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Author Topic: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS  (Read 3062 times)

Paul Breneman

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Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« on: September 13, 2019, 07:21:40 pm »
I'm trying to make a simple Ultibo example using Raspbian Lite:
http://turbocontrol.com/easyultibo.htm

Forcing a beginner to use Lazarus makes things difficult.  I'd also like to see other simple "Arduino-like" ways (https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/303) to introduce people to Free Pascal.  Once they are hooked Lazarus will be an attractive option.
Regards,
Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2019, 09:44:22 pm »
I like to help beginners.  I just updated a free book that is directly above this puzzle: http://www.controlpascal.com/tutorial.htm#puzzle
« Last Edit: September 13, 2019, 09:49:41 pm by Paul Breneman »
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Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

MarkMLl

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #2 on: September 13, 2019, 10:03:39 pm »
I'm trying to make a simple Ultibo example using Raspbian Lite:
http://turbocontrol.com/easyultibo.htm

Forcing a beginner to use Lazarus makes things difficult.  I'd also like to see other simple "Arduino-like" ways (https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/303) to introduce people to Free Pascal.  Once they are hooked Lazarus will be an attractive option.

What is "a terminal" in this context? Where does Qemu come into it? If it's running natively do you really need binutils-arm-none-eabi rather than the default binutils?
MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #3 on: September 13, 2019, 10:29:40 pm »
What is "a terminal" in this context? Where does Qemu come into it? If it's running natively do you really need binutils-arm-none-eabi rather than the default binutils?

In Raspbian Lite there is only a terminal (there is no GUI).  It (a terminal) is a place to type commands. When you have a GUI you usually have a menu item somewhere to open a terminal.

Ultibo can be used with QEMU.  That is the only reason QEMU is mentioned on my website (that should be removed with a better script).

Raspbian runs natively (to compile Ultibo). I'll try to add a little bit to the page that shows how you set up a SD to run Ultibo. Here is a bit of information: https://github.com/ultibohub/Demo

Thanks for posting your questions!
« Last Edit: September 13, 2019, 10:37:34 pm by Paul Breneman »
Regards,
Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #4 on: September 13, 2019, 10:52:45 pm »
If it's running natively do you really need binutils-arm-none-eabi rather than the default binutils?

I just realized why you mentioned this (makes me feel like a beginner).  I doubt it's needed, so I'll try to remove it. Thanks!
Regards,
Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2019, 12:37:54 pm »
Here is a bit of information: https://github.com/ultibohub/Demo

How could we make a custom NOOBS Lite that has the Ultibo Demo and Raspbian Lite both available?
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Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

MarkMLl

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #6 on: September 14, 2019, 10:23:01 pm »
Criticism intended constructively, I assure you.

A terminal is something you don't want to drop on your foot. Particularly if it's mechanical and made by Olivetti :-)

> In Raspbian Lite there is only a terminal (there is no GUI).  It (a terminal) is a place to type commands. When you have a GUI you usually have a menu item somewhere to open a terminal.

It's called a shell in unix :-) But there's also SSH, and potentially the lower-level console connected via an FTDI adapter etc.

> Ultibo can be used with QEMU.  That is the only reason QEMU is mentioned on my website (that should be removed with a better script).

Yes, but you've launched into that as rather a non-sequitur. It's probably also unwise to get involved in that bearing in mind the RPi's deficiencies when it comes to KVM etc.

> Raspbian runs natively (to compile Ultibo). I'll try to add a little bit to the page that shows how you set up a SD to run Ultibo. Here is a bit of information: https://github.com/ultibohub/Demo

I'd suggest that the best thing would be to write it to another SD-Card. You /could/ put it into an image file then use Qemu, but Qemu is really moving towards KVM which is a PITA on RPi. You could potentially write it to a thumb drive or external "spinning rust" but at that point you'd either have to tell the user how to enable booting from external media (which as an irreversible change that doesn't always work is something you probably don't want to get involved with) or get involved with coaching him through some sort of intermediate loader on an SD-Card (I've tried U-Boot but can't remember how far I got).

