The collected works of tweakoz

Actually it probably will. (I have power animator 7.5.1 running on a tezro V12 - IRIX 6.5.28).

I spent a bit of time getting this working because all I had in my possession was PA7.5.1 media ;<

Requires a couple of hacks though.
I can provide detailed instructions if your willing to go through the pain.
Basic steps: (I can provide more detail if necessary)

We will fake an older card by replacing its GL_RENDERER string that gets reported back to the application.
Basically we will be tricking PA into thinking its on an older graphics system.

a. Make a copy of your opengl core dll/so (mine was in /usr/gfx/arch/IP53ODSY/ or something like that).
b. there will be 2 so files - I forgot the exact name and my machine is inaccessible at the moment, you will want the one with 'core' in it. we will refer to this below as <glcorethingy>
c. using hexedit from nekoware - hexedit the copy of the glcore dll not the original!
d. search (in the ascii side) for VPRO - you will see something like "VPRO/%s/%b%s"
e. replace with "GU1-Extreme" taking special care that the string remains null terminated (and that we don't overflow the original size of the string).
f. theoretically this could be replaced with other renderer strings so long as they fit in the original space of the string.
g. place this so file in a tidy location, something like ~/alias_hack/<glcorethingy>.so
h. in general this technique can be used to trick an app into thinking its running on older graphics system than it actually is. No it will not magically give you features your graphics system does not have. This was also not extensively tested, but it seemed to work fine for this specific use case..

Make a shell script "run_alias.sh" in the ~/alias_hack folder

a. I use bash - so in my case I would add to this script:
#!/usr/nekoware/bin/bash
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/alias_hack
/usr/alias9610/bin/Alias

b. chmod it - "chmod u+x ~/alias_hack/run_alias.sh"

PA 7.5 had trouble renderering because it could not find it's renderer binary

a. it was looking for something like 'renderer6.5k' on my machine.
b. well there was this renderer6.4k and renderer5.3k file present...
c. solution! : copy or symlink one (preferably the one with the higher number of course!) to the one its looking for. viola - rendering occurs!
d. you probably will want to replicate the same pattern for the raytracer and power variant renderer binaries
e. this leaves me wondering if they were just appending the irix version to 'renderer' to locate a specific binary. was there even an IRIX 6.4?

Sorry the instructions are a bit fuzzy (Im recalling them from memory)
I can provide more exacting detailed instructions later this weekend.
More than likely these steps could be automated via a shell/python/etc script - but I will leave that for someone else to do...

Also sorry for the poor formatting - I will revisit when I get a little more time..

Next step - getting it running in the mame/mess ip22 driver! (I'm only half joking - If only had more free time...)
My VBOB definitely has 2 SD inputs (labeled 1,2) and 2 HD inputs (also labeled 1,2).
The documentation refers to Link A and LinkB for SD and HD.
Are LinkA,LinkB only meant for aggregating bandwidth onto a single stream, or are they supposed to be useable as separate streams ?

If they are usable as separate streams, then how are we supposed to access it via OpenML?

mlquery only shows 1 SD input jack and 1 HD input jack.
why does mlquery not show the 2nd SD/HD jacks ?

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DEVICE: xt-digvid
parent: tezr0.
index: 0
version: 1
location: /hw/video/xt-digvid/0
jacks: HDSerialDigitalInputJack,
HDSerialDigitalOutputJack,
HDGraphicsDigitalInputJack,
SDSerialDigitalInputJack,
SDSerialDigitalOutputJack,
SDGraphicsDigitalInputJack
paths: HDSerialDigitalInput,
HDSerialDigitalOutput,
HDGraphicsDigitalInput,
SDSerialDigitalInput,
SDSerialDigitalOutput,
SDGraphicsDigitalInput


I am starting with some sample OpenML code from the OpenML tardist on nekochan's ftp site.
I will be morphing it into something cooler over time...

you can track progress here...
https://github.com/tweakoz/vbobtest

Thanks,

mtm
I would be happy to donate...
But sorry, I am not going to spend more than 3 minutes trying to install a custom theme...
(and those 3 minutes are up)..
Sorry, too busy spending what little free time I have trying to get my VBOB working..
Just PM the paypal link, and I will donate...

Thanks,

mtm
I was a little too brave one day, not satisfied with my vbob experience to date, and decided to flash the firmware.
(by running /usr/dmedia/bin/vbob/vbob_update1 and vbob_update2)

Oops :?

It was on 1.3.22
Now It is on 1.3.8

I no longer get the color bars , and confidence tests no longer pass....
the flash commands no longer work.

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-bash-4.2$ sudo ./vbob_update1
Password:
************* vbob_update1 *****************************
* updating non-active firmware version
* Note, one of the following vbob_flash cmds might fail.
********************************************************

vbob_flash: Doing a killall on any dmdaemon or mldaemon.
process <dmdaemon> not found
process <mldaemon> not found
[libvboblvds] I/O ERROR: VBOB possibly disconnected!
vbob_flash: Internal Error! vbobReadData failed.
vbob_flash: Checking for vbob on pipe 0 (:0.0)
vbob_flash: Vbob not found on :0.0
vbob_flash: ERROR: No VBOBs found.
Connect VBOB to the system and re-run /usr/dmedia/bin/vbob/vbob_flash to update the VBOB firmware
vbob_flash: Doing a killall on any dmdaemon or mldaemon.
process <dmdaemon> not found
process <mldaemon> not found
[libvboblvds] I/O ERROR: VBOB possibly disconnected!
vbob_flash: Internal Error! vbobReadData failed.
vbob_flash: Checking for vbob on pipe 0 (:0.0)
vbob_flash: Vbob not found on :0.0
vbob_flash: ERROR: No VBOBs found.
Connect VBOB to the system and re-run /usr/dmedia/bin/vbob/vbob_flash to update the VBOB firmware
********************************************************
vbob_flash: Doing a killall on any dmdaemon or mldaemon.
process <dmdaemon> not found
process <mldaemon> not found
[libvboblvds] I/O ERROR: VBOB possibly disconnected!
vbob_flash: Internal Error! vbobReadData failed.
vbob_flash: Checking for vbob on pipe 0 (:0.0)
vbob_flash: Vbob not found on :0.0
vbob_flash: ERROR: No VBOBs found.
Connect VBOB to the system and re-run /usr/dmedia/bin/vbob/vbob_flash to update the VBOB firmware

------------------------------
Error:
vbob_flash failed.
check vbob cables and power.
aborting...
------------------------------




luckily, at least I can still cu in from the serial port.
:x

the following snippet looks a bit promising (If only I knew what bsend was, and what type of file it expects, and which part of the flash it would update).

Code: Select all

vbob> u
FLASH IMAGE UPDATE
Disconnect the terminal program and run 'bsend'
to send the new flash image.......

After 'bsend' completes, reconnect with the terminal
and hit <ENTER> to see the final status of the update.


I have also taken some notes on which DM3 FPGA's do what and can probably deduce which FPGAs
are which on the board based on proximity and connections to other components. I might be able to
do the same for the FPGA's in the vbob. and correlating xilinx bitstream sizes for different fpga types
might also help ID which bitstream goes to which FPGA.

The mcs files in the vbob ucode folder should be loadable via xilinx impact software,
which I actually have (along with a jtag adapter). and it looks like there is a jtag port on the VBOB motherboard.

Not sure if I feel brave enough yet to attempt it.
Anyone have any other ideas ?

Thanks,

mtm