status of Q950

[Riccardo-2]

Hi,

I installed vmlinuz-2.6.29-2 in the build of October 3rd on my Q950.

It seems that everything is fine. That means no new problem. I compiled
some of my code on it for several hours using an external hard disk; it
works. THus both the internal and the external SCSI bus work. Ethernet
seems to work and local keyboard too, as well as the console.

I did not try X11, I had trouble last time and I run apt-get update and
found no packages to update.
Which apt-sources should I use? Or were there in 3 Months absolutely no
updates?


Of course all standard Q950 problems remain:
- system clock not detected and and also the clock doesn't get
inherited from the mac any way
- hardware shutdown and reboot do not work. This is inconvenient, since
I use now the machine essentially headless over the ethernet and being
unable to reboot is a nuisance

IN nay case thanks for keeping up the good work! My next tests will be
on the IIfx.

Apparently, the only two 68k I have left in active usage... are the two
most troublesome machines around!

RIccardo

[Finn Thain]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Riccardo wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I installed vmlinuz-2.6.29-2 in the build of October 3rd on my Q950.
>
> It seems that everything is fine. That means no new problem. I compiled
> some of my code on it for several hours using an external hard disk; it
> works. THus both the internal and the external SCSI bus work. Ethernet
> seems to work and local keyboard too, as well as the console.
>
> I did not try X11, I had trouble last time

It worked for me using etch-m68k (and someone else reported success)
though there is no mode switching since the kernel fb driver doesn't
support it. You probably need to configure xorg for the same mode that the
video card boots up in.

> and I run apt-get update and found no packages to update. Which
> apt-sources should I use? Or were there in 3 Months absolutely no
> updates?

I'll let the Debian guys answer that one.

> Of course all standard Q950 problems remain:
> - system clock not detected and and also the clock doesn't get inherited from
> the mac any way
> - hardware shutdown and reboot do not work. This is inconvenient, since I use
> now the machine essentially headless over the ethernet and being unable to
> reboot is a nuisance

It's the same in the mainline kernel. If I knew how the hardware worked,
and if I had time to finish with other (more important) bugs, then I might
take a look at it. Until then, I've added your bug reports to the bug
tracker, http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=11666&atid=111666

>
> IN nay case thanks for keeping up the good work! My next tests will be
> on the IIfx.

I'd be interested to hear how it runs on that machine. I don't have one so
I've never been able to test it.

Finn

>
> Apparently, the only two 68k I have left in active usage... are the two
> most troublesome machines around!
>
>
> RIccardo


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[Stephen R Marenka]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 07:41:31PM +0200, Riccardo wrote:

> Which apt-sources should I use? Or were there in 3 Months absolutely no
> updates?

I'm pretty sure sid is in complete dependency hell and probably won't be
going anywhere until gcc-4.4 and eglibc, at least, are fully functional.

Stephen

--
Stephen R. Marenka     If life's not fun, you're not doing it right!
<stephen@...>


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[Riccardo-2]

Hi,

>>
>> IN nay case thanks for keeping up the good work! My next tests will be
>> on the IIfx.
>
> I'd be interested to hear how it runs on that machine. I don't have
> one so
> I've never been able to test it.

It boots; albeit quite slowly. A prompt comes up!

As soon as I try to telnet into the machine, it dies, the ethernet
driver gives up.

trigger_send() called with the transmitter busy.

I am pretty sure I had this problems months ago and thus gave
temporarily the IIfx up. But I couldn't find my old mail.


Riccardo


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[Brad Boyer]

On Wed, Oct 07, 2009 at 10:51:12PM +0200, Riccardo wrote:
> >>IN nay case thanks for keeping up the good work! My next tests will be
> >>on the IIfx.
> >
> >I'd be interested to hear how it runs on that machine. I don't have
> >one so
> >I've never been able to test it.
>
> It boots; albeit quite slowly. A prompt comes up!

The SCSI performance on the IIfx is terrible at the moment since it's
using PIO mode only (1 byte per transfer). We never got the DMA working,
and the PDMA code doesn't work either. If we get the DMA working we
should be able to max out any single disk from the time period, but I
had trouble with it when I tried. I could get the DMA engine started
up and it would transfer data, but I couldn't get the end of transfer
interrupts working. That made it less than useful. Apple ran this chip
in PDMA mode in regular MacOS and supposedly used the real DMA in A/UX.
The PDMA mode works a little different on the IIfx compared to other
macs with an NCR5380 chip.

