The collected works of ivelegacy - Page 6

yeah, i did humorist post " don't tell me MIPS " (mainly because i am MIPS-addicted, like chocolate-addicted), but you are right about real usage: the IP30 (Octane line) is a real example of things that … simple do not work, you have to reduce the amount for ram due to the Xbox (1.5Gbyte is the max ram you can have … if you plan to have XIO_PCI and USB), fill an impactSR gfx instead of Odissey (if you want a frame buffer, we still do not know how to put a pixel on Odissey), remove the SMP module (which is very expensive, we know, and kernel v3.* panics with SMP -> use old kernel pre NPTL, 2.6.17) and so on, also the IOC3 does not work at all with keyboard and mouse, PS/2 devices, if you plan to plug a PCI_USB chip on the XIO-PCI (which is expensive, we know)


conclusion: no sense in term or "real usage" (IRIX simply runs better, no dubs about it), linux is just for fun

edit:
if someone interested i will open a thread to talk about other MIPS toys.

miod wrote: Skylark's original Octane work contains console frame buffer drivers for both Impact and Odyssey

exactly, also i think Skylark is gone. He disappeared =(

with my friend we have reported details on IP30 on this wiki page with a few informations.

yes, i am tempted about tring a very mad experiment which requires 2 Phobos G160 lans, my friend has one of these lans, so i need a second, anyone has this board for sale ?

ok, no problem about that, i can remove the GFX as i am used to use machine remotely

sold out: SCSI Controller Expansion Card, P/N 030-8133-002
sold out: lan 10/100Mbps Phobos G130

Accepting new offers on one SGI Fast Ethernet card for Indy and Challenge S SGI part number 9210110

The card is tested and known to be 100% working, it's NOT a Phobos card , this is the card designed for SGI by Set Engineering, with drivers built into Irix 6.5, and available for 5.3 / 6.2.

Found a Boxed Phobos G130, provided with manual, CD.
Hardly tested, 100% working

Trippynet wrote: the system was fully cleaned out inside, Ian T-cutted the case to smooth off the scratches (and did a really good job IMO)

just curious, can i see a few photos about it ?

as one of my three friends has IP22 spare parts, in can provide GIO32/NIC, motherboard, CPU, gfx, ram, and PSU

i do not have a complete Indy machine, as he has already sold out, but … it may be i can assemble one. I could got a chassis, the problem with this is the plastic cover, i am not able to find out anything good, i mean i could only got something scratched a lot.

sorry for this

it's a mad hack i have done in 2009, trying to put a full gentoo/m68k on (which simply does not exist, so i had to create it)

i need money to repair my Octane2, or to replace it, also i need to have more free space in my small room, so here it is my crazy box for sale, featured with

• 68060 FULL, it has MMU and FPU (68LC060 does not have FPU, 68EC060 does not have FPU and MMU)
• SmartSocket, to put a 68060 on the 68040 socket you need it, as it performs 3.3V conversion for the 68060, the 68040 uses 5V, also it has a PLL to provide the proper clock, while 68040 has a double frequency in quadrature, which the 68060 simply doesn't have
• clocked @ 33Mhz (PLL hack, it was @ 25Mhz)
• rom hacked to put 68060SP on, as this CPU does not support all the 68040 ISA, you need a "support package", more specifically you need to put "handlers" on "unsupported opcode exceptions", the hack is needed to have the firmware able to boot the kernel, which bootstrap thinking to have to deal with a 68060, so … it requires the SP already loaded by the boot loader. I wanted to put everything into flash instead of dealing with what is loaded from the hard drive at early boot stage because i wanted to profile all my firmware to 68060 instead of having things compiled for 68000 and things compiled for 68060
• LAN E410, it's a NuBus/E420 LC PDS, EtherNet Adapter on RJ45
• SCSI to pATA, it's a board i have developed by myself, it's not the perfection, it's slow, but … it performs 3Mbyte/sec making you able to put a micro drive on
• micro drive of 4Gbyte with a mon68k, a second stage boot loader, and the linux kernel 2.6.27-hacked, plus a ram rootfs + a full gentoo stage4, but i mean … the minimal survival apps, gcc, binutils, a bit of utilities, and … nothing more, it takes to much to emerge things, but it has a full portage, python and emerge … this machine takes 7 month 24h/24 to emerge her stage4, also … using NFS due to the limitations of the installed ram (too poor for emerge, the swap file was provided by NFS, 1Gbyte), CPU power (the 68060 is hardly under clocked, it can go up to 66/75Mhz), etc
• 32Mbyte installed
• LCD 2x16 backlighted on the front of the machine, connected to the /dev/ttyS1, so it is possible to put short-texts on (load balance, machine status, pretty MessageOfTheDay, whatever), i have removed the floppy that is -broken- and -useless-