MarkMLl

p.s. A friend in Suse is watching Ultibo with interest, possibly in combination with the Oberon GUI running natively. Not sure whether he'll raise his head above the parapet, I suspect that he underestimates the difficulty.




MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #7 on: September 17, 2019, 07:08:21 pm »
I'd suggest that the best thing would be to write it to another SD-Card. You /could/ put it into an image file then use Qemu, but Qemu is really moving towards KVM which is a PITA on RPi. You could potentially write it to a thumb drive or external "spinning rust" but at that point you'd either have to tell the user how to enable booting from external media (which as an irreversible change that doesn't always work is something you probably don't want to get involved with) or get involved with coaching him through some sort of intermediate loader on an SD-Card (I've tried U-Boot but can't remember how far I got).

p.s. A friend in Suse is watching Ultibo with interest, possibly in combination with the Oberon GUI running natively. Not sure whether he'll raise his head above the parapet, I suspect that he underestimates the difficulty.

Ultibo images are very small, so why not just have an entire development environment on one 8 GB SD card, and easily reboot the RPi to test what was just compiled? Seems to me this would work for demonstrating simple things.  Of course a full development workstation would be better for a real pro.

I've looked at Oberon a little in the past, and will have to more http://www.projectoberon.com/. Thanks!
Regards,
Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

MarkMLl

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #8 on: September 18, 2019, 09:29:03 am »
Ultibo images are very small, so why not just have an entire development environment on one 8 GB SD card, and easily reboot the RPi to test what was just compiled? Seems to me this would work for demonstrating simple things.  Of course a full development workstation would be better for a real pro.

I've looked at Oberon a little in the past, and will have to more http://www.projectoberon.com/. Thanks!

It's probably reasonable to assume that somebody who has run NOOBS has a card writer and that it's reliable for the type of card he's bought... I really get very unhappy about the idea of using the RPi's internal one even if the main OS has its root filesystem on some other medium.

I've managed to kill an SDCard by telling Debian on an RPi to halt abruptly (or perhaps I switched to runlevel 0- I forget). It really is an extremely fragile combination.

As an ab-initio OS hacker I find Ultibo particularly interesting, but I'm not going there this week :-)

MarkMLl
MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2019, 03:54:33 pm »
I've managed to kill an SDCard by telling Debian on an RPi to halt abruptly (or perhaps I switched to runlevel 0- I forget). It really is an extremely fragile combination.

As an ab-initio OS hacker I find Ultibo particularly interesting, but I'm not going there this week :-)

8 GB SD cards are very inexpensive.  I do a Halt and wait for the LED to turn off.

Help with NOOBS is still needed!
Regards,
Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

MarkMLl

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #10 on: September 19, 2019, 09:35:27 am »
I do a Halt and wait for the LED to turn off.

Possibly depending on the distro, if you do a halt the CPU will stop leaving all other state unchanged. In my case I obviously caught something at just the right time and the SDCard was trashed to the extent that I couldn't get any sense out of it using low-level hardware commands.

I find the  poweroff  and  reset  commands reliable on all platforms.

MarkMLl
MT+86 & Turbo Pascal v1 on CCP/M-86, multitasking with LAN & graphics in 128Kb.
Pet hate: people who boast about the size and sophistication of their computer.
GitHub repositories: https://github.com/MarkMLl?tab=repositories

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #11 on: September 19, 2019, 06:18:36 pm »
I find the  poweroff  and  reset  commands reliable on all platforms.

Thanks for that tip!  I found https://www.proqsolutions.com/shutting-down-your-raspberry-pi/.

I've also started a new wiki page: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Ultibo_Quick_Start
Regards,
Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

Paul Breneman

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Re: Help needed with Ultibo and Raspberry Pi NOOBS
« Reply #12 on: September 25, 2019, 03:09:36 pm »
If it's running natively do you really need binutils-arm-none-eabi rather than the default binutils?

There is now an explanation of why that is needed on the https://wiki.freepascal.org/Ultibo_Quick_Start page.
Regards,
Paul Breneman
www.ControlPascal.com

 

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