[9fans] plan9 on Sparc IPC ?

[Andrew Lynch lynch@ccigate.cci.de]

> > 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.