[9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[erik quanstrom]

i'm having some trouble booting on a intel 440GX motherboard
with 2 800mhz coppermine processors.

i've got an aic-7896n on the motherboard with no disks attached
and a mylex controler with two disks attached. there are no
ide disks, save the cdrom.

the machine loads 9load from cdrom and prints something like
this (copied down, so probablly not verbatim):

ELCR: 0E00

dev A0 port 1F0 config 85C0 capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0407
Boot devices: fd0

i tried the drive as a primary and secondary ide master;
same results.

i tried
	sdD0!cdboot!9pcflop.gz
and get
	unknown partition
i tried
	fd0!dos!9pcflop.gz
and it boots (recognizing one processor) up to the point where it
prints "kfs..." and then it stops.

any ideas?

- erik

[9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[erik quanstrom]

one detail i got left out. after booting from the floppy i got a
prompt for the root device -- i used #S/sdD0/data.


erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> writes

|
| i'm having some trouble booting on a intel 440GX motherboard
| with 2 800mhz coppermine processors.
|
| i've got an aic-7896n on the motherboard with no disks attached
| and a mylex controler with two disks attached. there are no
| ide disks, save the cdrom.
|
| the machine loads 9load from cdrom and prints something like
| this (copied down, so probablly not verbatim):
|
| ELCR: 0E00
|
| dev A0 port 1F0 config 85C0 capabilities 2F00 mwdma 0407
| Boot devices: fd0
|
| i tried the drive as a primary and secondary ide master;
| same results.
|
| i tried
| 	sdD0!cdboot!9pcflop.gz
| and get
| 	unknown partition
| i tried
| 	fd0!dos!9pcflop.gz
| and it boots (recognizing one processor) up to the point where it
| prints "kfs..." and then it stops.
|
| any ideas?
|
| - erik

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[geoff]

Can you give us the entire contents of your plan9.ini?

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[Paweł Lasek]

On 3/5/06, geoff@collyer.net <geoff@collyer.net> wrote:

> In general, I believe we don't have drivers for RAID cards.  They
> often turn out to not actually do RAID in hardware (Promise is famous
> for this).  I think 3ware is an exception and their cards actually do
> RAID in hardware.

DAC960 is a SCSI disk-only RAID controller, with special protocol for
attaching scsi tape drives... it does everything in hw (just like DPT
SmartCache/SmartRAID - I have a SmartCache IV, and it contains a 68k
processor - different model for different cards, from 680ECxxx on
cheapest, to full 68060 on best SmartRAID IV :-) )



--
Paweł Lasek

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[geoff]

It looks like you can find the freebsd driver as multiple files at

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/mlx/

but it may not be much better.  mlx.c, which I assume is the main part
of the driver, is just over 3,000 lines.

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[erik quanstrom]

the firmware seems to live on the card. i just verified the configuration.
so hopefully there's no "goo" involved.

i cried uncle when i read this:

static inline
void DAC960_P_To_PD_TranslateReadWriteCommand(DAC960_V1_CommandMailbox_T
					      *CommandMailbox)

does anyone have a link to only the freebsd driver? i don't have the bandwidth
to download the whole thing.

- erik

On Sat Mar  4 20:34:11 CST 2006, geoff@collyer.net wrote:
> Hmm, so there may be yet another big lump of binary goo that you have
> to download into the 960.
>
> The scary size of linux drivers is why I also mentioned the freebsd
> driver.  I think I saw mention of a netbsd driver too.  Maybe they're
> smaller.
>

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[geoff]

Hmm, so there may be yet another big lump of binary goo that you have
to download into the 960.

The scary size of linux drivers is why I also mentioned the freebsd
driver.  I think I saw mention of a netbsd driver too.  Maybe they're
smaller.

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[erik quanstrom]

yes it would. i'm not too worried about that yet.

i have worked with the dac960 before under linux.
we built a 2TB oracle database using the dac960; the
performance on a 4-way 600Mhz pIII xeon was
exceptional, handily beating 8-way ibm
r50s running oracle on SSAs (serial arrays).

as i understand it, the card is buit around an intel i960
chip that does the arithmatic for raid5.

the good news is that there's a linux driver. the bad news
is similar:

; wc -l /usr/src/linux-2.6.15-gentoo-r1/drivers/block/DAC*
  7222 /usr/src/linux-2.6.15-gentoo-r1/drivers/block/DAC960.c
  4429 /usr/src/linux-2.6.15-gentoo-r1/drivers/block/DAC960.h
 11651 total

On Sat Mar  4 20:12:47 CST 2006, geoff@collyer.net wrote:
> The *nomp=1 will explain why only one processor is being seen.
>
> I'm not familiar with the dac960, so I suspect that we don't have a
> driver for it.  google shows that freebsd and linux drivers exist, so
> that might be a place to start.
>
> In general, I believe we don't have drivers for RAID cards.  They
> often turn out to not actually do RAID in hardware (Promise is famous
> for this).  I think 3ware is an exception and their cards actually do
> RAID in hardware.
>

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[geoff]

The *nomp=1 will explain why only one processor is being seen.

I'm not familiar with the dac960, so I suspect that we don't have a
driver for it.  google shows that freebsd and linux drivers exist, so
that might be a place to start.

In general, I believe we don't have drivers for RAID cards.  They
often turn out to not actually do RAID in hardware (Promise is famous
for this).  I think 3ware is an exception and their cards actually do
RAID in hardware.

Re: [9fans] booting from cd on an intel 440GX dual processor

[erik quanstrom]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 350 bytes --]

here it is. i have since been able to boot from the floppy. and i can
mount the cdrom, but on further review (picking through the bios
.

however, the controler is a little different that i thought. it's
a dac960. it prints an address of f4206000 on startup.

the adaptec onboard is an aic-7896, but doesn't have any drives attached.

- erik

[-- Attachment #2: plan9.ini --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Size: 250 bytes --]

*nomp=1
distname=plan9
nobootprompt=local!/boot/bzroot
*nodumpstack=1
partition=new
mouseport=ask
monitor=ask
vgasize=ask
dmamode=ask

# serial console on COM1
#console=0

# disable ether and usb probing
#*nousbprobe=1
#*noetherprobe=1