[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[Dave]

>I tried plan9 terminal on my Sparc IPC, but it hung after
>having downloaded its kernel(9ss) from tftp server.
>The same kernel runs on SS2 without any stress.
>
>I commented out "case 0x52:" in 9/ss/main.c as told in 
>plan9 ML archive and made a new kernel.  But the new kernel
>also hung at the same place as before.
>
>Are there any patch (or boddle?) that I missed ?
>__
>YAMANASHI Takeshi
>
I currently have a plan9 fileserver and a terminal running
on Sparc IPC boxes.  As far as I can remember there 
was no problems tftp'ing the kernels  that were given
in the distribution.  You may have taken care of this
already, but plan9 for Sparc doesn't support the vga
card that's in most of the IPC's, so you have to 
physically remove the card and plug the monitor into the
black and white output.  Then it should work.

-davek
davek@csh.rit.edu

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[YAMANASHI]

> From: Elliott.Hughes@genedata.com
> > It's encouraging :-) that other people have the same
> > trouble.(Thanks, Andrew)
> 
> Andy doesn't really have a problem. I think the behaviour he's seeing is
> the documented behaviour. It might be unfortunate, but that's not the same!


Excuse me, It's my mistake.  I misread Andy's mail.

Thank you again, Andy and Elliott too,  I can see
another way now.  I will try to remove all SCSI
related codes from 9ss.

My IPC has following numbers:
	Serial#			2112840
	CPU board is labelled	501 1870 020206

It seems somewhat older than Andrew's IPC ?
__
YAMANASHI Takeshi

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[Andrew]

> > Andrew wrote:
> > > I can't try just the onboard bw2, as that seems to be broken (no picture, 
> > > not even with SunOS). 
> > 
> > It's encouraging :-) that other people have the same
> > trouble.(Thanks, Andrew)
> 
> Andy doesn't really have a problem. I think the behaviour he's seeing is
> the documented behaviour. It might be unfortunate, but that's not the same!

I see two things:

a) Plan 9 does not run on my IPC with a cgthree in SBus slot 2.
   This is documented in The Various Ports as "The only frame buffers
   we know work are the bwtwo and cgsix, but we think the cgthree will
   work [...]"
   However there is no explicit "it will not work" and several people
   have reported running an IPC with a cgthree. I would say this is "the
   same trouble" as mentioned above.

b) Nothing runs on my IPC with the onboard bwtwo, or rather I see nothing
   on the screen. My guess is this is a hardware fault (and maybe the
   reason why somebody put a cgthree in there). Unfortunately this means
   I am unable to fix a) by removing the cgthree. Also I doubt this would
   change anything. Maybe it is an old SCSI chip causing trouble, perhaps
   removing all SCSI support from the ss kernel might fix things.


Regarding the use of a serial console in kernels other than the file 
server, the following appeared last year:

> From: David Hogan <dhog@lore.plan9.cs.su.oz.au>
> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 06:12:34 +1000
> Message-Id: <199704080612.4338.out.bagot@plan9.cs.su.oz.au>
[...]
> Speaking of hacks to the ss confinit(), here is a patch to enable the
> use of a serial console on a sparcstation which has a monitor.


I've also tried physically removing all traces of bwtwo in 9/ss/main.c and 
9/ss/screen.c with exactly the same result. The kernel is loaded and then 
the machine dies and I have to toggle the power switch to get any kind of 
reaction.

In confinit() I currently have

  case 0x52: /* IPC */
    conf.monitor = 1;
    fbslot = 2;
    strcpy(fbstr, "cgthree");
    break;
  case 0x54: /* SLC */

with exactly the same behaviour as any other combination I've tried.


I don't know if this information will be of any use, but my IPC is
Serial# 2125392, the CPU board is labeled 501 1974 010233. Maybe there is 
some kind of works/doesn't work pattern. The Sun hardware reference lists 
several 501-xxxx variants of the IPC.

Andrew.