> As soon as I try to telnet into the machine, it dies, the ethernet
> driver gives up.
>
> trigger_send() called with the transmitter busy.
>
> I am pretty sure I had this problems months ago and thus gave
> temporarily the IIfx up. But I couldn't find my old mail.

What type of ethernet card are you using? I believe there was a bug
in the 8390 driver that got fixed. A newer kernel may work.

I have a IIfx and did some of the initial work along with JMT to get
it running, but it's not in such great shape now. It was pretty
unreliable the last time I had it running.

        Brad Boyer
        flar@...


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[Finn Thain]

On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Riccardo wrote:

> Hi,
>
> > >
> > > IN nay case thanks for keeping up the good work! My next tests will
> > > be on the IIfx.
> >
> > I'd be interested to hear how it runs on that machine. I don't have
> > one so I've never been able to test it.
>
> It boots; albeit quite slowly. A prompt comes up!
>
> As soon as I try to telnet into the machine, it dies, the ethernet
> driver gives up.
>
> trigger_send() called with the transmitter busy.
>
> I am pretty sure I had this problems months ago and thus gave
> temporarily the IIfx up. But I couldn't find my old mail.

Your email is archived in the list archives, and it does appear to be the
same bug. I gather that you tested vmlinuz-2.6.29-1-11 at the time.

I don't know which version you are using at present, but the latest deb is
probably this one (?)
http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian/pool-m68k/main/l/linux-2.6/linux-image-2.6.29-2-mac_2.6.29-5_m68k.deb 
which is dated 19th May, so it seems to be older than the bug fix.

2.6.30 appears to have the necessary patches. If you want to test the
current mainline kernel, I can build one for you.

Finn

>
>
> Riccardo
>
>


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[Riccardo-2]

Hi,

> Your email is archived in the list archives, and it does appear to be  
> the
> same bug. I gather that you tested vmlinuz-2.6.29-1-11 at the time.
>
> I don't know which version you are using at present, but the latest  
> deb is
> probably this one (?)
> http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian/pool-m68k/main/l/linux-2.6/linux- 
> image-2.6.29-2-mac_2.6.29-5_m68k.deb
> which is dated 19th May, so it seems to be older than the bug fix.
>
> 2.6.30 appears to have the necessary patches. If you want to test the
> current mainline kernel, I can build one for you.

I'm running this version:
http://people.debian.org/~smarenka/d-i/m68k/images/daily/kernels/

downloaded the 3rd of may. It is the same  version I used on the Q950.
  The file seemed a new build, but still from the 2.6.29 series.

Is there another up-to date repository? Or were the patches backported  
perhaps?

Thank you,

   Riccardo


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[Finn Thain]

On Fri, 9 Oct 2009, Riccardo wrote:

> Hi,
>
> > Your email is archived in the list archives, and it does appear to be
> > the same bug. I gather that you tested vmlinuz-2.6.29-1-11 at the
> > time.
> >
> > I don't know which version you are using at present, but the latest
> > deb is probably this one (?)
> > http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian/pool-m68k/main/l/linux-2.6/linux-image-2.6.29-2-mac_2.6.29-5_m68k.deb 
> > which is dated 19th May, so it seems to be older than the bug fix.
> >
> > 2.6.30 appears to have the necessary patches. If you want to test the
> > current mainline kernel, I can build one for you.
>
> I'm running this version:
> http://people.debian.org/~smarenka/d-i/m68k/images/daily/kernels/
>
> downloaded the 3rd of may. It is the same version I used on the Q950.
> The file seemed a new build, but still from the 2.6.29 series.
>
> Is there another up-to date repository?

Not that I know of.

> Or were the patches backported perhaps?

It would appear not.

I've built the latest mainline kernel with gcc-4.4.1 and uploaded them
at http://www.telegraphics.com.au/~fthain/linux-2.6.31/

That should fix the ethernet problem, but mac_scsi viability is anyone's
guess. In the past it failed in different ways on the machines that I
tested, but hopefully it will work on your IIfx.

Finn

>
> Thank you,
>
>  Riccardo
>
>
>


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