.3/Folio-RiscPC-0.0.1-test76.3.zip

test76.3 is compiled as ARMv3M code tuned for the StrongARM, to see if this fixes it. Could you try it on both 4.39 and 6.20 with the newsletter and the PDFs that aborted? If anything still goes wrong, the FolioLog as before would be great.

On RISC OS 5 ARMv7 machines, test76 is still the one to use.

Release page: https://github.com/adyoull/riscos-folio/releases/tag/v0.0.1-test76.3

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 09:27:13 +0000

Hi Andrew,

New version is slightly better with the aborts but still no text being displayed.

I have sent you the Folio log file when running 4.39 and 6.20 plus a sample PDF as well as the machine information as displayed by Bugz.

Hope this helps.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 08:57:57 +0000

Photodesk will now launch and load a sprite, but performing an operation e.g. rotation causes an abort. GraphDraw, ChartDraw and Multiplot all now work.

I think I’ve resolved this, photodesk manages its own virtual memory, which is what caused the issues in the first place, my original fix, was to create page files to the size photodesk asked for, but on rotation the pages grow which I didn’t anticipate, so photodesk crashes.

OvationPro I’ve only run the demo which works fine on IXFS on my Pi4, so logs would be handy.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 08:56:58 +0000

The image is flashed to a USB drive, does that matter? The SD card is unplugged.

If I flash the image to an SD card, it does start up showing a HardDisc4 drive icon and an IXFS drive icon but the keyboard does not light up and neither mouse nor keyboard work. So it doesn’t like booting from USB and it doesn’t seem to like the USB on a CM5 Lite as plugging in a USB drive is ignored.

Sat, 14 Nov 2026 08:23:01 +0000

…PBPro Wi/Fi… Is working but is slow.

Could be a general issue: Fast.com here reports 4-5 Mbps download on the Pi4 running RO-o-L, my native CM4 machine gets 28-32 Mbps on the same router. Upload speeds however are similar at around 5-6 Mbps.
EDIT: I should have said, the Pi4 RO-o-L machine is connecting wirelessly. Even so, wireless on the native machine would run around 10-11 Mbps downloading.