the following screenshot show how pretty she boots from a SEAGATE ST32550N hard drive, which trust me … this SCSI disc was very very noisy, while the micro drive is very silent (even if … slower due to my SCSI-to-pATA interface)



# gcc -v

Target: m68k-unknown-linux-gnu
Configured with: /var/tmp/portage/sys-devel/gcc-4.2.3/work/gcc-4.2.3/configure --prefix=/usr --bindir=/usr/m68k-unknown-linux-gnu/gcc-bin/4.2.3 --includedir=/usr/lib/gcc/m68k-unknown-linux-gnu/4.2.3/include --datadir=/usr/share/gcc-data/m68k-unknown-linux-gnu/4.2.3 --mandir=/usr/share/gcc-data/m68k-unknown-linux-gnu/4.2.3/man --infodir=/usr/share/gcc-data/m68k-unknown-linux-gnu/4.2.3/info --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/lib/gcc/m68k-unknown-linux-gnu/4.2.3/include/g++-v4 --host=m68k-unknown-linux-gnu --build=m68k-unknown-linux-gnu --disable-altivec --disable-nls --with-system-zlib --disable-checking --disable-werror --enable-secureplt --disable-libunwind-exceptions --disable-multilib --disable-libmudflap --disable-libssp --disable-libgcj --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++,treelang,fortran --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-clocale=gnu
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.2.3 (Gentoo 4.2.3 p1.0)

# cat /proc/cpuinfo

m68k ~ # cat /proc/cpuinfo
CPU: 68060
MMU: 68060
FPU: 68060
Clocking: 33 MHz

just to make you understand how "pretty slow" is this machine with linux



# time gcc hAllo.c -o hAllo


# ./hAllo



a modern machine takes 0.062s for the real time parameter





btw, let me know if you want to feel the gentoo/m68k Appeal

thank you guys, marvelous job done, i am impressed about results X__________X
scratched machine look very very good after the T-cut, @mapesdhs, once again, you have teached me new things =)

thank you =)

a guy has proposed me a very pretty exchange: his Acorn RiscPC/Arm-610 machine for my "strange" 68K linux pizza box, and i am really thinking it would be a very nice exchange. His machine is missing the lan, but it's not a problem, i can find one.

No decision taken yet, but i have to confess i am really tempted to accept the exchange.







@foetz
i have never seen the earlier SGI 68k line, i have few informations about them, but …. about m68k I have designed an home-made 68k-board, also trying to adapt a box-case (IBM S/370 CRT-Terminal). I't not completed yet, also the firmware needs more improvement, it has 2 big NVram for the storage (non volatile memory, it stores things when you switch the PSU off) but currently the firmware boots an interpreter (released as open sources) i have coded it in order to pass my university homework, and which looks like "pascal". Well, if pascal hadn't procedures

Sorry about that, i am still having limited capability about designing an interpreter, i am still having lessons about (computer science, "compiler and interpreters" courses), it may be i will learn, actually it has no procedures, just the "main", even if it's able to do this:




MC68060 VME SMP

my 68K-home board machine is a pretty common design in where you have all devices attached to the CPU bus, no DMA, and just a few interrupt driven devices (e.g. the ACIA, uart, and the PIT, which is used as timer and could be used for "tick" generator in order to schedule things). Nothing special in this design, everything looks very easy, while the board in the picture looks much more interesting !

That's MC68060 VME SMP made by "Eltec". There are other companies that used the Eltec board, and they do "embroidery machines", but we are talking about bit-industrial embroidery machines, something that need "hard real time" processing, so the board i got from ebay dot com looks more interesting.

The board has two big 68060 CPUs @ 50Mhz, and a pretty amount of "shared ram", something like "dual port" ram, but it also have 2 engines that perform DMA and "mail boxes". Each CPU has a private space, and can access the "partner" space in two way: -1- accessing the share ram (which is also semaphored), and -2- trapping a mail into the partner mail-box, this is the full interrupt driven way. DMA works in the background, has 4 channels, and can move stream from and to the VME bus.

