Raspberry Pi - A few questions about I/O

I'm looking at the files recently released for running Squeak on RPi and
I figure to do that I need the actual RPi. But I have a few questions
about it.

The Pi takes an SD Card. I need to order a NutPi from the Pi people, put
it on the SD card, and slot it in? Or does the NutPi come on an SD card?

The image, changes, and sources would go on the same SDCard?

What's a good monitor and keyboard/mouse? It wants HDMI, and I don't see
a jack on my Mac for that. I do think I see one on my Xoom tablet, so
maybe I could use that. Is any screen recommended?

And the mouse/keyboard seems to have one USB jack. Is there a
mouse/keyboard rig that uses only one USB jack? Instead of two?

Does the Pi come with the power cable, or do I need to go to Bob's House
Of Cables and get something specific?

My justification for getting involved is that I think looking at how the
vm is compiled and built for the Pi might be a little simpler to grasp
than the panoply of files usually see that list every known operating
system. If it's not, don't tell me. That's my justification for a new
toy and I'm sticking to it.

Thanks,
Chris

On 10 January 2013 17:59, Chris Cunnington
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> I'm looking at the files recently released for running Squeak on RPi and I
> figure to do that I need the actual RPi. But I have a few questions about
> it.
>
> The Pi takes an SD Card. I need to order a NutPi from the Pi people, put it
> on the SD card, and slot it in? Or does the NutPi come on an SD card?

I suspect the NutPI comes _on_ an SD card. I bought one of the
recommended SD cards and slapped one of the Linux images on it. You
need to make the SD's partition bootable (or whatever the jargon is;
it's been a while since I've had to care about this kind of stuff).

> The image, changes, and sources would go on the same SDCard?

Yes: the SD's your Pi's hard disk.

> What's a good monitor and keyboard/mouse? It wants HDMI, and I don't see a
> jack on my Mac for that. I do think I see one on my Xoom tablet, so maybe I
> could use that. Is any screen recommended?

You can get a DVI/HDMI converter, if your current monitor's DVI. (I
just bought an el cheapo one off Amazon.)

> And the mouse/keyboard seems to have one USB jack. Is there a mouse/keyboard
> rig that uses only one USB jack? Instead of two?
>
> Does the Pi come with the power cable, or do I need to go to Bob's House Of
> Cables and get something specific?

Power cable not included. Any old USB power adapter will work. You
_can_ power it off anything with a USB socket (your laptop, your
desktop), and it might even work. If you have a powered USB hub lying
around, that would work fine.

> My justification for getting involved is that I think looking at how the vm
> is compiled and built for the Pi might be a little simpler to grasp than the
> panoply of files usually see that list every known operating system. If it's
> not, don't tell me. That's my justification for a new toy and I'm sticking
> to it.

Oh, totally. *cough*

frank

> Thanks,
> Chris

On 10.01.2013, at 09:59, Chris Cunnington <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I'm looking at the files recently released for running Squeak on RPi and I figure to do that I need the actual RPi. But I have a few questions about it.
>
> The Pi takes an SD Card. I need to order a NutPi from the Pi people, put it on the SD card, and slot it in? Or does the NutPi come on an SD card?

IIUC you need two SD cards (one for the RiscOS, one for the NutPi dev tools), but Tim will know for sure. NutPi is sold as SD card, RiscOS is a free download.

> The image, changes, and sources would go on the same SDCard?

Another one for Tim.

> What's a good monitor and keyboard/mouse? It wants HDMI, and I don't see a jack on my Mac for that. I do think I see one on my Xoom tablet, so maybe I could use that. Is any screen recommended?

Any screen with either DVI or HDMI input will be fine. That is pretty much any monitor or flat-screen TV except the very cheapest ones, which only have VGA inputs. You need a cable with an HDMI plug on the RPi side and HDMI or DVI on the monitor side. There are also cheap adapters between HDMI and DVI, just pay attention to its gender for proper mating.

> And the mouse/keyboard seems to have one USB jack. Is there a mouse/keyboard rig that uses only one USB jack? Instead of two?

