Prometheus&Firebird with Firestorm firmware support thread

[spudje]

OK, this is what I have been able to gather:

- Latest Prometheus firmware for Firestorm (E3B)
- PrmLibs41 from Hedeon
- prm-rtl8029.device 1.3
- openpci_8139.device 1.2b4
- OP-FM801v0.9b (sound)
- prmscan 1,6
- DMAlist 1.2

Are these all latest version. If not where to get the latest versions?

Some questions still:
- Firestorm is both 3,3V & 5V if I'm not mistaken (see Hese's original spec). Wrangler's video(s) claim it's only 5V, so that's getting me confused.
- Do I still need to install the stuff from the original Prometheus drivers (emulation.library, fastlayers.library, rtg.library) or does Hedeon's package suffice?
- USB cards weren't supported over Prometheus, or were they?

Thanks!


3,3V

[Hedeon]

- I see openpci drivers in there, but no openpci itself.
- USB is supported through openpci.
- If you read the comments to Wrangler's I already said something about he claiming 5V only. It is also 3.3V
- The drivers you name as part of the original Prometheus drivers sound suspiciously as....P96. Don't use them, but the ones from 2.1 (free) or v3.x (not free plus slows the PPC down)

This is more a driver debug thread then how to install them. I think there is also a how to install thread on EAB.

[Crumb]

@spudje


Firestorm refers to the updated firmware with DMA and PCI bridge support, Firebird is the name of the Prometheus-compatible board designed by Hese and it is 3.3v & 5v compatible.


For USB you can use ArakAttack (you will still need Poseidon): https://aminet.net/package/driver/other/ArakAttack


I have attached PrmScan 1.7

[spudje]

Quite some progress, I have the following working in AOS 3.2.1.

Voodoo 3 with Picasso96 3.2.4
RTL8139 openpci via Roadshow, only tested working ping to public FQDN. Webbrowsing I will test later
Thylacine Mini Zorro2 USB with Poseidon 4.5
Working Apocalypse & Warp3D, only tested with GearsPPC so far.

Now the question to be answered in the following days, how long can I play Wipeout until it crashes (overheated Voodoo), like it did in my A4000 with Mediator.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by spudje

Quite some progress, I have the following working in AOS 3.2.1.

Voodoo 3 with Picasso96 3.2.4
RTL8139 openpci via Roadshow, only tested working ping to public FQDN. Webbrowsing I will test later
Thylacine Mini Zorro2 USB with Poseidon 4.5
Working Apocalypse & Warp3D, only tested with GearsPPC so far.

Now the question to be answered in the following days, how long can I play Wipeout until it crashes (overheated Voodoo), like it did in my A4000 with Mediator.

Great you got it working! Did Hedon post all the updated libs/files yet? Have to check his post...

You can put a fan on the Voodoo's main chip or near the Zorro/PCI slots to get some air flow. The AA3000+ has 2 fan headers: one for a 5V and one for a 12V fan. I have small fans on all my Voodoo 3's. I gather 3DFX learned their lesson as the Voodoo 4 and 5 come with pre-installed fans.

Since I also have an 060 in one of my AA3000+'s I glued a thin radial fan to the underside of the floppy drive / power supply assembly which circulates air in that area and rotates in a direction where it would throw air towards the power supply.

Darren

[jkdsteve]

Is there a place to download the Firebird CPLD firmwares from?

[Hedeon]

Somewhere on http://www.e3b.de/prometheus/ ?

[Hedeon]

Been busy this weekend and I think I fixed that cards were not recognized behind a bridge.

In the attached pictures you can see a Bigfoot M1 card running behind 2 bridges connected to the Prometheus (PCI->PCIe->PCI)

The M1 is actually also doing Warp3D which it doesn't without the bridges. Still no clue about that.

The Harrier is put on a PrmPMC carrier that is not transparent but has a bridge chip on it.

Also shown is a PCIe sound card that exposes its audio chip behind the PCIe bridge.

[BULI]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Been busy this weekend and I think I fixed that cards were not recognized behind a bridge.

In the attached pictures you can see a Bigfoot M1 card running behind 2 bridges connected to the Prometheus (PCI->PCIe->PCI)

The M1 is actually also doing Warp3D which it doesn't without the bridges. Still no clue about that.

The Harrier is put on a PrmPMC carrier that is not transparent but has a bridge chip on it.

Also shown is a PCIe sound card that exposes its audio chip behind the PCIe bridge.

[Crumb]

@Hedeon

nice progress! :-)

I'm wondering if DMA will also work better through the 2 PCI-PCIe bridges

[PainDictator]

I just bought a PCIe Adapter, and some cheap low Profile graphics Adapters (GeForce 8200, GT710) with the idea of coding a P96 driver for something newer.

