Subject: Re: SPARCbook and wscons
To: None <bsieker@rvs.uni-bielefeld.de>
From: Michael <macallan18@earthlink.net>
List: port-sparc
Date: 03/05/2005 10:55:33
--Signature=_Sat__5_Mar_2005_10_55_34_-0500_ZROvYq9IwlGrpn_Q
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello,

> > two questions:
> > 1. Does anyone else here use NetBSD 2.x on a SPARCbook 3GX? I just resurrected mine and dug up some hardware info.
> 
> I have a SPARCbook 3TX, which is exactly the same as the GX, except
> that it has the 170MHz TURBOsparc CPU with 256k L2 Cache and can
> handle up to 256MB RAM. It was a 3GX once, but was upgraded by
> Tadpole. It features the "S3TX" sticker on the front, but the type
> plate at the bottom still says "3GX".
Cool, mine has the stock 110MHz MicroSPARC II without L2 cache and 64MB. Compile times are quite a bit longer than with my other boxes. Any chance to get such an upgrade without going bankrupt? The L2 cache alone would give a nice performance boost I bet.

> > 2. What about wscons? I recently added wscons support to the cgsix driver on sparc64, it should work on sparc32 too but I can't
> > really test it because the only box with SBus slots I have is an Ultra1. Volunteers? 
> 
> I have a SPARCstation 20 (with VSIMM/cgfourteen) and a cgsix sbus
> board (SunGX) lying around that I could test it with.
That's exact;y what I was hoping for :)

> Both machines are running 2.0.1, so if you send some patches I
> might test wscons.
Check out -current if you didn't already do so, build a kernel with wsdisplay* at cgsix?, wskbd* at kbd? and wsmouse* at ms?, and add a line for ttyE0 to /etc/ttys ( or you won't be able to login ) - that's it, in theory. On sparc64 it works pretty well, although there are some problems with the zs driver but sparc32 has its own so I guess it may work - I'm mainly interested in...
- does it compile?
- does wsdisplay and all that attach properly?
- does it produce proper output?
I'm not aware of any 32bit vs. 64bit problems in the code but you never know, so far it's been tested only on sparc64. As a side-effect this would allow you to run XFree86 instead of Xsun - no more 'XRENDER extension missing' and all that nonsense.

> > The reason for question 2 is - I'm playing with the SPARCbook's graphics controller, the documentation from Tadpole is quite
> > sketchy but the holes are filled by XFree86 3.3 so I guess it wouldn't be hard to add acceleration to pnozz*. The obvious way to go
> > would be rasops and wsdisplay but I don't see any wscons support in sparc32 ( well, wscons attachments for keyboard and mouse
> > work on sparc64, more or less, so all that's missing is framebuffer support )
> 
> Would that also mean 24bpp support on pnozz? Or does that already
> work and I just missed it?
Yes and no. The current pnozz driver is just a frame buffer, the only registers it accesses belong to the DAC. Adding support for 24bit wouldn't be hard - since we're driving a panel we don't really have to worry about frequencies and all that, just play with the sequencer a bit. Or we let the firmware do the setup and just use whatever we find ( seems the best way to me, the current code assumes 800x600 in 8bit which is dodgy at best ). But it won't give you acceleration for Xsun24, XFree86 doesn't ave a driver at all ( although porting the one from 3.3 shouldn't be too hard ) so it would also run as a dumb framebuffer.

have fun
Michael

--Signature=_Sat__5_Mar_2005_10_55_34_-0500_ZROvYq9IwlGrpn_Q
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (NetBSD)

iQEVAwUBQinWd8pnzkX8Yg2nAQKw6wf/donTLftc/ocafs01U1Tl5gzaTz8HnNG0
vhQcVu9I6wWKc4wVHm7q24iQddgrPL80XiYYsEh0u5TGVHqCLfIxb/f8PgqE2cYs
RKsYs0cF8XgsFdcE1Y3nbJdZCbR9c3AUdihkMyrxnt/Mc5xmOjORSz7jP/3uARq8
3tnJcSMaSTTtkKYaNaNbacfligrDRz+nITlyh6UcCs/q0H2729229RtXa6UjtI0t
P+abd6zBIFgfmA2s+zIqdrBp6RiTEfcQafHhjsteCdFtj3jqMeKs8NBlP7ndTlWM
3U+tSspkX5LNZtSShekGde+VHYNivho6CcWCvbtRJqiMHi/uAMJl3w==
=3rMY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--Signature=_Sat__5_Mar_2005_10_55_34_-0500_ZROvYq9IwlGrpn_Q--