You want the RPi model B which has two USB jacks and Ethernet (model A only one USB and no Ethernet).

In any case, you can use any USB hub for plugging in more devices. There also are USB keyboards with a built-in hub, e.g. old full-size Apple ones.

> Does the Pi come with the power cable, or do I need to go to Bob's House Of Cables and get something specific?

You just need a Micro USB cable, like many current mobile phones / tablets.

> My justification for getting involved is that I think looking at how the vm is compiled and built for the Pi might be a little simpler to grasp than the panoply of files usually see that list every known operating system. If it's not, don't tell me. That's my justification for a new toy and I'm sticking to it.
>
> Thanks,
> Chris

Let us know how you like RiscOS. (I was only running Debian on my RPi and that way it feels no different from any other Linux machine, which is kinda boring, if in a good way)

- Bert -

OK, let's try answering these and see if I can make sense.

Step 1. Buy a model B because the A doesn't have ethernet. If you order via Newark/elelment14 -
http://www.newark.com/jsp/bespoke/bespoke7.jsp?bespokepage=newark/en_US/landing/raspberry-pi/rasp-pi-accessories.jsp&ICID=HP-Raspberrypi-Accessories
- then you'll almost certainly get one made in the Sony factory just down the road from where I was born in Wales.

Step 2. powwweeeeeeeerrrrrrr! Micro-usb power is the cheap way. I bought 2 (because so cheap and just in case one was DOA) via ZYDistro on eBay, item 400318350252 for $4.95 (yes for two chargers, shipped to Canada). Some powered usb hubs can provide 'back power' that works, but not all. It's worth reading
http://elinux.org/RPi_Hub for some details. I just made a nicer case for my Pi by diggin up an old newerTechnology 'miniStack classic' that used to go with a mac mini ans a port expander and external disc case. Remove the old 3.5" disc, fit Pi, hook up usb hub & power, eventually add a 2.5" disc as well. See https://plus.google.com/107730379469391818270/posts/9oxF5K8sKVK

Step 3. Monitor - I bought an hdmi to DVI cable from the same ZYDistro people. $3.48 shipped! Any monitor that you can drive from an hdmi output will work. I'm using my old HP2025 lcd that Alan gave me in 2004, 1600x1200 res and looks really nice with RISC OS. There *is* a composite output that can be used with ancient TVs. Not recommended if you want to keep your eyes able to focus. HDMI 20" or so TVs seem to be around $80-150 locally. RISC OS can drive almost any resolution that has ever existed.

Step 4. mouse & kbd. any old usb  devices should work. You need a 3button mouse for RISC OS. A scrollwheel will work in many but not all applications (they came out a bit late in the game for a lot of older apps) and Squeak will sometime soon understand them.

Step 5 USB hub. You might be using one for power anyway but if not you'll need one to drive anything like an external disc since the Pi is a bit short on usb output power. Using one to start your 27 litre Cummins diesel in the Tank will not work well. At least, not twice.

Step 5. Case. Pi is naked. Don't put it on a conducting surface when powered up. The magic smoke will escape. I spent a whole $11 to have one shipped from Poland - eBay item 261126108203. But for Chris I'll send that very one as a thank you. (Just email me an address)

Step 6. Whew. Take a break. Drink a coffee or tea.


I have to go out right now but I'll continue this later.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Low on thinking gas.

Back from birthday lunch et al. time to continue -

Step 8. download the OS. This is an enormous file as you'd expect for an entire operating system.  Why, it takes up a whole 1/6th of a CD-rom!
Go to http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads grab the 'Direct download' of riscos-2012-11-01-RC6.zip unless you really like using torrents.

Step 9. Unzip the file; it should end up 1.97 Gb - lots of empty space in there.

Step 10. Write it to an SD card. Sounds easy. What, you want instructions? Oh, ok. If you look back up to the top of the Downloads page you'll see a paragraph mentioning that you use `dd` or Win32DiskImager. I went to the suggested http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup page and followed the instructions for OS X command line. It's also worth looking at http://www.pilearn.com/Pages/Page1001.html to get an alternative view of the same process. I'll note the that page was written by an old Smalltalker and Squeak user...

