Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[spudje]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Here's a picture from the webzone I linked the blue arrows are how the air is supposed to flow:

I have the same fan mount. What would be the best way to put the fan on it?
- Respecting the original airflow direction, i.e. sucking air away from the PCI/ISA cards to the front of the case?
- Blowing on the PCI cards, maybe disturbing the airflow direction?

[trixster]

I'm only speaking from my own experience with that fan mount, but I can't see how it will fit with the gfx card and sonnet in place in the orientation shown. I'm using a slim 10cm fan and have it sitting on the back of the bracket (not the front as in that picture) and the corner of the bracket does not clear a card sitting in slots 1 and 2. You might be able to flip the entire mount 180degrees and mount it from front to back of the case (ie over the motherboard ram slots), that way the edge of the bracket might be clear of the cards.

If you have some gaps in the case at the back of the PCI area (empty backplate, drilled holes etc) then surely having a fan blow over the PCI cards so the hot air can exhaust is better than trying to draw cold air into the case hoping it'll make its way round the daughterboard, over the cpu card and then out the expansion port or through the psu? In my experience these fans seems to be more efficient blowers than suckers? However if the PCI area is full and there's just those small perforations then maybe a sucker to pull air away from the cards to the front of the case is better. Dunno!

[kev]

why you look at static pressure in fans

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by spudje

I have the same fan mount. What would be the best way to put the fan on it?
- Respecting the original airflow direction, i.e. sucking air away from the PCI/ISA cards to the front of the case?
- Blowing on the PCI cards, maybe disturbing the airflow direction?

I would say respect the original airflow direction, sucking air away from the slot grill. Otherwise in theory you are going to have the power supply and your extra fan fighting each other causing air to swirl around the CPU area and leak out wherever or even worse have areas where it barely moves at all.

If you do this really badly take a match and blow it out, while it's still smoking see how the smoke flows into the case, if you do it really badly you'll find in the same area it is being blown back out and sucking back in, resulting in hot air being pushed out then sucked back in.

That is if you don't have something with thermal probes to tell if any of your changes are actually making a difference whether good, bad or indifferent.

IMHO just pick and airflow direction and stick to it. I guess there's some argument that making the power supply suck in instead of blow out makes sense as your hottest components might end up around the PCI area, if you're adding a new fan. The other general rule is wherever your exhaust is-don't freak if it seems hot-that's what it's supposed to be doing.

[trixster]

I've just had another go at closing the winsize jumper on my Mediator. I'm using MMULibs, wb3.9, BB 1 and 2. With it closed the machine doesn't get to workbench and I get some odd gurus (yellow and sometimes red). Booting into the early boot menu shows the Mediator present, booting with no startup sequence and run pciinfo the output goes a bit mad and spews out about 20+ entries. Anyone seen this before?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by trixster

I've just had another go at closing the winsize jumper on my Mediator. I'm using MMULibs, wb3.9, BB 1 and 2. With it closed the machine doesn't get to workbench and I get some odd gurus (yellow and sometimes red). Booting into the early boot menu shows the Mediator present, booting with no startup sequence and run pciinfo the output goes a bit mad and spews out about 20+ entries. Anyone seen this before?

Are you using a PC mode next to the screenmode name? If not do so. Like 640x480x16bit PC? It really shouldn't matter having the Winsize jumper open, but maybe just leave it open till the Sonnet gets there.

[trixster]

1280x1024 16bit PC
In all respects the Mediator is currently running perfectly with winsize open, I'm just a little worried that, after the effort of sourcing a sonnet, I might not be able to use it if I can't get the Mediator to work with winsize closed. But if it might all work ok leaving winsize open I'll stop worrying so much!

Could something in the voodoo tooltypes be causing an issue? I'm using the same settings as those in the voodoo monitor driver you sent me when I was having my Mediator issues/meltdown last month.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by trixster

1280x1024 16bit PC
In all respects the Mediator is currently running perfectly with winsize open, I'm just a little worried that, after the effort of sourcing a sonnet, I might not be able to use it if I can't get the Mediator to work with winsize closed. But if it might all work ok leaving winsize open I'll stop worrying so much!

Could something in the voodoo tooltypes be causing an issue? I'm using the same settings as those in the voodoo monitor driver you sent me when I was having my Mediator issues/meltdown last month.

