Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[strim]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

3) MPC107 bridge or other PCI/PowerPC bridge that operates in Agent mode, with option to run in host mode (?)

I don't want to discourage anyone, but MPC107 is not produced anymore and sourcing it from China is a terrible idea.

Anyone wanting to build a reproduction should search for an equivalent that has similar ("agent"/"host") functionality, yet is still produced. That was stated before but as someone who has produced hardware before, I can tell you it is most important for the success of this project.

[strim]

Originally Posted by wXR

I know you don't have a lot of time, but if you've already done some research on this, maybe it would be helpful to compile a list of alternative cards (and requirements for them to work) on the SonnetAmiga repo wiki?

I have such plan... for quite some time already ...

[Hedeon]

Analogue & Micro Rattler 8280

[DarrenHD]

I'm having all sorts of trouble again after changing from a Voodoo 4 to a Voodoo 3.

I even did a clean install of OS 3.9BB2 and I'm still having problems.

I can't put InitPPC in startup-sequence or even powerpc.library in libs: else my system hangs.

Even with Thor's 68060.library the system will hang after workbench loads, so I've had to revert to the phase-5 060 library just to get workbench loaded, but I still can't have powerpc.library in libs:

I can rename it after loading then start InitPPC and then the PPC works.

Sometime's I have seen a requestor while booting that says "PowerPC CPU Not responding", but mostly it just hangs either while booting or just after workbench is up.

Weird.

Systems is an A4000, CS MK2 060 not overclocked, Voodoo 3, Mediator 3.3V version.

Darren

[Wrangler]

@DarrenHD I have a similar experience with my Voodoo3-based set up so I thought this behaviour was "normal"! If I boot with powerpc.library in libs: the system hangs so about the first line in my s-s deletes this library if it's there. Then I have a script that I start manually from workbench to copy across the library and run InitPPC.

[Wrangler]

@Hedeon: Going back to my Warp 3D problems, here is the memory dump from the srr0 location +- $100 along with a screenshot of the registers at the time. Let me know if you need anything else.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by wXR

@grelbfarlk

I'm certain you could sell a few hundred of them... Well, I suppose that last part depends on how many PCI bridgeboards there are out in the wild. That surely isn't a common item, right? Do we have any sense at all about those numbers?

Are the people working on the reproduction even interested in/motivated by bounties, is maybe a better starting question. And then, if so, is the SonnetAmiga repo an appropriate place to attach the bounties, or someplace else? Do you have any idea if the board design will be open source? If so, and if it is already started, then clearly that repo would be the best place.

@strim

I know you don't have a lot of time, but if you've already done some research on this, maybe it would be helpful to compile a list of alternative cards (and requirements for them to work) on the SonnetAmiga repo wiki?

My very unscientific analysis suggests to me that there's probably a few hundred Mediators out there that are installed. I would say over 1000 mediators have been sold, but maybe that's overestimating a bit. The Mediator SCSI driver on Aminet has 2000 downloads and I could imagine the same people downloading it twice. Anyway I say there's probably a couple hundred Mediators in the world. It's not like anyone (not an Amigan) is going to crank out an order for 200, the parts alone would be very expensive. I'd say build 10 then maybe batches of 25 or 50 if there's overwhelming interest.

Try removing deficons out of your sys:WBStartup/ if Workbench is freezing when titlebar appears.

And how about an 8360? 667MHz should be plenty fast for most people. Digikey is out of stock but the manufacturer lead time is only 8 weeks, if that can be trusted though I don't know how that works.

[HelloBeautiful]

Grelbfabrik, Mediators have been around for years so there should be a lot more in the wild than you estimate. All Elbox A1200 tower sets but also ones for A3000 and A4000. SCSI on Mediator should be quite slow (at least compared to ones attached to accelerator bus) and also big box owners most likely have had owned SCSI cards before the Mediator so again I don't think the SCSI drivers are a good indicator of the install base. I'd imagine an initial batch of 100-200 would be snapped right off if the price point is around 200-300 euros.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by HelloBeautiful

Grelbfabrik, Mediators have been around for years so there should be a lot more in the wild than you estimate. All Elbox A1200 tower sets but also ones for A3000 and A4000. SCSI on Mediator should be quite slow (at least compared to ones attached to accelerator bus) and also big box owners most likely have had owned SCSI cards before the Mediator so again I don't think the SCSI drivers are a good indicator of the install base. I'd imagine an initial batch of 100-200 would be snapped right off if the price point is around 200-300 euros.

