Direct PCI Access

Direct PCI Access

[Mark Mitchell]

I figured I'd ask if this is possible before I spend a lot of time trying it. 
I have a program called BARR SPOOL that needs to access three things to work.

1. The C:\ and D:\ drive. This works great!
2. An Intel Pro 10/100 PCI NIC. - Untested
3. A proprietary PCI EDSIDIC printer channel adapter. - Untested

From the looks of the documentation the NIC should work but I was
wondering if dosemu will be able to have direct PCI access to the
channel adapter card. Is that possible? I figure if it is then this
should work but I wanted to ask the general population of dosemu users
if they see a problem with doing this first.

By the way, I'm running an already loaded version of DOS 6.2 on a
second hard disk mounted on /dos.

Thanks so much for any help!!!

- Mark

Re: Direct PCI Access

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Mark Mitchell wrote:
> From the looks of the documentation the NIC should work but I was
> wondering if dosemu will be able to have direct PCI access to the
> channel adapter card. Is that possible?
Dosemu can allow you to access the PCI
config space and you can request any
additional ports, but the PCI DMA won't
work, so most likely your NIC will neither.
You should access it via the packet driver
instead.

Re: Direct PCI Access

[Mark Mitchell]

Do all PCI devices use DMA or is that devices specific?
Your right about the packet driver, that should work but if my PCI 
Channel card uses DMA I'm pretty much screwed right?

- Mark

Stas Sergeev wrote:

> Hello.
>
> Mark Mitchell wrote:
>
>> From the looks of the documentation the NIC should work but I was
>> wondering if dosemu will be able to have direct PCI access to the
>> channel adapter card. Is that possible?
>
> Dosemu can allow you to access the PCI
> config space and you can request any
> additional ports, but the PCI DMA won't
> work, so most likely your NIC will neither.
> You should access it via the packet driver
> instead.
>
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Re: Direct PCI Access

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Mark Mitchell wrote:
> Do all PCI devices use DMA or is that devices specific?
This is device specific of course, but
I think most of them do. For example
recently added PCI/VESA driver for dosemu
can drive the PCI/AGP video boards quite
well - they use DMA for 3D acceleration in
most cases, but who cares about 3D accel
under DOS.
Doing
grep DMA /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/eepro100.c
gives you an idea that your NIC really use it.

> Your right about the packet driver, that should work but if my PCI
> Channel card uses DMA I'm pretty much screwed right?
No, the packet driver will work in any case.
Direct access will not, but who cares if the
packet driver does the trick.

Re: Direct PCI Access

[Alain]

>> Your right about the packet driver, that should work but if my PCI
>> Channel card uses DMA I'm pretty much screwed right?
> 
> No, the packet driver will work in any case.
> Direct access will not, but who cares if the
> packet driver does the trick.

Packet driver has a connection with Linux kernel and not with the 
hardware. That is why it will allways work. Just the same as graphic 
will allways work under X, as it completely ignore the real hardware.

But I would like to ask a question: If you are interfacing with a very 
expensive Hardware, why don't you just dedicate a machine exclusively 
for that? A new machine would cost a small fraction of that PCI board 
alone...

Alain

Re: Direct PCI Access

[Mark Mitchell]

Alain wrote:

>>> Your right about the packet driver, that should work but if my PCI
>>> Channel card uses DMA I'm pretty much screwed right?
>>
>>
>> No, the packet driver will work in any case.
>> Direct access will not, but who cares if the
>> packet driver does the trick.
>
>
> Packet driver has a connection with Linux kernel and not with the 
> hardware. That is why it will allways work. Just the same as graphic 
> will allways work under X, as it completely ignore the real hardware.
>
> But I would like to ask a question: If you are interfacing with a very 
> expensive Hardware, why don't you just dedicate a machine exclusively 
> for that? A new machine would cost a small fraction of that PCI board 
> alone...
>
> Alain
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>
We are dedicating a machine to just that purpose but the problem is the 
current dedicated machine runs DOS and nothing else. This limits us to 
how we can spool data and modify forms on the machine.

My idea is to run Linux on a dedicated machine with dosemu running the 
spool sofware inside Linux. This will allow me to access the DOS drive 
from Linux and Windows via the network and SMB. I can then create custom 
jobs and forms without going over to the physical DOS box.

So is the "Packet Driver" a way to connect DOS to the PCI bus or a way 
to connect DOS to a PCI Network card only? Packet sounds kinda 
networkish and may be confusing me.

- Mark

Re: Direct PCI Access

[Alain]

Mark Mitchell escreveu:
> We are dedicating a machine to just that purpose but the problem is the 
> current dedicated machine runs DOS and nothing else. This limits us to 
> how we can spool data and modify forms on the machine.

There are Servers that run in a DOS box and can be accessed by Windows, 
One is from Microsoft, IIRC itÅ› called LANMANAGER

> My idea is to run Linux on a dedicated machine with dosemu running the 
> spool sofware inside Linux. This will allow me to access the DOS drive 
> from Linux and Windows via the network and SMB. I can then create custom 
> jobs and forms without going over to the physical DOS box.
> 
> So is the "Packet Driver" a way to connect DOS to the PCI bus or a way 
> to connect DOS to a PCI Network card only? Packet sounds kinda 
> networkish and may be confusing me.

No, the packet driver in DOSEMU conects to LINUX, not to the harware. 
How Linux itself is be conected to anywhere is completely transparent 
and unknown, could be USB, satelite or whatever.

Alain
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