Raspberry Pi 4 Thread - general discussion

[fruitoftheloom]

[Retropi On Raspberry Pi 4]

Last month i bought two raspberry pi 4 RAM 4 Gb, in hope i can plays retro games.

After long journey, i still cant play retro games on my raspberyy pi 4. COuld someone tell me why ??

The developers of Retropie have no relationship to RPF / RPT so it is not fair to complain when you have not investigated before buying, caveat emptor....


Maybe ??

https://www.lakka.tv

https://www.lakka.tv/articles/2019/08/0 ... 4-support/

[davidcoton]

To be fair, the RPF/RPT has a long history of maintaining backward compatibility. Things have suddenly changed with the introduction of the PI4.

Not at all. Backwards compatibility means that the new software runs on old hardware. That has been achieved (give or take the odd bug). Getting old software to be compatible with new hardware requires ... no (or severely constrained) new hardware. That is not something RPT has ever tried or claimed. It has always been necessary to update software to run (optimally) on new hardware.

[jamesh]

To be fair, the RPF/RPT has a long history of maintaining backward compatibility. Things have suddenly changed with the introduction of the PI4.

Not at all. Backwards compatibility means that the new software runs on old hardware. That has been achieved (give or take the odd bug). Getting old software to be compatible with new hardware requires ... no (or severely constrained) new hardware. That is not something RPT has ever tried or claimed. It has always been necessary to update software to run (optimally) on new hardware.

The main change is moving to the the more standard OpenGL 3D - that does break a bit of backwards compatibility, but swaps it for a much better long term option. In most others areas we should be fairly OK.

[rpdom]

Not at all. Backwards compatibility means that the new software runs on old hardware.

I think you've got that backwards (pun intended.) Backwards compatibility means that old software will run on new hardware or OS.

Yes and no. It depends what is claimed to backward compatible. Is it the software or the hardware?

In this case it is the new software that is backward compatible with the old hardware.

[ejolson]

Not at all. Backwards compatibility means that the new software runs on old hardware.

I think you've got that backwards (pun intended.) Backwards compatibility means that old software will run on new hardware or OS.

I didn't have any problem running the old btrfs binary from Stretch on a Pi 4B under Buster. In fact, that old binary worked better than the new one.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 6&t=249873

I think running new software on old hardware is also reverse compatibility.

Having sufficient RAM is an expected issue. With Intel-compatible software, we are also seeing situations where certain software tools no longer support 32-bit architectures. Before that, some code wouldn't run on on pre-SSE2 machines; before that 486 was left out; before that hardware x87 float was required.

From a save-the-planet point of view, it is not green to throw away an expensive battleship, mobile phone or space station because new software no longer runs on the built-in computers. Maybe a big slice of Raspberry Pi could save the day.

[chwe]

From https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... minary.pdf

The Pi4B has a dedicated SD card socket which suports 1.8V, DDR50 mode (at a peak bandwidth of 50Megabytes / sec). In addition, a legacy SDIO interface is available on the GPIO pins.

can someone elaborate this a bit more?

e.g. with a modified bootloader it should be possible to attach an eMMC module here?

[Imperf3kt]

This has bothered me since I purchased it, but I ignored it for a while.

However it's really starting to bug me.
The Australian version of the Official Pi4 power supply is upside down, why?

I have to bend the cord 180° in order to use it. I imagine in time, gravity will ruin it.

(those lugs on all four sides so you can unplug it, make it difficult to use the switch too)

[dickon]

As they say, gravity is a myth. The Earth sucks.

More accurately, the mass of that cable won't do it any damage despite it being in the 'wrong' orientation. We see this sort of thing in the UK all the time...

[jbudd]

The Australian version of the Official Pi4 power supply is upside down, why?

Could it be that Australia is upside down?

ps I know Australia isn't upside down, I went and checked. Oddly though, the night sky there WAS upside down.

[TideMan]

And the lugs on the sides of the PS are really annoying if you're using a power board, because they protrude over the adjacent slot meaning you can only use every second one.

