Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[jkdsteve]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Well one ROM. Sonic.bin. Or any ROM really.
Or some app that is going to run the CPU at 100% while also drawing a lot, with sound too. Doom is not a bad idea either but run it at 640x480 or whatever mode you're trying to run your Warp3D app at, also with AHI so you know that's not causing any issues either.

The point is, if you are thrashing the CPU and GFX card in 2D for extended periods and have no doubt they are completely stable, then go ahead and try to get Warp3D running.

If that isn't working, well what's the problem then? Probably power, try reseating the power supply to motherboard connector a few times or spray some isopropyl in it. See if this affects the stability at all.
But if it's not that, then maybe just rearranging your cards will make a difference. I don't know about Prometheus but do whatever order Trixster and co are doing.

I appreciate the help and insight. Now I’ve rebuilt my 4000, I’m going back to the AA3000 today.

I’m thinking it’s just not stable during heavy PCI bus transfers. I’ll have to bug trickster some more

[TheMrKocour]

I wanted to ask has anyone tried to port SheepShaver any further? I know it's been addressed here before

[grelbfarlk]

No, it doesn't seem possible. I mean it is possible but not by anybody that has an inclination to do it. See Sheepshaver for OS4 and MorphOS. Maybe QEMU or something could be done, but probably not.

A more probable path would be booting a Lunix on the PCI-PPC hardware and then running it there. But probably not.

[cloverskull]

FWIW, running MacOS on vintage Apple hardware, in my experience, is far cheaper than finding a Sonnet card these days :P

[trixster]

£120

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184255849...mis&media=COPY

[grelbfarlk]

Round these here parts, we like running things on our Amigas. They are the best Amigas and Trixster's is probably the best of those. So why can't we like run PSX games with sound or PowerMac stuff We don't have the people to do it well enough.

[matt3k]

My AA3000 has been out for repairs forever, so I don't have a ppc in an Amiga for a long time.

Have there been any additional software used for it. All it did for me was draw the backgrounds faster since I'm not much of a gamer.

[grelbfarlk]

Probably the most comprehensive list of working software is here:
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetA...ary-version%29

It's almost all games. Unless you fancy running a DOS emulator to run something there at somewhere around 486 50MHz speeds, but that just more in the emulator section and yes, also to play games.
Sadly lacking a PPC native 3D package like Lightwave or the means to emulate it.

[fgh]

A decent web browser would be nice.

And Jim Drew is (slowly) working on a new version of Fusion.
If he’d update the PPC version to work with our cards that would be a killer app.

[grelbfarlk]

Netsurf seemed like it was reasonably possible to do. That could happen with a little elbow grease.

Ah he can't. He sold the PPC version to the Futunari Bytes and unless they formally declare they don't want it anymore or don't care, he can't touch it or share it.

[fgh]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Netsurf seemed like it was reasonably possible to do. That could happen with a little elbow grease.

Ah he can't. He sold the PPC version to the Futunari Bytes and unless they formally declare they don't want it anymore or don't care, he can't touch it or share it.

Oh, too bad. I didn’t know he sold it..

Netsurf would be great.

[Hedeon]

The discussion regarding iFusion is something that is now 6-7 years old. Jim is fed up with PPC and he either does not have the source anymore or does not want to give it. Same with the Software house he sold it to.

The reverse was also tried. I spoke to both Haage and Sam Jordan regarding the WarpOS source so I could do a 100% port (and as such maybe then iFusion would work) but Haage of course didn't have the source and Sam Jordan didn't want or lost interest.

And that is were I lost interest too.

[grelbfarlk]

Since Sheepshaver seems not possible, OS4 is not possible. The next possible reasonable thing would be to try to boot Linux on the PPC. If you boot the machine without initializing the powerpc.library you can terminal into the PPC card and play with the boot environment.

There are several distros that are supposed to boot on the Apocalypse or Ragnarok cards.
From there figuring out the boot device whether that's a SCSI card or the onboard flash is probably the next step.

[jbenam]

Honestly it’s pretty insane how Hyperion didn’t reach out to add support for the Sonnet library and open up a new avenue of OS4 licenses.

But that’s the Amiga companies for you. Big egos and little interest in the benefit of the community.

Oh well I guess that the OS4 point is now moot since it got split between a bunch of parties and it’s now effectively a dead project.

[Timtheloon]

Been awhile since I post last.

@Hedeon I'm wondering if you can get around the copyright problems by creating patches on the drivers that already exist?

I seen this by other programmers was wondering if this is a possibility

Im not a programmer so I may be way off but could this be an option?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Timtheloon

Been awhile since I post last.

@Hedeon I'm wondering if you can get around the copyright problems by creating patches on the drivers that already exist?

I seen this by other programmers was wondering if this is a possibility

Im not a programmer so I may be way off but could this be an option?

For what though? If it was a matter of just building a bootloader for OS4, he would have done it. But it also means that you need a Spider USB for input, PCI sound card for sound. No chipset access at all. So it's partly a moral issue. I'd still be into it, but hey that's me.
IFusion is a matter of missing functions that need to be built out, without the source for that or the source for WarpOS MMU functions, it's way too hard.


On a different topic, does anyone remember whether there was some missing registers, like doorbell register or BARs or something that made QorIQ SoCs not possible to act as a processor on a card? I was talking to a company that has some in stock that we could potentially use and we never got to Dagor Dagorath.

[Hedeon]

Look in the docs and look for a message unit or doorbell, external interrupts and/or I2O.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by Timtheloon

@Hedeon I'm wondering if you can get around the copyright problems by creating patches on the drivers that already exist?

Not sure what you are referring to, but regarding certain 2D/3D drivers, there's nothing existing on OS3 to patch and regarding iFusion there were special mmu features added to WarpOS that are impossible for me to reverse engineer and for which I have been asking for either the source of iFusion to see what is called and when so I can zoom in to which code is actually used or the WarpOS source so I could implement the missing MMU functions. iFusion is the only program that uses multiple mmu page tables linked together. But stepping through thousands of code to see what is actually happening with wosdb is not productive.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Look in the docs and look for a message unit or doorbell, external interrupts and/or I2O.

Still digging into it.
I'm kind of questioning whether it could be all that fast. E5500 core (not E6500 with Altivec) with only 256KB of L2 cache, but DDR3...

[Hedeon]

With help, I fixed some bugs in de Prometheus libs some time ago, but didn't upload the new compiled libraries. The first post was now updated with them.

the .card and the .library needs to be updated both as some functionality shifted from one to the other.

- Removed restriction on AllocDMA/FreeDMA - prometheus.card now does the check
- Some S3 cards can now be used for DMA purposes
- Search for Prometheus.card under LIBS:Picasso96/
- Fixed translation of physical to virtual address
- Increased reset time of the Prometheus/Firebird bridge per hints from Mathias Heyer
- Version number now correctly displayed