Floppy on some UltraAX/UltraAXi boxes

Floppy on some UltraAX/UltraAXi boxes

[Jakub Jelinek]

Hi!

Just to let you know, on some UltraAX/AXi boxes the single floppy drive you
have is unit 1 and not 0 (B: and not A: in DOS terms). To get that working,
you have to use recent kernel (e.g. from CVS), plus it will be accessible
through /dev/fd1 and not /dev/fd0 as you might expect.
If you have a recent kernel, the boot messages will tell you correctly
Floppy drive(s): fd1 is 1.44M
So if that is your case (if your floppy does not work and prtconf -pv shows
you something like:

....
            Node 0x????????
                manual:
                unit:  00000001
                address:  ????????.????????.????????
                device_type: 'block'
                interrupts:  ????????
                reg: ????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????
                name: 'fdthree'
....

(the unit: 1 is important), then upgrade your kernel.
I'll be making kernel RPMS really soon, once some bug is fixed.

Cheers,
    Jakub
___________________________________________________________________
Jakub Jelinek | jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz | http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz
Administrator of SunSITE Czech Republic, MFF, Charles University
___________________________________________________________________
Ultralinux - first 64bit OS to take full power of the UltraSparc
Linux version 2.1.121 on a sparc64 machine (498.80 BogoMips).
___________________________________________________________________

Re: Floppy on some UltraAX/UltraAXi boxes

[Ward Deng]

Jakub,

I also tested on Ultra30 too and UltraPenguin maps the floppy as /dev/fd1
or B: in mtools. I tested with PC style "twisted (pin10-16 crossed)"
cable but the system did not recognized. It will be easier for end user
to figure out if it is /dev/fd0. Probably just simbolically link it
to /dev/fd0.

Just to let you all know that this feature exists on all UltraSPARC
systems I tested including AX/AXi and Sun PCI Ultras (not tested on
SBus based ones).

BTW, I felt Xsun24 slower than I expected on a Creator3D FFB so I
did a Xmark/x11perf test. The result seemed to be ok. Obviously Text 
can be accelerated. Of course, this card is for 3D performance and X11perf
is for 2D only. Here is what I got:

Sun Ultra30 Creator3D, 250MHz UltraSPARC II, 128MB RAM, 4.3GBN UWSCSI
OS: UltraPenguin 1.0.9 with kernel 2.1.125
Xserver: Xsun24
Test Resolution: 1280x1024x24bit
Xmark: 13.00051
Xspeed: 
   Graphics :  203192
       Text :  606097
    Windows :  129866

FYR: SGI Onyx RE-2 with IRIX 5.3 xspeed:
   Graphics :   77300
       Text :  267100
    Windows :   20900
(Of course RE-2 is not for 2D either :-(.)

--ward


> Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 11:41:08 +0200 (MET DST)
> From: Jakub Jelinek <jj@sunsite.ms.mff.cuni.cz>
> To: ultralinux@vger.rutgers.edu
> Subject: Floppy on some UltraAX/UltraAXi boxes
> 
> Hi!
> 
> Just to let you know, on some UltraAX/AXi boxes the single floppy drive you
> have is unit 1 and not 0 (B: and not A: in DOS terms). To get that working,
> you have to use recent kernel (e.g. from CVS), plus it will be accessible
> through /dev/fd1 and not /dev/fd0 as you might expect.
> If you have a recent kernel, the boot messages will tell you correctly
> Floppy drive(s): fd1 is 1.44M
> So if that is your case (if your floppy does not work and prtconf -pv shows
> you something like:
> 
> ....
>             Node 0x????????
>                 manual:
>                 unit:  00000001
>                 address:  ????????.????????.????????
>                 device_type: 'block'
>                 interrupts:  ????????
>                 reg: ????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????.????????
>                 name: 'fdthree'
> ....
> 
> (the unit: 1 is important), then upgrade your kernel.
> I'll be making kernel RPMS really soon, once some bug is fixed.
> 
> Cheers,
>     Jakub
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Jakub Jelinek | jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz | http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz
> Administrator of SunSITE Czech Republic, MFF, Charles University
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Ultralinux - first 64bit OS to take full power of the UltraSparc
> Linux version 2.1.121 on a sparc64 machine (498.80 BogoMips).
> ___________________________________________________________________
> 