[DougieLawson]

Could you pop the lid off, turn it "widdershins" then glue it back on?

[ejolson]

Could you pop the lid off, turn it "widdershins" then glue it back on?

It would be easier to turn the house upside down. That way gravity will pull things towards the ceiling the way it is supposed to work down under. Another thought is to hire an electrician to install a new mains socket upside down.

Here in the liberal frontier we intentionally install about half the sockets in a new house using the upsidedown orientation, just in case anthropomorphic global warming causes both the magnetic and gravity fields to reverse. It's also used to indicate which sockets are connected to the light switches.

[Imperf3kt]

And the lugs on the sides of the PS are really annoying if you're using a power board, because they protrude over the adjacent slot meaning you can only use every second one.

That's probably on purpose.
It's a legal requirement that power supply blocks are designed so you cannot place two side by side on a power board due to the heat they can generate.

The solution is to get a power board with "wide" sockets.
A wide selection is available here: (excuse the pun)
https://hpm.com.au/powerboards/

[andrum99]

From https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... minary.pdf

The Pi4B has a dedicated SD card socket which suports 1.8V, DDR50 mode (at a peak bandwidth of 50Megabytes / sec). In addition, a legacy SDIO interface is available on the GPIO pins.

can someone elaborate this a bit more?

e.g. with a modified bootloader it should be possible to attach an eMMC module here?

There are two SD card interfaces on Pi Zero to 3: one is the Broadcom SDHOST interface, the other is the Arasan SDIO. Both are present on the Pi 4 as well, but are not currently used by any official hardware. The Compute Module and Compute Module 3 use the Broadcom SDHOST interface to talk to their eMMC modules. The old Broadcom interface is not normally accessible on the Pi 4, since it uses the same GPIOs that are used for the new DDR SD card interface, and those GPIOs are hardwired to the SD card slot (and not the GPIO header).

When the Raspberry Pi was first released, it used the Arasan interface to talk to the SD card. I'm not sure if the Compute Module also used it to talk to its eMMC module, or if the Pi had switched to use SDHOST instead before that.

You can also attach an eMMC module to any Pi using an adaptor - for example one that plugs an eMMC module into a USB slot, or an SD card slot. On Pi 4B this should mean you could use an eMMC module with the new DDR-capable SD card interface, and boot from it.

[RossDv8]

I'm running buster on an RPi 4 4GB. The RPi is connected to a Samsung TV by HDMI cable.
In Chromium, when I try to stream, the pictures come through just fine, but I need both RPi and TV at 100% volume to hear sound.
Is there a way to tweak the volume up a bit?

I don't know if this has been answered already, because I can;t find any replies. However, there is a way to get the Pi volume up to about 150% fairly easily. First, you will have to check if you have pulseaudio on your Pi. in a Terminal type pulseaudio and hit Enter. If you get something like "E: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running." you have it. If it says something like "pulseausio command not found" you don'e, so just do a sudo apt-get pulseaudio

Now, the bit that will help you is called pulseaudio volume control. you can get that by:
sudo apt-get pavucontrol

Once you have those, do a reboot to make sure the pulseaudio daemon is running. Then you should fine 'PulseAudio Volume Control' in the Sound and Video section of your Main Menu. On mine it is a little red square with three white vertical stripes. (representing sliders).

Open that and you should be able to change the Volume. BUT !!!
When you first open it, look at the 'Playback' tab. You might find the only thing you can change is the slider for 'System Sounds'. That is because there is no media plaing.
Just start playing something, in VLC or whatever makes some noise, and look at the Playback tab again.
Now there should be a listing for VLC, and the slider below it can be taken up to about 150%.
NOTE ! If you adjust the normal volume control on the Pabel, it will set pavucontrol back to 100% and you will have to manually adjust it again.
There is a way to set it to default above 100% but I can;t remember what I did (it is on my other Linux computers).

