New version of boards.library

bubbob42 · 27 February 2013, 20:34

Hi there,

boards.library decodes manufacturer IDs and product IDs of Amiga autoconfig hardware. So - in short - it'll show you what stuff there is inside your machine and who made it. It's supported by other tools which provide information about your system, like "WhichAmiga" by Harry Sintonen.

The boards.library for Amiga classic systems was initially developed by Torsten Bach and then maintained by Thomas Barth from 1998 on. The last release dates back to December 2001. Jens Schoenfeld obtained the sources in December 2012 and gave them to me for further development.

UPDATE (Mar/2013): The latest version can now be obtained from Aminet:

http://aminet.net/util/libs/BoardsLib.lha

Version information:

(see Aminet readme)

Older updates:

This is a BETA release. It has been developed and tested on various Amiga hardware, both real and emulated, but may contain bugs, crash your machine and frighten your cat. Its goal is to stimulate feedback for further development. So here's what's been happening since V2.32a 12 years ago and why you should give it a try:

V2.64:

- fixed a nasty bug in the serial rewrite routine, which was the reason
why X-Surf cards were displayed as DENEB clockports

V2.63:

- added Georg Braun's products

V2.62:

- added new boards (well, that was obvious, wasn't it?)

+ Elbox releases since 2001

+ IComp releases since 2001

+ E3B products

+ WinUAE boards

- completely rewritten enclosed "showboards"-utility

- "showboards" now also supports Kickstart 1.x

- modified boards.library to support Kickstart 1.x

- refined board detection via product-ID and serial-number (see below)

- revision bump (sic!)

New ProductID and Serial detection (*please read*):

This feature is the only real enhancement of the current release. It comes in two flavours:

1) During the quite turbulent history of the Amiga, developers were not always able to obtain a unique manufacturer ID from Commodore or its successors, so they used the IDs of other manufacturers instead. boards.library is now able to display the names of the real manufacturers in such cases. You can watch this if you own an early E3B-board, like the Highway USB-Card. (Contact me if you have information about similar cases!)

2) The data structure for each autoconfig board provides a space for serial number information. However, that space does not contain real serial numbers in most cases, but has been used by manufacturers to store information about different revisions of their product, type of flash chip used, etc.

Example:
The ACA620 processor board for the A600 by Individual Computers currently exists in two revisions. Revision 1 has stability problems and can only be identified by the serial number. boards.library will provide a warning message to Rev.1 users, containing contact details for the update process.

Usage:

Just copy "boards.library" to libs:, "showboards" to c: or where ever you like and run "showboards" (There are some options, as "showboards ?" might tell you. (Well, at least for OS > V36 for now).

Developer information:

The documentation is still valid and can be found in the Aminet-archive of the old boards.library release. An update and example sources will follow.

*Your help is needed*

Get your weirdest and latest expansion boards out of your storage boxes, run showboards on your machine and give me your feedback every time you encounter an unknown board or anything strange. And if you are/were a developer of hardware yourself and know some details about you cards' serial information encoding, let me know as well.

You can find my email-address in the readme.

Planned future enhancements:

- support for chained-ConfigDev structures (board-on-board)
- Detection of non-autoconfig ACA and Indivision-cards
- PCMCIA support
- clockport support
- detect any board that's detectable (if I get the info how to do it)

Acknowledgements go to:

- Torsten Bach and Thomas Barth for starting and maintaining boards.library
- Jens Schoenfeld for the source,
- Michael Boehmer for some insights
- Toni Wilen and ELBOX for some data

and to the nice and crazy people of a1k.org for bringing me back to the Amiga.

And now just try it out. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Marcus

prowler · 27 February 2013, 21:48

Thanks, Marcus.

Did you know that there was an independent version started recently in this thread?

bubbob42 · 27 February 2013, 22:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by prowler

Thanks, Marcus.

Did you know that there was an independent version started recently in this thread?

No, but I have been in contact with Geijer recently. It'll be a lot easier for him to combine board.library and SysINfo 4 now.

I'll study the thread and see if I can extract some data out of it, thanks!

prowler · 27 February 2013, 22:56

I'm sure you knew that I hadn't meant to be critical when I posted that link to the other thread. In fact it's great news that you've already made contact with Geijer!

bubbob42 · 27 February 2013, 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by prowler

I'm sure you knew that I hadn't meant to be critical when I posted that link to the other thread.

No, I really did not read any criticism out of it.

Georg Braun just sent me the IDs of his cards, so GBA1000-owners should see something new with V2.63 (update in Post #1).

bubbob42 · 28 February 2013, 11:06

It has been reported that V2.63 falsely detects X-Surf-Boards as Deneb Clockports. This will be corrected soon.

bubbob42 · 01 March 2013, 21:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by bubbob42

It has been reported that V2.63 falsely detects X-Surf-Boards as Deneb Clockports. This will be corrected soon.

