[LV] TURBOchannel support -- success!

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

Hi Jan-Benedict,

> > Calibrating delay loop... 28.26 BogoMIPS (lpj=141312)
> 
> What a nice fast VAX it is...

 Not as good as the 4000/96 (or even the /90A), but these do not normally 
come with the TC adapter -- DEC apparently underestimated the demand for 
the adapter and by the time the /96 came out they already announced the TC 
adapter for the system was only available through their parts exchange 
service. ;-)  The /90 is about the same performance as the DECstation 
5000/240 is, which, for those unfamiliar with the family, is based on a 
MIPS R3400 processor (MIPS I ISA with an integrated FPU) running at 40MHz, 
with the system bus at 25MHz.

 Now to translate it to real-world numbers -- a 5000/240 with 384MB of RAM 
needed about two weeks of continuous processing to fully bootstrap GCC 4.0 
-- that is with the Ada, C, C++, Fortran and Java frontends and all the 
relevant libraries.  Some time could be saved by using a PMAZC-A board and 
a half-decent disk...  We need a driver for the former first though. ;-)

> > IP-Config: Complete:
> >       device=eth0, addr=153.19.170.130, mask=255.255.255.0, gw=255.255.255.255,
> >      host=cougar.ds2.pg.gda.pl, domain=, nis-domain=(none),
> >      bootserver=153.19.170.129, rootserver=153.19.170.129, rootpath=/export/cougar
> > Looking up port of RPC 100003/2 on 153.19.170.129
> > Looking up port of RPC 100005/1 on 153.19.170.129
> > VFS: Mounted root (nfs filesystem).
> > Freeing unused kernel memory: 96k freed
> > Warning: unable to open an initial console.

 Hmm, I could probably `mknod /export/cougar/dev/console c 5 1' to push it 
even further... ;-)

> They share, for example, the TurboChannel bus (as well as some early
> Alphas.) So this is quite a nice work, especially if TC on Alpha is
> brought to work at some time.

 This is just a part of a bigger plan of making the TC support 
architecture-independent and then supporting all the three relevant 
platforms.  The DEC 3000 AXP is there somewhere on my to-do list, but I 
figured this port has a greater need for some momentum. ;-)  And the 
design of the 4000/90 seems fancier too. ;-)))

> hacking! I'll try to merge up with Linus's work as well as getting
> Maciej's TC patches into the tree. ISTR that I've got one of the SCSI
> TC adaptors around, maybe I can play with it a bit :)

 Please note that the PMAD-A and the PMAZ-A require some changes to 
disable non-TURBOchannel stuff they support for the DECstation and to 
convert some left-over MIPS-specific bits, which should be done properly 
(basically s/CKSEG1ADDR/ioremap, but there's a little bit more than that).  
See the patch with my other mail for what to look for (please note it's 
not ready for merging yet, but anybody interested should be able to use it 
easily anyway).

> PS: Oh, and Maciej is quite into toolchain hacking. Saw that he's
> using 4.0.1? I still hope that a working substitute of the Oldenburg

 I make tools available as RPM packages routinely at my site, which is: 
"ftp://ftp3.ds.pg.gda.pl/people/macro/".  Most bits are for MIPS (which 
are happy enough to have got to the native stage already), but I put my 
VAX/Linux cross-packages there too.  Currently binutils 2.17, gcc 4.0.1 
and headers from glibc 2.3.6 are provided.  Look for package names 
starting with "vax-linux-".  Those looking for an Ada compiler I have to 
disappoint though -- it's too early, really -- sorry. ;-)

> meeting (http://meeting.ffis.de/) gets up'n'running...

 That would be most welcome.  And BTW, you mentioned some documentation 
that I have assumed to be well known to the others may in fact not be -- 
here's a link to two useful books: 

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/archSpec/

Personally I find the standard more valuable than the manual.  There are a 
few more one level up.

 I have a couple of unrelated patches that I needed to upgrade to 2.6.18 
which I'll send shortly, so that you do not have to duplicate this work.

  Maciej
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