Very amazing design, and VxWorks v5 is running, i have seen it on the serial console. I had to hack it a bit, adding a VME backplane in order to power to board, and reversing the console to wire out a connector in order to access the console. Lately I got a pretty documentation, thanks to Eltec, which has provided me 2 big pdf

Italy

still for sale:
- CPU
- Oddysey V6 gfx
- Motherboard

sure, i have posted old photos of my home-made 68k just because i already have them on my hard drive, for new photos i have to ask my friend for his digital camera

i hope i will be able to take a shot of the booting stage: it's very funny

i am a gentoo guy, not a debian guy, and not a red hat guy (see my smile ) , so, if there is a linux kernel work Acorn RiscPC, then i will put a stage1-4 on catalyst/arm (under qemu/arm) in order to have the specific rootfs. It will be easier than the work i did for the LC475 gentoo/m68k. The real problem is … that dude has a RiscPC/700 equipped with a StrongArm @ 200Mhz CPU but only 32+2Mbyte of ram, so It looks to me like the profile i have with my this LC475 machine, and in this case … it's a problem about natively emerging things from the gentoo's portage because emerge eats a lot of ram. Acorn ram are very expensive, i was asked about 30-35UKP on ebay, and 99UKP by dealers, for just one 128Mbyte module, plus shipping and VAT

how pretty or ugly is the R13 on Irix ?
anyone can tell me his/her experience ?

hi guys,
i have for sale

• HP9000 Visualize Workstation C3600 Motherboard A5992-66510 (which already has CPU and her big FAN)
• HP9000 C3600 PCI Video Card A4982

tested 100% working

100 euro for the motherboard
50 euro for the Video Card

shipping the motherboard is 40 euro within Europe zone1-5
i have to pack things into a big parcel

shipping the Video board is 20 euro within Europe zone1-5
small parcel, good price

yep, but i'd also like to hear neckochan guys
(as Mathworks guys are too addicted for Matlab )

markh wrote: was included with the rest

it's not in the tarbal file

markh wrote: Where did you get it from?

Mapelson's "Gifts" CD

could you provide me the missing file ?

yes, i confirm, this tarball has the wanted library

-rwxr-xr-x 0 guest guest 589936 Jul 22 2003 LegoConstructionKit_0.2.1/lib/libdom.so

that's good, thank you so much

I know Octave, i am currently using it on Irix and … it's not 100% compatible with Matlab.

hi guys
do you know the memory layout of the EISA bus of Indigo2 ?
i mean which addresses are opened to the EISA bus from the point view of the CPU

i'd like to to realize a custom board to be plugged into the backplane, figured to be handled by linux, and in order to achieve such a purpose i need to know which address are allowed

also, do you know if the backplane perform both mem_io and dev_io ?

let me know

Thank you for your answer. Nice to know that SGI has dropped =( Linux should be a bit easier at both kernel and userspace side, btw i am also thinking about realizing an easier ISA8bit board, it could work and it will cost 1/2 vs the EISA (i mean the PCB will be less couplex and smaller, services are happy to make you pay for PCB area and their cooking time). I have to understand if it will work, and if it will not, i have to really think about design a full EISA instead of ISA8. The hardware prototype is a spartan3e-500 FPGA with level shifter buffer and external ram. Pretty good for DSP acceleration purposes.

i got this informations

ISA/EISA IO:
0x0008.0000 - 0x0008.FFFF

ISA/EISA MEM:
0x000A.0000 - 0x07FF.FFFF
0x8000.0000 - 0xFFFF.FFFF

@vishnu
i have already realized a very cheap ISA8bit prototype, never tried yet into the EISA bus but I wouldn't expect any problems, it should just work good, slower just because 8 bit instead of 32bit, btw, it's simpler, so i think it will be my first try.

i want to use spartan3e fpga plus a few level shifter, 3.3V <-> 5V, just implementing an easy "echo" buffer polling I/O driven, well, i prefer interrupt-driven I/O versus polling I/O, but … i have to proceed step by step from the easiest choice

let me say "sorry", really "sorry".