Fixed, V2.64 has been attached to post #1

prowler · 01 March 2013, 21:41

Thanks, Marcus!

bubbob42 · 29 March 2013, 19:16

Finally, I found the time to rework the documentation. The latest version of boards.library will be available via Aminet from now on:

http://aminet.net/util/libs/BoardsLib.lha

bubbob42 · 09 June 2013, 09:00

boards.library V3.0 is out, the highlights are:

- PCI-busboard/cards support via openpci.library (PCI owners plz give feedback - I don't own lots of PCI busboards or cards)
- ACA 6xx/12xx detection (feedback needed as well)
- completely reworked documentation with information for hardware developers
- SysInfo-style rating feature in showboards - useless, but enjoyable.

Best regards,

Marcus

bubbob42 · 17 June 2013, 15:21

Another update is out - V3.1 fixes a critical bug and adds three new boards.

The feedback from PCI-busboard users has been very sparse so far. Does the library really detect all your PCI-cards?

slaapliedje · 17 June 2013, 15:32

I'll check it out when I get home and let you know, I have a Mediator 4000Di in my system.

slaapliedje

mfilos · 17 June 2013, 20:05

Awesome.
Now my ESS-Solo-1 SoundCard and my GREX busboard is recognized at last

Code:

showboards 1.62 (16-Jun-2013) by Marcus Gerards
using boards.library V3.1
=============================================================================
You are running Kickstart V45.57
=============================================================================
Board  1:  ES1969 / Solo-1 PCI AudioDrive family 
Made by :  ESS Technology                                     

Board ID: 6505                       Manufacturer ID: 4701
Address:  $FFFA1100                  Size: 4k                        
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  2:  Realtek 8029 A/B/C/D       
Made by :  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.                    

Board ID: 32809                      Manufacturer ID: 4332
Address:  $FFFA11C0                  Size: 4k                        
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  3:  Voodoo 3                   
Made by :  3Dfx Interactive, Inc.                             

Board ID: 5                          Manufacturer ID: 4634
Address:  $80000000                  Size: 512k                      
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  4:  ZorRAM/256MB Zorro III memory Expansion 
Made by :  E3B                                                

Board ID: 32                         Manufacturer ID: 3643
Address:  $40000000                  Size: 256M                      
Type:     $A4                        Flags: $0A                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  5:  DENEB USB Controller (Zorro III Mode) 
Made by :  E3B                                                

Board ID: 16                         Manufacturer ID: 3643
Address:  $50000000                  Size: 16M                       
Type:     $88                        Flags: $02                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  6:  DENEB FlashROM Card        
Made by :  E3B                                                

Board ID: 19                         Manufacturer ID: 3643
Address:  $00E90000                  Size: 64k                       
Type:     $D1                        Flags: $02                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  7:  DENEB Clockport            
Made by :  E3B                                                

Board ID: 23                         Manufacturer ID: 4626
Address:  $00EA0000                  Size: 64k                       
Type:     $C1                        Flags: $02                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  8:  CyberStorm PPC/MK III SCSI 
Made by :  Phase 5 Digital Products                           

Board ID: 100                        Manufacturer ID: 8512
Address:  $00F01060                  Size: 128k                      
Type:     $D2                        Flags: $00                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  9:  GREX PCI busboard / BVision 
Made by :  Phase 5 Digital Products                           

Board ID: 101                        Manufacturer ID: 8512
Address:  $FFFE0000                  Size: 4k                        
Type:     $C1                        Flags: $00                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board 10:  GREX PCI busboard / BVision 
Made by :  Phase 5 Digital Products                           

Board ID: 101                        Manufacturer ID: 8512
Address:  $FFFA0000                  Size: 64k                       
Type:     $C1                        Flags: $00                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board 11:  GREX PCI busboard / BVision 
Made by :  Phase 5 Digital Products                           

Board ID: 101                        Manufacturer ID: 8512
Address:  $FFFC0000                  Size: 128k                      
Type:     $C2                        Flags: $00                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board 12:  GREX PCI busboard / BVision 
Made by :  Phase 5 Digital Products                           

Board ID: 101                        Manufacturer ID: 8512
Address:  $80000000                  Size: 32M                       
Type:     $81                        Flags: $00                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board 13:  GREX PCI busboard / BVision 
Made by :  Phase 5 Digital Products                           

Board ID: 101                        Manufacturer ID: 8512
Address:  $82000000                  Size: 32M                       
Type:     $81                        Flags: $00                       
=============================================================================

13 boards found. Your rating: Send pics NOW!!

