[9fans] Display problem

[9fans] Display problem

[Wynand Winterbach]

First a bit of useless history (may be skipped):

Originally I heard about Plan 9 in a CS lecture at uni.
The lecturer was raving about how cool it was, but that
it wasn't "object oriented" etc. In my ignorance I dismissed
it (what a stupid mistake).

A while ago I read Eric Raymond's "The Art of Unix Programming",
and I read about Plan 9, but he spoke about it as if it was
more or less dead.

Then the other day I stumbled across it on the Net, and started
reading more. The more I read, the more excited I got.

I have to tag down to my local cyber cafe for internet access,
since I'm a poor student, and net access is comparatively
expensive in South Africa. However, I was adamant that Plan 9
must be the coolest thing since sliced bread, and I blew a
few bucks to download the distro.

----

Greatly excited, I installed it, and the installation went
well. After that is where things however went awry...

When I boot up, everything goes well until it starts up Rio.

It prints 3 lines (where pc differs for each):
fifo stat 0 scrio dc000000 scr 80304C74 pc 80171E9C
fifo stat 0 scrio dc000000 scr 80304C74 pc 80171E9C
fifo stat 0 scrio dc000000 scr 80304C74 pc 80171E9C

then it prints character by character (SLOWLY):
dossrc: serving #s/dos

After this it continues in its slow char by char mode, and prints the
previous line (the one starting with fifo).

I assume this line is a debug line, and that pc is the program
counter?

Anyhow, nothing happens after that :(

I have a classic Athlon, a Via KX 133 (I think) motherboard, which
uses the 82C686 IDE chipset, and an Nvidia TNT 2 - according to the
Wiki, this setup should work flawlessly. I tried to replace the TNT 2
with an old ATI board (I don't know which one it is. A Rage board I
think) - this allowed me at least to see a highly corrupted version of
the window manager, but it was pretty useless.

I'm really disappointed, since this OS seems so cool.  If anyone has
any short (less than 160 characters) suggestions, please send them to
0824576827@voda.co.za, which will deliver a text message to my mobile
phone :).

Thanks in advance.

--

Wynand Winterbach
wynand@dip.sun.ac.za

---------------------------------------------------------------------

DISCLAIMER     DISCLAIMER     DISCLAIMER     DISCLAIMER    DISCLAIMER

Anything said  within  this  e-mail  is  solely the opinion of Wynand
Winterbach.   No  orginisation   with  which   Wynand  Winterbach  is
affiliated  or   associated  in  any   way  whatsoever  may  be  held
responsible  in  any  way  for  anything  said,  implied or otherwise
insinuated in this e-mail. Id est, hold your legal horses!

---------------------------------------------------------------------

    COMMERCIALISM RANT   COMMERCIALISM RANT   COMMERCIALISM RANT

Consumerism = bad. Why? Comsumers are meant *only* to consume.
What can I do!?
Go the Open Source way:

1. General info
  http://www.libresociety.org
  http://www.gnu.org

2. Music, Movies, and other media
  http://www.locarecords.com
  http://creativecommons.org
  http://www.free-music.org

3. Software
  http://www.gnu.org
  http://www.linux.org
  http://www.debian.org

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] Display problem

[Russ Cox]

There is something wrong with the video acceleration for your card.
Put

echo hwaccel off >/dev/vgactl

in your profile before you start rio, or in termrc right after running aux/vga.

This will turn off hardware acceleration.
It will be slow, but not nearly as slow as
what you're seeing now!

Russ

Re: [9fans] Display problem

[boyd, rounin]

back to a bit of history:  you could see write(fd, &c, 1) on the blit
'cos it was all packaged up in a packet, with CRC, and multiplexed
down at 19.2k baud iirc.

running things _slowly_ often displays weird bugs, that you
would not necessarily see.

Re: [9fans] Display problem

[Thomas Miller]

Wynand Winterbach <wynand@dip.sun.ac.za> wrote:

> When I boot up, everything goes well until it starts up Rio.
>
> It prints 3 lines (where pc differs for each):
> fifo stat 0 scrio dc000000 scr 80304C74 pc 80171E9C
> fifo stat 0 scrio dc000000 scr 80304C74 pc 80171E9C
> fifo stat 0 scrio dc000000 scr 80304C74 pc 80171E9C
>
> then it prints character by character (SLOWLY):
> dossrc: serving #s/dos
>
> After this it continues in its slow char by char mode, and prints the
> previous line (the one starting with fifo).
>
> I assume this line is a debug line, and that pc is the program
> counter?
>
> Anyhow, nothing happens after that :(
>
> I have a classic Athlon, a Via KX 133 (I think) motherboard, which
> uses the 82C686 IDE chipset, and an Nvidia TNT 2 - according to the
> Wiki, this setup should work flawlessly. I tried to replace the TNT 2
> with an old ATI board (I don't know which one it is. A Rage board I
> think) - this allowed me at least to see a highly corrupted version of
> the window manager, but it was pretty useless.
>
> I'm really disappointed, since this OS seems so cool.

Hi,

I had this same problem last month with apparently
the same or similar video card.

The problem goes away when I recompile *both* kernel
and userland with the latest sources.  Recompiling
the kernel alone, even from latest sources, is
insufficient to resolve the problem here.  I confirmed
this yesterday by making a fresh install from
a fresh distribution iso downloaded yesterday.  I
still had to recompile both kernel and userland.

Here is the google archive to the 9fans discussion
last month (sorry about the long line length :-):

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;th=68e8e91fed094a7c&amp;seekm=407F31CF.nail9O11TLQU%40insolvencyhelp.org&amp;rnum=2

I still do not understand the cause of the problem
and why it seems necessary to recompile both the
kernel and userland.  I'm glad, however, that the
recompilation fixes the problem.

I am running kfs with 9pcdisk.  According to 'X
--configure' running with XFree86 Version 4.4.0
under NetBSD-current i386, my video card is
"nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/
Model 64 Pro]."

HTH,

Tom

Re: [9fans] Display problem

[Thomas Miller]

"Thomas Miller" <tom@insolvencyhelp.org> wrote:

> I am running kfs with 9pcdisk.  According to 'X
> --configure' running with XFree86 Version 4.4.0
> under NetBSD-current i386, my video card is
> "nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2 Model 64/
> Model 64 Pro]."

-configure

only one `-'