Q: NeXTdimension bootstrap
: Christian Kuhtz
Hi guys:
Anyone know the answer to this one?
I have a cube with 4 boards in it (1x040, 3x030), and it is working just
fine... and I am thinking about building a system with the following
configuration (nice to have spares flying around ;-):
1x040-25 board
2x030-25 boards
1xNeXTdimension board
Will this work? How does the NeXTdimension find its host?.. At some point
the CPU board attempts to bootstrap the ND, but what exactly determines which
of the boards will bootstrap it and where is this information kept?
Thanks so much in advance!
Regards,
Chris
--
Christian Kuhtz <ku...@ix.netcom.com>, office: cku...@paranet.com
Network/UNIX Specialist for Paranet, Inc. http://www.paranet.com/
MIME/NeXTmail accepted
Mike Paquette
: Christian Kuhtz <ku...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>I have a cube with 4 boards in it (1x040, 3x030), and it is working just
>fine... and I am thinking about building a system with the following
>configuration (nice to have spares flying around ;-):
>1x040-25 board
>2x030-25 boards
>1xNeXTdimension board
>Will this work? How does the NeXTdimension find its host?.. At some point
>the CPU board attempts to bootstrap the ND, but what exactly determines which
>of the boards will bootstrap it and where is this information kept?
For multiple CPU boards to work in a Cube, at most one of the boards
will be connected to backplane signals other than power and ground.
I'd bet that your 040 board has an NBIC chip installed next to the
NeXTbus connector, and the 030 cards have an empty socket there.
The NeXTdimension board should boot from the 040 board in Slot 0. The
ND board can be in slots strapped to be NeXTbus slot 2, 4, or 6. The
68040 board boot ROM knows how to initialize and examine the NeXTbus
for peripheral cards such as the NeXTdimension. The 68030 board boot
ROM doesn't do this.
Details on how to bootstrap a peripheral board like the NeXTdimension
are kept in a ROM on the peripheral card mapped into the slot address
range for the slot holding the card.
Mike Paquette
--
I don't speak for my employer, and they don't speak for me.
mpa...@wco.com
mpa...@next.com NeXT business mail only, please
David Evans
In article <54rdbt$2...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>,
>fine... and I am thinking about building a system with the following
>configuration (nice to have spares flying around ;-):
>
>1x040-25 board
>2x030-25 boards
>1xNeXTdimension board
>
>Will this work? How does the NeXTdimension find its host?.. At some point
>the CPU board attempts to bootstrap the ND, but what exactly determines which
>of the boards will bootstrap it and where is this information kept?
>
This should work fine. The trick is that only one CPU board may have an
NBIC installed (and the NeXTdimension board must as well, of course). If there
is no NBIC then there is no communication with the NeXTbus, so the other two
CPU boards will be effectively invisible.
I'm not sure what fireworks you'd get if you had multiple boards with slot ID
0, each with an NBIC...
--
David Evans (NeXTMail OK) dfe...@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Computer/Synth Junkie http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual
Christian Kuhtz
dfe...@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca (David Evans) wrote:
> I'm not sure what fireworks you'd get if you had multiple boards with
> slot ID 0, each with an NBIC...
Actually, there are no fireworks at all. Just works. ;-) Otherwise you
wouldn't be able to read this ;-)..
Regards,
Chris
--
Christian Kuhtz <ku...@ix.netcom.com>, office: cku...@paranet.com
Network/UNIX Specialist for Paranet, Inc. http://www.paranet.com/
Supercomputing Junkie, et al MIME/NeXTmail accepted
Christian Kuhtz
mpa...@wco.com (Mike Paquette) wrote:
>For multiple CPU boards to work in a Cube, at most one of the boards
>will be connected to backplane signals other than power and ground.
>I'd bet that your 040 board has an NBIC chip installed next to the
>NeXTbus connector, and the 030 cards have an empty socket there.
You mean that quite little PGA socket? The last thing I heard about that
socket was that it was a proprietary port for a logic analyzer ;-).. Cool,
that makes sense. All my '030 boards have nothing in that PGA socket.