A lot of time ago (2009) I was given an IP30 equipped with 8 modules of 1Gbyte each, for a total of 8Gbyte of ram (1), but, as the fact the Xbov v1.4 is not well known in linux (i am afraid its documentation is still under NOX), i had to remove 6 modules for a total of 2Gbyte of ram. It was fine without SMP and without PCI, but when i added the PCI cadge i had an other issue, and in order to open a window to the XIO-PCI (in order to have a PCI_USB NEC EHCI chip on) i had to

- get out all my 1Gbyte ram modules
- get in 8x256Mbyte modules


in the exchange i wanted also a SMP 2xR12K@400Mhz module, so my 8Gbyte kit for the 2Gbyte ram kit + SMP, that was the deal, and this to achieve a total of 1.5Gbyte of ram (256Mbyte x 6)

(1) that dude exchanged his SGI Octane2 8Gbyte ram kit for an HP C3600 workstation (PA Risc v2 by HP @ 550Mhz) equipped with 4Gbyte of ram. At the beginning i was a gentoo/HPPA fan, then i switched to gentoo/MIPS-SGI


as far as i understand, the 256Mbyte memory kit comes from Octane1, which has an older Xbow chip, with a limitation in the maximal amount of ram. It was good for me, i was able to exchange the 1Gbyte-ram-module for a very expensive SMP module.

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.

which is the cost of such a machine ?

hi Kumba
nice to see you here

i am the guy who has emailed you for the IP28 memory layout, the same guy of the gentoo discussion about 2.6.17 vs 3.* line.

Kumba wrote: Hmm, in other words, any memory >2GB of RAM on an XBow 1.4 had issues in Linux?

everything > 1.5Gbyte has issues with the XIO_PCI-EHCI, no chances about that, unfortunately.

Kumba wrote: I guess I'll have to hunt for XBow information/documentation

I don't suppose you've come across any XBow documentation?

unfortunately no, i have no documentation, just your pdf (which i still have to study and understand more deeply)

Kumba wrote: As for the PCI card cage, that issue might have been the Linux/MIPS PCI scanning code detecting the cardcage first in its bus probe and stopping after that.

no, with 2Gbyte of ram the XIO_PCI has success in its probe but the PCI_EHCI NEC chip does not respond correctly, while if i remove 2 memory modules (each one is 256Mbyte, 8x256Mbyte=2Gbyte, 6x256Mbyte=1.5Gbyte) then the issue disappears and i am able to have a working PCI_EHCI.

We are talking about this configuration (i am the co-author of this ewiki page), so … a pretty old kernel 2.6.17-rc4+hack, you can see the dmesg here .

Kumba wrote: I have a fix in the mips-sources ebuild now, but it hasn't been accepted upstream yet

good, it may be your patch is good to be back ported to 2.6.17 in order to fix the 2Gbyte memory problem.

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

@miod
let me understand, are you using gentoo on IP30 ?
if so, which kernel, and which configuration ?

i got a few quotes

2xR14K @ 600Mhz CPU module only
400 euro

v12 gfx + DCD, module only
400 euro

v12 gfx without DCD, module only
300 euro

nice to meet him

i envy you for the DCD

I know that there is a different type of XIO carrier for VPro which is designed to hold two VPro cards, but it seems to me that is very rare and very valuable. I mean i was tempted to put two gfxs on, actually i have a chassis with a SE-gfx (Impact/SR serie) and a V6, this is an uncommon and not supported configuration that has no sense with Irix (and it does not work). I did so only because i have configured the linux kernel to dynamically load the frame buffer i want, so … i have have the console on V6, or on SE, i just need to mod probe the wanted kernel-module.

so, if i have understood right:

• you cannot have MGRAS and VPro in the same system, they do not work with Irix
• you could eventually have a XIO carrier for 2 VPro, this works with Irix, but the carrier is very expensive (and hard to find)
• you'd better have a DCD, in order to have 2 CRTs, which is exactly what i need

Normally the DCD is only used with V12, probably for IFFFS setups in movie companies , but the DCD is also extremely good for development purposes as you can have the debugger's session (pretty full of interesting informations) on CRT0 and the the running application on CRT1, that's wonderful, marvelous, and damned productive

in short words: i simply want it

as it's very interesting, and in order to avoid extra OT (my apologies for this), i have opened a specific thread here to discuss the dual CRTs.

