Subject: Re: TODO list
To: Reinoud Zandijk <imago@kabel065011.kabel.utwente.nl>
From: Ben Harris <bjh21@netbsd.org>
List: port-arm32
Date: 07/25/2000 13:57:57
On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Reinoud Zandijk wrote:

> Hi Ben,
> 
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Ben Harris wrote:
> > In article <Pine.NEB.4.21.0007242158060.5075-100000@rangerover.kasbah> you write:
> > >My idea was
> > >f.e. to look if its posible to use the NetBSD/arm26 bootloader and modify 
> > >it so it will load NetBSD/arm32 on the RiscPC too.
> > 
> > _Please_ don't do this!  BBBB is a mess, and what I'd like is for someone to
> > sort things out to build RISC OS executables linked against libsa so we can 
> > use the same code as the rest of the world.  That _would_ be worth sharing  
> > between the ports.
> 
> Oeps... hehe... well euuhmm... Mark Brinicombe said the same thing of is
> initarm() implementation for riscos ... i found your initarm() a lot more
> clear ! ... thats what got me thinking about it...

My kernel assumes a sane environment when it starts, which means that all
the hairiness is in BBBB.  BBBB is the bit that handles getting the kernel
into contiguous physical memory, but I'd _really_ prefer it written in C
so it can use libsa to load the kernel off an FFS disc and useful stuff
like that.


[ea and eb]
> I compiled in the mbuf alignment patch in the arm32 if_ea.c and if_eb.c
> and they compile. I'm currently doing speed tests to see if there is a
> significant performance gain/lossage but i dont think so really.

Ah.  I needed the patch because without it the NFS_BOOT_DHCP stuff simply
didn't work.  Does it work on arm32 without the mbuf alignment fixed?  
This may be a consequence of my compiler changes.

> just ran the test... no noticable change ... is it for your bcopy() is
> only word aligned?

My bcopy is the arm32 one (with the calling convention changed to
APCS-26).

> I get a 300 kb/sec :( for FTP and thats quite bad ... dunno why ... i'm
> gonna check that out...

The ea driver copies every packet into a temporary buffer first, which is
likely to be a serious speed lose.  I take it your chip doesn't drop
packets like mine does then?

-- 
Ben Harris                                                   <bjh21@netbsd.org>
Portmaster, NetBSD/arm26               <URL:http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/arm26/>