Ongoing Raspberry Pi problems

Agreed but defective media likewise trumps good hardware. :)

That won't stop people from trying it.

Warren.

You won't know the media is bad if the hardware isn't working.

The media is easily checked on any number of known working machines.

In the end, in a mix of hardware and software, all the ducks must be in a row.

Warren.

This is an chicken and egg problem. One would expect the hardware and the media you receive to be tested. So if it doesn't work when delivered you can return it as being defective. If you only buy the hardware then there is no way to tell whether the hardware is broken, the media is defective or you are doing something wrong.

When buying these kind of boards the golden rule is to buy them with preformatted media and get that running first before attempting anything else.

In troubleshooting, you should start with the basics. That's the power source. A marginal supply can cause all kinds of headaches, so a few seconds with a scope to look for ripple is a good place to start.

Not for the past 20 or more years. Statistically sampled yes, but 100% testing? Not with volume of more than a few a month.

It may indeed be in "Linux format" but the Win32DiskImager appears to leave the SD card as FAT formatted, not some Linux "extsomething" file system. Maybe Linux has changed in recent years so that it can now understand FAT formatted drives such as this SD card. That's probably handy for the Raspberry Pi because it seems that if there is trouble booting and using your particular display you have to hand edit some config file on the SD card and doing that from a Windows PC would be non trivial if it put some crazy Linux type filesystem on the card.

My two attempts at getting interested in firing up my Raspberry Pi have been thwarted by its lack of current for the USB ports - I have two different keyboards that both fail with the "auto repeating" feature. I have ordered a powered hub which will hopefully turn up soon, so that should fix it. Alternatively I may short out the Polyfuses to allow a bit more juice to the ports.

Regards, Simon.

Linux has been able to handle FAT-12, FAT-16, VFAT, etc. for at least a decade now.

Which format you use on a device, depends very much on what you want to do with it. Using a FAT varient is very common for USB thumb drives and other media which you want to be highly portable (interchange media, etc.) but you give up the ability to set file ownership, permissions, and so forth. ext2 or another Unix-type format is preferable if you need those.

The partition table on such devices is often in a DOS/BIOS format, even if the individual partitions hold ext2/3/4 or whatever sort of filesystem you want. And, such a device might have multiple partitions... a FAT filesystem for boot data and an ext2 for the root and user filesystems, for example.

It's had FAT support for over two decades now.

SLS (20 Aug 1992) was distributed on a series 20 of FAT formatted floppy disks.

On a sunny day (24 Jan 2013 10:15:32 GMT) it happened Jasen Betts wrote in :

I still have SLS (SoftLandingSystems) Linux on floppy :-)

It is actually quite cool, and really small.

Thanks for the clarification, guys!

Seems I'm a bit out of touch with all things Linux-related. The problem is, each time I try to get interested, there always seems to be something to thwart my efforts.

My first go was back in 1999 when I BOUGHT a copy of Red Hat 6.0. (I just pulled out the manuals from my bookshelf where they have sat untouched for over 13 years to check the date.) I lost interest in that when it turned out that sound didn't work and I hadn't got into it enough to work out how to fix that.

I have used a few flavours of bootable live disc to repair or extract stuff from Windows machines over the years (and to extract all the content from my dead Popcorn Hour box) but never built up enough enthusiasm to go through with hitting the "Install" button. Simple things like not being able to set the screen resolution to match my monitor in the GUI, and probably having to edit some text file to achieve this, is the kind of thing that has made me just not bother.

The best use I've found for Linux in recent times is keeping my three boys' computing habits under some control. For example if they have been playing games too much, or downloading dodgy stuff necessitating a Windows reinstall or general tidy up, I have occasionally threatened them that I'll install Linux on their machines to control their destructive urges.

Now with the Raspberry Pi, I hoped things might be a bit simpler for the beginner, but so far the keyboard problems have put a stop to this. (The powered USB hub has STILL not turned up.) I bought the official User Guide and that has SOME useful information in it, so hopefully I'll get into it a bit more soon. Might even build up the Gert Board kit that hs been sitting on my desk for a few months.

Regards, Simon.