Step 11. Assemble your Pi. Connect all the bits of hardware, remembering to insert the usb plugs into the usb sockets and not into the hdmi or  ethernet sockets. Insert you prepared SD card into the relevant socket. Insert the micro-usb from the power supply into the micro-usb socket next to the SD card slot. Wait about 10 seconds and RISC OS will be there, typically trying to drive the monitor at 1920x1080, which might look odd for a while.

Step 12.  Hmm, a 12 step program. Am I your 'higher power'? Learn about RISC OS so you can feel like you have some sort of control over the situation.
When you first start the pi you should see a web-browser window with a 'Welcome to RISC OS Pi' page already open. It's well worth a read.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=22093 - actually, hit the raspberrypi.org forums for RISC OS in general.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS isn't terrible.

By this stage you are all set with a basic running RISC OS machine.  If you want to boot your pi as a Raspbian device (or use any other the other no doubt wonderful OS 's on offer) all you need to do is write another SD card and plug it in instead before booting.

You can try Squeak by downloading the temporary test version VM from (http://www.rowledge.org/tim/squeak/Squeak3-9b-RISCOS.zip ) on my website and a Squeak 4.0 image/changes/sources from squeak.org. If you read the READMERIGHTNOW file it will help get started.

To add the development tools to build a Squeak VM etc. you'll need the appallingly named 'nutPi' pack from the equally poorly named ROOL. (http://www.riscosopen.org/content/sales/nutpi) That comes as a 2Gb SD card, though for completely not understood reasons it doesn't come as a RISC OS plus dev tools all-in-one setup. All you do is boot Pi into RISC OS, remove the main SD card, stick in the nutPi SD card, open it up, run the !PiCopy file which will remind you of the old days of swapping floppy disks around, just more quickly. Once that has run you could I suppose reuse the nutPi SD card for some other purpose.

You would also need the OSLib package (http://ro-oslib.sourceforge.net/) and !SVN which is loaded via the !PackMan package loader application already on the RISC OS Pi. It ain't no AppStore but it seems to work ok.

After that you need the VM sources, some magic sauce and so on. Later, I think. And of course, we should make a nice wiki page about all this once it is shown to be intelligible to someone that hasn't been used to RISC OS for 25 years…

As for justifications for a new toy, this one is amazingly cheap, terribly chic, usable as a media centre if you get bored, good for expanding the neural pathways of an ageing brian and probably good for your spelling, too.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
You can't make a program without broken egos.

for fun I just used my 16 year old tv with the rPi

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tim Rowledge
> Sent: 01/10/13 08:05 PM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] Raspberry Pi - A few questions about I/O
>
> Back from birthday lunch et al. time to continue

--- snip all the goodness

> As for justifications for a new toy, this one is amazingly cheap, terribly chic, usable as a media centre if you get bored, good for expanding the neural pathways of an ageing brian and probably good for your spelling, too.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> You can't make a program without broken egos.

Tim,

Excellent and inspiring write up. I look forward to the implementation reports from all the folks who are running out to try this now.

Thanks!

Hi Tim, Bert, Frank, and Enrico,

Thank you for that great information about how to get started with RPi.
I've printed it out, read, and highlighted. It's a great primer. Pretty
dense, though. I'll be reading it over a few times, I think. Then I'll
get the RPi and start playing around. I'm interested in playing with an
entirely new vm.

Thanks for your help,

Chris

On Thursday 10 January 2013 11:29 PM, Chris Cunnington wrote:
> What's a good monitor and keyboard/mouse? It wants HDMI, and I don't see
> a jack on my Mac for that. I do think I see one on my Xoom tablet, so
> maybe I could use that. Is any screen recommended?
>
> And the mouse/keyboard seems to have one USB jack. Is there a
> mouse/keyboard rig that uses only one USB jack? Instead of two?

I installed a low cost micro wifi adapter (digisol DG-WN3150Nu) and ssh
into the box. I also installed esqueak and modified /etc/rc.local to
speak out the IP address. This is good enough for all compiling work.

Regards .. Subbu