[9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[kokamoto]

It`s possible to install the Plan 9 distribution onto Asus P5Q-Pro
motherboard with two SATA HDD drive and a SATA DVD-RAM/±R/±RWdrive with
4 GB memory.

The Plan 9 distribution CDROM assumes the CDROM is connected to D:
drive, which is the problem here.  Then, connect the drives as
SATA1=SATA HDD in my case 500GB Hitachi SATA drive)
SATA2= SATA DVD-RAM/±R/±RW Sdrive
SATA3= SATA HDD in my case the same as SATA1.

First, install the Plan 9 system from the distribution CDROM using
IDE Compatible mode.   You may see some proble, such as some of the venti 
parameters are not properly set (mem, bcmem, icmem), so I recommend
you to install fossil only first, and then setup venti later.

In my case fossil.conf includes a line of
fsys main config /dev/sdC0/fossil
and venti.conf does two lines of
isect /dev/sdC0/isect
arenas /dev/sdD1/arenas0.

Next, you should change the above lines as
fsys main config /dev/sdE0/fossil
and
isect /dev/sdE0/isect
arenas /dev/sdE2/arenas0.

of couse you should change the relevant lines in you plan9.ini file.

Then, exit the Plan 9 system, and return to the BIOS setting mode.
Here, you should change disk configurations to use AHCI mode.
this will lead you to SATA mode setupped Plan 9 system.

Lastly, I'm not using bloom because it's not fit my system.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[kokamoto]

> It`s possible to install the Plan 9 distribution onto Asus P5Q-Pro
> motherboard with two SATA HDD drive and a SATA DVD-RAM/±R/±RWdrive with
> 4 GB memory.

reports of Asus P5Q-Pro + ahci (fossil+venti+auth+cpu server) after above time

(1) It looks like to be able to read SATA CDROM, such that we can see directories, files at
the top level of /n/cdrom.   However, it fails to read the files under deeper levels,
say such as /n/cdrom/sys/src/9/pc/pc.  In short we cannot read cdrom correctly.

(2) vesa vga driver doen't work for say 1280x1024x16 or x 32 vgasize ( this machine's
vga card is ATI Radeon HD 4350(1002/954f).   When I set it as 1280x1024x16, I see two
small windows at the upper part of the display, and the lower part is jamed.   
For 1280x1024x32, I see four small windows at the upper 1/4 part etc...

(3) for another older terminal machine with Celeron CPU with GeForce2 MX400 (10de/0110), 
I can set the display only for 1024x768x8.  This is not vesamode, but nvidia driver.
Interestingly, I can use 1024x768x32 on this machine, when I booted from the distribution
CDROM (03/03/2010), which uses 9pccd.

For (2), the CDROM booted system doesn't run as 1280x1024x16 or x32 mode.

>From the above observation, I suspect that the vga driver does read only the one byte for
each pixel.   If I use 32 bit depth, the one pixel have 4 bytes, and then four windows
are shown.   Each window is the reasult of each byte from the four bytes.   
Is my guess is wrong?

For nvidia driver, I don't have any idea what's is going.   Is the 9pccd.gz 
of the booting CDROM is differnt from the 9pccd.gz compiled from the source tree?

Kenji

Re: [9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[erik quanstrom]

> (1) It looks like to be able to read SATA CDROM, such that we can see directories, files at
> the top level of /n/cdrom.   However, it fails to read the files under deeper levels,
> say such as /n/cdrom/sys/src/9/pc/pc.  In short we cannot read cdrom correctly.

if you want to try the new sata stuff, there's prebuilt kernels and
source at ftp://ftp.quanstro.net/other.

- erik

Re: [9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[kokamoto]

> if you want to try the new sata stuff, there's prebuilt kernels and
> source at ftp://ftp.quanstro.net/other.

I'd like to have it in sources, because every new commer can try it first.
I looked your new sources like a name of new-E820Atom....   Unfortunately
it requires lots of changes to the structure of kernel device tree.
Can't you rewrite them not dremand, say such as /sys/include/fits.h(?, sorry
I don't re,member it well), just more harmony with the present style of
kernel sources?

Kenji

Re: [9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[erik quanstrom]

On Wed Mar 17 11:17:05 EDT 2010, kokamoto@hera.eonet.ne.jp wrote:
> I looked your new sources like a name of new-E820Atom....   Unfortunately
> it requires lots of changes to the structure of kernel device tree.
> Can't you rewrite them not dremand, say such as /sys/include/fits.h(?, sorry
> I don't re,member it well), just more harmony with the present style of
> kernel sources?

i don't believe i've changed the structure of anything.
and of course there's no reason you need to use the atom
stuff at all.  i just thought it might help with your problem.

fis.h is required because all the sata drivers need to format
fises and that code is centralized in libfis.  a fis is the sata
analogue to the ide register block.  now that there are
multiple sata drivers (at least in atom), it makes sense.
the alternative to the library is to copy the same code around
here and there.  that was the original approach, but it
resulted in too many bugs.

- erik

Re: [9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[EBo]

erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> said:

> > (1) It looks like to be able to read SATA CDROM, such that we
> > can see directories, files at the top level of /n/cdrom.
> > However, it fails to read the files under deeper levels,
> > say such as /n/cdrom/sys/src/9/pc/pc.  In short we cannot read
> > cdrom correctly.
>
> if you want to try the new sata stuff, there's prebuilt kernels and
> source at ftp://ftp.quanstro.net/other.

There appears to be over 30 different downloads there.  Is there any metadata
(or README) detailing any of these?  The *atom* are most likely for the atom
processors, but I'm not sure about the others.

Of the 4 systems I have tried to install plan9 onto, the only one I was able
to get installed was a very old dual PIII-500, and even that is still not
completely functional.

  EBo --

Re: [9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[kokamoto]

> (1) It looks like to be able to read SATA CDROM, such that we can see directories, files at
> the top level of /n/cdrom.   However, it fails to read the files under deeper levels,
> say such as /n/cdrom/sys/src/9/pc/pc.  In short we cannot read cdrom correctly.

This was my fault to compile cpuf kernel for my use.
Now, SATA driver can read CDROM correct.  Sorry make noise.

> (3) for another older terminal machine with Celeron CPU with GeForce2 MX400 (10de/0110),
> I can set the display only for 1024x768x8.  This is not vesamode, but nvidia driver.

This was also solved, I don't know what I did properly.
Only one thing I missunderstood is that in nvidia driver, I cannot change diskplay resolution
on the fly.

> (2) vesa vga driver doen't work for say 1280x1024x16 or x 32 vgasize ( this machine's
> vga card is ATI Radeon HD 4350(1002/954f).  the upper 1/4 part etc...

This is still problem.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] install onto P5Q-Pro SATA drives

[erik quanstrom]

> > (2) vesa vga driver doen't work for say 1280x1024x16 or x 32 vgasize ( this machine's
> > vga card is ATI Radeon HD 4350(1002/954f).  the upper 1/4 part etc...
>
> This is still problem.

there may be some magic overflow crt register bits that
could be set incorrectly.  i wonder about vga->crt[0x13].
my reading of the spec several years ago was that it needed

to be
	vga->crt[0x13] = (vga->virtx*mode->z)/64;
not
	vga->crt[0x13] = ((vga->virtx*mode->z)/8);

this produces output like the table here
http://wiki.osdev.org/VGA_Hardware.  but i never finished
testing this.

also, crt[0x18] should be set to 0x3ff, not that it matters.
the extra bit is just ignored.
(see http://www.osdever.net/FreeVGA/vga/crtcreg.htm)

- erik