Well I tell you, you're probably going to have to close it if you have more than 128mb on the Sonnet. But here's my story which isn't as interesting as it it is long. So on my desktop, I had a Radeon with 256MB, I had to close Winsize for that. I eventually switched to Voodoo for Warp3d, this was 'round back '14 or so. I remember I had just purchased a new twill vest which seems to have about three years of wear on it, so that should be about accurate. Well I tied a grape vine around the waist and threaded it through the button hole as was the style at the time when I vaguely recall that I had some unspecified problem with the Voodoo. I then opened Winsize to get the window size smallerlier then I got the Sonnet. I think I posted here or sent Hedeon an email and gave him my PCIInfos. He said close Winsize then it worked. So it's not a good story but I think your hero's journey may end up being similar.

If the Sonnet doesn't work out for you DONT PANIC, I'll give it a good home.

[Hedeon]

It should work fine with WinSize closed. especially in a clean, no-ss environment. There is something wrong.

Originally Posted by trixster

I've just had another go at closing the winsize jumper on my Mediator. I'm using MMULibs, wb3.9, BB 1 and 2. With it closed the machine doesn't get to workbench and I get some odd gurus (yellow and sometimes red). Booting into the early boot menu shows the Mediator present, booting with no startup sequence and run pciinfo the output goes a bit mad and spews out about 20+ entries. Anyone seen this before?

[kev]

hey now you have enough sonnets i need 1 unless you were speaking of my home

[trixster]

Grelbfarlk, I think we need a picture of the vest in question.

I believe the sonnet I'm getting has two simms - 64mb and 32mb. So if I can't get the machine to work with WINSIZE closed maybe it will still work ok with the jumper open. Fingers crossed.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by trixster

Grelbfarlk, I think we need a picture of the vest in question.

I believe the sonnet I'm getting has two simms - 64mb and 32mb. So if I can't get the machine to work with WINSIZE closed maybe it will still work ok with the jumper open. Fingers crossed.

I don't know, I don't have a the newer mediator to test with. I have Sonnet not installed right now and Winsize closed and it works fine. Does it act any differently with lower resolutions?

[trixster]

I gave this another go this morning with WINSIZE closed, but with the network card and soundblaster removed, so just the voodoo3 in place. It worked fine first time, straight into workbench, no corruption or problems. Showconfig confirms that window is 512mb.

Amigas are strange. I'll try now with the other cards back in position.

Update: soundblaster and Ethernet cards back in, everything working fine. Bizarre.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by trixster

Update: soundblaster and Ethernet cards back in, everything working fine. Bizarre.

I've had it too a few times. Most recently when I inserted a modified pci card. Normally the error always leads to a bad contact on one of the cards or mediator itself. Cleaning/reinserting did the trick here.

(Modified as in carved an 5V key on a 3.3V keyed card).

[trixster]

Perhaps a little predictably I'm having a spot of trouble getting this Sonnet working.

I've added the two Simms that were provided with it, both known to be working ok according to the chap who sold the sonnet to me - a 64mb and 12mb

The sonnet shows up ok in pciinfo

I'm using the latest sonnet package off aminet. I've placed PowerPC.library into LIBS:PowerPC. I initialise the sonnet using the script:

Assign Libs: Libsowerpc libs: ADD
C:initppc

The memory is added to the system. Then running getinfo shows the details about the board which to my untrained eye seem ok. However as soon as I run any Warpos program I get an instant Instruction Storage Exception.

Any ideas what's the issue? I've tried the Simms in all three slots.

Interestingly, the sonnet would not initialise when using the MMULibs 68060.library. It will initialise with the phase 5 library but I still cannot get programs to load, I get the Instruction Storage Exception. Removing mmu.lbrary as well does not help. I've tried using the mmu-configuration arexx script to rebuild the config but it doesn't seem to help.

[Hedeon]

Hmmm, was the board modified? Sounds like something melted on the board or something

[trixster]

Ok I can get the board to initialise now with the MMULibs 68060.library by commenting out the 4 setcachemode entries in my mmu-configuration. However I still get an Exception: Instruction Storage error when trying to load anything. This is with just one 64mb simm in slot 3.

[trixster]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Hmmm, was the board modified? Sounds like something melted on the board or something

Yes, it's had a mod to allow it to run on a 5v Mediator but I have a 4000di mk3. The previous owner said it worked fine and provided photos and videos to show it running ok.

[Hedeon]

Ok, me bad. I knew about that sonnet card.

On a more serious note, what I am seeing is that ppc code is ending up in Amiga memory instead of sonnet memory. I'm guessing you are running not a standard 3.9 system?

[Hedeon]

Could you please post pictures on the right orientation? Difficult to see on a phone.

Anyways, looking at the mmu config. You should be able to uncomment everything and change the sonnet memory range to cache inhibit. I guess you installed mmu lib after a start of initppc, otherwise mmu lib wouldn't have recognized the memory and made it copyback