I'd like to address both of you guys...
---
Alex,
Personally, I love the fact that we have more people committed to
helping the project. I have a 1400 with the Sonnet G3 upgrade and have
wanted to contribute, but I haven't had the time, nor the expertise, nor
the documentation access to do it. Any information you find can only
help, because there are many things that still remain a mystery about
how the systems work under the hood, especially in the area of sound.
So far so good!
---
Tobias,
Your work has been admirable, and as Alex said he didn't mean to
criticize or steal your thunder. Your patches have made Linux a viable
avenue for me on my trusty 1400, and for that I am grateful. Surely, you
cannot deny the benefit of having someone else check some of your math?
If it's correct (which I have no doubt of), you feel double vindicated,
and if a small part is wrong, or Alex finds something you didn't have
the resources to fill in, you benefit from more correct information.
Don't feel discouraged; feel glad that others have joined the cause
after all these years. When there's not a lot of information available
on something like the old PowerBooks, having more people with the skills
to search out the missing information can only benefit.
We all admire the work you've poured in so far -- keep it up!
--Guy
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Alex Kenis
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:55 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Nubus-pmac-users] Hello Tobias...
Hello Tobias... I was hoping that you would jump in here. I would be
thrilled to have whatever info you could offer on the powerbook. I
didn't mean any offence by my posts, I just wanted to figure out what
changes had been made.... you are right: what is in the kernel is
correct. i just wanted to cross-check the kernel code against my actual
machine and then provide some useful information with the specific
pointers that were not in the code in case anyone else wants to jump in
and check them out. I checked out all the addresses in nbpmac_node.h in
the kernel and In the original code that you did not fix up, there seem
to be a few pointers to nothing for sound and floppy left over from 7
years ago, followed by /* XXX Where is it? */ with no reference in the
interrupt_info section. Those are what I am trying to help with. You
all know a lot more about this than i do, but I have some time to kill,
so I did a bunch of research.
I am just trying help anyone passing through here wit as much
information as I can to see if i hit on anything new that might be
useful. My primary concerns are getting sound to work and maybe getting
the floppy to work and maybe help with the power-off issue... I have not
looked into the SCSI at all. I re-traced all the I/O in Macsbug, TMON
and Macnosy based on known addresses from 68k-style machines working on
a similar ROM, and then guessed the rest and dissassembled the low
memory addresses to make sure... and indeed confirmed that what is in
the kernel now is correct... I am just looking for a way to get the
other features working.
You are absolutely right that there is only one VIA, and the other is
emulated in the same manner as the RBV virtual VIA2 on other machines.
i know that Apple had problems with that... so I am sure that is part of
the issue. I also know that on some of those old machines, the 68k
emulator was used to switch the status register through the OS since the
powerpc itself could send commands in supervisor mode... it had to
clue-in the 68k emulator to do it, and then execute some instructions to
translate from the 7 interrupt levels of 68k to the single register of
the powerpc... but that is all old Apple stuff that you all already know
and is easily available in Apple's hardware developer notes, as well as
all the low mwmory pointers to hardware addresses from the ROM and very
detailed notes about interrupt handling on the x100 series.
I am also trying to figure out how the kernel polls the ADB/PMU timer
since the countdown is what seemed to keep the machine from shutting off
in MacOS... I have not found it yet, so maybe I am looking for the wrong
thing.
I have run MkLinux... from the first developer release through the
newest revision. I have it installed on a machine right now actually.
You are right... it is buggy, but my floppy and sound "work" and it did
not randomly shut the machine down except when it crashed... which
happened a lot... so I was hoping to pull some code from them and the
m68k people to see if it helps. I even have the MkLinux book if anyone
needs any information from that. The later kernels seem to fix the
powerbook ide timeout problem, but you can't get them online anymore. I
think I am running the last generic kernel-9 version something or other.
My first install I tried an old kernel through the CD drive and had to
deal with hitting a cmnd-pwr NMI every few seconds, so I know what you
are talking about there... BIG pain in the butt!
Anyway, I won't step on anyone's toes since I am no Linux guru, but if
you need it, I am good with old mac hardware, and I have support on my
old machines for Apple's old MPW developer kits, lots of debuggers and
can compile and debug old mac programs, and I am running machines with
about 6 different versions of MacOS classic as well as OSX. I am happy
to help with whatever is needed.
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