MorphZone

Regarding Mediator A1200 support

jacadcaps

# 1
MorphOS Developer

Posts: 3108 from 2003/3/5

From: Canada

Mediator for A1200 only has a 8MB (or less) PCI window which requires page swapping by either software or MMU to address the whole pci space of certain cards. As far as we know, it locks the PowerPC cpu while doing this. Because of this design issue, it cannot be supported by MorphOS.

No bounty is going to change this.
»25.08.05 - 11:31

quenthal

# 2
Just looking around

Posts: 7 from 2005/8/24

Personally I was talking about Mediator 4000
»25.08.05 - 11:46

Crumb

# 3
Priest of the Order of the Butterfly

Posts: 732 from 2003/2/24

From: aGaS & CUAZ Al...

And what about Mediator4000 and Prometheus? These boards have a 512MByte window and seem to have documentation available.
»25.08.05 - 13:04

mdma

# 4
Butterfly

Posts: 85 from 2003/5/4

Quote:

jacadcaps wrote:
Mediator for A1200 only has a 8MB (or less) PCI window which requires page swapping by either software or MMU to address the whole pci space of certain cards. As far as we know, it locks the PowerPC cpu while doing this. Because of this design issue, it cannot be supported by MorphOS.

No bounty is going to change this.

Here is Elbox support's reply:-

Quote:

The 8MB memory window is a "feature" of the Amiga 1200 turbo cards,
in which only 24 processor address lines are connected to the A1200
CPU slot connector.
BTW. A1200 CPU slot spec defines pins reserved for the processor
address lines A24 - A31.

Page swapping should be not a big problem for systems where only
one processor accesses space addressed via this memory window.
It was much more complicated in AmigaOS3.x (and Warp 3D) where the
Mediator PCI space is available for both (68k and PPC) processors.

If only AmigaOS emulation in this MOS version is done well enough
that the Picasso 96 system can work, you should be able to use our
Voodoo drivers (and drivers for other PCI cards). The pci.library
should be switched to the NO_MMU mode and the Envarc:Mediator/Emulation
variable should be set to Yes. In this mode the pci.library takes
care over the memory window page swapping. In this mode pci.library
does not use the 68k MMU unit.
»25.08.05 - 16:11

jacadcaps

# 5
MorphOS Developer

Posts: 3108 from 2003/3/5

From: Canada

This has nothing to do with emulation - MorphOS *requires* a CGX v5 gfx driver.
»25.08.05 - 19:22

Nickman

# 6
Just looking around

Posts: 10 from 2005/8/24

Quote:

jacadcaps wrote:
This has nothing to do with emulation - MorphOS *requires* a CGX v5 gfx driver.

for native support yes. but can't you install 68k p96 and drivers ? Thats what elbox meant.

But maybe MorphOS is to diffrent to AmigaOS to accept another gfx system ?
maybe with the combination of wb 3.9 + p96.

Will be dog slow i guess. so why bother right ?
-------
A1200T, BlizzardPPC 603+ 240Mhz/040 25Mhz
196mb ram. All SCSI.
»25.08.05 - 20:01

jacadcaps

# 7
MorphOS Developer

Posts: 3108 from 2003/3/5

From: Canada

Various components of MorphOS are built around CyberGraphics which is a core component of the roms. It is not and will not be possible to use Picasso because it does not have the required functionality. Such stuff was only possible with 0.4 which did not have native graphics or intuition.
»25.08.05 - 21:09

Nickman

# 8
Just looking around

Posts: 10 from 2005/8/24

Thats what i suspected. Just wanted it to be clear to everyone. Thanks for the answer.
-------
A1200T, BlizzardPPC 603+ 240Mhz/040 25Mhz
196mb ram. All SCSI.
»25.08.05 - 22:02

quenthal

# 9
Just looking around

Posts: 7 from 2005/8/24

Quote:

jacadcaps wrote:
This has nothing to do with emulation - MorphOS *requires* a CGX v5 gfx driver.

Ok. But that doesn't answer the possibility of Mediator 1200 support. If I understood correctly Elbox's answer, the 8mb window is not problem, if only PPC (and 68k emulation on it) is required to talk with PCI-bus, not real 68k. If Mediator becomes one day one of the supported PCI-solutions, then I should be able to use common CGX v5 -drivers, independent of PCI-bus?

As a side note, I personally user of Mediator 4000, which shouldn't be suffering these limitation even under AOS3.x.

Btw., is there going any talks about Mediator4000 (and Prometheus) with or without Elbox? Is there any serious discussion within MorphOS-team about that Mediator4000-donation (from DiscreetFX) for them? Could those non-Elbox work done on Mediator-drivers help in any way(Mediator HAL - if it really exists - for MorphOS 0.x, work done on Linux and OpenPCI)?

[ Edited by quenthal on 2005/8/30 20:13 ]
»30.08.05 - 13:12