Attendees of the recent Southwest Show in Bristol who sat in on one or two of the theatre presentations – or anyone who has subsequently watched the videos of those talks will be aware that Wi-Fi is now a thing for RISC OS – and not only that, but like buses two different versions have arrived; one from RISC OS Developments Ltd (ROD) and one from RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL).
Neither are quite ready for full release as yet, but both were in use at the show, which means at that point both were approaching the point where test versions were likely to become available – and indeed hinted at during the respective talks.
That time has now come! If you wish to participate in testing the ROD solution1 – the Wi-Fi and Network Manager components for their TCP/IP stack – it’s now possible to do so. Simply contact Richard Brown and Andrew Rawnsley via email or telephone (if you have these details), or via the contact form on the ROD website, and they’ll add you to the list of testers and send you the necessary details to obtain the software – for which the source code is also available from the same location.
It should be noted that the software currently only covers platforms that use Broadcom chips to provide Wi-Fi – which includes the Raspberry Pi since it’s third main incarnation. Andrew Rawnsley, who announced the public beta, notes that the same driver also works on the Pinebook Pro laptop, but as that version requires updated operating system builds along with other platform-specific elements, its beta is being handled separately by R-Comp. If you have bought the machine from R-Comp you will probably have already seen Andrew’s message regarding this.
!ReadMe
- The ROOL solution will likely be included in the nightly builds (of RISC OS 5.31) once they have officially released 5.30.
