On 16.07.05, 10:56:14, Michael wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> > It works just fine on my 3TX, I am listening while typing. I get CPU
> > states around 16-17% with mpg123, so this is quite usable on a
> > SparcBook 3TX. I haven't compiled anything with listening, though :)
> 
> So the TurboSPARC is more than twice as fast as the microSPARC II in my
> 3GX - I get about 40% CPU load when playing mp3.

That's not exactly surprising, considering that it has a substantial
L2 cache, where the microSPARC (II) has none.

> 
> Compiling - depends. I used a bigger DMA buffer than most other drivers
> do ( ~128KB ) so it should work ok. I get some distortions when cron
> runs its maintenance scripts ( like a find over all local filesystems )
> or during heavy disk IO.

Using mpg123 buffer option (-b) will probably help, because it
buffers _de_coded audio, unlike most other players, that just buffer
encoded input. So if it is CPU starved for a time, it only has to push
audio data to the device, and not do some more decoding. Has alwasys worked
fine on heavily loaded (albeit fast) systems for me. Have to build mpg123 and
test on the SPARCbook.

> 
> have fun
> Michael

I have tested the SPARCbook kernel from 2005-07-15, and it seems to work,
after a fashion.

PCMCIA appears to work fine, my wlan card (PRISM2.5 chipset) works
fine.

I'm using a cross-compiled snapshot from 2005-07-14 sources, built
on i386/2.0_STABLE

I have some problems with it, however.

- It lacks IPSEC (but GENERIC lacks that, too, I just happen to use it.)
- The system is very unstable, where it was rock-solid running 2.0_STABLE
  . during builds via nfs via WLAN it stops at different places with different
    error codes. Sometimes signal 4, sometimes signal 10, ...
  . during booting, most of the times the ifconfig -l command fails, the only 
    time it did not fail was after a kernel panic, when it had to do fsck during boot.
  . sometimes it kernel-panicks, I haven't been able to copy down the messages,
    something to do with caches ... (Was something in the handling of the TurboSPARC
    CPU changed after 2.0? If it was mainly tested on a 3GX, the main difference
    to my 3TX is the microSPARC-II vs. TurboSPARC CPU.)
- I can't seem to get the Xserver to run, it aborts with a bus error before opening
  the display.

Is any particular snapshot on releng.netbsd.org recommended for
use with these kernels?


Anyway, great work so far, keep it up!

Regards,
Bernd

-- 
Bernd Sieker

NetBSD: it's not free beer, but it's free