Raspberry Pi to run SpinRite

[Julian]

I currently only have Mac's which do not run SpinRite 6.1. I was thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi just to run SpinRite, would it work? or is there an alternative PC to get.
I am in England (UK) and been using PC's & Mac's for 50 years programming.

 

[PHolder]

The Raspberry Pi is an ARM device, and SpinRite doesn't run on ARM. (It only runs on x86 devices.) For his development, Steve uses a small PC device (still bigger than a Raspberry Pi though) known as a ZimaBoard. You would need to pick up a more powerful power supply, to run a spinning media drive with it, but the whole works should be fairly similar in price as a Raspberry Pi setup. If you search here on the forums, I believe there is useful information about the ZimaBoard.

You could also look for low priced used PCs on sites like EBay, or pick up one new from Amazon (or others) for not too much money. The only issue you face is to make sure the device can do legacy booting, as most very new PCs seem unable (although the ZimaBoard is fairly new, it can boot a legacy OS.)

 

[AlanD]

There has been some discussion in the Newsgroups about a way to run SR6.1 on UEFI only machines through VirtualBox. So far he has got it working in Windows and Linux.

It is still work in progress, but initial results look promising. Scott has said that once he gets it all working, he will post in these forums with full instructions. You may want to hold off purchasing a ZimaBoard for a few days to see what happens.

 

[Steve]

For what it's worth, the ZimaBoard is what you want. It's not much more expensive that a Raspberry Pi once you add memory and power, and it's an Intel chip that will natively run anything GRC does today or in the future. It may be that by booting Linux and emulating an Intel processor and running a VM and establishing a hardware link, it MIGHT be POSSIBLE to get SpinRite to run... But if your goal is to be able to run SpinRite, the ZimaBoard makes a LOT more sense, IMO.

 

[johnso515]

The Raspberry Pi is an ARM device, and SpinRite doesn't run on ARM. (It only runs on x86 devices.) For his development, Steve uses a small PC device (still bigger than a Raspberry Pi though) known as a ZimaBoard. You would need to pick up a more powerful power supply, to run a spinning media drive with it, but the whole works should be fairly similar in price as a Raspberry Pi setup. If you search here on the forums, I believe there is useful information about the ZimaBoard.

You could also look for low priced used PCs on sites like EBay, or pick up one new from Amazon (or others) for not too much money. The only issue you face is to make sure the device can do legacy booting, as most very new PCs seem unable (although the ZimaBoard is fairly new, it can boot a legacy OS.)

What are the specs needed for the more powerful power supply? This seems like a good solution.

 

[ColbyBouma]

12V 5A 5.5x2.5mm.

https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-csm-capable-uefi-machines.968/page-2#post-12074