Keep up the good work mate.

slaapliedje · 18 June 2013, 02:57

Code:

showboards 1.62 (16-Jun-2013) by Marcus Gerards
using boards.library V3.1
=============================================================================
You are running Kickstart V45.57
=============================================================================
Board  1:  RV280 ATI RADEON 9200 Pro  
Made by :  ATI                                                

Board ID: 22880                      Manufacturer ID: 4098
Address:  $40000000                  Size: 128M                      
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  2:  RV280 ATI RADEON 9200 Pro secondary 
Made by :  ATI                                                

Board ID: 22848                      Manufacturer ID: 4098
Address:  $48000000                  Size: 128M                      
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  3:  Realtek 8139 A/B/C/D       
Made by :  Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.                    

Board ID: 33081                      Manufacturer ID: 4332
Address:  $60C06400                  Size: 4k                        
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  4:  USB 2.0 Host Controller (OHCI compliant) 
Made by :  NEC Corporation                                    

Board ID: 53                         Manufacturer ID: 4147
Address:  $50041000                  Size: 4k                        
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  5:  USB 2.0 Host Controller (OHCI compliant) 
Made by :  NEC Corporation                                    

Board ID: 53                         Manufacturer ID: 4147
Address:  $50042000                  Size: 4k                        
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  6:  USB 2.0 Host Controller    
Made by :  NEC Corporation                                    

Board ID: 224                        Manufacturer ID: 4147
Address:  $50040100                  Size: 4k                        
Type:     PCI                        Flags: n/a                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  7:  opt. space for MEDIATOR PCI 4000 memory 
Made by :  ELBOX-Computer                                     

Board ID: 161                        Manufacturer ID: 2206
Address:  $40000000                  Size: 512M                      
Type:     $85                        Flags: $02                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  8:  MEDIATOR PCI 4000 Core Logic (PCI/Z III bridge) 
Made by :  ELBOX-Computer                                     

Board ID: 33                         Manufacturer ID: 2206
Address:  $60000000                  Size: 16M                       
Type:     $88                        Flags: $02                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Board  9:  ZorRAM/256MB Zorro III memory Expansion 
Made by :  E3B                                                

Board ID: 32                         Manufacturer ID: 3643
Address:  $70000000                  Size: 128M                      
Type:     $A4                        Flags: $0A                       
=============================================================================

9 boards found. Your rating: Cylon Baseship

slaapliedje

bubbob42 · 18 June 2013, 11:49

Thanks for your feedback guys!

slaapliedje · 18 June 2013, 13:29

No problem, this is the first utility that I've seen that will list everything in my system. Medication on Aminet said I didn't have a Mediator. Keep up the awesome work!

slaapliedje

bubbob42 · 28 July 2013, 18:45

A new little update is available on Aminet - Readme.

bubbob42 · 26 November 2013, 14:43

Another Update, see what's new.

Michael · 15 March 2014, 18:02

I am getting plenty of enforcer hits from v3 library :-(
Running A1200 + BPPC + BV, nothing special.

bubbob42 · 15 March 2014, 18:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael

I am getting plenty of enforcer hits from v3 library :-(
Running A1200 + BPPC + BV, nothing special.

Quote from boards.guide:

Quote:

If you're using Enforcer or similar tools, you'll observe some "hits" while
using boards.library > V3.0. This is normal; to detect some
non-autoconfig hardware like the ACA turboboard series, the library has to peek
(and sometimes even poke) into registers which machines without those expansion
do not have. If you don't need to check for those boards, add the option
"NOCUSTOM" to showboards and the hits will be gone.

Can you suppress the hits with "nocustom"?

09 June 2013, 09:00	#10
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	boards.library V3.0 is out, the highlights are: - PCI-busboard/cards support via openpci.library (PCI owners plz give feedback - I don't own lots of PCI busboards or cards) - ACA 6xx/12xx detection (feedback needed as well) - completely reworked documentation with information for hardware developers - SysInfo-style rating feature in showboards - useless, but enjoyable. Best regards, Marcus Last edited by bubbob42; 09 June 2013 at 09:03. Reason: added requirement openpci.library (PCI users only)