On a sunny day (Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:50:54 -0000) it happened "Simon Stroud" wrote in :

Yes, RatHead 6, I had similar problems, and no sound, IIRC not even a mouse. And I had done a lot of Linux at that time. Suse was a lot better really, upto version 6? Those companies go commercial, and make it so you NEED their support. When I got fed up with it all, I installed grml

For you, on a PC, have a look at Ubuntu. It installed here without any effort, and I have it on one laptop as 'fallback'. That one also has many other version of Linux in different partitions. Ubuntu is commercial too, but has very good free online support and has the latest drivers *working* it seems.

You cannot expect everything to work, Linux is for geeks, the claim it 'is for everybody's desktop' I cannot support that.

Ubuntu and grml is Debian based, and Debian is probably the most comprehensive Linux distro around, many others build on that work.

But anyways. I ordered (decided to buy) the Debian DVDs so to also financially support Debian, and when these came they had labeled the boot disk as the data disk and the data disk as the boot disk. Insert boot disk... nothing happens. For me easy, but I guess for some that would be back to MS windows? So it is a lot of work done by people working in their spare time, and errors are made.

MS windows is expensive, full of bugs, bloat, and a constantly changing target with deliberate limitations so you need to buy a more expensive version.

I burned my xp disk, and really, I do have one very old PC that has win98 on it, because it has drivers for my Canon scanner.

It is a bit all over for MS, although that mammoth will probably stay around in various forms, like the flue viruses, but with all these ipads, androids, etc etc in the last few years MS software as OS on all platforms has dropped below about 50%.

There is some beautiful software for MS windows, I know, you will have to wait until somebody wants the Linux version enough that has the time and capability to write it. But in general there is more available in Linux, even for free, than for MS OSses.

As to that pie, I have not bought one yet, but it looks like a good embedded solution that will run most of the things I have (written) with nothing more than a recompile. And on that subject, the compilers, assemblers, and languages available for Linux for free, are worth a zillion for anybody interested in computers.

The raspberry is more powerful in some ways than my very old 486 box was, and that could already do miracles in Linux.

Hope you get it working, try writing some small programs in C, it is actually quite easy :-)

Thanks Jan.

Well if this flippin' powered USB hub every turns up (looks like I need to order another one) I am certainly looking forward to getting the Pi going properly and writing some C stuff. I have written plenty of C code (and assembler) for embedded things in the past, but not with the added complication of Linux. Will certainly have a go.

Best regards, Simon.

On a sunny day (Sun, 27 Jan 2013 15:44:15 -0000) it happened "Simon Stroud" wrote in :

Writing C for Unix (Linux) is easy if you use libc.info as reference, all functions of the libray are desribed there. It is probably on your system, but I have put a complete copy as text file here:

You will also need some GUI stuff if you want to write programs for X windows. I use libforms, because it is so small, and does most of what I need: libforms-dev

Even this newsreader I wrote is libforms (xforms) based.

And so is my new spectrum analyser :-)

libforms also has a GUI generator called 'fdesign', it will write the C code for you, including all callbacks, you only need to fill in your own code. Good way perhaps to start.

I don't know what you mean. Windows is free with every PC you buy. I want a new laptop and every one I find with Linux on it costs a lot more than the Windows equipped ones.

Yeah, but when will those platforms become mainstream for doing design work?

Microcenter's January sale brochure had a 17" laptop with 8 GB for $600 which would have been a go for me if I had seen it sooner. But it ran out today and I didn't have time to get more info on it. I expect there will be a similar machine next month and I may have to snag that one because I won't see a similar Linux box for anywhere near that.

Rick

FWIW I only ever remember connecting the full KB/Mouse/Monitor once or twice. Installed & configured it to auto-start SSH & VNC and do everything over ethernet.

Chris.

target

In fact windows is subsidised by fees from the AV & crapware companies. Try to buy any machine with *just* windows on it, it will

Still worth it IMO, of course I can spend the day wiping a crapware-infested machine and reinstalling windows and all the drivers etc. But the experience is so nauseating I usually just pay the extra.

You can of course buy it with Windows+crapware and install linux on it, that's what I normally do.