So I was wondering how BARs with >256MB are handled by the current Prometheus library. Would be Great to see at least Part of the Frame buffer for such devices as many come in 1GB or even 2GB flavours. Might also be interesting to Go to a 1gGB autoconfig window. 2GB would be Outside the Z3 reserved memory region.

[pipper]

Been through this experience myself, I can give you some pointers.

The PCI scan and BAR assignments happen in prometheus.library:
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/Prometh...Lib/driver_2.c

There are a few hardcoded vendor/device IDs in there that recognize certain devices and vendors as graphics cards. Graphics card memory will later be assigned first in WriteAddresses(). This makes sure, that the gfx card has a chance to get the largest chunk of memory first and sits low in memory. Be aware that this will result in the card to be assigned to PCI physical address 0 (which might 'surprise' some cards which are hardcoded to decode 0xA0000 for a VGA window for instance and don't expect their linear framebuffer window overlap with the same address range).

For some cards (ATI notably) the code will refrain from assigning more than BAR0 to prevent the card from grabbing too much address space. Mind you, the whole ZorroIII address window for all of the PCI cards is only 506MB (thats what Prometheus grabs from the system at bootup time via Autoconfig) . IMHO card exposing more than that is not possible and needs some form of 'bank switching'. IDK if a Zorro card could even ask for 1GB of ZIII address space without immediately exhausting it for any other cards in the system?!

The next step to introduce a new gfx card type is to modify Prometheus.card.
The way prometheus.card works is that it identifies the installed gfx card and loads the corresponding .chip driver to take care of the actual register level programming.
This needs to be integrated here:
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/Prometh...rd/card.c#L253

I have an example change that does that for S3Trio64 cards:
https://github.com/mheyer32/Promethe...3913e1ba249016

The card driver is also where you'd hook up the Prometheus interrupt handler with your card's interrupt handler. Additionally this is the place where the .card driver hands some memory to Prometheus.library to be used as DMA memory. Prometheus.library in turn can hand out this memory to some other clients (like a soundcard or network card driver).

The .chip driver implements the P96 interface to your card. This can be done in multiple steps as described in the P96 Wiki:
http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/P96_Driver_Development
The P96 SDK comes with example code, but it is written in assembly.
I have done this for S3Trio in C:
https://github.com/mheyer32/p96drive.../main/s3trio64

I have set up this repo planning to write some more .chip drivers in future which can share some common code - if you like, use it as inspiration or basis for your endeavor.

[PainDictator]

Thanks, that helps a lot.

Do I have to Go through the Prometheus Library for supplying the DMA RAM or is there an OpenPCI compatible way to do that?

[grelbfarlk]

Just got a Prometheus Firebird A4000 this weekend and got it running with Ragnarok and Voodoo 3 2000 with Warp3d with no fuss.
Stuff not working:
Dosbox WOS, whatever clod built that port should be ashamed.

[Hedeon]

I'll fix it for..... 1 billion dollars

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by PainDictator

Thanks, that helps a lot.

Do I have to Go through the Prometheus Library for supplying the DMA RAM or is there an OpenPCI compatible way to do that?

OpenPCI sits on top of prometheus.library (and pci.library etc)

You can do both.

[Hedeon]

OpenPCI recommended as you automatically support multiple pci solutions

[ElectroBlaster]

I have a Firebird. Bought mine recently!

I also have an original Prometheus, I need to update the firmware on it.

Not sure when I am going to get around to testing/playing with it but I do have a lot of old cards floating about, so I will attempt to grab everything together and list it all.

[ElectroBlaster]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Been busy this weekend and I think I fixed that cards were not recognized behind a bridge.

In the attached pictures you can see a Bigfoot M1 card running behind 2 bridges connected to the Prometheus (PCI->PCIe->PCI)

The M1 is actually also doing Warp3D which it doesn't without the bridges. Still no clue about that.

The Harrier is put on a PrmPMC carrier that is not transparent but has a bridge chip on it.

Also shown is a PCIe sound card that exposes its audio chip behind the PCIe bridge.

I have a Killer K1. I read something about these cards not working with the Firebird/Prometheus.

I am interested in these bridge things! What exactly are they and what how did you get the M1 going?

[grelbfarlk]

I wanted to try using this two slot PMC carrier, where the PMC slots sit behind a bridge but the system just crashed with a RAMLIB error as soon as it initializes the prometheus.library it looks like. That being said I was also using it in the last slot with a PCI cable extender so no real determination on that front yet.
Rapture @600MHz seems to work ok, not in a place to put the case on for proper cooling since I'm not using a PMC239/F with this one, but good to see it works too.