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[Dave]

>What "vga" card???
Pardon my erronious terminology.  The non b/w monitor output,
whatever it is.

>My IPC has a cg3 card installed and shows the same symptoms (tftp 
>download, then hangs - not even Stop-A works). I tried hardcoding the 
>kernel for the cg3 which made no difference, the same happens with a 
>terminal attached to the serial port (keyboard disconnected, with or 
>without cg3 removed).
The only kernel that works with the serial port (correct me if I'm 
wrong) is the one for the fileserver (9ssfs), and then it _only_ works 
through the serial port.

>I can't try just the onboard bw2, as that seems to be broken (no picture, 
>not even with SunOS). I hope it might just be a fuse, but I've never got 
>round to looking at it so far. Same goes for the boot problem - I would 
>like to find out just how far the system gets... (my guess is it stops 
>somewhere before the graphics card stuff)
Then you might have a problem, becuase the only way I could get plan9
to pop up was through the on board b/w card.

-davek

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[Elliott.Hughes]

> Andrew wrote:
> > I can't try just the onboard bw2, as that seems to be broken (no picture, 
> > not even with SunOS). 
> 
> It's encouraging :-) that other people have the same
> trouble.(Thanks, Andrew)

Andy doesn't really have a problem. I think the behaviour he's seeing is
the documented behaviour. It might be unfortunate, but that's not the same!

> My IPC has only onboard bwtwo at SBUS slot 3, and hangs.
> 
> But there IS one IPC at least on which plan9
> terminal runs. (Thank, davek)

There are more than one. As far as I know, it's the case that -- as they
say -- multiple frame-buffers aren't supported, but falling back to the
on-board frame-buffer works fine.

There's something in the documentation about trouble with the SCSI in
really old Suns, so I suppose it's possible that there are other minor
hardware differences.

-- 
http://users.ch.genedata.com/~enh/

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[YAMANASHI]

Andrew wrote:
> I can't try just the onboard bw2, as that seems to be broken (no picture, 
> not even with SunOS). 

It's encouraging :-) that other people have the same
trouble.(Thanks, Andrew)
My IPC has only onboard bwtwo at SBUS slot 3, and hangs.

But there IS one IPC at least on which plan9
terminal runs. (Thank, davek)

Could there be any revision dependent magic in IPC ?
__
YAMANASHI Takeshi

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[Andrew]

> Date:          Sun, 26 Apr 1998 11:35:00 -0400
> From:          Dave M Klint <davek@csh.rit.edu>
> 
> >I tried plan9 terminal on my Sparc IPC, but it hung after
> >having downloaded its kernel(9ss) from tftp server.
> >The same kernel runs on SS2 without any stress.
[...]
> You may have taken care of this
> already, but plan9 for Sparc doesn't support the vga
> card that's in most of the IPC's, so you have to 
> physically remove the card and plug the monitor into the
> black and white output.  Then it should work.

What "vga" card???

My IPC has a cg3 card installed and shows the same symptoms (tftp 
download, then hangs - not even Stop-A works). I tried hardcoding the 
kernel for the cg3 which made no difference, the same happens with a 
terminal attached to the serial port (keyboard disconnected, with or 
without cg3 removed).

I can't try just the onboard bw2, as that seems to be broken (no picture, 
not even with SunOS). I hope it might just be a fuse, but I've never got 
round to looking at it so far. Same goes for the boot problem - I would 
like to find out just how far the system gets... (my guess is it stops 
somewhere before the graphics card stuff)

Andrew.

[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[YAMANASHI]

I tried plan9 terminal on my Sparc IPC, but it hung after
having downloaded its kernel(9ss) from tftp server.
The same kernel runs on SS2 without any stress.

I commented out "case 0x52:" in 9/ss/main.c as told in 
plan9 ML archive and made a new kernel.  But the new kernel
also hung at the same place as before.

Are there any patch (or boddle?) that I missed ?
__
YAMANASHI Takeshi