IRIX and Software

hi
i am far away from any SGI IRIX machine at the moment, my IP30 is still damaged and my friend's IP28 is offline, so i can't access to Insignia SoftWindows95 in order to verify by myself.

I'd like to know

• can i put on DOS 6.22 instead of Windows95 ?
• can i share the serial line between the Virtual-SoftWindows95-machine and Irix ?

The SGI IP28 (aka Impact) has 2 serial ports on the back of the machine, they are RS422 but i have already adapted them to RS232 (used to have a serial console for linux), so it should be fine attaching the EVS debugging port to it.

about DOS 6.22 and serial line, my purpose is pretty funny, i have built an original Motorola MC68332 EVS board with it's debug processor that talks through the serial line @ 9600bps-8-1-n to the HOST, which is a dos 6.22 program that listens on the serial port and injects commands and data. It's very amazing if you want to have the full control of your target for debugging purposes. You could upload programs, watch the ram, the stack, the heap, modify registers, trap things, breakpoint things, watchpoint things, and having a lot of fun.

Motorola designed the EVS interface as a kit-suite targeting the software for a common PC/386 equipped with MSDOS plus a pair of serial ports (1). So, just because it could be funny, could i try this experiment on Impact ? I mean does it has any probability of success, or Insignia SoftWindows95 can't really share the serial line ?

In the far future i will try to rebuilt the HOST interface in the open source way, that means something written in C which could be recompiled in Irix or Linux and needs just a ncurses support plus the access to the serial dev name (/dev/ttyS0 on linux), actually my dubs are related to the "protocol" which is not exactly well and full documented, so i first need to reverse it. (the same happens with the BDM protocol: not 100% known and documented).


(1) a pair of serial ports. Two ports needed, the first one must be dedicated for the debug processor, the second one could be used for the user console.

I wonder if you can install OS/2 for Windows (Red Spline) over the top? Mind you OS/2 struggled with device drivers for bloomin IBM machines let alone anything else.

uunix wrote: I wonder if you can install OS/2 for Windows (Red Spline) over the top? Mind you OS/2 struggled with device drivers for bloomin IBM machines let alone anything else.

Indeed, it also had no concept of privilege separation.

It did have a nice whoooooop sound though team.

I do now know if Insignia SoftWindows95 can do it, I know RiscOS allows your dosbox to share the serial line with the physical machine, and I am pretty able to attach a device to the serial line, sending and receiving bytes to/from the target board.

DOS --------- RiscOS --------- uart --------- target device



this is an original EVS board, it has 2 serial lines:

• DEBUG serial port
• CONSOLE serial port

I haven't checked Insignia SoftWindows95 yet (because I am still without a working SGI box), but probably the answer to my question is: do not expect anything serious about the handshake, the breaks, and everything needs more lines and attentions than a NULL-modem.

I have posted in the RiscOS topic a few links about all the troubles I have found with GEMINI. Who? What? In short GEMINI is what happens when you try to share the serial line between a dosbox and the physical machine (horror story, be warned)

TeamBlackFox wrote: Indeed, it also had no concept of privilege separation.

Not exactly correct ... OS/2 has 'system' files which are in some way protected, I forget how.

But in practice, that is quite sufficient. This entire user-group-other thing on the desktop is an error of monumental proportions.

SoftWindows was not a pure VM like e.g. VMware. It's more Wine meets DosBOX. It included native versions of several key system files for performance reasons. Because of this you cannot simply install another OS on top of SoftWindows.

I think the predecessor to SoftWindows was SoftPC and ran DOS. We're now talking IRIX 4 days, though.

I have a marvelous m68K development toolchain, SierraC, and this toolchain is fully working without any limitation of the demo version that Motorola (today acquired by Freescale) was used to include with the EVS board. The demo limitation was related to a 100 lines in every C file. No more than 100 lines per module, plus other limitations with the linker script. When I bought my EVS board from a dude on ebay I was lucky and the the parcel came with a full working Sierra C disks, plus other floppies with debug processor interface (similar to DDD + GDB) and a few professionals tools, that is a pure WOW, but … the bad side is that all of these things work only for DOS. Wine (under linux) is not fine with them, while Windows95 (aka MSDOS7) is fine too, so I was thinking that Insignia SoftWindows95 was great!

