NetBSD 7.1 on the Atari TT

[Icky]

To add a few more references as I am working around the web standing on the shoulders of giants (there is a lot of good work people have done in the past around NetBSD and all the people on this forum with software and hardware. I am only a mere tinkerer of tech).

Reference to installing source files to be able to cross build on:

• https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/ch ... sd-release

Great source of Atari TT NetBSD information:

• http://netbsd-ataritt.wikia.com/wiki/Cr ... ed_Install

My current stumbling blocks I am working on:

• Getting Server to work with the ET4000 card I have. Kernel recognises the card but am currently getting crashes with the Xserver

• Building a decent window manager for X on NetBSD am currently trying to cross compile KDE and xcfe

[tuxie]

That’s great, will test it on my tt with IDE HDD and Our fastram card, would be a goal to get the lightning usb working using netbsd

Are you the tuxie I am currently in contact with to obtain a Thunder and Storm card?

Yes i am, but with other user name i think ? Or by Mail/Facebook ?

Regards

[Icky]

That’s great, will test it on my tt with IDE HDD and Our fastram card, would be a goal to get the lightning usb working using netbsd

Hi tuxie. I have just installed the Storm (256MB) and Thunder card today (brilliant pieces of kit) and tried to boot the NetBSD 7.1 image with them. The boot was so much faster but it did not succeed. The AtariTT kernel does not have the Falcon IDE interface code in it. I will have to create an additional AtariTT-Thunder-kernel for NetBSD to boot and run from the Thunder IDE interface.

Thunder and Storm card installed with 256MB and an SD to IDE adaptor

fullsizeoutput_25d.jpeg (3.53 MiB) Viewed 3691 times

I'll let you know how I get on and once done I'll post an disk image.

[tuxie]

great news, and yes this was also in my mind that the ide support is missing.

Idk if the smartswap mode would work, so the cf/sd is windows compatible. But there the partition tables are named in bytecode.

[tuxie]

Any success ?

[Icky]

Any success ?

Not yet. Have been battling time and failures. The New Year has started with a bang. My day job is keeping me away from the land of Atari and to top it all my main computer (where I have been compiling NetBSD) has had a motherboard failure and am waiting a new board.

However despite these annoying distractions I have managed to get the Falcon code for IDE into a kernel for NetBSD 7.1.1. Not so impressed with my coding as its hacky (being a quality software developer manager I need to give myself a good talking to). I intend to clean up and create a proper selection for this in NetBSD code using flags etc.

However I am at the kernel panic / debug stage as it is bombing at the initialising the wdc0 at mainbus0 on startup.

Will keep you posted once I get more time to look at this.

One thing though - when booting via the Thunder IDE interface up to the panic the speed compared to the TT SCSI and a Gigafile is very noticeably faster.

[tuxie]

One thing though - when booting via the Thunder IDE interface up to the panic the speed compared to the TT SCSI and a Gigafile is very noticeably faster.

Mostly the SCSI Devices are between 1,2-2MB/s so its up to 3 times faster and the Storm Fastram card is also much faster then all other cards, so you can feel it.

And your time, thats not a problem take your time i know this feeling

[Icky]

So still no further forward - kernel panics. Have been battling work and not the Atari world . Just wanted to post an update.

Currently I have a new kernel config which I have called ATARITT-THUNDER it is set to activate the IDE-bus using the following in the kernel config:

Code: Select all

wdc0 at mainbus0 # IDE-bus
atabus* at wdc? channel ?
wd* at atabus? drive ?

However this is not the only thing that is needed as there are a few statements around IDE code in the wdc_mb.c file that need to allow the TT to use those branches.

Code: Select all

if (machineid & ATARI_FALCON)

From what I can gather these will allow the kernel to run this on the Atari TT with the Thunder board. There are some items I have questions around. Firstly does the Thunder card use the same address space as the Falcon:

Code: Select all

/* Falcon IDE register locations (base and offsets). */
#define FALCON_WD_BASE  0xfff00000
#define FALCON_WD_LEN   0x40
#define FALCON_WD_AUX   0x38

There is also some initiation with the Atari Falcon to turn on the IDE before its probed by tapping the ym2149. Which I believe Port A has a bit to turn the IDE on or off (handy doc on Atari hardware registers http://deunstg.free.fr/sct1/hardware.htm)

Code: Select all

ym2149_ser2(0);

When booting with the new kernel it panics initialising the wdc. I am still in the process of debugging to see where thesis failing.

On another note I am also compiling xfce4 for this NetBSD build so as to have a half decent desktop from twm. This has resulted in many packages that are not in the existing repositories for Atari NetBSD.

[troed]

How TT specific is all this?

I'm very interested in getting a modern unix onto my Falcon CT60e and the existing Debian m68k seems old and lacking from active maintaining.

[Icky]

How TT specific is all this?

I'm very interested in getting a modern unix onto my Falcon CT60e and the existing Debian m68k seems old and lacking from active maintaining.

The NetBSD for Atari can be run on a stock ST although its pretty slow and not useable as there is a lot of disabled features. There is support for the TT, Falcon, Hades and Milan. If you were to follow the build walk through on the wiki link posted in the first post http://netbsd-ataritt.wikia.com/wiki/Ne ... tari_TT030 you could get it to build on the Falcon.

I can compile the Falcon kernel and copy it to /. I current use this option to select a kernel at boot by holding the RIGHT-SHIFT key after the memory test. I do this for testing different builds of the Thunder kernel I am playing with.

What I will do is clean up the image (as it has a lot of dev and src floating around) this weekend and post it to work on the Atari TT and have the option to try a Falcon compiled kernel at boot time.

So that said look out for Atari TT NetBSD 7.1 image v1 coming soon - which will be basic NetBSD which can launch X but will not have the xcfe4, Thunder or et4000 support as i am still working on this.