Sonnet 7200 PCI programming

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Stedy

That order is not guaranteed to work as technically, it violates one of the PCI system design rules. The last slot in a PCI system must have a card or diode termination. It's easier and cheaper to add a card. Without the diode clamping provided by a card in the last slot, the reflective wave switching of the PCI bus is not guaranteed to settle within the 30ns cycle time of the PCI bus.

Back in the late 90s when I built some Compact PCI systems, I learnt this rule (that is in the PCI spec) when my 8 slot rack failed unless a card was in the final slot.

Most PCs, of the era when conventional PCI was mainstream, had either the southbridge or IDE controller at the end of the PCI bus to provide the required termination.

Interrupt mapping, min_grant/max_latency and bus arbitration can also cause some weird operation. If a Sonnet card and USB device share the same interrupt, the isochronous interrupts created by the USB device can cause issues as they block the CPU from accessing the bus.

If you change the card setup, use pciinfo and note what Interrupt pins are listed for each card.

Thanks for this. The last time I played with installing the Rapture, I removed the ethernet card in the top slot-and had nothing but problems. I put the Rapture in the top slot and things started working so I just moved the ethernet card down to the 3rd slot, satisfied that everything was working I closed the case up. I bet this was the reason.

Previously I had to have the Sonnet in the 3rd slot so the 4th slot could fit the Ethernet card-and it all worked just fine. Only when I started screwing around last time did I run into problems....

That being said as Stedy mentions you do need to pay attention to the IRQs, when things are in the correct slots you should get different IRQs for each device, and only some combinations allow sharing. Like in my Tower by necessity the Spider has to share with some of the other devices as it takes up three IRQs.

[nexus]

plug in play wasnt always plug n play lol

[Cego]

it seems that Voodoo 3 only operates at 16Bit regarding 3D stuff. Other users reported the same issue with Gears running on a 24Bit screen.

@Stedy
thanks for the info! i will check my setup!

[trixster]

@Cego that is a known issue. Check the sonnet wiki installation guide, part 4.

https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetA...allation-guide

[Cego]

@trixter
Thanks for the link! Some other users have already confirmed the Voodoo 16bit issue. Everything is working fine now

@Topic
whats the status of the Rapture development?

I have found a seller who has probably >200 units in stock. Question is, how did you manage to get a PMC card working in the Mediator? Did you build your own PMC carrier or did you buy an existing one?
I am elaborating on ordering higher amounts, if there is enough demand from the community. I have already been talking about discounts regarding the PPC cards.

So my question is, where did you get the PMC carrier and how much did you pay? Are there any modifications necessary to make it work in a Mediator 3,3V/5V?

[nexus]

we already know about embedded sales if thats the supplier you are talking about and its not worth it we are building much faster

pmc is just a embedded form of pci which needs 3.3v in our case

just fyi we been through all this with pmc cards and carriers its way to much as you are paying marked up prices for a high $$$$$ market
so we are building the fastest possible card that would=same you pay for that above and be 5x faster at least

i have stated many times we have a couple cards built already we are in software testing phase and at same time trying to support other already made g3/g4 pmc cards and pci
there is still a lot to be done and most is software not hardware eg:altivec support and the fact we still need faster cards as a PPC7457 is way to fast to be stuck using voodoo cards and the other hurdles we have just many many things all takes time

tbh i think we are coming along fast considering how many are working on this


the problem on hardware side is power as the mediator is just barely enough to run a 7410 at 450mhz so to go faster more power is needed 3a at 3.3v aint gonna cut it

[grelbfarlk]

The PMC carriers that are being used are just off the shelf ones. One model that I've been using I had to modify for to support 3.3V as it doesn't have 3.3V conversion built into it. A different off the shelf PMC adapter has 3.3V conversion on it and it works fine for me.

What we're finding is that even if 3.3V is not a problem, noise or simply too much 5V power draw through the one pin of an A4000 motherboard is a problem. Towers shouldn't have this issue as they have multiple 5V pins or the Mediator busboard in a tower has a supplementary power connector.

So anyway we're looking at different options to deal with it. It feels like I've made this exact same post before so I apologize if this makes you feel groundhog day.

Also I swear I've run the Voodoo in 24-bit 3D modes albeit slowly. Gears I would expect doesn't support more than 16-bit since it was a Warp3D demo for the Permedia or Virge or whatever and those only supported 15 or 16-bit. *EDIT* Set Cowcat's Hexen II to 24-bit and the console reports it is running at 24-bit, which it might be.... or might not. Quake 2 didn't want to run at 24-bit.