yesterday i got a few pretty humor pills: a dude offered me 50 bucks credits for the IP28, and he was really believing his offer was generous just because a few seconds before he bought a Raspberry PI for 30 bucks from a dealer, also he pointed out that the RPI has more Mhz, it's smaller, it eats less energy, also it's a brand new machine vs a third hands. In shorts he was realling thinking that 50 bucks is good enough

an item is only every worth what someone is willing to pay, so he said - " we could also exchange the IP28 with an RPI, take my RPI, it's RPI model2, i am including the plastic enclosure for free !!! "

Is that an offer or a joke? That's my offer.That's a joke. Really, I was thinking it was a candid camera, but he was really too serious


- - - - - - - - -

btw, it's still for sale, guys

yep, it's true, you are right, i am missing my IP30 development (kenrel toying) and i'd like to have a new IP30 machine, and my budget is still down. But hey ? no hurry, i have switched my mind to a pretty cheap chinese router (that is MIPS32/BE and could run the same ramrootfs of the IP30, i have profiled both of them as mips3-be-softfloat-uclibc), so i have a toy to toy with (perhaps only toying with the userland), so i have all the time i can have to achieve a minimal sale price of 300 euro for my friend's repainted-IP28

no hurry, really, i reported the funny-offer just to share my smile

=)

Kumba wrote: Minor correction (for the Google Spider), everything between 2.6.17 and 3.13

you mean "between 2.6.19 and 3.13", sure everything in the middle is dead
while at the lower border the 2.6.17-rc4 is pretty working with a few issues about XIO_PCI and IOC3
2.6.18 is … untested, and personally i have never tested anything in the the 3.* line

about 3.14, what about the SMP ? is it really working ? what about the XIO_PCI ?

any detailed description about what you have tested, what is working, and what is not ?
i have filled an ewiki page with a precise description about everything i am doing on 2.6.17

actually i have no time and no working hardware to do tests.
i am waiting for a new IP30 has my machine is unfortunately dead.

TeamBlackFox wrote: I've been following your conversations here and on Gentoo's various lists - why are you so hung up on 2.6.17 IveLegacy? Kumba is working hard on the newer kernels getting them working - he has a seriously good point that anything 2.6.x is ancient and not worth messing with.

because i do not find useful to follow new kernels just because they are "the last dish of the day". No sense for me, as i have no resources to do that. I had time when i was student, now i have to work and i have a lot of more interesting things to do (e.g. my debug processor) , also I have spent a lot of time and resources on 2.6.17 and it's well documented, debugged, and well working. It has a few issues that i could fix, but hey ? I am really fine and i could spent my time developing PCI_FPGA in the XIO_PCI cadge. That is my purpose, i do not want to spend time porting kernel or converting the IP30 into a workstation, that because Irix does it better with a lot of Application (e.g. Pro/E, Catia, etc) which makes sense about using this Iron box.

What i want is to use the USB to attach a disk, this because SCSI disks are more expensive! And i worked to achieve this purpose!
Now i am able to attach an USB disk, i am pretty fine.

I got an other solution: using a PCI-SCSI controller to interface my home made SCSI-to_pATA adapter, I have seen interesting things in the "IP30 Hw aggregator" thread (here, on this neko forum), the ACARD AEC-7722 ATAPI/IDE device on LVD (80MB/sec) SCSI bus is very very good, even if … a bit expensive.

Cerberus is a NFS+sshFS NAS, it has been designed to be THE storage using the net. It's a multi node PowerPC embedded system. I used gentoo to realize uclibc ram rootfs. It's good, it works good, Irix can't use it yet.

2x6 Disks of 250Gbyte, sATA-II, soft mirrored by 3 nodes internally connected by 100Mbit/sec lan (too poor, buy, hey ? i do no thane 1000Mbit/sec built in lan in Walnut-DHT-nodes)

total storage: 3x250Gbyte (mirroring 2:1) accessed in NFS + sshFS ( i have to add Samba) = enough for everything !

TeamBlackFox wrote: In any case if I was in Italy I am going to be selling an Octane2 for a friend in a few months

thank you, but i think i am fine, i mean I am dealing a new IP30 with a dude, it's scheduled for the end of the month.
I hope that dude will not change his idea (finger crossed, i really do not have more budget)

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