I'm nit certain that something else isn't causing the problem, but that 'answers your question'.
I hope if helps. You can also just add an icon for PulseAudio Volume Control to your panel to make it easy

[ColonelDare]

Back in June I was all sad because I lost Clementine (and thank you for the helpful explanation anyway).
I have just spotted the Strawberry Music Player currently being developed based on Clementine.
see: https://github.com/jonaski/strawberry

Is there any hope this might be a way forward? I have been using Rhythmbox in lieu, but Clementine was _so_ much better.
Any advice on correct protocols for requesting more good stuff in Raspbian will be respected.

Thanks.

Does anyone know what happened to Clementine in the Buster repos?
I use it lots, on several devices, and will miss it if I have to move up from Stretch

It looks like it got caught up in the QT opengl es mess.

Debian builds (and raspbian doesn't change this) QT5 against opengl ES on armel and armhf because more arm boards have (or at least had) drivers for opengl ES than for desktop opengl. Unfortunately this breaks apps that rely on both desktop opengl and QT. The result seems to be that when clementine moved from QT4 to QT5, support for armel and armhf was dropped

[plugwash]

The Australian version of the Official Pi4 power supply is upside down, why?

I previously assumed it was due to the internal layout of the PSU, indeed I had vague memories of someone from raspberry pi saying it was.

But when I Google for pictures of the different country variants there doesn't seem to be any commonality in their pin locations. The UK one has the pins at the same end as the cable exit, the US one has the pins at the opposite end from the cable exit and the EU and AUS versions have the pins roughly in the middle.

[/quote]
I have to bend the cord 180° in order to use it. I imagine in time, gravity will ruin it.
[/quote]
Seems highly unlikely to me.

[ColonelDare]

Back in June I was all sad because I lost Clementine (and thank you for the helpful explanation anyway).
I have just spotted the Strawberry Music Player currently being developed based on Clementine.
see: https://github.com/jonaski/strawberry

Further to my post above, I have tried compiling Strawberry Music player from Jonaski's github 'Readme' instructions. It failed first off due to lacking dependancies, but by way of a helpful email from Jonaski:

Looks like your missing libgnutls28-dev, libprotobuf-dev and protobuf-compiler

You need all the packages listed here:
https://github.com/jonaski/strawberry-b ... Dockerfile

Jonas

I followed his clues using a spare Pi3B+ that I have [and on a fresh install of Raspbian/Buster - I don't usually side-load code that's not in the repos] it compiled, linked and installed just fine. It took a while to compile and it ran out of memory 1st go as I had left Chromium open using half the 1GB RAM! Doh!

It now runs really nicely on both Pi my Pi 3 and my Pi4B, my music library installed just fine and the UI is a natural step-up from Clementine (sorry to say I hate VLC as a music player, and RythymBox is awful).

Two things:
[1] I asked about Debian and Jonaski said in his email to me "There was an attempt to get strawberry packaged in debian over a year ago, but nothing happened. No-one answered my e-mails,...."

I'm not familiar with the protocols here, but seeing as the package is very nicely polished and seems to be a drop-in replacement for what was lost moving from Strech to Buster, can we/should we give his project a bit of backing?

[2] The only thing that fell short of my hopes was it currently seems to lack an 'Internet' button and no 'Add new stream' option - which I use often for Internet radio. There are options for streaming but for me, I find that one important bit that is missing.



[Please]Help anyone?[/Please]

[MikeDB]

With Intel-compatible software, we are also seeing situations where certain software tools no longer support 32-bit architectures.

You mean almost anything written after about 2009. I know that is when I stopped producing 32 bit versions as being too much hassle.

Let's be honest, virtually all PCs and phones and many of their applications are 64bit only nowadays so it is surprising that the Pi4 still comes with 32bits at all, let alone as standard. Hopefully this anomaly in the computing world will disappear sometime soon and the Pi go 64bit as default. Since the Pi4 hardware is different, I don't see the point in maintaining backward compatibility with units that will surely be scrapped fairly soon anyway as people upgrade to the Pi4.

