Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[Timtheloon]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

But if you borrow an M1, just move that fancy heatsink over to a K1 and send it back.

Hahahaha, @grelbfarlk not funny!! I’ll be writing down every serial number on the card and taking pictures of it from every angle haha.

I’ll get it wrapped up and sent to you @fitzsteve I’ll pm you for details.

[Timtheloon]

M1 on its way to fitzsteve, you look after it now

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Timtheloon

M1 on its way to fitzsteve, you look after it now

Cheers Tim, I'll do some benchmarks to compare

[hese]

@Hedeon

Are you planning on getting SonnetAmiga to run on Prometheus PCI bridge also? If it would be of any help, I could send you my A4000 Firebird Daughterboard prototype. It's basically the same as AA3000+ Firebird Daughterboard but works on A4000D motherboards.

[Hedeon]

It's on the todo list, right after the conversion of the powerpc library to C. Which is a few days away to go into debugging/beta testing.

Thanks for the offer, sadly I don't have a desktop A4000. Only A3000. All the others are towers.

[fitzsteve]

Some Timedemos on the A1200 with Radeon/FM801. This is with the K1, Tim is kindly sending me his M1 so be interesting to see how they compare.

Timedemo 1:

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Timedemo 2:

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Timedemo 3:

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Play-though 3 levels (stability test) this was after running all 3 demos.

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[mousehouse]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

It's on the todo list, right after the conversion of the powerpc library to C. Which is a few days away to go into debugging/beta testing.

Thanks for the offer, sadly I don't have a desktop A4000. Only A3000. All the others are towers.

I have a spare 4000 motherboard+daugtherboard with the famous 3640 CPU card that you can borrow if you want.

[Hedeon]

Thanks mousehouse. The pci cards need dma for Warp3D to work. I am not sure anyone has showed dma working between pci cards yet?

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

You could try a few builds back. There have been patches added to make AmigaAMP 3 run (which frequently accesses CHIP RAM which V2 does not. sure why). Otherwise try V3 with mpega.library with current build.

Ok I have everything working again. I did a clean install of AmigaOS 3.1.4.1, Picasso 96 2.1b, the latest elbox pci.library and sonnetlib. WarpUP external plugin is now recognized 100% of the time by AmigaAMP 2.25. AmigaAMP 3.x works as well with mpega, although it does grind alot of cpu cycles it seems at startup and if you try to play visualizations, but anyway, I will stick to AmigaAMP 2.25.

I also copied over most of the missing ReAction Classes from OS 3.9, AmiDock and a few other things, and they work great. AmigaOS 3.1.4.1 seems to be very good, it seems very stable now.

The only thing I don't have working is PPC Warp3D. 68k demos work (like 68K gears) but the PPC ones just lock the machine. I am sure it's probably a configuration issue, I will look into it. EDIT: Got it working now, had some missing Warp3D libs, now I'm getting 91 fps on gears_ppc_small.

I'm not sure if I should upgrade to the latest Picasso 96 from Jens, I did buy it, but I am worried about compatibility with Elbox drivers and the latest P96.

Darren

[grelbfarlk]

Some of us have used the new P96 from Jens without any reported problems, but not to my knowledge on 3.1.4, just 3.9.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Some of us have used the new P96 from Jens without any reported problems, but not to my knowledge on 3.1.4, just 3.9.

It's working on 3.1.4.1 also...just installed it Everything works as before, Warp3D (tested gears demo PPC) and AmigaAMP 2.25 with WarpUP external engine.

[DarrenHD]

Just a small update, observation, I was playing with the WarpDT datatypes. Pain in the butt to install because it's installer looks for the original powerpc.library, so you have to copy the original one over to even get it to install.

I tried Cybershow and Photoalbum set to use datatypes and it seems really slow. The image is loaded using the PPC datatype then seems it has to transfer over to those programs (on the 68k side) and it's really slow. It's actually faster just to use the 060 datatype. I gather due to context switching?

Darren

[Hedeon]

I think it looks for warp.library. So the sonnet library needs to be running when you are installing.

The second question has not enough info. For example, the docs state that you have to start the library inside the startup-sequence to be able to use them in a meaningfull manner. Did you do that? And what build of the library are you using?