Re: Floppy on some UltraAX/UltraAXi boxes

[Jakub Jelinek]

> 
> Jakub,
> 
> I also tested on Ultra30 too and UltraPenguin maps the floppy as /dev/fd1
> or B: in mtools. I tested with PC style "twisted (pin10-16 crossed)"
> cable but the system did not recognized. It will be easier for end user
> to figure out if it is /dev/fd0. Probably just simbolically link it
> to /dev/fd0.
> 
> Just to let you all know that this feature exists on all UltraSPARC
> systems I tested including AX/AXi and Sun PCI Ultras (not tested on
> SBus based ones).

The issue is that on machines where floppy is physically unit 1 and not 0,
the hardware floppy unit swap does not unfortunately work. So, we either can
go and write ugly hacks in generic floppy driver, so that those two will be
software swapped, or we can live with that. And I think the latter does not
hurt that much, especially when the kernel during bootup tells you your
floppy is fd1 or fd0. If you have a PC, you can likewise have a B: floppy
only and not have A:...
> 
> Sun Ultra30 Creator3D, 250MHz UltraSPARC II, 128MB RAM, 4.3GBN UWSCSI
> OS: UltraPenguin 1.0.9 with kernel 2.1.125
> Xserver: Xsun24
> Test Resolution: 1280x1024x24bit
> Xmark: 13.00051
> Xspeed: 
>    Graphics :  203192
>        Text :  606097
>     Windows :  129866

Are these numbers # of objects painted per second or time to paint one in
some fraction of time? Concerning text acceleration, I do my best and don't
know how to make it faster a lot (of course, it can be tuned a little bit).
The only 2D things I'm aware is:
	polygons
	bitblt in the same image overlapping to the right
	multiple plane groups (ie. e.g. 8bit and 24bit windows on the same
			       display)
> 
> FYR: SGI Onyx RE-2 with IRIX 5.3 xspeed:
>    Graphics :   77300
>        Text :  267100
>     Windows :   20900
> (Of course RE-2 is not for 2D either :-(.)

It would be more interesting to see x11perf output on the same box running
Linux XFree86 and Solaris Xsun24, so that we see weak spots in sw
implementation, not hw differences.

Cheers,
    Jakub
___________________________________________________________________
Jakub Jelinek | jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz | http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz
Administrator of SunSITE Czech Republic, MFF, Charles University
___________________________________________________________________
Ultralinux - first 64bit OS to take full power of the UltraSparc
Linux version 2.1.125 on a sparc64 machine (498.80 BogoMips).
___________________________________________________________________

Re: Floppy on some UltraAX/UltraAXi boxes

[Ward Deng]

I think the numbers showed were pretty good for a 3D card in 2D 
benchmarks. Since this Ultra30 has been online for Debian UltraLinux
development use, I will test Solairs FFB driver and UltraLinux
XFree86 driver on an UltraAXi. Probably I will do more testing
with other 3D benchmarks.

I think acceleration of what Jakub did was mainly on 2D operations.
Right?

Actually I was pretty impressed with his work.

--ward

> 
> It would be more interesting to see x11perf output on the same box running
> Linux XFree86 and Solaris Xsun24, so that we see weak spots in sw
> implementation, not hw differences.
> 
> Cheers,
>     Jakub
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Jakub Jelinek | jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz | http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz
> Administrator of SunSITE Czech Republic, MFF, Charles University
> ___________________________________________________________________
> Ultralinux - first 64bit OS to take full power of the UltraSparc
> Linux version 2.1.125 on a sparc64 machine (498.80 BogoMips).
> ___________________________________________________________________
>