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* [9fans] it's live
@ 2006-07-26 19:47 Ronald G Minnich
  2006-07-26 19:52 ` Devon H. O'Dell
  2006-07-26 20:30 ` Anthony Sorace
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 4+ messages in thread
From: Ronald G Minnich @ 2006-07-26 19:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs


ok, so it's trivial, but if you look at mbgokhale.org/bustracker today,
you'll see a track of my wife's Honda Fit ... the arrow on the bus
really does mean 'I am going this direction, as indicated by GPS'.
Josiah built 36 different bus icons to make that go. I'll try to get a
link for node pictures and setup info.

Thanks to Google for Gooooogle maps. Thanks to everyone for Plan 9 :-)

more later. We just built the machine into the toolbox. I gave it the
'drop kick' test (drop it, kick it, kick it, drop it) and it survived.
For this embedded stuff, you need to be pitiless. My wife was kind of
shocked at how mean I was to the hardware before I put it in the car.

I wrote a basically working driver for the DoC Millenium for Plan 9
yesterday, using linuxbios and linux sources. It has debug prints in it,
and it has a problem in one sense, in that a 'busy' bit in a status
register NEVER clear, so every op has to time out (but succeeds). I
think it's a standard docmil hardware problem (doc hardware is a mess,
even if it is cool). I did install an mbr, file system, etc. and it all
works on this part.

If anyone wants the driver to have a go at finishing it up, you're
welcome to it. I was going to put it on sources but I can't get to
sources just now (down?).

I stopped doing it because the (AHEM) fuctory bios is SUPPOSED to treat
doc mil as an IDE drive if the right bios settings are made. It does
nothing of the sort (SURPRISE! a fuctory bios doesn't work). So, I have
to do linuxbios for this node ... but ... it will boot plan 9 really
fast when I'm done. But, the only way to have ONLY a docmil part on the
node is to have linuxbios, as the fuctory bios just won't work.

The docmil driver is small. It made me a big fan of copy and convert.
The Linux doc driver is pretty general, and hence complicated, as it
weaves around the various doc part bugs and 'features'. A simple docmil
driver is ... simple. And, it can be copied and converted for standard
doc. A good deal. I like copy and convert.

oh yeah ...
doc == disk on chip -- 32 pin DIP flash, looks like programmed I/O disk,
up to 64 MB
docmil == disk on chip millenium -- 32DIP, 8 MB

all doc are proprietary, all neat, all full of bugs.

ron


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 4+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2006-07-26 21:30 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2006-07-26 19:47 [9fans] it's live Ronald G Minnich
2006-07-26 19:52 ` Devon H. O'Dell
2006-07-26 20:30 ` Anthony Sorace
2006-07-26 21:30   ` Ronald G Minnich

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