>The NeXTdimension board should boot from the 040 board in Slot 0. The
>ND board can be in slots strapped to be NeXTbus slot 2, 4, or 6. The
>68040 board boot ROM knows how to initialize and examine the NeXTbus
>for peripheral cards such as the NeXTdimension. The 68030 board boot
>ROM doesn't do this.
Aha, great! That makes a lot of sense. Right now all the slots are coded 0
for the CPU's to work. So, how does the '030 board work with NeXTdimensions
then? I mean, how does it find it? Do you have to explicitly tell the ROM
about it?
>Details on how to bootstrap a peripheral board like the NeXTdimension
>are kept in a ROM on the peripheral card mapped into the slot address
>range for the slot holding the card.
Is there documentation still available for exactly details in NeXTdimension
programming?
David Evans
In article <5531cn$b...@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
Christian Kuhtz <ku...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>You mean that quite little PGA socket? The last thing I heard about that
>socket was that it was a proprietary port for a logic analyzer ;-).. Cool,
>that makes sense. All my '030 boards have nothing in that PGA socket.
>
You sure you aren't getting NeXT confused with Be? ;-)
>Aha, great! That makes a lot of sense. Right now all the slots are coded 0
>for the CPU's to work. So, how does the '030 board work with NeXTdimensions
>then? I mean, how does it find it? Do you have to explicitly tell the ROM
>about it?
>
I wondered about this too. In the Dimension's instructions (that I saw many
years ago) it said that NeXT "strongly recommended" upgrading to an '040, but
that it wasn't a requirement. Howeve, maybe you have to use a newer ROM
version. I don't know what the deal is regarding ROM version compatibility
with '030 and '040 boards.
Actually, come to think of it, it would be nifty to have a list of ROM
versions along with the devices they support, bugs they fix, and so on. I'm
sure the info must exist somwhere, but finding it would be a major pain.
>Is there documentation still available for exactly details in NeXTdimension
>programming?
>
I've sort-of been interested in this for a while, and I gather there are
none. From what Mike has said before I gather you need some sort of strange
i860 cross-development environment. However, it does seem that the i860's code
is loaded from the host '030/'040 (rather than being in ROM) since the new
backing store compression stuff in 4.x is done on the i860. I remember finding
an i860 section or something one day while poking around in
/usr/lib/NextStep/Displays/NeXTdimension<whatever> with otool, but can't seem
to reproduce it now.
Christian Kuhtz
dfe...@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca (David Evans) wrote:
>In article <5531cn$b...@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com>,
>Christian Kuhtz <ku...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>You mean that quite little PGA socket? The last thing I heard about that
>>socket was that it was a proprietary port for a logic analyzer ;-).. Cool,
>>that makes sense. All my '030 boards have nothing in that PGA socket.
>>
>
> You sure you aren't getting NeXT confused with Be? ;-)
Nope ;-).. I actually have it in a piece of documentation here. Anyway.
Obivously crappy documentation ;-)
> I wondered about this too. In the Dimension's instructions (that I saw
many
>years ago) it said that NeXT "strongly recommended" upgrading to an '040,
but
>that it wasn't a requirement. Howeve, maybe you have to use a newer ROM
>version. I don't know what the deal is regarding ROM version compatibility
>with '030 and '040 boards.
> Actually, come to think of it, it would be nifty to have a list of ROM
>versions along with the devices they support, bugs they fix, and so on. I'm
>sure the info must exist somwhere, but finding it would be a major pain.
Something for the FAQ! ;-)
> I've sort-of been interested in this for a while, and I gather there are
>none. From what Mike has said before I gather you need some sort of strange
>i860 cross-development environment.
Well, doesn't bother me. You can build a complete i860 with most of the GNU
stuff and some glue. And if I dig deep enough in my gray cells, I can
probably the i860 linguistically challenged remainder of it ;-).. or at least
I used to be able to speak it quite fluently.
