#sBitx Using Raspberry OS ARM64-bit (Debian 12) #sBitx
|
I am wondering if anyone has tried to use Raspberry OS 64-bit on the sBitx?
I just received my V3 yesterday and decided to try it out because I'd like to use the Pi4 with my sdrplay RSPdx and the 64-bit SDR software as well as sBitx. So far I have SDR++, SDRconnect, CubicSDR and SDRangel all compiled and working on the OS with the cinnamon?desktop. Even though the OS has a 100Meg swap file to fit on a SD card, I don't like using such a small swap file so I? increased it to 2048M. I made a just few changes to the github sbitx source code and it builds but I haven't tried it with the Pi4 in the V3 board. If I? run ./sbitx and open the web interface the waterfall and controls are there but of course that doesn't mean a whole lot. I'm using a 128GB flash drive and not the SD card at this point.? Firstly, I'm going to mount a HDMI display to the V3 since HFSignals provided a nice 4mm thick 14cm x 28cm acrylic plastic sheet over the front. Secondly, I'll try the sBitx with the provided SD card and then the USB flash drive.? FYI: The code changes were to use WiringPi-arm64 and recompile the ft8_lib/libft8.a file. The ft8_lib/Makefile had to have the CPPFLAGS line changed to CPPFLAGS = -std=c++0x -I. P.S. I do have a Odroid N2 Arm64 quadcore and Radxa Pi 5A Arm64 octacore but I don't want to waste my time trying to get around translating WiringPi to libgpio on those platforms to get sBitx to run. -- Jerry, AC9NM 手中的鸟在灌木丛中值两个 -- Jerry Ponko, AC9NM |
|
On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 07:43 PM, JerryP wrote:
I am wondering if anyone has tried to use Raspberry OS 64-bit on the sBitx?I'm glad to see you got things to work. A few people have also gone to 64 bits. This link is a search for 64-bit on this group and you can find some relevant info there. Also this?link?has some fairly cryptic notes on what I did to make sbitx work on 64-bits. I did it on Debian 11 / Bullseye not Debian 12 / Bookworm. I'll probably have a go at that some time soon once a few things I've ordered come in. ? Rafael Dinitz has even started down the path of putting a Pi 5 with Bookworm into a sbitx case, search for his posts for more info. -- Regards, Dave, N1AI |
|
My biggest?concern is that sooner or later 32-bit OSes and other things become obsolete sooner than you expect such as WiringPi is already.
I've been following?Rafael Dinitz's postings and I hope he succeeds with the PI5 project. It's always good to keep up with the tech changes.? There are some things I don't like such as not having a swap file or using memory for swap space - defeats the purpose of swap space. Jerry, AC9NM 手中的鸟在灌木丛中值两个 -- Jerry Ponko, AC9NM |
|
On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 08:57 PM, JerryP wrote:
My biggest?concern is that sooner or later 32-bit OSes and other things become obsolete sooner than you expect such as WiringPi is already.My concern is less about obsolescence and more about efficiency.? Doing things like signal processing in 64 bit chunks is more efficient than doing them in 32 bit chunks.? Chances are really high that the phone in your pocket is using an ARM chip in 64-bit mode for similar reasons.? I think the Pi Foundation will probably keep 32-bit OSes around for quite a while just due to backward compatibility. ? -- Regards, Dave, N1AI |
|
While 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit OSes may be around for a long time, you'll eventually find that no one is developing software for them. Also, eventually the 32-bit compatible libraries on 64-bit platforms will start to disappear. As far as using SD cards for running an OS on it,? yes you can. I try to avoid using SD cards because they're slow compared to NVME, flash drives, eMMC, etc. if I have a choice. I don't use Linux without a swap. It's? there as a relief valve in case you just happen to run out of memory. Things will run slow if swap is used but not crash. If you've ever tried to compile a large program using all four cores on a 2 GB SBC without swap, you've probably seen gcc give up with out-of-memory errors. Why does the Raspberry OS provide a swap file even if it's just 100meg in size? On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 9:37?PM Dave, N1AI <n1ai@...> wrote: On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 08:57 PM, JerryP wrote: -- Jerry, AC9NM 手中的鸟在灌木丛中值两个 --
Jerry Ponko, AC9NM |
|
On Sat, Jan 6, 2024 at 01:31 AM, Rafael Diniz wrote:
Hi Gyula,You said we could use Debian12 64bit for sbitx now, why not? I related to this that I would like to test if there was an image of my sbitx program running on Debian12 64-bit OS. So if you have such an image that you would like to share, I would be happy to test it. Here I have an external NMVe.M2 waiting in my account. For this, an adapter card is already on the way, with which the RPi4 and this can be built into one. I was thinking of installing the new OS on it. Do you have the possibility to put a working image on google drive? That was my question. ? -- Gyula HA3HZ |
|
Since no one seems to be running Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm 64-bit, I thought I share my experience with you. I've attached a couple of screen shots of the OS with the cinnamon desktop (my favorite) with sBitx running on my sBitx V3 board. The display used is a 9 inch 800x480 HDMI touchscreen display from attached to the sBitx's acrylic panel with epoxied standoffs. I don't know if I'll use either the touch screen or the rotary encoders since most everything can be done with a wheel mouse. If anyone else is interested in running the sBitx on the Bookworm OS I can do a write-up and provide the modified Wiringpi-arm64.tgz file somehow. I would have liked to have used libpigpio instead of wiringPi but I didn't want to spend too much time on this so I cheated and fixed wiringPi so that it would work under the version 6 kernel. I couldn't get dual HDMI monitors to work so I had to comment out the dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d line in config.txt. Otherwise, sbitx would not run because of the dreaded simple.c error from alsa sound. It probably has to do with HDMI audio being available on the monitor but I don't know enough about the alsa sound system to fix it. I also forced the Pi OS to use 800x480 mode for the display in the config.txt -- Jerry, AC9NM 手中的鸟在灌木丛中值两个 -- Jerry Ponko, AC9NM |
|
On Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 02:30 AM, Paul wrote:
The biggest question for me with the stock complete v3 sbitx, is it worth it, would the sbitx code take advantage of the extra 32-bits and run any better? If the answer to this is yes, then absolutely I too would be interested in a write up of your experiences installing and building."Any better" is a low bar.? I'll share what I wrote earlier: Doing things like signal processing in 64 bit chunks is more efficient than doing them in 32 bit chunks.? Chances are really high that the phone in your pocket is using an ARM chip in 64-bit mode for similar reasons.?I think it definitely will run better, but not night and day better. I am not a programmer but I can find my way around when I have to. There are a few things I would like to improve on the sbitx more from a usability perspective but would do this upgrade first before starting anything else to provide a good base to work from.IMO the best thing to do with your time is to incorporate Steve Beckman (N3SB)'s pull requests for ALSA sound and FFTW DSP. The first gets rid of a lot of the crackling sounds and the second avoids starting up and seeing tons of "ghosts" everywhere. Then look at the rest of the pull requests and decide which ones are good bang for the buck. ? -- Regards, Dave, N1AI |
|
While the 2GB Pi is used by many the 32Bit OS does limit the RAM considerably. While the 4GB Pi may show that most of that 4GB is usable in reality it is not.
A 32 bit OS it natively allows the CPU to address up to 4 gigabytes of RAM memory where a 64 bit OS allows the processor to natively address much more which allows the 8GB Pi to be used and the 4GB at its full potential. The formula for those who may be interested 2^bits 2??=4294967296 |
JerryP
Dave, N1AI
HA3HZ
Zach Davis - AB0E