Yes that may be so. I am aware that the SCSI is pretty much useless but it's not like we can easily guess the number still in use. I was just throwing that out there as a guess as to how many mediators are actually still in use that people would pay a few hundred for another expansion. I think price point might be somewhat higher than 300EUR.

With a processor like the 8360, that's $100 as the biggest single expense, figure another $75 for the other miscellaneous parts, plus assembly, some reasonable profit margin, it could easily cost $500 USD. Or maybe if someone wants to assemble these and sell them at cost, $250 might be possible. (I don't think anyone is going to lay out that kind of cash and then sell them at cost).

What slightly complicates things is these are BGA packages so Do-It-Yourself packages aren't really practical.

[starship]

How about this?

https://www.startech.com/eu/Cards-Ad...-Card~PCI1PEX1

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by starship

How about this?

https://www.startech.com/eu/Cards-Ad...-Card~PCI1PEX1

If there was a PCI Express PowerPC card around then yeah maybe that could be used. Or maybe that would be useful for installing a PCIe graphics card into a PCI slot.

[starship]

One mind is to use other Ghz processors with bga adapter on sonnet. but it is very difficult.
hmm

[amigoun]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

I don't have a Radeon system to compare right now, but maybe it really doesn't have BE modes, that's ultra-lame.

Lately I sent a question about supporting S-Video output and BE Graphics modes on Radeon, and today I got an answer, that they are working on it.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by Wrangler

@DarrenHD I have a similar experience with my Voodoo3-based set up so I thought this behaviour was "normal"! If I boot with powerpc.library in libs: the system hangs so about the first line in my s-s deletes this library if it's there. Then I have a script that I start manually from workbench to copy across the library and run InitPPC.

Before you miss it in Gregblfarks answer: try removing deficons from wbstartup

[Hedeon]

Be careful: If you install Thor's mmu libraries while sonnet is active, it will mark the sonnet memory as being copyback for 68k (it actually does that with everything it finds in MemList in ExecBase, except for CHIP the first time it is executed). This does not work at the moment. Sonnet memory needs to be cache inhibited. This can be checked through MuScan.

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Be careful: If you install Thor's mmu libraries while sonnet is active, it will mark the sonnet memory as being copyback for 68k (it actually does that with everything it finds in MemList in ExecBase, except for CHIP the first time it is executed). This does not work at the moment. Sonnet memory needs to be cache inhibited. This can be checked through MuScan.

Maybe that is what is happening on my system then. I've put the Voodoo4 back in and I have Warp3D working again (but my system still hangs on startup if powerpc.library or InitPPC is called), so I start it after Workbench loads and then it works. Sound doesn't work again (it's very slow/garbled), but I will look at that after. (using AHI 4.18 and paula)....maybe because of the memory not being cache inhibited.

I will uninstall thor's lib and install it again when the sonnet is not active. I'll run a Muscan as well.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

Maybe that is what is happening on my system then. I've put the Voodoo4 back in and I have Warp3D working again (but my system still hangs on startup if powerpc.library or InitPPC is called), so I start it after Workbench loads and then it works. Sound doesn't work again (it's very slow/garbled), but I will look at that after. (using AHI 4.18 and paula)....maybe because of the memory not being cache inhibited.

I will uninstall thor's lib and install it again when the sonnet is not active. I'll run a Muscan as well.

You can run it with the sonnet library running you just have to make sure to edit your mmu-configuration in envarc: and change the Sonnet RAM to CacheInhibit instead of Copyback. Remember on some versions of MMULib you actually have to run the Arexx script to build the MMU-Configuration for your hardware if you're using Phase5 boards, don't know if the new version does this automagically.