I tried Multiview and it is way faster with the PPC datatypes.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

I think it looks for warp.library. So the sonnet library needs to be running when you are installing.

The second question has not enough info. For example, the docs state that you have to start the library inside the startup-sequence to be able to use them in a meaningfull manner. Did you do that? And what build of the library are you using?

I tried Multiview and it is way faster with the PPC datatypes.

It actually does the check on powerpc.library (during the WarpDT install), looks for version 5 of WarpOS (which does not correspond to the actual library version #), but I think it's like 17.something. anyway no matter, I got them installed.

I have C:InitPPC right before adddatatypes in s-s. I can see the cpu usage by the WarpPPC Datatype first on the PPC (using IdleWOS), and then Cybershow takes like 99% of the 68k cpu for some seconds before the photo loads. I did not directly try to just click on a jpeg and load it via datatypes, but I will try that later tonight. Some mouse jerking as well, it's very slow during both the PPC loading and the 68K loading (again at least with Cybershow).

I actually found that "ShowPPC" (a PowerUP pic viewer) is a very good pic viewer and it works pretty quick, but I don't think it uses datatypes and unfortunately it doesn't really auto-scale photos that well.

[Hedeon]

warp.library is version 5. I am pretty sure it looks for that (too). It is the whole reason my powerpc.library sets up a fake warp.library.

Anyway, try adding _PPC to the name. Maybe that will help. It will force the program to load data to PPC memory. Normally this is only done when the library detects powerpc.library somewhere in a code hunk.

GetInfo shows the number of context switches needed to address Amiga memory (being CHIP or FAST - DSI emulation I think it is called).

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

warp.library is version 5. I am pretty sure it looks for that (too). It is the whole reason my powerpc.library sets up a fake warp.library.

Anyway, try adding _PPC to the name. Maybe that will help. It will force the program to load data to PPC memory. Normally this is only done when the library detects powerpc.library somewhere in a code hunk.

GetInfo shows the number of context switches needed to address Amiga memory (being CHIP or FAST - DSI emulation I think it is called).

Thanks, I will check that out. I'm still sort of tuning my system after installing AmigaOS 3.1.4, but in general it is working very well and seems more stable than OS 3.9.

BTW are you in any contact with the AmigaAMP author? I believe his name is Thomas Wenzel. Just curious as I know you've made some changes to help with AmigaAMP V3. I can't remember what build of the Sonnet lib I'm running, but I think it's the latest build as of a week ago, but let me double check.

[fitzsteve]

Finally go round to doing some proper tests with the Killer M1 Tim kindly sent me on loan. The 20% CPU increase from 333mhz to 400mhz yields a approx. 10% increase on the FPS in QuakeWOS Tiimedemo:

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Timedemo 1 goes up from 24.4 to 26.8 (9.84%)

And also tests to see how increasing the resolution affects the frame rate, here I test 400x300 and 512x384

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I notice some white specks, I seen this before with the Radeon in OS4 so I think that is a driver issue although I didn't change anything from the K1 setup.

Hopefully in a future version there will be support for the Apocalypse but I don't hold out much hope.

What I have now however on the A1200 is more than I could have ever expected so I'm very pleased all the same and grateful for all the hard work that has gone into bringing this to the Amiga.

Hopefully in the spring I will have an A4000 board to play with but until then I gotta send Tim his M1 back and downgrade my setup

[DarrenHD]

Has anyone got PeterK's new icon.library to work? It seems to crash with the WarpDT Datatypes.

Darren

[Crumb]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Thanks mousehouse. The pci cards need dma for Warp3D to work. I am not sure anyone has showed dma working between pci cards yet?

A friend of mine patched the firmware (before firestorm one was released) and he had USB/eth100 working for years. I guess that firestorm one is even more stable.

[dayowalker]

Originally Posted by trixster

Hopefully fewer people will get ripped off by scalpers.

After what happend with the Sonnets, anyone who imports these boards in bulk and then sells them on amibay for £££ profit should be kicked squarely in the nuts, repeatedly.

Story goes on. On Amibay these are sold now at little higher price:
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F193299946777

Remembered, that someone here asked if they do work with SonnetLib. Couldn’t find it to cite. At least we now know that they work.