Subject: help! Working falcon kernel would be nice...
To: None <leo@ahwau.ahold.nl>
From: None <D.L.Hastings@exeter.ac.uk>
List: port-atari
Date: 06/16/1996 19:39:29
>> The main problem seems to be with the scsi driver somewhere - I keep
>> getting weird "some bytes stuck in fifo" and "dma-ready = 2" errors
>> then the system hangs irretrievably. In addition to this it now
> This is _bad_. If I am right, you are the fourth one complaining about
> this particular problem... I have the feeling that it is somehow related
> to the fact that DMA interrupts are now enabled for the falcon. I thought

Ah... at least there is an explanation. ;)

> the tests Markus performed on his falcon were thorough enough to drop this
> savely into the release... I don't know if you already have something working
> right now (It's 2 weeks later now), but what I can do is compile a falcon

Having had several looong sessions with fsck I managed to get the 1.1 
kernel to boot into single-user mode and reinstall the base/comp sets
from the 1.1 distribution. So I have managed to roughly get back to where
I was with BOOTFPE 1.1 kernel.

> kernel without DMA interrupts enabled and let you try it - drop me a mail
> about it if you want to. 

I'd be happy to try the kernel. :) Would be nice if I could compile my
own but space is too tight on my system and it would probably take all night
anyway. :/

> This problem is also serious because it might
> cause filesystem corruption (at least Dirk reported this) :-(

It did - but only indirectly. When the system inevitably hung there was no
way to sync discs and shutdown - fsck reported all sorts of errors on 
rebooting. At once point every single program started on startup core
dumped... :/

> There is something strange about this problem. I seems to happen on _some_
> falcons with _some_ drives. Does somebody know if there are hardware patches
> in this area for the falcon?

Might be worth mentioning that mine is an _old_ Falcon (TOS 4.01) so maybe
an early motherboard revision too?

> I think however that the most important thing is getting the (to be) 1.2
> kernel to work solidly on your falcon.

I think this is pretty important too. :)

*  {{{ Dan }}}  *  Atari Falcon030 4Mb RAM 65Mb IDE 340Mb SCSI   *
*    NetBSD-1.1-Atari installed - a _real_ unix environment!     *
*    Looking for a Falcon sample editor? Get SuperSam v1.08!     *