On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 09:44:13AM -0000, chris%dokein.co.uk@localhost wrote: > Hi Vince, > > > If you own a CATS board please visit > > http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/EB110ATX/resources.html and read the > > Product Change Notification. > > Could this be the cause of the long reported bug: > http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=10502 > which many people had put down to broken hardware... > This is more likely to be related to the footbridge 21285 revision 3(AA) errata where bus mastered DMA fifos can get jammed. More modern boards have revision 4(AB) bridges which have this issue fixed. But perhaps thsi will help I cant say for sure. > I'll change the jumpers and see if I can repro the issue. > Thanks, do let me know I will add this to the FAQ > Is it worth adding a check for these jumpers being wrong to the kernel > boot up code, so it's visible to users running cats boxen headless? (is > it easy to detect in software?) > ABLE has clear indications if there's an issue (5 lines of text with stars :-) its somewhat difficult to detect this post startup other than the PCI SDRAM BAR will not work properly. Historically with AA revision footbridges and all existing Operating systems the issue didn't bite hard so wasn't noticed. > > Recently there has been some discussion about ABLE our next generation > > boot loader. I would just like to make clear that there is *no* GPL > > code in ABLE and only minimal BSD code (headers for the ffs > > filesystem). ABLE is an underived original work not based on any other > > code base. Sorry to have to stress that but otherwise someone might > > get the wrong idea. > > > > It has been mentioned ABLE is more "Linux" in its approach. I hope > > this isn't the general perception! ABLE is intended to be its own > > interface, it is a boot loader not an OS after all. Perhaps this idea > > has come about because of the naming of partition aliases? they are > > just names, usually the (hd0) aliases would be used. If a (wd0a) type > > set of names would be useful please let me know and I will look at > > including that naming scheme in addition. > > I suspect that it is the perception due to the change from wdxx to hdx. > Possibly the issues with earlier ABLE not working well with NetBSD as > well. > Well hopefully these issues have gone away, I will consider a way to have a config option to add BSD style aliases so you will all feel at home ;-) > > I would encourage all users to upgrade to ABLE 1.95 to gain access to > > the new features it offers, it is also being actively maintained > > unlike cyclone which is beginning to show its age. > > Certainly I've been using 1.93 beta firmware on my -current cats box, it's > fixed most of the issues I've had with earlier ABLE builds. I'll update > my -current cats box this evening. If people want to try ELF kernels they > should find the options in the GENERIC kernel to build ELF kernels. You should find the ELF loading improved, even loads debug segments now > > Long term I'd like to move to ELF kernels, as it would avoid the issues > with converting from ELF to a.out. > As soon as the EB7500ATX port is completed tehre are several other new boards which might be good targets for NetBSD. -- Regards Vincent
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