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27 February 2013, 20:34	#1
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	New version of boards.library Hi there, boards.library decodes manufacturer IDs and product IDs of Amiga autoconfig hardware. So - in short - it'll show you what stuff there is inside your machine and who made it. It's supported by other tools which provide information about your system, like "WhichAmiga" by Harry Sintonen. The boards.library for Amiga classic systems was initially developed by Torsten Bach and then maintained by Thomas Barth from 1998 on. The last release dates back to December 2001. Jens Schoenfeld obtained the sources in December 2012 and gave them to me for further development. UPDATE (Mar/2013): The latest version can now be obtained from Aminet: http://aminet.net/util/libs/BoardsLib.lha Version information: (see Aminet readme) Older updates: This is a BETA release. It has been developed and tested on various Amiga hardware, both real and emulated, but may contain bugs, crash your machine and frighten your cat. Its goal is to stimulate feedback for further development. So here's what's been happening since V2.32a 12 years ago and why you should give it a try: V2.64: - fixed a nasty bug in the serial rewrite routine, which was the reason why X-Surf cards were displayed as DENEB clockports V2.63: - added Georg Braun's products V2.62: - added new boards (well, that was obvious, wasn't it?) + Elbox releases since 2001 + IComp releases since 2001 + E3B products + WinUAE boards - completely rewritten enclosed "showboards"-utility - "showboards" now also supports Kickstart 1.x - modified boards.library to support Kickstart 1.x - refined board detection via product-ID and serial-number (see below) - revision bump (sic!) New ProductID and Serial detection (please read): This feature is the only real enhancement of the current release. It comes in two flavours: 1) During the quite turbulent history of the Amiga, developers were not always able to obtain a unique manufacturer ID from Commodore or its successors, so they used the IDs of other manufacturers instead. boards.library is now able to display the names of the real manufacturers in such cases. You can watch this if you own an early E3B-board, like the Highway USB-Card. (Contact me if you have information about similar cases!) 2) The data structure for each autoconfig board provides a space for serial number information. However, that space does not contain real serial numbers in most cases, but has been used by manufacturers to store information about different revisions of their product, type of flash chip used, etc. Example: The ACA620 processor board for the A600 by Individual Computers currently exists in two revisions. Revision 1 has stability problems and can only be identified by the serial number. boards.library will provide a warning message to Rev.1 users, containing contact details for the update process. Usage: Just copy "boards.library" to libs:, "showboards" to c: or where ever you like and run "showboards" (There are some options, as "showboards ?" might tell you. (Well, at least for OS > V36 for now). Developer information: The documentation is still valid and can be found in the Aminet-archive of the old boards.library release. An update and example sources will follow. Your help is needed Get your weirdest and latest expansion boards out of your storage boxes, run showboards on your machine and give me your feedback every time you encounter an unknown board or anything strange. And if you are/were a developer of hardware yourself and know some details about you cards' serial information encoding, let me know as well. You can find my email-address in the readme. Planned future enhancements: - support for chained-ConfigDev structures (board-on-board) - Detection of non-autoconfig ACA and Indivision-cards - PCMCIA support - clockport support - detect any board that's detectable (if I get the info how to do it) Acknowledgements go to: - Torsten Bach and Thomas Barth for starting and maintaining boards.library - Jens Schoenfeld for the source, - Michael Boehmer for some insights - Toni Wilen and ELBOX for some data and to the nice and crazy people of a1k.org for bringing me back to the Amiga. And now just try it out. Feedback is greatly appreciated. Best regards, Marcus Last edited by bubbob42; 29 March 2013 at 19:18. Reason: New update (V2.64)

27 February 2013, 21:48	#2
prowler Global Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Sidcup, England Posts: 10,300	Thanks, Marcus. Did you know that there was an independent version started recently in this thread?

27 February 2013, 22:56	#4
prowler Global Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Sidcup, England Posts: 10,300	I'm sure you knew that I hadn't meant to be critical when I posted that link to the other thread. In fact it's great news that you've already made contact with Geijer!

28 February 2013, 11:06	#6
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	It has been reported that V2.63 falsely detects X-Surf-Boards as Deneb Clockports. This will be corrected soon.

01 March 2013, 21:41	#8
prowler Global Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Sidcup, England Posts: 10,300	Thanks, Marcus!

29 March 2013, 19:16	#9
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	Finally, I found the time to rework the documentation. The latest version of boards.library will be available via Aminet from now on: http://aminet.net/util/libs/BoardsLib.lha

17 June 2013, 15:21	#11
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	Another update is out - V3.1 fixes a critical bug and adds three new boards. The feedback from PCI-busboard users has been very sparse so far. Does the library really detect all your PCI-cards?

17 June 2013, 15:32	#12
slaapliedje Registered User Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Utah, USA Posts: 516	I'll check it out when I get home and let you know, I have a Mediator 4000Di in my system. slaapliedje

18 June 2013, 11:49	#15
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	Thanks for your feedback guys!

18 June 2013, 13:29	#16
slaapliedje Registered User Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Utah, USA Posts: 516	No problem, this is the first utility that I've seen that will list everything in my system. Medication on Aminet said I didn't have a Mediator. Keep up the awesome work! slaapliedje

28 July 2013, 18:45	#17
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	A new little update is available on Aminet - Readme.

26 November 2013, 14:43	#18
bubbob42 Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Germany Posts: 585	Another Update, see what's new.

15 March 2014, 18:02	#19
Michael A1260T/PPC/BV/SCSI/NET Join Date: Jan 2013 Location: Moscow / Russia Posts: 839	I am getting plenty of enforcer hits from v3 library :-( Running A1200 + BPPC + BV, nothing special.

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