What Nexus means by we have cards built already, that we some of us have >800MHz off-the-shelf cards that are in the process of 'getting to work'. *EDIT /END*

Originally Posted by Cego

@trixter
Thanks for the link! Some other users have already confirmed the Voodoo 16bit issue. Everything is working fine now

@Topic
whats the status of the Rapture development?

I have found a seller who has probably >200 units in stock. Question is, how did you manage to get a PMC card working in the Mediator? Did you build your own PMC carrier or did you buy an existing one?
I am elaborating on ordering higher amounts, if there is enough demand from the community. I have already been talking about discounts regarding the PPC cards.

So my question is, where did you get the PMC carrier and how much did you pay? Are there any modifications necessary to make it work in a Mediator 3,3V/5V?

[Stedy]

Originally Posted by nexus

<SNIP>

tbh i think we are coming along fast considering how many are working on this


the problem on hardware side is power as the mediator is just barely enough to run a 7410 at 450mhz so to go faster more power is needed 3a at 3.3v aint gonna cut it

Any idea how much current you need on +3.3V?

Do you have details of the PowerPC cards you're looking at?

If I know the PowerPC variant and amount of RAM (assuming SDRAM), I can get a good approximation of the power required.

I've been talking to grelbfralk about an idea for a PCI riser card that takes a floppy drive connector or Molex and can deliver 6-8A @ 3.3V from the 12V supply. The +5V could also be fed in parallel.

A straddle mount PCI connector is expensive, I can get cheaper right angle connectors but that would 'remove' one PCI slot. Pricing it all up, a custom riser with the 3.3V converter, additional 5V feed and connectors would be £35-40 each for a batch of 40+.

Would there be sufficient interest in this if I pursue the idea further?

A custom PMC carrier card would cost more, factoring in larger PCB and cooling fan + finger guards.

[nexus]

we need like 40watts+ for MPC7457/7455

[Cego]

Has anybody tried to run PPC applications/games on a PAL screen?
On AMP2, when i select PAL as output screen, i'll get a corrupt image on my 15khz monitor. The same with Heretic2, when i switch to Software Renderer/PAL LoRes.

Back in the days i used to watch VCDs on my PAL monitor while doing WB/Webbrowsing/etc. on my Voodoo. Heretic2 used to work too. Now i dont know if this is Sonnet related or P96, because back in the day i had CGX v4 running (GRex 1200).

I played around with the different variables in PVS, but nothing seems to work.

Edit: haha i'm asking so many questions, i hope i'm not too intrusive Just trying out all the things i used to do back in the day

[Cego]

btw, i have finally found a satisfying cooling method for my A4000 without the need of cutting any holes into the case. Have a look

The temperature of the G4 is indicated on the left side and the voodoo on the right. Removing the front cover completely lowers the temperature 1-2°C! I think those values are fantastic for such a setup.

[nexus]

add one of these

https://modmymods.com/modmymods-rasp...-mod-0171.html

i plan on water cooling they make many sizes of blocks and also radiators down to 40mm
https://modmymods.com/radiators.html

[nexus]

looking at that a4000d psu lots of room inside to have rads mounted then drill port holes

[Hedeon]

PAL screen = CHIP memory = not supported

[Cego]

is this going to be supported one day? Actually it is partly working already, as you can see in the video:

[ Show youtube player ]

[Hedeon]

The ppc cannot access chip RAM. No Paula, no Denise etc will be officially supported

[grelbfarlk]

If you want a second output you could install an S3 Trio or something, though I haven't actually tried this with the Sonnet.

[Cego]

oh thats bad :-(
i thought that was a nice feature of the p5 ppc cards.

[grelbfarlk]

Well I don't think it's so bad, not to say it "doesn't work ever" more like "not worth the effort of making it work". Some AGA stuff does seem to work, like that hacky version of MiniVMAC seemed to work on AGA when I tried it a year ago. If you want multiple display out like I said try another PCI card, hopefully one without too much VRAM so you don't use up all the address space.

[Wrangler]

Just got my Rapture G4 working and it's just hot hentai! Took me 3 different bridge cards to find one that was reliable , but I got there in the end. Count me in on future faster versions!

Want to say a special thanks to grelbfarlk who put up with me crying like a baby when it was unstable. Cheers mate