Well, from the the pure software side, Insignia SoftWindows95 is really great! the problem is .. you are fine with the toolchain, you can compile and build whatever you want, but then have to talk with the board, and … the debug processor is a very horror story because it uses a full-modem connection, with DCD, DSR, DTR, RTS, CTS, all of these signals plus "breaks".

Under RiscOS, there is a GuestCard with a 486DX4 CPU, plus an ASIC chip, called Gemini, that performs

• Bus translation ARM <-> Intel (luckily they are both Little Endian)
• Interrupt delivery and mailboxes
• Address space trapping -> emulating ISA peripherals, UART, LPT, pATA, sVIDEO, kb/mouse

!PC/Pro is the software side, and it's able to control the x86 card, and to share all the host resources. Everything is fine with the LPT port, I can attach a BDM cable and use a DOS program to control it. Unfortunately the serial line has other troubles because Acorn didn't respect the RS232 standard, and also they did not use 8250, 16550 chips.

under !PC/PRO, every DOS program makes a BIOS call for a serial service

• the “BIOS” pushes the data to the ASIC
• the ASIC works a bit like the Pi GPU with a mailbox scheme, it would probably be able to raise interrupts on either processor and pass data between them
• RISC OS will respond to the ASIC, read the data, perform the service, and pass data back if appropriate

In the theory this working scheme seems fine, but ... I have understood the supporting DOS Applications that directly access the PC hardware sounds more complex than how it seems, so actually I have bought a genuine 586 PC from ebay, and I have loaded it with OS/2 Warp3: the OS/2 legacy DOS support is working good, and I am able to multitask up to two BDM DOS applications , that is extremely good if you want to toy with 2 target boards at the same time

ivelegacy wrote: Motorola (today acquired by Freescale)

As a former Motorola SPS employee, I don't know if I should laugh or cry at such an utterly wrong shortcut.

wikipedia
Freescale was one of the first semiconductor companies in the world, having started as a division of Motorola in Phoenix, Arizona in 1948 and then becoming autonomous by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004

good to know, I was wrong

I was focused on the MC68332UM: with the EVS I got a lot of books, and I have noted that all of these old paper books marked " Motorola " have been renamed " Freescale " without any other difference in the context of the new digital form (PDF).

Unfortunately Freescale says that, from their point of view, 683xx and the EVS are legacy products, so probably there is no way to open a technical ticket to ask their dudes for a few informations, software, or tips. I have already tried, and … they have said they can't help.

Sorry the DIBUG tool is quite old and EOL for many years. We do not provide any technical support for this tool any more. I do not know from who you got the DIBUG tool, I had tried to find the tool from our data base, but found nothing.

Technical Support
Freescale Semiconductor

The guy from who I got the DIBUG tool was an old Motorola semiconductor employee.

SoftWindows95 can assign the virtual COM1-COM4 to either of the physical serial ports ttyd1, ttyd2, etc. You can grab and release the ports while running.
It can only emulate a serial port up to 9600 bps and some modem signals are not passed through.
I don't know about "sharing", however: if more than one process tries to open the same serial port, then 1) if they try to use the port in different modes, the subsequent opens will fail, and 2) if they use the same mode, then they will both send and receive data to the port. there is no port shadowing.

hi
I am reversing the BBCDI protocol using a LA (Logic Analyzer) equipped with a pretty UART decoder. It may be I will be able to trash COUGAR.EXE and DIBUG.EXE, in order to have a UNIX native application to control the debug processor of the EVS board. I have already got success in decoding a few commands and their answers. So, let's go on.

About Insignia SoftWindows95, what is the support of the Parallel Port ? I have to ask it, because I can't actually reverse the BDM protocol (may be in the future), so I have to use a DOS application that control a cable attached on the Parallel Port.