I wish there was more information available about this wonderful piece of
hardware... a fine piece of engineering it seems, but nobody seems to know
much about it...
Regards,
Chris
--
Christian Kuhtz <ku...@ix.netcom.com>, office: cku...@paranet.com
Network/UNIX Specialist for Paranet, Inc. http://www.paranet.com/
Supercomputing Junkie, et al MIME/NeXTmail accepted
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Mike Paquette
dfe...@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca (David Evans) wrote:
> I wondered about this too. In the Dimension's instructions (that I saw many
>years ago) it said that NeXT "strongly recommended" upgrading to an '040, but
>that it wasn't a requirement. Howeve, maybe you have to use a newer ROM
>version. I don't know what the deal is regarding ROM version compatibility
>with '030 and '040 boards.
There are no ROM upgrades for the 68030 board. The '040 upgrades got
you a faster CPU (feeding the i860 from the '030 was an exercise in
thumb twiddling. It could chew through it's command queues way faster
than the '030 could fill them. The '040 system was better balanced),
and a NeXTbus aware ROM that would let you run with a sound box
instead of the 2 bit gray display, and still get to the ROM monitor
and see the boot animation.
Mike Paquette
Christian Kuhtz <ku...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>mpa...@wco.com (Mike Paquette) wrote:
>>For multiple CPU boards to work in a Cube, at most one of the boards
>>will be connected to backplane signals other than power and ground.
>>I'd bet that your 040 board has an NBIC chip installed next to the
>>NeXTbus connector, and the 030 cards have an empty socket there.
>You mean that quite little PGA socket? The last thing I heard about that
>socket was that it was a proprietary port for a logic analyzer ;-).. Cool,
>that makes sense. All my '030 boards have nothing in that PGA socket.
That's the NBIC socket. The old NeXTbus Developer's Guide has a
diagram in it showing how to hook a logic analyzer up through the
socket. Maybe that's what caused the confusion here.
>>The NeXTdimension board should boot from the 040 board in Slot 0. The
>>ND board can be in slots strapped to be NeXTbus slot 2, 4, or 6. The
>>68040 board boot ROM knows how to initialize and examine the NeXTbus
>>for peripheral cards such as the NeXTdimension. The 68030 board boot
>>ROM doesn't do this.
>Aha, great! That makes a lot of sense. Right now all the slots are coded 0
>for the CPU's to work. So, how does the '030 board work with NeXTdimensions
>then? I mean, how does it find it? Do you have to explicitly tell the ROM
>about it?
A 68030 board without an NBIC won't be able to talk to any NeXTbus
peripherals. All it has are power and ground connections onto the
NeXTbus.
With an NBIC installed, the 68030 board ROM code still won't talk to
the NeXTbus. The kernel code will initialize the NBIC, though, and
then loadable device drivers (like the NeXTdimension driver) can
communicate over the bus to their peripherals.
Since the ROM code on the 68030 board is not NeXTbus-aware, a
NeXTdimension + 68030 system will always have it's ROM monitor and
boot animation on the two-bit gray display. No ROM upgrades for 68030
systems were available to make the ROM NeXTbus-aware.
The 68040 system boot ROMs were designed to support the NeXTbus. The
ROMs contain code which can initialize the CPU board NBIC and scan the
NeXTbus slot address spaces looking for peripherals. When known types
of peripherals are found, a p-code interpreter in the boot ROM
executes initialization code on the peripheral card and adds the card
to an internal device list.
For display cards, the 68040 ROM selects the card in the highest slot
number (or the card specified as the console by the Preferences.app
Displays panel) as the console. The ROM monitor, boot animation,
console, and login window will appear on this screen.
>Is there documentation still available for exactly details in NeXTdimension
>programming?
No. The NeXTdimension is a dedicated accelerator for Display
PostScript, Quick Renderman, and the video mechanism supported by
NXLiveVideoView. All programming for the board is done through the
published API for PostScript, Quick Renderman, and NXLiveVideoView.