I guess this is easier for me to say when I haven't actually looked at it since I did it months ago.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by DarrenHD

Maybe that is what is happening on my system then. I've put the Voodoo4 back in and I have Warp3D working again (but my system still hangs on startup if powerpc.library or InitPPC is called), so I start it after Workbench loads and then it works. Sound doesn't work again (it's very slow/garbled), but I will look at that after. (using AHI 4.18 and paula)....maybe because of the memory not being cache inhibited.

I will uninstall thor's lib and install it again when the sonnet is not active. I'll run a Muscan as well.

Did you remove deficons from wbstartup?

[DarrenHD]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Did you remove deficons from wbstartup?

Yes. Ok I think I have the mmu/68060.lib installed ok now. Here is my MuScan and showconfig.

Warp3D Demos (the gears demos) work, but I'm still having trouble with sound.

Using AmigaAMP 2.25 with the WarpUP external engine. It doesn't load - AmigaAMP says it can't load the external engine. If I select the OS3.9 PPC mpega.library it plays the music but very slow. I have AHI 4.18 installed with Paula DMA as the music unit and Paula 8-bit Stereo++ as Unit 0. It worked before so I don't know why it's not working now.

5.System3.9:MuTools> muscan
MuScan 46.1 (02.07.2016) © THOR

68060 MMU detected.
MMU page size is 0x1000 bytes.

Memory map:
0x00000000 - 0x001FFFFF CacheInhibit Imprecise NonSerial
0x00200000 - 0x00BBFFFF Blank
0x00BC0000 - 0x00BFFFFF CacheInhibit I/O space
0x00C00000 - 0x00D7FFFF Blank
0x00D80000 - 0x00DFFFFF CacheInhibit I/O space
0x00E00000 - 0x00E8FFFF Blank
0x00E90000 - 0x00EBFFFF CacheInhibit I/O space
0x00EC0000 - 0x00EFFFFF Blank
0x00F00000 - 0x00F7FFFF CopyBack
0x00F80000 - 0x00FFFFFF ROM CopyBack Remapped to 0x0CF4C000
0x01000000 - 0x06FFFFFF Blank
0x07000000 - 0x0CF4BFFF CopyBack
0x0CF4C000 - 0x0CFCBFFF ROM CopyBack
0x0CFCC000 - 0x0CFFFFFF CopyBack
0x0D000000 - 0x3FFFFFFF Blank
0x40000000 - 0x40FFFFFF CacheInhibit I/O space
0x41000000 - 0x5FFFFFFF Blank
0x60000000 - 0x7FFFFFFF CacheInhibit I/O space
0x80000000 - 0xFFFFFFFF Blank
5.System3.9:MuTools>

5.System3.9:> showconfig
PROCESSOR: CPU 68060/68060fpu/68060mmu
CUSTOM CHIPS: AA NTSC Alice (id=$0033), AA Lisa (id=$00F8)
VERS: Kickstart version 45.57, Exec version 45.20, Disk version 45.3
RAM: Node type $A, Attributes $505 (FAST), at $8000000-$CFFFFFF (80.0 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $505 (FAST), at $7000000-$7FFFFFF (16.0 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $2005 (FAST), at $7C400000-$7FEFFFFF (59.0 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $703 (CHIP), at $4000-$1FFFFF (~2.0 meg)
Node type $A, Attributes $2005 (FAST), at $69000000-$69EFFFFF (15.0 meg)
BOARDS:
Board (Index Information Ltd): Prod=2206/33($89E/$21)
(@$40000000, size 16meg, subsize same)
Board (Index Information Ltd): Prod=2206/161($89E/$A1)
(@$60000000, size 512meg, subsize same)
Board + ROM (HD?) (phase 5): Prod=8512/25($2140/$19) (@$EA0000 128K)
Board + ROM (HD?) (Individual Computers): Prod=4626/10($1212/$A) (@$E90000 64K)
5.System3.9:>

[Hedeon]

What does your envarc:mediator/voodoomem say and how much memory does your voodoo3 have?