[W. H. Heydt]

Since the Pi4 hardware is different, I don't see the point in maintaining backward compatibility with units that will surely be scrapped fairly soon anyway as people upgrade to the Pi4.

I think you greatly overestimate the hardware turnover in the Pi ecosystem. Pis that run and do whatever task they were set up for continue to work. New Pis (particularly Pi0 and Pi0W) that *can't* run 64-bit software continue to be deployed. The CM1 is slated to be produced for another 3 years, and that, too, is unable to run 64-bit software.

The "show stoppers" of the A-series (with the release of the Pi3A+) and CM-series (with the CM3 and CM3+) mean that there are 64-bit *options* where those boards are used.

I have gone on at length, previously, about the Pi0/Pi0W being a major reason why Raspbian can't go 64-bit (at least exclusively) and I haven't seen anything to suggest that is going to change in the foreseeable future. Or--perhaps--a 64-bit capable Pi0/Pi0W is that "secret project" that was mentioned in passing in the recent BBC article.

[Imperf3kt]

If I recall*, one of the engineers actually commented on that "secret project" and corrected the media, stating that it was more like seven projects.

* my mind is known to be prone to bit corruption and read errors.

[Gavinmc42]

Or--perhaps--a 64-bit capable Pi0/Pi0W is that "secret project" that was mentioned in passing in the recent BBC article.

We can only hope
$5 64bit Pi Zero+, ooh shiny, I want.

Seriously, why expect 32 bit single cores to do the same job as 4 core 64bit SoC PCBs.
Different capabilities, why not different OS's?
The Pi ecosystem has expanded, many versions now, pick your SoC, then PCB format, then a suitable OS.

scrapped fairly soon anyway as people upgrade to the Pi4.

Soon? I still have a model A that works fine, suitable to purpose.
Upgraded my PC to a Pi4 but it is overkill for most of my embedded Pi IoT uses.
I would like lower power Pi's for that, don't care it it is 32 or 64, but 64bit is the trend.

Seven Projects, my mind boggles at what they could be
Better get a bigger Pi stuff savings jar.

[HawaiianPi]

... why not different OS's?

Because it takes a lot of extra time and effort to develop and maintain multiple OS versions. There are signs that this might be changing (64-bit kernel and multiarch for Raspbian), but I believe there are significant hurdles to overcome (32-bit GPU, for example), so it's not as simple as recompiling the OS for ARM64 (ARMv8).

While this thread is about the Raspberry Pi 4, we need to remember that Raspbian is the official OS that must run on all models, including the older ones based on the 32-bit VC4 GPU (Pi 2Bv1.2, 3B and 3B+ models all have 64-bit CPU embedded in a 32-bit VC4 GPU).

And now I can hear someone shouting about having two different images. Sure, and then we can have twice as many "My Pi won't boot" threads, but do we really need more of those?

At least we have options now (Sakaki's Gentoo, for example, which is probably what Gavinmc42 was alluding to).

[Gavinmc42]

At least we have options now (Sakaki's Gentoo, for example, which is probably what Gavinmc42 was alluding to).

Just the first(best) of many alternatives, that's if they can find a champion to get them going.

Raspbian is there to support the RPF mission.
If you look at the Pi Projects page, a lot of them could not be done on Pi's, they needed PC's.
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects
The Unity project cannot be done but Blender can and FreeCAD is getting closer.

Will there ever be an Arm version of Unity on Pi's?
BlockCAD for Linux?

How many of those projects can be ported or run on Pi4 now?

[Technocolour]

If I recall*, one of the engineers actually commented on that "secret project" and corrected the media, stating that it was more like seven projects.

* my mind is known to be prone to bit corruption and read errors.

I wouldn't take that comment too seriously.

Even if it's true (if), it could be... Peripherials, helping somebody design stuff around a CM, that one project that never went anywhere, SW stuff, and so on an so forth.